Cast

On the left, main cast members in 1967 (clockwise from the bottom): Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner, on the right, the 1977 cast: Burnett, Tim Conway, Lawrence, and Korman

In addition to Carol Burnett, the cast consisted of:

• Vicki Lawrence
• Harvey Korman (seasons 1–10)
• Lyle Waggoner (seasons 1–7)
• Tim Conway (seasons 9–11; frequent guest performer in seasons 1–8)
• Dick Van Dyke (first half of season 11)

Comedic actor Harvey Korman had done many guest shots in TV sitcoms. From 1963 to 1967, he had been a semi-regular on the CBS variety series The Danny Kaye Show. Burnett already had become an admirer of Korman's talent as a sketch comedian on that series. When Kaye's program ended in the spring of 1967, Burnett insisted that he be signed for her series and Korman immediately joined The Carol Burnett Show as a regular.

Actor Lyle Waggoner had recently auditioned for the title role in the ABC series Batman but was passed over in favor of Adam West. Shortly after, Waggoner auditioned for the Burnett show and was immediately hired. He would often play a handsome man for Burnett to fawn over. His participation on the series was somewhat modeled on Durward Kirby of The Garry Moore Show, as Waggoner was also the show's announcer in addition to playing in sketches.

Burnett, Vicki Lawrence, and guest star Dinah Shore in the 1976 Went with the Wind! sketch

Vicki Lawrence, a young singer from The Young Americans wrote a letter to Burnett when she was 17, remarking on their physical resemblance. This led to her audition and getting hired to play Burnett's kid sister in numerous "Carol and Sis" sketches.

Costumes

Bob Mackie created all of the costumes, including evening gowns, character outfits and dance clothing for guests during the run of the show, including the iconic curtain dress from the "Went with the Wind!" sketch,^[10] which is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution. Burnett credited him with coming up with comedic touches for various characters, such as the tight-legged skirt for Mr. Tudball's secretary, Mrs. Wiggins. She told Mackie the skirt was too baggy in the back for her physique, but he told her to stick her bottom out to fill it, resulting in the character's distinctive posture and walk. In a 2003 interview with Terry Gross, she said Mackie would put rice in the “older woman” undergarments, where typically cotton would’ve been used, to make the saggy breasts have weight and movement as the characters walked or danced, such as when Burnett portrayed Norma Desmond or Charo's mother.^[11] Burnett estimated that Mackie had created 17,000 outfits for the show, and said his costume work added more humor to some of the skits Burnett felt were weaker than others.^[12]

Guests

Jim Nabors was the guest star on every season premiere of the show. Burnett considered Nabors to be her annual good luck charm.

Celebrity guests who appeared on a semi-regular basis included Steve Lawrence (29 appearances), Ken Berry (20 appearances), Eydie Gorme, Nanette Fabray (13 appearances), Bernadette Peters and Mel Torme (10 appearances).

Other notable guests include Olivia De Havilland, Lucille Ball, Joanne Woodward, Rita Hayworth, Dinah Shore, Rock Hudson, Cher, Martha Raye, Maggie Smith, Don Rickles, George Carlin, Gloria Swanson, Ella Fitzgerald, Joan Rivers, Rita Moreno, Tony Randall, Betty White, Phyllis Diller, Eddie Albert, Carol Channing, Betty Grable, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Jean Stapleton, Robert Goulet, and Liza Minnelli.

In addition, several notable character actors were used in the comedy sketches in featured roles, especially in the earlier seasons. Such actors include William Schallert, Isabel Sanford, Vivian Bonnell, and Reta Shaw. Lesser-known actors who appeared include Brad Trumbull, Bob Duggan, Dick Patterson, and Inga Neilsen.

Opening

A favorite feature consisted of an unrehearsed question-and-answer segment with the audience in CBS Studio 33 lasting about three to four minutes at the start of most shows. Burnett stated that she borrowed the concept from Garry Moore, who did the same on his variety show, but never taped it.^[13] Burnett asked for the lights to be turned up ("Let's turn up the lights...") and then randomly picked audience members who raised their hands. Burnett often ad-libbed funny answers, but occasionally ended up as the straight (wo)man. For example:

Young woman: "Have you ever taken acting lessons?"

Carol: "Yes, I have."

Young woman: "Do you think it did any good?"

Rehearsals and ad-libs

The show was rehearsed each day until its two Friday tapings. Differently colored cue cards (black, blue, green, and red) were used for each major performer ("Carol Burnett: Bump-Up the Lights"). The second taping was fairly routine until Tim Conway came aboard as a guest star. As a recurring guest star from the show's launch and later a regular cast member, Conway inserted unrehearsed bits into sketches that became known to the staff as "Conway's Capers". Conway would play the first taping straight, but (if the sketch had played well in the first taping, and could be used) would ad-lib bizarre scenarios during the second. Some notable clips included Conway as a Nazi interrogator berating an American captive (Lyle Waggoner). Using a Hitler puppet and a pencil as a "club", Conway sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" as Waggoner tried in vain to ignore him. Some, like the Hitler puppet, made it into the final broadcast; others, like a notably convoluted story about Siamese elephants joined at the trunk (ad-libbed during a 1977 "Mama's Family" sketch), were edited, the uncensored version only appearing years later on CBS specials. Conway's favorite victim was Harvey Korman, who often broke character reacting to Conway's zaniness, such as when Conway played a dentist misusing Novocain or the recurring role of "The Oldest Man" – an elderly, shuffling, senile man who slowly rolled down stairs and fell prey to various mechanical mishaps (including an electric wheelchair and an automated dry-cleaning rack).

Ending

The show also became known for its closing theme song, written by Burnett's husband, Joe Hamilton, with these lyrics:^[14]

I'm so glad we had this time together

Just to have a laugh or sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, "So long."

At the close of each episode, Burnett tugged her ear. This silent message was meant for her grandmother, who raised her, and meant she was thinking of her at that moment. After her grandmother's death, Burnett continued the tradition.

Continuations and revivals

In the fall of 1977, while the series was still running in prime time, the comedy sketches of the show were re-edited into freestanding programs; the resulting show enjoyed success for many years in syndicated reruns as Carol Burnett and Friends, a half-hour edition of selected 1972–77 material.

In the spring of 1979, a year after The Carol Burnett Show left the air, Burnett and her husband Joe Hamilton were dining in a restaurant with friends, including Tim Conway. At that gathering, Burnett got wistful and started reminiscing about the show and making suggestions to Conway concerning sketches that she wished they could be creating if the show were still running. Hamilton suggested to Burnett that she do a summer series. Taking that idea, Burnett and Hamilton approached CBS about doing a four-week program in the summer of 1979. CBS already had its schedule filled for the summer months and rejected the idea. However, ABC was interested, and as a result, four postscript episodes of The Carol Burnett Show were produced. Under the title Carol Burnett & Company, the show premiered on Saturday, August 18, 1979, and included many favorite sketches such as "Mr. Tudball and Mrs. Wiggins", "The Family", "As The Stomach Turns", and Burnett doing her impersonation of Queen Elizabeth II. Its format was very much similar to Burnett's series, with two exceptions. Due to the unavailability of Harvey Korman (who, ironically, had been under contract to ABC since he had left Burnett's show in 1977), comic actors Kenneth Mars and Craig Richard Nelson were added to the supporting cast, joining Lawrence and Conway. Ernie Flatt, who had been the choreographer on Burnett's show for its entire 11-year run, was replaced by the show's lead dancer Don Crichton. The guest stars in that four-week period were (chronologically) Cheryl Ladd, Alan Arkin, Penny Marshall, and Sally Field. The reviews of the series were very favorable, with several critics heartily welcoming Burnett back to weekly television, albeit on a limited basis. The ratings also were respectable and plans were announced for the program to become a yearly summer event, but it never happened.

In 1980, Joe Hamilton produced The Tim Conway Show, a variety series in the same vein with Conway as host and much of the staff of Carol Burnett & Company carrying over. Harvey Korman would join Conway as a co-host later in the show's short run; it ended in 1981.

The "Family" sketches led to a 1982 CBS made-for-television film called Eunice starring Burnett, Korman, Lawrence, Betty White, and Ken Berry. The success of this program spawned a spin-off sitcom titled Mama's Family, starring Vicki Lawrence and Ken Berry, which ran from 1983 to 1990. It occasionally featured Burnett and Korman guest-starring as Eunice and Ed Higgins; Burnett's involvement in Mama's Family was limited due to her divorce from producer Joe Hamilton.^[17] In the first year and a half of the show's run, Korman also appeared as narrator Alastair Quince, introducing each episode (a parody of Alastair Cooke hosting Masterpiece Theatre) and he also directed 31 episodes of the series.

NBC aired a comedy half-hour repertory series called Carol & Company that premiered in March 1990. It proved to be moderately successful in the ratings and was renewed for a second season. The regulars on the show included Peter Krause, Jeremy Piven, Terry Kiser, Meagen Fay, Anita Barone, and Richard Kind (and occasional guest stars, including Betty White and Burt Reynolds); each week's show was a different half-hour comedy play. This program lasted until July 1991.

CBS brought back The Carol Burnett Show for another run in the fall of 1991; new regulars included Meagen Fay and Richard Kind (brought over from the NBC show), and Chris Barnes, Roger Kabler, and Jessica Lundy. However, the times had changed and Burnett's humor was tame compared to the edgier comedy popular in the 1990s. The series failed to catch on with the public and only six episodes of this revival were aired.

In 1996, reruns of the syndicated Carol Burnett and Friends package aired on The Family Channel. It also aired on TV Land from 2004 to 2005. Beginning in January 2015, the show airs on MeTV at 11:00 PM ET.^[18]

The episodes of The Carol Burnett Show from 1967 to 1972 had never been released in syndication until 2019, when MeTV added the episodes to its library on April 14, 2019.^[19]

Specials

The cast of The Carol Burnett Show was reunited on four CBS television specials:

• The Carol Burnett Show: A Reunion (January 10, 1993) – featured several clips of the show's best moments from 1967 to 1978 with the gang reminiscing about their time together on the show.
  • 21.4 rating; 27.1 million viewers (9–11 pm)
• The Carol Burnett Show: Show Stoppers (November 26, 2001) – consisted mostly of bloopers and outtakes from the series.
  • November 26, 2001: 29.8 million viewers (time slot rank: first)
  • April 26, 2002: 11.5 million (time slot rank: first)
  • September 20, 2002: 6.2 million (time slot rank: third)
• The Carol Burnett Show: Let's Bump Up the Lights! (May 12, 2004) – featured showings of Burnett's recorded audience warmups (most of which made it, though not usually in full, to the aired episodes), during which she would turn up the house lights and provide often humorous — but sometimes serious — answers to questions shouted to her by members of the studio audience.
  • 13.6 million (time slot rank: second)
• The Carol Burnett Show: 50th Anniversary Special (December 3, 2017) – featured some of the most popular clips of comedy and music from the entire run of the show. Included dozens of celebrities, both live and recorded, to reminisce with Carol.
  • December 3, 2017: 1.5 18-49 rating; 15.2 million viewers (time slot rank: first) ^[20][21]
  • December 27, 2017: 0.6 18-49 rating; 5.26 million viewers (time slot rank: fourth)

Season 1 (1967–1968)

Season 2 (1968–1969)

Skit with Mel Torme, 1969

Season 3 (1969–1970)

Season 4 (1970–1971)

Season 5 (1971–1972)

Season 6 (1972–1973)

Season 7 (1973–1974)

Season 8 (1974–1975)

Season 9 (1975–1976)

Season 10 (1976–1977)

Season 11 (1977–1978)