Carol Burnett teams up with TCM to pair movie spoofs from her classic variety show with the films themselves
Carol Burnett loved spoofing classic movies on her legendary, eponymous 1967-’78 CBS comedy-variety show, so it’s wholly appropriate that she’s now bringing some of those sketches to Turner Classic Movies.
The iconic entertainer joins TCM host Dave Karger for Sundays With Carol Burnett most weeks in December. The series launches this Sunday (December 1), as the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind is paired with the Carol Burnett Show satire “Went With the Wind!,” arguably one of the most famous pieces of humour in television history — in large part due to Burnett’s memorable wearing of a Bob Mackie-designed gown that substitutes a curtain rod for shoulder pads.
“This was my husband’s idea,” Burnett explains. “Brian [Miller] had talked about doing it for a while, and we were at an event for Bob Mackie a couple of months ago, and there was a panel hosted by Dave Karger. I watch TCM all the time, and we presented this idea to Dave and he jumped at the chance. It was just a wonderful coincidence that we ran into him, and he said, ‘Send me a list of [the movie parodies] you have, and the ones you want to do for this.’ ”
Coming up on subsequent Sundays: Born to Be Bad (1950) followed by Burnett’s “Raised to be Rotten” and Torch Song (1953) attached to “Torchy Song” on December 8; The Heiress (1949) and then “The Lady Heir,” plus A Stolen Life (1946) linked to “A Swiped Life,” on December 15; and finally, Mildred Pierce (1945) connected to “Mildred Fierce” and Double Indemnity (1944) adjacent to Burnett’s “Double Calamity” on December 29. (TCM will be in the midst of a “Classic Christmas Marathon” on December 22.)
A movie lover all her life, Burnett says being able to pay homage to classic actresses she admired was “a dream come true for me. After our version of Mildred Pierce came on, Joan Crawford [who won an Oscar for the film] called me and said, ‘You gave us more production value than Jack Warner [the studio chief behind the film]!’ Unfortunately, she did not like our takeoff on Torch Song [in which Crawford also starred], and that might have been because the movie wasn’t a success. But the takeoff is very funny.”
Now preparing to reprise her Primetime Emmy-nominated role in the second season of the Apple TV+ series Palm Royale, Burnett laments that TCM couldn’t get the rights to include Love Story (1970) in Sundays With Carol Burnett. She hopes the franchise will fare well enough for the channel to revisit it by focusing specifically on her movie-musical spoofs, which she notes have “original music and lyrics by our [Carol Burnett Show] writers.”
A winner of seven Primetime Emmy Awards (to date) and a Kennedy Center Honors recipient — among her numerous accolades — Burnett has had a relationship with TCM for some time, her narration of a mini-documentary about her friendship with fellow comedy great Lucille Ball being one example. Her return there to co-host Sundays With Carol Burnett is, she believes, “the icing on the cake.”
Sundays With Carol Burnett airs Sunday, December 1, on TCM