HARVEY KORMANHarvey Korman, who died on 29 May, 2008, was a comic actor who was familiar to Americans as a cast member of The Carol Burnett Show and best known around the world as the villainous politician Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles (1974).He was the straight man to Tim Conway’s clown in the popular sketch show for most of the 1970s and was loved for his exaggerated comic accidents and his tendency to corpse at his cohort’s unscripted antics during the live broadcasts.His screen career began in the early 1960s after a decade of unsuccessful theatre work and he appeared in more than a dozen comedy films, contributing to franchises like the Pink Panther, Herbie and the Flintstones live action films – in the ’60s he was also a voice actor for the cartoons.Harvey Herschel Korman was born into a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois on 15 February, 1927. He was something of a loner as a child and put his ambitions to entertain down to a reaction to this seclusion.He studied drama in Illinois, and then headed to New York with dreams of stardom. "I went to New York and died," he later said. "For 10 years I walked those pavements. I can’t think of New York without feeling uncomfortable and feeling like a failure."Eventually, having tried serious theatre "on Broadway, off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway" he gave up and returned to Chicago, but his ambitions were still burning and he decided to give show business another shot.Arriving in California, he started finding film and television work, making his screen debut in minor picture Living Venus (1961) and then getting bit parts in episodes of shows like Hennesey, The Detectives and Perry Mason.His break was the chance to perform comic sketches in the first series of The Danny Kaye Show alongside the acclaimed entertainer in 1963. Having shown his ability to play comedy, more work followed, with roles in The Lucy Show, The Munsters and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World.In The Flintstones he voiced, among several characters, The Great Gazoo, the bizarre alien character introduced in the show’s final series as a moral guide to Fred. The nonchalant green spaceman baffled audiences but it did give Mr Korman a showcase for his mellifluous tones and he would return to cartoon voiceover work later in his career.He moved from the Danny Kaye Show to The Carol Burnett Show at its launch in 1967 and quickly struck up a repartee with both the hostess and Emmy-winning comedian Tim Conway.They would act out sketches in which Conway would be the central focus while Mr Korman attempted to keep a straight face – he was the unfortunate patient of Conway’s incompetent dentist who accidentally anesthetised himself in one famous sketch, the despairing father of an alleged piano prodigy who struggles to read music, a take on George Adamson’s character in Born Free who has to ejected a civilised lion (Conway in big cat outfit and bowler hat) from his house and many more.Midway through his 10-year run on the show (he left just before the final series in 1978) he starred in Mel Brooks' classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles, playing a State Attorney General prone to melodrama and grandiloquent speech as he attempts to drive town folk out of their homes so he can build a railroad.Other roles included the confidence trickster ‘King’ in Huckleberry Finn (1974), Prof Auguste Balls in Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) (he had earlier shot scenes as the character in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, 1976, but they were cut), and the Count de Monet in Mel Brooks' History of the World: Part I (1981).Like most American comics, he was a regular on panel games like Hollywood Squares and the late night talk shows. He was an erudite speaker with a dry, self-depreciating sense of humour. He had a great admiration for his colleagues but also held the opinion that great comedians were generally "very disturbed", an insight delivered with a tone of admiration.He voiced the Dictabird in the The Flintstones (1994) and was given an on-screen part as Colonel Slaghoople in the follow-up, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000). He also reprised his role as The Great Gazoo in a Flintstones computer game. In the ’90s he lent his vocal talents to numerous children’s cartoon series and films and made cameo appearances in shows like Diagnosis Murder and ER.He died at the age of 81 in Los Angeles. He was survived by his wife of Deborah Fritz and their two children, plus two children from his first marriage to Donna Elhart.
Keep me informed of updates
