"The Carol Burnett Show": Some 1970s beefcake and gay subtexts amid the boring dinosaur songs.

Variety shows, combining comedy sketches and songs,  are out of style now -- only Saturday Night Live survives -- but in the 1960s and 1970s, they were all the rage.  At least among the adults.  In 1970, they could watch twelve hours of variety per week, with hosts Leslie Uggams, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, Glen Campbell (left),  Jim Nabors (who was gay but not ouht), Tom Jones, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, and Andy Williams.

Kids and teenagers hated variety. Passionately. They were always on opposite something good.  If your parents forced you to watch The Jim Nabors Hour, you had to miss That Girl. If you were forced to watch The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, you had to miss The Mod Squad.

And the shows were horrible.  Slow songs from dinosaur times!  Comedy sketches about characters popular on radio a thousand years ago!  Bathetic closing numbers involving sad clowns or cleaning ladies!

I usually managed to get out of watching variety shows by claiming homework, or when my brother and I got our own tv set, watching something else -- anything else.  But for some reason I saw a lot of The Carol Burnett Show (1967-78).  Carol, who got her start in the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, played a charwoman, a ditzy secretary, Queen Elizabeth, and Vickie Lawrence's sister.  She and her comedy troupe parodied soap operas ("As the Stomach Turned") and classic movies ("Went with the Wind").  

I had no idea what they were parodying.

Famous guest stars like Rock Hudson, Tony Randall (left),  Sid Caesar, and Robert Goulet played parodies of themselves or sang.  I remember Tony singing "Have some Madeira, M'Dear," about a creep trying to get a girl drunk so he can take advantage of her.  

That was comedy in the 1970s.

There were only three reasons to watch:

I liked three things about the show:

1.  Co-host Lyle Waggoner, a former male model who appeared n*dee in Playgirl.  He played the leading-men and hunks in comedy sketches.  Unfortunately, because they were comedy, he never appeared n*de or even shirtless on the show.

More after the break

2. Ken Berry (previously of Mayberry RFD) sang, danced, and appeared in comedy sketches in 20 episodes.  He had some muscles, and often wore extra-tight pants that would give Frank Gorshin some competition in the bulge department. Unfortunately, his numbers usually involved heterosexual romance.  One, called "Love Stolen from the Cookie Jar," was about how much he enjoyed  grabbing the butts of strange girls.

3. Singer Steve Lawrence (center, with the Blues Brothers) appeared in 30 episodes, mostly to sing.

 I recall a number where Steve's kid (played by a teddy bear) keeps asking him what he did in the Great War: "Did you kill anyone?  Did you have any fun?  Steve sings that the horrors of war are nothing compared the endless agony of being married.  Or having marital problems, but I read it as a critique of the "what girl do you like?" interrogations that I heard over and over throughout my childhood.   

4. The "Mama's Family" sketches, about a dysfunctional Southern family, featuring Carol as the brash Eunice (left), Harvey Korman (not pictured) as her husband, and the much younger Vickie Lawrence as crotchety Mama (right).  Gay actor Roddy McDowell (center) appeared occasionally as Eunice's highly educated, obviously gay brother, who lived to regret his visits. 

Alan Alda and Tommy Smothers appeared as other brothers before it was established that Mama had only one son, Vinton (Ken Berry).

  Anything that skewered the myth of the deliriously happy nuclear family was fun.  

And it spun off into the sitcom Mama's Family, a must-watch program of the 1980s.  Vickie Lawrence reprised her role as Mama, Ken Berry as her son Vinton, and  Alan Kayser was added to the cast as Eunice's son Bubba -- obviously hired for his physique and the lead pipe his pants, which entered the room three seconds before he did.

See also: The Four Seasons: Elitist New Yorkers discuss True Love, with a gay couple, a lumberjack, Vivaldi, and a n*de Len Cariou

Once Upon a Mattress.

Allan Kayser: the Bodybuilder of Mama's Family

Steve Bond: Tarzan costar turned Playgirl model turned soap hunk, all in the steamy 1970s.