HARVEY KORMAN
Feb. 15, 1927–May 29, 2008
By Carol Burnett
Harvey was the ultimate actor, who happened to have this great timing and a funny bone. He could do any accent. He had a book of Italian accents. I thought, ''What are you doing, Harvey?'' He didn't want to do what I would call a sketch Italian accent. He really went into it and he did a Southern Italian accent. He approached every single character from a serious acting standpoint, then he would add the little bits that would make it funny.
I think one of the classic, early ones was the dentist sketch, where Tim was the new dentist and Harvey was his first patient, and Tim started shooting himself accidentally with the Novocain. Poor Harvey, sitting in that dentist chair, was helpless. He was laughing, the tears were falling down, the audience was screaming, all of us were on the side of the stage screaming with laughter. Then it just became a thing. All Tim would sometimes have to do was look at Harvey with a quizzical face, even at the beginning of a sketch, and Harvey would be gone. He prided himself on being a serious actor, that he should stay in character. And Tim was relentless. Nobody ever laughed on purpose. None of us did. You'd have to be really careful having dinner with Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, because you gotta know the Heimlich maneuver. All we did was laugh, and you'd have to do it between chews.
Korman, 81, died of complications from an aneurysm in L.A.
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