Show Business: Major Clown

The Norfolk-jacketed colonel, clipped of mustache and clipped of accent, bumped into the grand lady who of course turned out to be his long-lost love. As the two bodies collided, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture suddenly thundered of pain and passion. “I say,” muttered the colonel. “You seem to have turned on my transistor radio.”

The colonel was Comedian Art Carney, joined by Hermione Gingold in a parody of Separate Tables: Carney lost in Hermione’s furs, and Carney in suicidal despair over having given the “wrong order” on D-day (“Desert!”) was as funny as anything seen on TV. On his first of eight monthly shows this year, Carney was badly hampered by some dreadful jokes and a couple of high-school-level musical numbers. But in the skits he triumphed with his marvelously mobile face, his adaptable voice (he started in radio 17 years ago on a serious news show, impersonating Churchill and F.D.R.) and the conscientiousness about being funny that marks a major clown.

The show’s high point: Carney impersonating Ed Murrow impersonating the Delphic Oracle. In the manner of Murrow’s Small World program, Carney conversed with a famous Riviera party giver (“It’s really been one of the most divine and decadent seasons I can recall,” gurgled Hermione Gingold); a twitch-lipped Hollywood star impersonated by Edie Adams, who did her too-familiar but still funny parody of Marilyn Monroe; and a Greek shipowner (Hans Conried) who has just bought a new Picasso—”his oldest boy.” Throughout, Carney kept up the authentic Murrow atmosphere of portentousness and cigarette smoke until the great moment when he found himself puffing cigarettes with three hands.