TRIB TV: CAROL + 2

March 19, 1966

BURNETT, BALL, AND MOSTEL – how do you get a comedic triple threat like that on the same TV show? If you’re Carol Burnett, you ask Zero to lunch and say: “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to do a show together?”

 Then, even tho everybody says, “Forget it, you’ll never get her,” you call Lucy and she says: “I hear you’re doing a show with Zero…I can’t wait to see it." 

And you say: "How’d ya’ like to see it up close?" 

“Carol + Two” [Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. on channel 2] is "just the three of us, and it’s split pretty evenly three ways,” Carol told us at a lunch date just before the show’s taping. 

“Each of us does sketches with one another, and the three of us do a musical number together,” she said. “I don’t want to tip you off to too much because we want to preserve an element of surprise in the sketches.” 

She did reveal that she plays a seamstress in a bunny club. "A little something that occurred to me while I was going to sleep the other night,” she said. 

Carol considers snagging Lucille Ball for the show a real coup. 

“I’ve wanted to work with her for years, but it never came off because of schedule difficulties,” she said. “I met Lucy the second night I was doing "Once Upon a Mattress” [off-Broadway in 1959]. She was in the audience, and boy, was I nervous! She’s my favorite comedienne, the best there is." 

REMINDED SHE HAD OFTEN been compared with Lucy, Carol did a double-take equal to any she’s ever done on stage. 

"Oh, my word, I didn’t know that,” she exclaimed. “To be compared with her is an honor. To me she can do no wrong. She’s wise in what she does, and no matter how good the material is she rises above it." 

Could Carol foresee any friction among three such high-powered performers? 

"Oh, I think it’s a phony thing, you know, when someone says, ‘I don’t want a singer on my show because I’m a singer, or I don’t want a comic on my show because I’m a comic,’” she said with a shrug. “It’s simply insecurity if you can’t work with someone. You are you, and you have your space in life, and you do what you’re supposed to do.” 

"Two people like Zero and Lucy, who are willing to work, that’s a hard thing to find. They still like their profession, they like to work, they like to rehearse. They’re two pluses – How can you get a minus?" 

Carol glanced down at a photograph of Zero and herself in one of the show’s sketches and sighed: "Ah, there we are, the Dick and Liz of CBS."