Harvey Korman has died at UCLA Medical Center, at age 81. He had been recuperating after an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago. At six foot four and with easy access to an attitude of sneering, haughty disdain for what was going on around him, he sometimes seemed to be demonstrating the answer to a question that nobody asked: what if John Cleese were American and joined the Shriners to get away from his wife? After a stint in the navy, Korman studied theater in Chicago before going to New York hoping to make it as an actor. He didn't have any luck and, he said later, he finally decided to move to Hollywood so that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed." For three years he grabbed whatever work he could get while selling cars and performing other odd jobs to get by, until he became a regular on Danny Kaye's TV series in 1963. That led to plenty of work guesting on other shows, including his iconic voice work as the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones. As a movie actor, he appeared in Lord Love a Duck (1966), The April Fools (1969), Americathon (1979), and Radioland Murders (2004), but found his steadiest employment in films as part of Mel Brooks's stock company. He first worked for Brooks in Blazing Saddles, playing the villainous Hedley Lamarr, then returned in High Anxiety, The History of the World, Part I and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
It was in TV that Korman really made his mark, especially playing second banana to Carol Burnett for ten years, beginning with the first season of her CBS variety show in 1967, where he used his size and air of deadhead exasperation to parody classic movie stars and represent the soul of defeated Middle America in the classic "Family" sketches. "We were an ensemble," he said later, "and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I've never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away." Korman left the show after ABC offered him his own series, which was pulled from the air after three episodes; none of his subsequent attempts at a series of his own (including the 1989n flop The Nutt House, which Mel Brooks had a hand in) fared any better, and though he kept coming back, often in tandem with Burnett or his Carol Burnett Show sidekick Tim Conway, he was not above publicly airing his feelings that the best days of his career were behind him. On a 1990 late night talk show appearance with Bob Costas, Costas became so uncomfortable listening to Korman slag himself as a has-been that he jumped at a mention of the comedian's small daughter watching reruns of The Flintstones; did she, Costas asked, seem surprised at how much the Great Gazoo sounded like her father? Yes, Korman said, very surprised: "Daddy used to work!?"