LOS ANGELES (AP) — Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to The Carol Burnett Show and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in Blazing Saddles, died Thursday. He was 81.Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said. He had undergone several major operations.
A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on The Danny Kaye Show, appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of The Carol Burnett Show.
His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks’ 1974 Western satire, Blazing Saddles.
“A world without Harvey Korman — it’s a more serious world,” Brooks told the AP on Thursday. “It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we’d crash to floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh.”
On television, Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as Gone With the Wind and soap operas like As the World Turns (their version was called As the Stomach Turns).
Burnett was devastated by Korman’s death, said her assistant, Angie Horejsi.
“She loved Harvey very much,” Horejsi said.
In the ’70s, he and Tim Conway, one of his Burnett show co-stars, toured the country with their show Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again. They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.
RIP Harvey. Say hello to Dick Martin and Sydney Pollack. You will all be missed.
Photo: Korman as Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles
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