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Through the Stargate with a Wrinkled Nose

Delight creeps in.  Like watching Agnes Moorehead

devour every single moment of screen time she has

in The Magnificent Ambersons.  Or watching

Carol Burnett, Vicki Lawrence, and Dick Van Dyke

initially feign attempts to stifle laughter (and hence

‘break character’) by bowing their heads as if in

prayer, and then each literally lose it, while

Tim Conway (Tim Conway’s ‘character’)

conveys in earnest (ever so slowly so as to

accommodate audience laughter) a story

about an elephant who was rumored to

fall in love with its trainer, who happened

to be a ‘dwarf’.  The pair come to a tragic

end during a purported sexual act (the

elephant has to be shot).  They were

buried together.  Then, another long

pause for audience laughter and

camera concentration upon the

rapt trio who’ve been attempting

to exhibit restraint (and therefore

‘character’), but who are each

beginning to fail, to succumb

to their own (non-‘character’)

senses of humor, to Tim

Conway’s deadpan delivery

of a silly story full of false

endings (each one a punch

line).  After which Conway

begins another story, this one

about two circus elephants

who were Siamese twins—

they were attached by their

trunks—when one of them

would sneeze.....

After the movie, Curran

mentions that it is rumored

that Moorehead had a long fling

with Debbie Reynolds.

I’m feeling a bit vulnerable today.  Heartsunk.