This legendary television accident occurred over 50 years ago.
Certain moments in television history, like fine wine, grow with age. That is certainly true of Carol Burnett’s comedy act “The Dentist” on The Carol Burnett Show. It still makes people giggle, indicating that it was one of the finest TV moments ever.
What could go wrong in a dentist’s office?
In just 11 years, The Carol Burnett Show earned eight Golden Globes and 25 Emmy Awards, and it helped start the careers of many comedians. It is still one of TV’s most distinguished programs.
“The Dentist,” featuring Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, is one of the show’s most memorable and amusing segments. This is one of those sights that you can’t seem to shake. Conway and Korman can’t stop giggling as they try to get through the comedy.
The film “The Dentist” is about a patient named Korman who has a bad toothache. On a Sunday, his normal dentist isn’t present, but his regular dentist’s nephew, Conway, is.
Korman will be his first patient after completing dental school. The worried dentist does everything to persuade his first customer to leave or merely get a cleaning, even informing him that he’s only ever extracted teeth on animals and received Cs in dental school. Korman, on the other hand, is in too much pain to care about all the excuses.
Conway is forced to check a manual and try to extract his patient’s tooth. During the surgery, he injects Novocain into his hand by accident. After a comical error, the numb hand makes an amusing mishap. Korman had to hide his face more than once because he was laughing so hard.
Conway would later allege that Korman soiled his pants because he was chuckling so much at himself throughout the scene. That’s what I mean by humor. He’d also later explain that the sketch was inspired by a real-life military dentist he’d met.
By the conclusion of the play, the dentist had numbed practically everything, including the patient’s mouth and the audience’s laughter. Clearly, the farce made many chuckles, but you’ll have to wait to find out if the patient’s tooth was ever extracted.
Isn’t it true that everyone can relate to the embarrassment of a bad dental experience? From 1967 until 1978, The Carol Burnett Show produced accessible, clean, non-political humor that was popular with the general population. It’s easy to understand why this important piece of television history continues to captivate audiences of all ages.