Remembering Harvey Korman
May 30, 2008

On Thursday, legendary funny man, Harvey Korman, died at the age of 81 of complications related to a four month old rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Although today's generation of younger TV viewers are growing up with the likes of Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, Gen-X'ers grew up watching the antics of Harvey Korman and Tim Conway on the Carol Burnett Show. Korman, who rose to fame in the 1960s on such classic shows hosted by the likes of Red Skelton, Danny kaye and Lucille Ball, also became the memorable voice of The Great Kazoo on The Flintstones and was also a favorite of director Mel Brooks, who cast Korman as the hilarious Hedly Lemarr in the timelessly funny western spoof Blazing Saddles.

Although Harvey Korman had been ill, his passing still comes as shock since he was a comedic presence that many felt would be around forever. Just last month, The Deadbolt was one of a few lucky outlets that took part in a conference call with Korman's legendary comedy partner, Tim Conway, who recently appeared on NBC's 30 Rock and shared his thoughts on why it was so easy to work with Harvey. As was customary of their relationship, Conway was all comedy when it came to Harvey and why their on stage relationship was so effortless.

"Because he is all the wonderful things that you want if you want to pick on somebody, he’s obsessive, he thinks that Bin Laden is after him. He doesn’t go to sleep until about 4:00 in the morning because he’s up and locking doors and things of that nature. He can be - he’s as bright as anybody I’ve ever met. He can do the New York Times crossword puzzle in 10 minutes with a pen but he can’t tie his own shoes. So I - being the dumbest guy in show business - got along with him very well because I would put him on, on everything."

Conway also shared a hilarious story of their travel adventures together while working on the road when landing at an airport. Who knew that planes have or don't have gas caps?

"We had to land one time for gas coming back from the east coast, we were running into headwinds and we were in a small plane. And they stopped for gas, we got gas and when the plane took off I said to Harvey, 'You know, Harvey, I was watching them put that gas in and I don’t think they put the gas cap back on.' And he went to the pilot and was going to make him turn around and land again to put the gas cap on until the pilot finally convinced him that we don’t have a gas cap on this plane.

Her are a couple of awesome clips of Harvey Korman that we'll always remember.