'Carol Burnett' Star was 85 years old – Variety

Tim Conway, the agile comic who was a vital member of the troupe "The Carol Burnett Show" and starred in a series of Disney movie comedies in the 1970s, died Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. He was 85 years old.

A representative of Conway tells Variety he died of water on the brain.

Later, Conway was successful with his series "Dorf" of comics videos in which he played a puffy and tiny Scandinavian character by kneeling. He also lent his versatile voice to a series of animated productions ranging from "SpongeBob SquarePants" to "Scooby Doo" to the Christian video series "Hermie and Friends".

During his long career, Conway has been nominated for 13 Emmys and has won six. For "The Carol Burnett Show," he was nominated six times in a series of winning varieties or comedies in 1973, 1977, and 1978. He was also nominated to the show's editorial team. winner in 1978. In addition to these four Emmy Award wins, he won in 1996 for an outstanding guest actor in a comedy, "Coach", and in 2008 for a guest actor in a comedy for "30 Rock".

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In "The Carol Burnett Show," Conway was so hilarious that he often made his teammate Harvey Korman laugh in the middle of a skit. He was known for his ad-libbing passages that would challenge Korman and other stars, including Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Wagoner.

Conway appeared as so many characters in the series, but the two most famous are the old man and Mr. Tudball. The old man was walking at a slow pace and insufficient for the occupations in which the director would place him. His inability to get things done usually led to clumsiness, and Conway would gladly do a good job.

Mr. Tudball was a businessman who wanted to run a ship-like office, but such intentions would always remain blank because of the bored indifference of his secretary, Mrs. Wiggins (Burnett). It was generally thought that the character was Swedish, but Conway actually imitated the accent of his Romanian mother.

"Carol Burnett" spent 11 seasons on CBS from 1967 to 1978. Conway appeared on a single episode in 1967, then became a regular member of the comedian's troupe from 1975 to the end of the series.

In 2012, Burnett, Conway and Lawrence asked in an interview with Sirius XM Satellite Radio if they were worried about not having enough material for the show. Burnett replied, "No, because we could always count on Tim. So, there was always enough show. In fact, sometimes, because he was doing things we had never seen before, a four-minute sketch would maybe be a 10-minute sketch – thanks to Conway – and we could then keep another sketch going on this week for another week. "

Conway's career was first launched by the McHale's Navy sitcom with Ernest Borgnine. He played the naïve President Charles Parker, leader of the PT-73, in 138 episodes of the series (1962-1966), as well as in the two feature films that ensued, receiving his first Emmy nomination for his performance in 1963 .

His series of family comedies produced by Disney began in 1973 with "The World's Largest Athlete", in which he played the roles of assistant to a desperate coach (John Amos) who discovered a new player in Africa – a type of Tarzan performed by Jan Michael Vincent. Then, in 1975, "The Apple Dumpling Gang", in which he plays notably with Don Knotts (later, Conway appeared in the continuation of 1979); "Gus", also with Knotts, in which a mule moves from team mascot to team member; "The Shaggy D.A.", with Dean Jones (Variety said: "Conway is particularly funny as a cloddish ice cream seller"); and "The Billion Dollar Hobo."

Apart from the arrangement with Disney, Conway wrote the children's comedy "They were like this and like it" (1978), in which he and Chuck McCann were playing with incompetent cops of the governor asking them to expose themselves as that jailed detainees to find out where an elder hid his booty and co-wrote "The Prize Fighter", in which he and Knott played. This latest movie shared much intrigue with the boxing movie Danny Kaye's "The Kid From Brooklyn", which was far superior, was itself a remake of Harold Lloyd's even higher superior vehicle "The Milky Way". Conway's partnership with Knotts ended with the 1981 comedy "The Private Eyes", concocted by Conway. The couple played doltish detectives working for Scotland Yard in the crazy comedy.

"The Tim Conway Show", an hour-long variety show, aired 13 episodes in 1980-81 (another program of the same title was briefly aired in 1970); Conway had another chance with his own show, detective CBS Spoof "Ace Crawford, Private Eye," in 1983, but his series was also very brief. The series, however, was produced by Conway's own production company, Conway Enterprises, which later produced its Dorf videos.

"The Longshot" (1986), directed by Paul Bartel, was interesting to be a comedy scripted by Conway for adults; the film, which featured Conway and Harvey Korman, among others, followed a quartet of losers who borrowed money from mobsters to bet on a "sure thing"; when they lose, the gangsters pursue them. The film did not attract much attention, however.

He started his series of explanatory videos "Dorf" with "Dorf on Golf" in 1987. Conway has produced nine Dorf videos in total, on sports such as baseball, racing and fishing.

In 1990, Conway appeared as a guest in an episode of the "Newhart" series of CBS on Bob Newhart. He returned to "Married … with children" as Peggy Bundy's father of Katey Sagal. He also invited "Coach" in 1996 and 1997 – winner of an Emmy for playing the incompetent gardener of Craig T. Nelson's coach – as well as on "The Larry Sanders Show," "Suddenly Susan And The Drew Carey Show. "All in 1997 and" Mad About You "in 1999. He returned to the 2001-05 CBS sitcom" Yes, Dear ".

In response to the 2008 episode of "30 Rock" titled "Subway Hero," David Hinckley wrote in the New York Daily News that "the real reason [‘Subway Hero’] This must-see television is a guest star of Tim Conway as an old-fashioned television star whose immaculate memories of the "good old days" are getting more and more bizarre and amusing. He damn stole the show. Subsequently, Conway won an Emmy for his appearance.

He was invited to "CSI" in 2010, "Hot in Cleveland" in 2010 and 2013, "Two and Half Men" and "Glee" in 2014.

Conway has also made appearances in such films as Garry Marshall's comedy in 1996, "Dear God", "Speed ​​2: Cruise Control" and "Air Bud: Golden Receiver" (1998).

Interviewed today in an interview on comedy in 2011, Conway replied, "I'm hooking on the old ones. Jonathan Winters calls me about three times a week and I never answer the phone. I have all his messages saved. He always calls with a different character and he wants me to do something, to appear somewhere, or to go to a navy store for something. I have hundreds on the answering machine, but I never talk to him. From time to time, I will take it and talk to him.

"I fall back a little on that. But Bob Newhart and I, and Mike Connors, Steve and Eydie, get together every Tuesday night and have dinner just to sit down and talk. Most conversations have already been told 20 or 30 times. But we stay in touch like this.

Regarding today's comedy, he added, "I do not really know who's really doing it these days."

Thomas Daniel Conway was born in Willoughby, Ohio in 1933. Conway studied at Bowling Green State University, where he specialized in speech and radio and served in the army. He began his career in the entertainment industry by working for a radio station, before writing for the promotion department. There was already an actor named Tom Conway, so he became Tim.

After the end of his military service, Conway returned to Cleveland to work with Ernie Anderson on KYW-TV in 1958-1959 and on WJW-TV from 1960-1962 for a morning film screening on weekdays (under the Ernie's Place banner). ); Conway wrote material for the comedy sketches shown in the movie's interludes. He also recorded a humorous album with Anderson.

Actress Rose Marie discovered Conway and organized an audition for "The Steve Allen Plymouth Show"; Allen was so impressed by Conway that the comedian became a regular at the show in 1960. Conway was also a regular at Allen's upcoming series, The New Steve Allen Show, in 1961.

The following year, he signed to play Charles Parker in "McHale's Navy".

After that, he starred in ABC's brief series of comics Western "Rango", as the main character, a ruined Texas Ranger, but the series lasted only 17 episodes in 1967. He got his own Series in 1970, but CBS's "The Tim Conway Show," in which he played an incompetent pilot in an overflown airline, only lasted one season.

It was his hilarious work on "The Carol Burnett Show" – memorable decades later for those watching the show and immortalized on YouTube – that was his real gift to the public.

Conway was married to Mary Anne Dalton from 1961 to their divorce in 1978.

He is survived by his second wife, Charlene Conway, whom he married in 1984, and seven children of Dalton, including KFI Los Angeles radio host Tim Conway Jr.