Conway blazed a career out of defining characters who upset the way more “competent” types thought things ought to go.
Tim Conway, who passed away Tuesday at age 85 following brain surgery last year, amused generations with his work on TV’s “McHale’s Navy” and “The Carol Burnett Show,” in Disney family films, that weird but apparently lucrative “Dorf” video series and as a cartoon voice for the likes of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and others.
Close to a comic genius even if the deadpan delivery and extended silliness that were the polar marks of his humor may not have always indicated his true finesse, the longtime Encino resident won five acting Emmys and another for writing.
Let’s face it: Anyone who could crack up the crack Burnett ensemble, especially Conway’s frequent foil Harvey Korman, so consistently well that the bloopers were included in the show’s broadcast cuts had something rare and valuable going on. I mean, when you’re good enough at improvisation to make a pro like Korman wet his pants on camera, as Conway did during the notorious “Dentist” sketch, you’ve got a gift.
He was the consummate comic sidekick too, and not just to straight man Korman. Conway acknowledged this in his own, self-deprecating way; his vanity license plate, 13 WKS, referred to the fact that none of his headlining TV projects lasted more than a season.
