The second Tim Conway opened his mouth, Harvey Korman was done. It didn’t require an elaborate setup or a booming punchline. All it took was a single line — delivered calmly, deliberately, and just slightly off-center. In that instant, the balance shifted. You could see Harvey realize it, even as he tried to power through.
He fought it. He truly did. His posture stiffened, his lips pressed together, and his eyes began searching for composure. But the battle was already lost. Conway’s quiet detour from the expected path had cracked the foundation, and everything after that was survival.
What followed wasn’t scripted brilliance — it was something rarer. Korman folded inward, shoulders trembling, struggling to hold onto the scene while laughter threatened to overtake him completely. The more he tried to regain control, the funnier it became. His resistance became part of the comedy.
Meanwhile, Conway stood steady. Straight-faced. Innocent. As if nothing unusual was happening around him. That contrast — one man unraveling, the other calmly pressing forward — is what turned a simple sketch into legend.
The script quickly became irrelevant. Dialogue slipped through fingers. Pauses stretched longer than planned. The energy in the studio shifted from anticipation to eruption. The audience sensed they were witnessing something unscripted, something happening in real time.
It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t tidy. It was alive.
And that’s the reason fans continue to replay the clip decades later. Not because everything went right — but because it didn’t. The joy lives in the collapse, in the authenticity of laughter that can’t be manufactured.
Two masters of timing. One unstoppable moment. And a meltdown that didn’t ruin the sketch — it made it television history.
