30 May 2008

Korman/Weber

Separated at birth, reunited in death: the comic actor Harvey Korman and the distinguished historian Eugen Weber. And yet which is which?

If you ever watched Weber’s engrossing TV series, The Western Tradition, you will know that he not only looked like, he sounded like Harvey Korman, too. You have observed that, if only Tim Conway were around during tapings of Tradition, the sober analyses of history and culture would be interrupted frequently by hysterical fits of giggling. Indeed, that is about the only thing that Weber’s program lacked.

Let it be known that I admired both men (if indeed they were not the same person), and I shall miss them profoundly and equally, but for different reasons.