Some of the greatest moments in comedy aren’t written. They happen in the uncomfortable space where something goes wrong — or appears to go wrong — and instinct takes over.
During one rehearsal, Tim Conway casually announced that he had forgotten all his lines. No drama. No apology. Just a simple statement delivered with that familiar calm that usually meant trouble was coming.
Across from him stood Harvey Korman, a master of precision, timing, and carefully built reactions. Harvey panicked.
“What are you going to do on stage?” he asked, already imagining disaster.
Tim thought for a moment, then answered honestly:
“You just perform like normal. I’ll… walk across.”
It sounded ridiculous. And vague. And dangerous.
That night, the sketch began as planned. Harvey launched into the scene, committed and serious, delivering every line with professional focus. Then, without warning, Tim Conway calmly walked across the stage. He didn’t speak. He didn’t gesture. He didn’t acknowledge anyone. He simply passed through the scene like a man who had wandered into the wrong room.
The audience laughed.
A few minutes later, Tim did it again. Same walk. Same silence. Bigger laughter.
By the third time, the crowd was roaring. Harvey tried to hold it together — shoulders shaking, eyes watering, every ounce of discipline being tested. Eventually, he lost the battle. He laughed so hard that he forgot his own lines, collapsing into the very chaos he had feared.
And that was the brilliance of Tim Conway.
He understood something rare: that comedy doesn’t always come from doing more. Sometimes it comes from doing less. From patience. From silence. From allowing the other performer — and the audience — to fill in the absurdity themselves.
Harvey Korman once admitted that Tim was the most dangerous partner he ever worked with. Not because Tim tried to steal scenes, but because he dismantled them quietly, one innocent step at a time.
In that moment, “forgetting the script” wasn’t a mistake.
It was the joke.
