A comic actor and performer known for depicting bumbling, inept characters, Tim Conway was performing on a local Cleveland (OH) TV station when Steve Allen signed him as a regular on Allen's second talk show. Since then, the short, balding comic has gone on to delight audiences with his controlled, usually physical comedy. Although he was unable to connect with his own successful TV series, he has lent support to the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Carol Burnett and others. It was as Ensign Parker, Borgnine's inept second-in-command, in "McHale's Navy" (ABC, 1962-66) that Conway first gained primetime prominence. After appearing on the summer variety series, "The John Gary Show" (CBS, 1966), Conway landed his first leading role in a sitcom as an inept lawman in the Old West in the unsuccessful "Rango" (ABC, 1967). In 1970, CBS gave him another shot with the equally short-lived "The Tim Conway Show", a sitcom about an airline pilot. After a successful variety special, Conway was given his own weekly series, "The Tim Conway Comedy Hour" (CBS, 1970). He began the first show by having his entire family on to celebrate Christmas saying that since no other series he had starred in had lasted he wanted to get the holiday celebrated. Although it was a rousing start, true to form, the show was canceled in December.
After several seasons of frequent guest appearances on "The Carol Burnett Show" (CBS), Burnett and her then-husband and producer, Joe Hamilton, offered Conway a regular spot. For four seasons (1975-79), Conway pleased audiences with such characterizations as a slow-moving old man and Mr. Tudball, the boss to Burnett's incompetent secretary, Mrs. Wiggins. Viewers especially responded to the chemistry between Conway and Harvey Korman, particularly in their shared scenes in which Conway would ad lib in an effort to make Korman laugh. On one occasion, Conway even managed to cause the unflappable Burnett to break character. He won four Emmy Awards for his work on the series, including one as part of the show's writing team. The demise of Burnett's show gave Conway yet another stab at headlining his own variety series, "The Tim Conway Show" (CBS, 1980-81), but again, despite guest appearances by Burnett, Korman and Vicki Lawrence, the show's ratings were not strong. The network gave him another shot at a sitcom with "Ace Crawford, Private Eye" (CBS, 1983), but the show lasted less than two months. Conway continued to appear frequently on TV, hosting "Hollywood's Private Home Movies" specials for ABC, and writing and starring in a 1991 CBS special "Dorf's Family", capitalizing on his slapstick characterizations. Conway also, occasionally, stepped into comic TV-movies, such as "Roll, Freddy, Roll!" (ABC, 1975), as a divorced father trying to keep his son's love after his ex-wife remarries a flamboyant, wealthy man. With the demise of TV comedy-variety shows, Conway was seen less and less on the small screen. In 1995, he produced a video with sequences of his "Dorf" character in the outdoors and sold successfully sold it through TV advertisements and he won a fifth Emmy for a 1996 guest appearance on the ABC sitcom "Coach".
Conway also had modest, yet real, success in comic motion pictures. His first screen appearances were in Universal's two movies based on the "McHale's Navy" series in 1964 and 1965. Ten years later, Conway was cast in "The Apple Dumpling Gang", which also featured Don Knotts. The chemistry between the two appealed to audiences and they were subsequently teamed in several comedy films, including "The Prize Fighter" (1979) and "The Private Eyes" (1981). Conway often wrote the screenplays for his films, including "The Billion Dollar Hobo" (1978) and "Longshot" (1986). In 1996, he co-starred with Greg Kinnear and Laurie Metcalf in the uneven comedy "Dear God", as an oddball postal worker.