My Dad's Funnier Than Your Dad

By Kelly Conway
 
Comic and television star Tim Conway (McHale’s Navy, The Carol Burnett Show, The Apple Dumpling Gang) enjoyed enormous popular appeal, including a wide readership for his best-selling memoir, What’s So Funny?
In her own humorous, loving, and surprising memoir, Tim’s eldest child, Kelly, reveals that the Conway home life was as riotous and engaging as some of her father’s best-known comedy sketches. Kelly Conway allows readers an intimate look at a supremely American childhood, from the studios of Television City in Los Angeles to the midwestern pleasures of her mom and dad’s hometowns. My Dad’s Funnier Than Your Dad is her love letter to her father and mother, as well as an account of the warm, laugh-filled world in which she spent her childhood. The book portrays a Cheaper by the Dozen–style upbringing, when she and her five younger brothers spent their lives playing together within a protective cocoon of affection and love. Her dad acted as the ringmaster of their circus. What kind of dad builds his kids a go-cart track in the backyard of his Encino residence by himself, not hiring a crew of professionals to do it? How about a dad that circles the block when his kids go off to their first day of grade school, fretting and fussing that they’re okay away from home? What can you say about a famous father who lived not for his celebrity but kept himself firmly grounded in family? While not all puppy dogs and rainbows—the Conways divorced when the author was seventeen—this is nevertheless a warm-hearted memoir of a man who was as funny off the set as on.