“Hi, is this Tim Conway?”

“Depends. Are you a bill collector?”

Already I’m laughing over the telephone. The comedian, star of movies and two of television’s most successful series of all time — McHale’s Navy which aired in the 1960s, and the 1970s Carol Burnett Show — is most likely older than 25, but his lighthearted manner makes him sound improbably young.

This weekend, on Saturday, July 30, at 7:30 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center, Mr. Conway and Vineyard native daughter, comedienne Louise DuArt will be presenting the comedy show they’ve showcased all over the country for the past 12 years.

“We had Don Knotts for a while,” Mr. Conway says, “also Harvey Korman, but for some reason he stopped returning my calls.” I realize Harvey Korman has died and, although I know Mr. Conway’s sadness caused him to shutter the show for a while, I can’t help laughing at this creative way of describing his costar’s departure.

I recognize his 818 area code as situating him in the San Fernando Valley, just a hop over the mountain from Los Angeles and, being a Valley Girl myself, I ask, “So where do you live in the Valley?”

“I’m in Encino.”

This is the poshest part of the Valley so I ask with unintended stereotyping of a man of wealth and fame, “Are you in the hills?”

“No, our house is right down on Ventura Boulevard. It’s very noisy but we’ve gotten used to it.”

“You’re on Ventura?!” I ask with my natural gullibility.

“Well,” he says noncommittally, and now it’s his turn to laugh.

A brief bio of this amazing man’s career: He was born in 1933 (sorry, Mr. Conway, but maybe Wikipedia makes mistakes) in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. (Why did they name it Chagrin, I ask him, and he reels off a funny explanation about the original Indians being chagrinned that the falls weren’t higher.) He attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio, then did a stint in the Army which presumably helped inspire his role as second-in-command to Ernest Borgnine in McHale’s Navy. But backing up to his prestar days, he worked first in radio, then directed a TV show in Cleveland that was so bad it attracted a large viewership of people who loved to say, “This show really stinks!”

It’s stinkiness prevented the show’s producers from luring guest actors, so Mr. Conway, who hadn’t acted until then, took on the role of a weekly guest who presented himself as a member of a different profession each week: a bullfighter, a state senator, a rocket scientist,and so forth.

One week Rose Marie of the Dick Van Dyke Show arrived in town, caught Tim Conway’s act and was so amused, she sent a tape to Steve Allen in New York. Appearances on Steve Allen led to the casting people from a new show called McHale’s Navy to offer him a starring role. He declined. He was having too much fun on “the awful Cleveland Show.”

Finally, in an act of mercy, the producer fired Mr. Conway to force him into show business success. And the rest, as they say, is comedy history.

The gift to the community that Tim Conway and Louise DuArt will be taking to the boards this Saturday night is a series of sketches and standup comedy. Ms. DuArt too is mind-blowingly funny and a great impressionist to boot (I hope she’s still doing George Allen and Cher.) This particular performance goes straight to charity —to whit Ms. DuArt’s and her husband, Squire Rushnell’s new nonprofit, NetworkofNeighbors.com, designed as a sort of philanthropic Yankee swap: People can post their needs, and other people can accommodate them with acts of kindness, or “A.O.K.,” as Mr. Rushnell calls them. He himself is the author of the series of God Wink books.

Ms. DuArt, in an earlier phone interview, remembers her Vineyard grandfather telling her, “We help each other here.”

And Mr. Conway opines that NetworkofNeighbors reminds him of growing up in Chagrin Falls. “Everyone cared about you. There were 52 kids in my graduating class so everyone knew everyone’s business.”

I ask Mr. Conway if it’s exhausting to take this show clear around the country. He responds, “Well, originally we performed it house-to-house and that was even more exhausting.”

I inquire if he’s good friends with Carol Burnett. “Oh, yes!” he replies, “We go up to her house all the time. Then she put in an ATM machine outside the house, so we can drive straight through; it’s much faster.”

Tim Conway was famous on all his sets for tossing in improvised lines like comic hand grenades and cracking up his costars. Don Knotts, Harvey Korman and Carol Burnett would brace themselves not to laugh, but inevitably they lost it. (Once he and Harvey Korman, dressed in medieval gear, engaged in a sword fight. Mr. Conway pulled his thin sword from his chest, examined it like a dipstick and said, “Hmm, down a quart.”)

Talking to Mr. Conway on the phone, it’s easy to see how he can crack people up at any time. He’s just plain, spontaneously funny, but in a lovable way that lifts one’s spirits.

I ask him if he has any advice for young people just breaking into show business. “Yeah. Don’t do it. You’ll be taking jobs away from me.”

Given that he’s still winning good parts — this year he appears as the Weeper in the new Batman, a washed-up super-villain who is idolized by the Joker, it’s clear this comic with the gift of making people happy with his jokes will go on working as long as he cares to.

Come laugh with him and Ms. DuArt on Saturday night. Kids will be selling lemonade, water, cookies and moon pies in the lobby. Ticket prices are based on a donation of your choice.

It’s too bad all the money goes to NetworkofNeighbors: It would be nice to get Mr. Conway off Ventura Boulevard.

An Evening with Tim Conway with comedy by Tim Conway and Louise DuArt will be presented on Saturday, July 30, at 7:30 at the Performing Arts Center. at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.