My mother tried to explain to me when I was a young girl a particular piece of sketch comedy she admired: it satirized a moment in the incredibly famous Gone With The Wind, where Scarlet O’Hara attempts to impress her beau with a gown fashioned from the curtains after the destruction of her home. In this particular parody on The Carol Burnett Show, the curtain rod was still present, and her character even going so far as to remark that “she saw it in the window and couldn’t resist it.” Although I was too young to appreciate it then, that story alone has pulled me to my topic – Carol Burnett has made her mark as comedian, performer, and playwright in the past 50 years she has been involved in the television and theatre world alike. Although starting as a second banana in television, Carol soon had her own show under her own name, often combining aspects of vaudeville, slapstick, song and dance, and many other theatrical elements, as well as satirizing a multitude of elements within pop culture. Her success has made her an icon to female comedians, but never inaccessible as a person to her fans. Carol’s approach to comedy was old-fashioned, but it was also effective; The Carol Burnett Show was on the air from 1967 to 1978, going for eleven seasons, filming over 286 episodes and (for herself and for the show) at least 22 Emmys. Even after the age of variety shows ended, Carol never once lost her enthusiasm for the sillier side of things. In this, I hope to highlight the aspects of her great television career; her start, her show, her style, and everything there after. While The Carol Burnett Show is over, Carol herself remains an involved member of the industry and a legend of her time.
In this paper, I hope to cover pieces of Carol’s history, including her start on the stage that eventually lead her to television. Through this, we can better understand how it remained her home for the past 30-odd years. In addition to this, I intend to analyze what drew her to musical comedy. We’ll also go to The Carol Burnett Show and the method Carol had in putting the show together, in addition to the characters therein that sprung to life. Finally, we will examine how her history affected her career, and how that has molded her into a television icon. However, to understand how she got to where she is today, you must understand her history which she has drawn so much from during her career.
Carol Burnett was born on April 26, 1933 in San Antonio, Texas. By the time she was four years old, her mother and father had moved to San Antonio, leaving her in the care of her grandmother in Texas, fondly nicknamed “Nanny”. Before long, Carol and Nanny left San Antonio to be her family again, but it was broken before they had even arrived. Her father had hit the bottle in her early years and her mother wouldn’t stand for it, leaving Carol without much of a family dynamic at a young age. Nanny raised Carol in Hollywood, where Carol caught her first glimpse of the glamorous future she could have. Following her parents’ divorce and the general roughness of The Great Depression, Carol resorted to the local movie houses and stayed there for the majority of the day before returning home. She often voiced the actions from the spectacles, reiterating them to make her own radio shows where she would interview herself every episode as a rising star. By the time she was nine, Carol’s mother had developed her whole drinking problem. However, with the bad came the good as Carol was also blessed with a little sister, Antonia Christine, nicknamed “Chrissy.” Carol herself remembers this part of her life with some displeasure, even going so far as to say, “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t waiting for a scab either to grow or to fall off my knee.”[1]
Years passed, and Carol developed an interest in journalism, much like her mother. Her younger sister, Chrissy, was growing up, Nanny and Mama were at each other’s throats and her father was still out of the picture. Following 9th grade, Carol went to Hollywood High School, expanding her circle of friends and dipping further into her writing. While enrolled, Carol joined the Hollywood High News, writing an article on Joel McCrea, which made her mother quite proud. By the time Carol graduated, she had decided that UCLA was the correct fit for her, but by no means had the money to pay the $42 tuition. Out of blue, she received a piece of mail with only a fifty-dollar bill, and not else. She still wonders who sent it to this day. When it came to registration, Carol realized that UCLA did not have a Journalism major and a single Journalism class. Then it dawned on her – Theatre Arts. There were lots of choices in Theatre Arts, even joint majors in English. She chose her major, and started acting, where she discovered Musical Comedy – her calling. She had a few bit parts, and then finally got a small role as a hillbilly woman in a student-written piece called Keep Me a Woman Grown. It was 23-minutes long and Carol only had two scenes. Her accent for her character, Effie, was influenced by Nanny down-home Texas/Arkansas drawl, and the audience exploded — they responded with enthusiasm, clapping, laughing and stomping their feet. Carol recalls this experience fondling, remarking that the feeling that followed was one of absolute bliss. Soon after, Carol, who was formerly so down on her luck and on herself, began to experience a marvelous change. She was asked to join a theatre troupe following her performances at UCLA, and join the Stumptown Players for their summer season. It was unanimously voted that she join them the following season, as well. Additionally, she met Don Saroyan, a young actor/singer/director who wanted to travel to New York following his graduation – she later married him. Following her own graduation, she encountered a very generous man (only known as ‘Mr. C’) who offered her and Don $1000 apiece to follow their dreams to Broadway, but only upon the promise that he would be repaid and that they would treat others with the same kindness that he had treated them.
Carol believed that good luck came with a rainstorm. She writes, “It rained the morning my UCLA tuition showed up in the mail. It rained when I was asked to go to Stumptown. It rained the weekend Mr. C gave us the money. Almost every opening night, stage or televisions; rain.”[2] She arrived in New York alone, with only one contact from college already present – Don had decided to delay his departure. Carol found a place to call home in The Rehearsal Club with a slew of other girls just like her seeking their fortune in the Big Apple. New York was a competition, where you could only get a acting gig if you had an agent, and the only way to get an agent to have an acting gig. Shortly after falling into the swing of things, Carol received a call that her father had passed away, but she didn’t allow her to slow her down. To generate buzz for the women of The Rehearsal Club, Carol assisted in constructing a revue show to gain them experience and the eyes of agencies – this worked alarmingly well.
Soon, Carol signed to an agency and was hired for several shows before she was offered even a few television jobs as an extra, one of them being on The Colgate Comedy Hour and the Paul Winchell kiddie show on NBC. The first time she appeared on the latter was the first time she pulled her ear to signal to Nanny back home; it was December 17, 1955 and Carol’s way to conveying to Nanny that she loved her back on the West Coast. Following the show, she and Don got married. In 1957, Carol got a gig at the Blue Angel for about three months, and did a show a few nights a week. During the height of the Elvis craze, a brilliant songwriter and personal friend of Carol’s got a wonderful idea – why not write a piece about a girl going nuts over John Foster Dulles, the current secretary of state, who was an ultraconservative and never smiled. The song, “I Made A Fool Of Myself Over John Dulles”, was a hit. When asked about the song, Mr. Dulles himself smiled and said, “I make it a policy never to discuss matters of the heart in public.” After the craze dissipated, Don and Carol were joined by Chrissy in New York to keep her from getting too much of her mother’s influence. Not long after, Carol’s mother passed away.
As one door close, another opens. George Abbott auditioned Carol for an adaptation of one of her favorite childhood stories, The Princess and The Pea – this particular version was called Once Upon a Mattress, starring her as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone. The show opened in May 1959, and was Carol’s first and only appearance on Broadway. Following a success audition for The Garry Moore Show, Carol was asked to fill in one evening when Martha Rayes, a regular in the cast, was feeling under the weather – this also turned out remarkably well, to which Martha gave her thanks in a dozen red roses. In October of the same year she did Once Upon A Mattress, Garry Moore asked Carol to appear on his Tuesday night variety show every week. Not long after, Don and Carol divorced on friendly terms.
Garry Moore was a performer and producer, who hosted his own CBS daytime talk and variety shows and a nighttime game show called To Tell the Truth. He was also always interested in new talent, holding regular auditions at CBS to discover newcomers. This is is how Carol came to know Garry – Ken Welch, the writer behind Carol’s hit song, and her auditioned for Garry, which he booked them for. His morning show then became a weekly nighttime variety show, which was produced by his same team: Bob Banner and Joe Hamilton. Carol got her big break when Garyy called her to replace an ill Martha Raye who was scheduled for a guest appearance in the weekly program. He called on a Sunday for a show that was to air on Tuesday, but Carol managed to get down her lines in two days with the support of the cast and Garry himself. As a result, Garry asked Carol to appear every week – the year was 1959. Carol was also still doing shows of Once Upon A Mattress, so after taping she would book it over to the Phoenix Theater for the 8:30 curtain. She writes, “I was young and had not one but two jobs of a lifetime.”[3]
Garry Moore marked Carol’s introduction to television comedy writers, which she learned had a comic slant on just about any aspect of life you can imagine – especially work. Additionally, Garry became a extremely positive mentor for Carol; in fact, she won her first Emmy as a result of working on his show. Garry was as kind as his was giving to Carol, who appeared on show more as a second banana than an integral character. Garry often insisted lines written for him could be better delivered by other members of his cast, so he often gave them opportunities that other hosts with bigger egos would’ve never given up. He provided Carol with an outstanding education about the industry, while also having a fantastic time on the show. They would perform comedy sketches, musical opening numbers and finales, plus a slew of fantastic guest stars, including a very young Barbra Streisand. Carol believes that history didn’t given The Garry Moore Show the spotlight is deserved. Following her work on the show, producer Joe Hamilton and her married.
After Carol had been on Garry’s show for a few seasons, CBS asked her to sign a contract with them. They offered her a ten-year contract, paying a decent sum to do a one-hour TV special once a year, along with two guest appearances on any of their other regular series. However, if during the first five years of this contract Carol decided to do a variety show of her own, they would guarantee her 30 one-hours. The term for such a deal was “pay or play,” which meant that they’d have to pay us for thirty shows even if they didn’t air them. At the time, Carol didn’t envision herself hosting her own show and was much more interested in Broadway.
In 1966, Carol and Joe were enjoying their first child; a daughter named Carrie, and had another baby on the way. The Broadway career never seemed to pan out, so their time in New York had ended and they were living in a Beverly Hills home. Although they weren’t by any means in the poorhouse, time was running out on the pay-or-play clause and they had just barely scraped together the money for this new home, so Carol made the call to “push the button.” At first, the producers at CBS forgot about the clause entirely, and weren’t positive that the comedy-variety show was the best way to go as most were hosted by men. Carol insisted. They asked if she wanted a spot on a half-hour sitcom. Joe took our dealing with the producers after that. CBS scheduled the premiere on Monday, September 11, 1967. It wasn’t expected to last too long. It ended up running for eleven seasons.
In the early years of the great comedy-variety shows, they all had a repertoire of outstanding comedians backing up the jokes. When Carol set out to make her own show, she followed in these footsteps to find her cast of “second bananas,” a term which means the comedian who serves as the straight man opposite to the leading comedian in burlesque. Which term encompassed exactly what Carol was looking for in her rep players – people who could play it straight and play it funny.
One of her first discoveries was Vicki Lawrence, who in 1967 was a seventeen-year-old senior in high school looking for a way into show business by sending Carol a letter. Carol decided right off the bat that Vicki looked more like her than she did. Vicki even had a performance lined up that Carol atteneded. A few months, during casting for the rep players for the show, Carol got in touch with Vicki again and decided to do a screen test with her and another young actress recommended by CBS. The sketch was written and taped twice, once with Vicki and one with the other girl. Perry Lafferty, a CBS executive, said, “She’s rough.” Carol’s reply was, “So are diamonds, at first.” Vicki was soon after hired for the show.
In 1967, Joe, Carol’s husband and the show’s producer, was busy putting together the writing and production staff, many of which migrated over from The Garry Moore Show and were willing to take a chance with Carol’s show. Having admired his work on The Danny Kaye Show, Carol decided her show needed Harvey Korman; “we needed a consummate actor with comedy chops to spare,”[4] writes Carol. After having put the call into his agent, she saw Harvey on the street, called to him and very informally asked him to join the cast. Harvey signed on.
At this point, goofy and zany seemed covered. Like Jack Benny, Carol wanted an announcer, but not one who was just an announcer, but a member of the cast who was unbelievably handsome, and not just a commercial-pusher. Auditions were held and in walked Lyle Waggoner. He fit the bill for looks, but was also incredibly fun. His delivery alone told you he wasn’t taking himself seriously whatsoever – he was perfect. He ended up being a jack-of-all-trades; Lyle was also a talented entrepreneur helping new actors and carpenter, using old set pieces to construct a new room in his home.
Tim Conway was another piece of the puzzle, having been asked to appear on the show once or twice a month before being asked to become a permanent addition to the rep players. Tim was a downright comedic genius in retrospect, even utilizing the cameras in his shenanigans. Often times, what he cooked up or ad libbed was better than the script itself, but it could only be on one of the two tapes they recorded of each show – one on script, and the other was somewhat improvised. It was also Tim’s fault that actors on the show broke character and started cracking up.
Other additions to the family (on and behind the camera) included Bob Mackie, a brilliant young costume designer, and Jim Nabors, a returning guest and performer who later became the godfather of Joe and Carol’s second child, Jody.
The Carol Burnett Show always began with Carol addressing the audience; she took this from her mentor, Garry Moore, who had a brief Q&A with the audience members before the show even began. It was a way to warm up the audience and also made them feel like they personally knew Garry – it was an extremely effective means of making the audience comfortable before recording tape. Bob Banner, one of the producers, suggested this to Carol and she reluctantly gave in. On the taping of the first show, Carol walked out and asked her audience if they had any questions. Staring at a group of blank faces, you can imagine how Carol was feeling for the first minute or so before a hand shot up, just asking who was on the show. After talking about Harvey, Vicki, Lyle and Jim, and audience seemed to open up, and the questions proceeded to get funnier. It became a staple for the show, and one of Carol’s favorite parts; it was never scripted, and anything could happen.
Carol’s show was deeply rooted in vaudeville, using sketch comedy and song and dance to entertain its audience, generally assisted by a celebrity guest. These sketches ranged from big-budget movie parodies to simple character pieces. Carol developed many characters that became immensely popular and were brought to life by Carol’s own experience. One of the most famous is the “Charwoman,” identified by her blue bonnet and mop. Another character was part of an office duo alongside Tim Conway: the agonizingly sluggish Mrs. Wiggins and her long-suffering boss, Mr. Tudball. As a comedian, Carol had tremendous energy, physicality, and was never afraid to risk acting “unladylike” for the sake of the act. She often plays up her own sexuality for laughs, but avoids typical feminine virtues by playing up female stereotypes. Unlike what many audiences had seen in previous generations with characters like Lucy Ricardo, Carol sketches were based in an “absurd theatre of cruelty, with herself as the chief victim.”[5] With sketch comedy, cast members play a variety of characters, some entirely unsympathetic and consisted (and comically) humiliated. She was even unsympathetic toward herself as a person, having a deeply self-deprecatory sense of humor. Through this, Carol had the freedom to play anything from victim, to villain, to fool without hesitation, but many aspects of her character were taken out of the experiences of her youth.
A particular sketch features Carol and Vicki Lawrence as Eunice and Mama respectively. Carol’s character Eunice is the closest she comes to reflecting the average housewife’s situation. Initially, Vicki played Eunice but it didn’t feel right, but as soon as Vicki began to play Mama, it was magic. Carol slipped into Eunice’s role, written to be a thoughtless and vain sort of woman, but Carol gave her vulnerability. As Eunice, Carol found the comic equivalent to the raging disappointment of her frustrated and talented mother. Although Eunice was designed to be a broadly comic character, Carol’s performance rang of pathos and the audience witnessed a moment of genuine truth and hopelessness in her actions.
Similarly, we witness a mixture of hopelessness, rage, fantasy and absolutely inept femininity in Carol’s portrayal of many actresses in the 1940s “women’s pictures,” many of which she saw of a teenager escaping family issues. When Carol played these movie stars, she mocked the notion of glamour and the possibility of herself ever possessing it. From the moment she appears, the audience is fully aware that she is not as beautiful as the original actress – there is something comically wrong with the way Carol looks and the sketch often preys upon this fact. In this sense, her lack of femininity is highlighted as the butt of many of her sketches. Her characters often cannot get a hold of what is expected of them as women. However, this doesn’t stem from Carol’s own insecurity, but her genuine willingness to expose the insecurities that plague most other women. Many comics present themselves to their audiences in a way that exaggerates their insecurities as a means to get a lot of laughs – with women comics especially, traditional gender roles demand that they be dumber and weaker than their male counterparts; this expectation was especially rampant during the pre-Feminist era in which Carol began her career. As the host of a very successful show, Carol was very much a powerful woman, but when many fans consider the inept and awkward portrayals of domesticity and romance that dominated her career – in this, Carol’s familiarity with both laughter and pain is hardly surprising. “When the performer is honest and vulnerable, even in the midst of the most outrageous slapstick, we experience not only entertainment, but shared humanity and hope.”[6]
Carol Burnett’s history, coupled with her natural talent as a performer, is what has made her funny, successful and deeply unique during the course of her career. In spite of having a rough start in the industry, Carol had the building blocks for a Cinderella story from day one – she was an honest and genuine soul through and through, and her ingenuity as a performer and comedian was just the icing on the cake. Throughout her career, Carol occasionally did televised specials with (but not limited to) such iconic stars as Julie Andrews and Beverly Sills. She has had wonderful working relationships with Lucille Ball, Elizabeth Taylor, and Walter Matthau. Throughout history, few make their mark on an industry like Carol Burnett did, and have it only develop over time. With two biographies, dozens of Emmys, and a family behind her, Carol furthers her abilities as a writer, comedian, playwright, and as a person. She is the quintessential underdog who plowed through an industry of men and hard luck in a generation of feeble-female-stereotypes. This achievement is enough to solidify her as one of the greater television stars of our time. She is an inspiration to others, and to myself, to give it our all no matter the possibility of success. As my mother’s anecdote now tells me, it is in this way that Carol Burnett has charmed her way into my heart: be outrageous, be courageous and try your damnedest – and finally, be glad we had this time together.
[1] Burnett, Carol. One More Time: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1986. Print.
Pg. 85
[2] Burnett, Carol. One More Time: A Memoir. New York: Random House, 1986. Print. Pg. 239
[3] Burnett, Carol. This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection. New York: Harmony, 2010. Print. Pg. 45
[4] Burnett, Carol. This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection. New York: Harmony, 2010. Print. Pg. 93
[5] Horowitz, Susan. Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women. Australia: Gordon and Breach Publ., 1997. Print. Pg. 76
[6] Horowitz, Susan. Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women. Australia: Gordon and Breach Publ., 1997. Print. Pg. 84