Carol Burnett: Queen of Sketch Comedy
CAROL BURNETT, born in San Antonio, Texas in 1933, moved to Hollywood at the age of eight, and lived in an apartment building a block north of Hollywood Boulevard. She grew up to star in a variety show which ran on CBS for 11 seasons, from 1967–1978.
As a girl, both of her parents were often drunk, so Carol lived down the hall from her mother, with her grandmother “Nanny” in a 30-dollar-a-month apartment. Carol grew up around drunkenness and anger, living on welfare, and seeing eight movies a week as an escape. She felt awkward when the storylines and the jokes were above her head
She was in no particular physical danger. No one in the family was angry at her; she was a sweetheart. But she saw how easily the brain is befuddled and dulled by alcohol. She was frightened that her own life would echo the lives of her parents, that she, too, would turn to booze for consolation. Sometimes she wanted to be angry, too, but anger is expensive and the family couldn’t afford any more of it.
So Carol specialized in being funny, and found that worked very well. It cut the tension; it helped keep her little family sane. And if she was the comedian, she got to be in on the joke.
Hollywood was always two places for Carol Burnett. It was the sad, slightly seedy place she’d lived as a girl — and it was also the ultimate symbol of show business success and glory.
In 1951, in her senior year at Hollywood High, she “saw herself” at UCLA. She had a very clear, confident vision in her head of herself as a UCLA student, likely a Theater major.
But in another part of her mind, she knew she couldn’t afford UCLA. The fall semester of her freshman year would cost 43 dollars, and her family didn’t have 43 dollars for school tuition. So those twin ideas remained stubbornly, indelibly in her head: ‘I WILL go to UCLA’ and ‘I CAN’T go to UCLA.’
Then one day, she peeked in the mail slot and there, barely visible, was an envelope with “Carol Burnett” typewritten on it. Curious, she opened the envelope and found a $50 bill inside. No note, no way of knowing who’d given her the 50 bucks. She always wondered.
She went off to UCLA, majored in Theater and found herself. She idolized stars like Mary Martin and Ethel Merman without believing she could ever be a star herself. There was something furtive about ambition that she wasn’t quite at home with.
But she was certainly hungry for something more than what she had. And she loved to play all different parts, the freedom to be someone else besides Carol Burnett. Roles in life, she decided, should not be locked down. You find a part and play it and if you don’t like the part, find another one.
One week in 1954, a Theater professor told the class ‘Hey, this weekend my wife and I are going down to San Diego for a black tie party. Why don’t you all come along, and be the entertainment for the party?’ So that’s where Carol was that Saturday night, performing bits from “Annie Get Your Gun” at a party of high-rollers in San Diego.
Near the end of the party, still a little flushed from her performance, she was wrapping up some hors d’oeuvres to take home to her grandmother when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘Busted!’ she thought. ‘I should never have tried to steal food from a fancy party.’
But the gentleman who’d touched her on the shoulder had something else in mind.
‘That was very good…” he said and then “What would you like to be doing right now?”
She blurted out, “I want to be in New York!”
He asked, “Why aren’t you there now?”
She said she could never afford to live in New York.
He said, “Well, I’ll help you.”
Carol assumed it was just the champagne talking, but he sat down and wrote her a $1,000 check, and then looked at her quite seriously.
He said, ‘Pay it back in five years, if you can. No interest.’ Then he said I’m giving you this check on two conditions. One, that you never reveal my name. And two, that if you ARE successful, you’ll help others out.’
Carol was stunned. She stammered, ‘Thank you.’
Later, she found out that when this man was young, someone had helped him in a similar way.
With calm certainty and exquisite terror, she flew to New York. Five years later to the day, she sent her patron a certified check for $1,000.
She excelled at sketch comedy and was signed by CBS. She worked on “The Gary Moore Show,” and learned how comedy is directed on television, and how to perform for TV, what the camera liked and didn’t like, what the censors would and wouldn’t allow. She also learned a good deal about the business of television: what a show’s budget was; how to tell a good talent agent from a bad one; how a network tries to create a slate of shows to appeal to a broad range of demographics.
She loved about sketch comedy that it was professionally written and acted, a commercial product — yet the sketches themselves were freewheeling takes on life, with a gleeful disregard for social convention. She loved that she could take her anxiety and her ambition, take them over the top, and make people laugh.
In 1962, her show business contract was one of those contracts with endless clauses and sub-clauses. One little sub-clause in the contract said that anytime in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 or 1966, Carol could decide to create a comedy-variety show and CBS would have to televise it.
CBS didn’t believe that Burnett would ever exercise this option — and neither did Carol herself. But it was there in the contract. And at Christmas time in 1966, with the option about to expire, she called a CBS executive, a man, of course, because TV executives in 1966 were men. Burnett told him she’d decided to do a variety show for CBS.
The executive said, “What do you mean?”
Burnett said, “I’d like to do a weekly variety show.”
The male executive got off the phone, as if his pants were on fire, then called her back, much calmer, having scrutinized her contract. Now he tried to, soothingly, talk her out of it. He said “Carol, variety is a man’s game. It’s Milton Berle, it’s Sid Caesar, it’s Dean Martin and Jackie Gleason.’
And she screwed up her courage and said ‘Yes, well, it’s also going to be Carol Burnett.’
CBS was boxed in a corner. They tried to get her to do a sit-com instead called “Here’s Agnes” but finally they gave her the variety show. They had to.
The top brass at CBS wrote it off as a failure before it even aired. They also made damn sure that none of their other talent had a contract with that little sub-clause about being able to launch a comedy-variety show on CBS whenever they wanted.
In 1967, the variety show launched and it was a hit for 11 seasons, an eternity on network TV. Carol found good writers, and for a time her head writer was Barry Levinson, who later directed the film “Diner.” But Carol was the focus of the show; everything was suffused with her energy, her comic sensibility, her instincts.
She was a comedian, a wisecracking host, and a social critic sometimes in the guise of a silly jester. She poked fun at Scarlett O’Hara’s dress from “Gone With the Wind” but it was gentle fun. People loved to hear a Tarzan yell come from this petite woman.
She told her writers she didn’t want to ride the same jokes from week to week. She pushed them for novelty.
When the show was a hit, the budget grew. Carol was well-paid and had a repertory company of five comic actors and actresses with her; plus two major “guest stars” each week, 12 dancers and a 28-piece orchestra. The costumes guy had enough money in the budget to make 65 costumes a week.
Having almost begged her NOT to launch the show in 1967, in 1978 CBS almost begged her to do the show for a 12th season. But she’d had enough, and wanted to try other things — movies, maybe even stand-up comedy.
She retired to Santa Barbara, but still enjoys traveling around, still performing though at a much less hectic pace.
Ever since the show went off the air, people have been asking her why variety shows aren’t on the air today. She tells them it would be much too expensive now to have such a big staff: the orchestra, the dancers, the rep company, the guest stars, the costumes, the rights fees for the songs the orchestra plays.
“Saturday Night Live” has some of the same freewheeling spirit, she’ll point out, and she is outspoken in her admiration for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. But that’s a comedy show, with a certain rather narrow brand of humor, and a sameness to many of the jokes. There has never been an outstanding network VARIETY show since Carol Burnett walked off-stage.