I can’t tell you how happy it made me to see Carol Burnett, 82, tug her ear on the red carpet at the SAGs Saturday night. I was little when the Carol Burnett show aired but I remember it playing on TV all the time, and I remember Carol tugging her ear at the end of every show. Carol did it as a message to her grandmother, who raised her and who passed away in 1967 during the show’s first season. So it was kind of bittersweet when Carol did that every show.
Carol was given the Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to her by Amy Poehler and Tiny Fey. In her speech she told a story about how the network wanted her to do a sitcom instead of a variety show. Of course she won out and the Carol Burnett show, which aired from 1967 to 1978, was born. She explained that she grew up with a love of movies because she used to see around eight movies a week and would act them out with her best friend. So having a musical variety show was a kind of dream for her and it ended up having a wacky cast, clever skits, costumes by Bob Mackie and an 11 year run. Only she had to convince the network executives that a woman could do it.
We mounted a musical comedy review every week and oh God, did we have fun. And at first, the network didn’t want me to do one. They tried to talk me into doing a half-hour sitcom called Here’s Agnyss. Can you picture it? Here’s Agnyss! I can just see it. But I had a terrific and unheard-of contract that said that all I had to do was push the button, and the network would have to give me 30 one-hour variety shows. Yeah. And I told them that that’s what I wanted to do. But they said “Carol, no no no no, look. All the comedy variety shows are hosted by men. Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, now Dean; comedy variety is a man’s game. Mm-mm. No.
Carol was a trailblazer in comedy and I love that she’s being honored for her long career. She told a story backstage about another trailblazer who was a close friend of hers, Lucille Ball. She met Lucille in 1959 when she came to see the off-Broadway show Carol was performing in, Once Upon a Mattress. Lucille called her “kid,” as she did for their entire friendship, which lasted until Lucille passed away at the age of 77. This got me choked up – Carol said that Lucille always sent flowers to her on her birthday, April 26, which happened to be the day that Lucille ended up passing away in the hospital from an aortic aneurysm. Carol still received flowers from Lucille for her birthday that day in 1989. She explained “She died on my birthday, on April 26th. That afternoon, I got flowers from her and it said ‘Happy Birthday, kid.‘”
Here’s Carol with slippers on the red carpet! She changed them at some point before the ceremony as there are other photos of her with her regular shoes, but I like that she walked in comfort for a while.
And here’s Carol’s speech, thanks to The Cut for posting it!
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