Today [Friday, April 26, 2019] is the 86th birthday of television comedy legend Carol Burnett.
I don’t admire celebrities. But, when it comes to extraordinary talents of particular ones, my appreciation for them endures. No one from television has lasted with the impact more than Burnett.
Born April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas, Burnett had a hard life in childhood as she was raised by her grandmother given her parents were both alcoholics. A biography of Burnett, which includes starting out in her 20s and as a regular on CBS’s The Garry Moore Show, can be read here: Wikipedia — Carol Burnett.
The Carol Burnett Show was broadcast for 11 seasons, on CBS, from 1967–1978, and won Emmys for outstanding variety series in 1972, 1974, and 1975. Her cast mates Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Tim Conway were also prized.
Burnett got to work with a film director I admired, Robert Altman, in 1978’s A Wedding, a comedy about two families, from separate geographic regions, merging as one has ties to organized crime.
After her series ended, Burnett delivered an Emmy nominated, dramatic turn in Friendly Fire, broadcast 40 years ago this week on ABC, April 22, 1979. She and Ned Beatty played parents of a son who is killed in Vietnam as the result of an error by his fellow soldiers.
Burnett was co-lead to Alan Alda, who had been a guest on her variety series more than once, in The Four Seasons (1981), a comedy directed and written by Alda about upper middle class couples who routinely vacation together as a group. There was consideration of Burnett possibly garnering an Oscar nomination, but that never came to fruition. Even Burnett was dismissive of it.
Burnett received a 1996 Tony nomination for best actress in a play for Moon Over Buffalo, a comedy about traveling actors in repertory theatre in Buffalo, New York. She was also nominated in 1960 for best actress in a musical, in what was her 1959 Broadway debut, for Once Upon a Mattress.
Burnett and her variety-series regulars have had more than one reunion; have promoted DVDs of memorable sketches; and she has made the rounds guest-starring in numerous television series. She won an Emmy in 1997 for playing Helen Hunt’s mom on NBC’s Mad About You. Burnett received a 2009 Emmy nomination for playing a former star, now a recluse, on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In three separate episodes starting in 2013, on CBS’s Hawaii Five–O, she played the aunt to series star Alex O’Laughlin. She has kept busy.
Here are some sketches which highlight the comic genius of Carol Burnett:
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