Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut. After successful appearances on The Garry Moore Show, Burnett moved to Los Angeles and began an eleven-year run on The Carol Burnett Show which was aired on CBS television from 1967 to 1978. With roots in vaudeville, The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show which combined comedy sketches, song, and dance. The comedy sketches included film parodies and character pieces. Burnett created many characters during the show's television run. Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas, the daughter of Ina Louise (née Creighton), a publicity writer for movie studios, and Joseph Thomas Burnett, a movie theater manager. Both of her parents suffered from alcoholism, and at a young age she was left with her grandmother, Mabel Eudora White. Her parents divorced in the late 1930s, and Burnett and her grandmother moved to an apartment near her mother’s in an impoverished area of Hollywood. There, they stayed in a boarding house with her younger half-sister Chrissy. When Burnett was in the second grade, she briefly invented an imaginary twin sister named Karen, with Shirley Temple-like dimples. Motivated to further the pretense, Burnett recalled fondly that she "fooled the other boarders in the rooming house where we lived by frantically switching clothes and dashing in and out of the house by the fire escape and the front door. Then I became exhausted and Karen mysteriously vanished." For a while, she worked as an usherette at what is now the Hollywood Pacific Theatre (the forecourt of which is now the location of her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; see the section in the theatre's article for more information). After graduating from Hollywood High School in 1951, Burnett won a scholarship to UCLA, where she initially planned on studying journalism. During her first year of college, Burnett switched her focus to theater arts and English, with the goal of becoming a playwright. She found she had to take an acting course to enter the playwright program; "I wasn't really ready to do the acting thing, but I had no choice."[5] She followed a sudden impulse in her first performance; "Don't ask me why, but when we were in front of the audience, I suddenly decided I was going to stretch out all my words and my first line came out 'I'm baaaaaaaack!'" The audience response moved her deeply: They laughed and it felt great. All of a sudden, after so much coldness and emptiness in my life, I knew the sensation of all that warmth wrapping around me. I had always been a quiet, shy, sad sort of girl and then everything changed for me. You spend the rest of your life hoping you'll hear a laugh that great again. During this time, Burnett performed in several university productions, garnering recognition for her comedic and musical abilities. Her mother disapproved of her acting ambitions: She wanted me to be a writer. She said you can always write, no matter what you look like. When I was growing up she told me to be a little lady, and a couple of times I got a whack for crossing my eyes or making funny faces. Of course, she never, I never, dreamed I would ever perform. The young Burnett, always insecure about her looks, described her reaction to her mother's advice of "You can always write, no matter what you look like", in her 1986 memoir One More Time: "God, that hurt!"In 1954, during her junior year, a professor invited Burnett and some other students to perform at a black-tie party. A man and his wife approached her afterward, as she was putting cookies in her purse to take home to her grandmother. Instead of reprimanding her, the man complimented Burnett's performance and asked about her future plans. When he discovered that she wanted to go try her luck with musical comedy in New York, but did not have enough money, he offered her and her boyfriend Don Saroyan each a $1000 interest-free loan on the spot. The conditions were that it was to be paid back in five years, his name was never to be revealed, and if she became a success, she would help others attain their dreams. Burnett took him up on his offer. She and Saroyan left college and moved to New York to pursue acting careers. That same year, Burnett's father died of causes related to his alcoholism. After spending her first year in New York working as a hat-check girl and failing to land acting jobs, Burnett along with other girls living at The Rehearsal Club, a boarding house for women seriously pursuing an acting career, put on The Rehearsal Club Revue on March 3, 1955. They mailed invitations to agents, who showed up along with stars like Celeste Holm and Marlene Dietrich, and this opened doors for several of the girls. Burnett was cast in a minor role on The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show in 1955. She played the girlfriend of a ventriloquist’s dummy on the popular children’s program. This role led to her starring role opposite Buddy Hackett in the short-lived sitcom Stanley from 1956 to 1957.After Stanley, Burnett found herself unemployed for a short time. She eventually bounced back a few months later as a highly popular performer on the New York circuit of cabarets and night clubs, most notably for a hit parody number called "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles" (Dulles was Secretary of State at the time). In 1957, Burnett performed this number on both The Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar, and The Ed Sullivan Show. Burnett also worked as a regular on one of television's earliest game shows, Pantomime Quiz, during this time. In 1957, just as Burnett was achieving her first small successes, her mother died.Burnett and Larry Blyden from The Garry Moore Show, 1960.Burnett's first true taste of success came with her appearance on Broadway in the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress. The same year, she became a regular player on The Garry Moore Show, a job that lasted until 1962. She won an Emmy that year for her "Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series" on the show. Burnett portrayed a number of characters, most memorably the put-upon cleaning woman who would later become her signature alter-ego. With her success on the Moore show, Burnett finally rose to headliner status and appeared in the 1962 special Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, co-starring her friend Julie Andrews. The show was produced by Bob Banner, directed by Joe Hamilton, and written by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch. Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Music. Burnett also guest-starred on a number of shows during this time, including The Twilight Zone episode "Cavender is Coming" and a recurring role as a tough female Marine in Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Burnett became good friends with the latter show's star, Jim Nabors, who would later be her first guest every season on her variety show. In 1963, Lucille Ball became a friend and mentor to Burnett, and after having the younger performer guest star on The Lucy Show a number of times, Ball reportedly offered Burnett her own sitcom called "Here's Agnes", to be produced by Desilu Productions. Burnett declined the offer, however, deciding instead to put together a variety show. The two remained close friends until Ball's death in 1989. Ball sent flowers every year on her birthday. When Burnett awoke on the day of her 56th birthday in 1989, she discovered via the morning news that Ball had died. Later that afternoon, flowers arrived at Burnett's house with the note "Happy Birthday, Kid. Love, Lucy." In 1964, Burnett was cast opposite Caterina Valente and Bob Newhart on the variety show The Entertainers which ran for only one season. She also starred in the Broadway musical Fade Out - Fade In, but was forced to quit after sustaining a neck injury in a taxi accident. The show’s producers sued the actress for breach of contract, but the suit was later dropped. There is so much more, but this is plenty for a blog post. I have always found Carol Bu
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