Carol Burnett

AKA Carol Creighton Burnett

Born: 26-Apr-1933

Birthplace: San Antonio, TX



Gender: Female

Religion: Christian Science

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: Actor

Party Affiliation: Democratic

Nationality: United States

Executive summary: The Carol Burnett Show

Carol Burnett's parents were alcoholics, and her earliest memories are of their screaming, drunken fights. Her father abandoned the family when she was eight, and she and her mother moved in with Burnett's loving but eccentric maternal grandmother, a hypochondriac subject to "hissy fits." Burnett's mother soon faded from the family into the bottle, leaving Burnett to be raised by her grandmother. They became very close, and Burnett's famous "ear-tug" gesture, offered at the end of all her live performances and on her famous TV series, began as a silent signal to her grandmother, meaning "Everything is OK."

She started in show business as an occasional stage actress, sometimes nightclub singer, and more often a hatcheck girl. After a few years barely making ends meet, 22-year-old Burnett first appeared on television in 1955, playing the dummy's romantic interest in 13 episodes of The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show, a kids' program that aired on Saturday mornings (Winchell was a ventriloquist, Mahoney was his dummy). At 23, she was cast as Buddy Hackett's girlfriend on Stanley, a NBC prime time sitcom set among workers at a hotel's newsstand, and written by Neil Simon and Woody Allen, among others. At 23½, she found herself unemployed when the program was cancelled, and for a time she worked as an usher at a Hollywood movie theater.

Burnett bounced back with a parody pop song, "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles," confessing her love for the utterly unsexy, 68-year-old Secretary of State who is now best remembered as the namesake for Dulles Airport outside Washington DC. The song became a minor pop hit after Burnett sang it on Jack Paar's Tonight Show in 1957.

After that, she was a frequent panelist on the game show Pantomime Quiz. In 1959, she joined the ensemble cast of The Garry Moore Show, a popular comedy-variety hour, while concurrently starring on Broadway in the musical-comedy Once Upon a Mattress, based on the children's story The Princess and the Pea. In a memorable Twilight Zone, she played a klutzy but contented single woman offered a life of glamour by her guardian angel. She had a recurring role as a tough female Marine in Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., becoming good friends with its star Jim Nabors, who was later her traditional first guest every season on her variety show. Burnett appeared in several episodes of her friend Lucille Ball's The Lucy Show, and she was a regular on the mid-1960s variety show The Entertainers with Art Buchwald and Bob Newhart. After that show ended, Ball offered to produce a sitcom for her, but Burnett declined, fearing she might feel stifled playing the same character week after week.

Instead, Burnett and her husband, producer Joe Hamilton, crafted a variety hour around her talents. The Carol Burnett Show premiered in 1967, ran for eleven years and won 22 Emmys. Recurring sketches included the tight-skirted secretary Mrs. Wiggins, the Southern-fried bitch Eunice of Mama's Family (later spun off to its own sitcom), and the bad actress star of the soap opera parody As the Stomach Turns. There were also spoofs of classic movies, most memorably Burnett as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, wearing a dress made from the drapes -- complete with curtain rod (the dress was maniacally designed by Bob Mackie). For no particular reason, she would occasionally belt out a Tarzan yell, and at some point in every show Burnett would take questions from the audience, usually coming up with an answer that was either heartwarming or hilarious.

Burnett had perfect chemistry with her supporting cast, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner, and through the show's first seven seasons there were no cast changes. When Waggoner left he was replaced with Tim Conway for the eighth and subsequent seasons. The show was always funny but never mean or risqué, and in an era with only three channels, audiences of all ages tuned in to see what wacky skits Burnett would perform each week. On video, The Carol Burnett Show has been repackaged as Carol Burnett & Friends, and unlike some alleged comedy classics, no-one who rents the videos could possibly be disappointed.

She worked occasionally in feature films, including Noises Off with Michael Caine, Robert Altman's A Wedding, and The Four Seasons with Alan Alda. Her best TV films include the Vietnam survivors' drama Friendly Fire, Eunice (the pilot for Mama's Family), and three separate TV adaptations of her Broadway hit Once Upon a Mattress in 1964, 1972, and 2005.

In 1986 she starred in Fresno, a six-hour mini-series spoofing Dallas and Dynasty, with Burnett as Fresno's hard-drinking raisin matriarch Charlotte Kensington. With Charles Grodin, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, and Gregory Harrison, it was funny to the finish, but has never been released on video in America.

In 1990 she starred in Carol & Company with Jeremy Piven and Peter Krause, an anthology series with a half-hour comedy skit each week, but it was quickly cancelled. In 1991 she revived her Carol Burnett Show in name and format but with a new supporting cast. It was funny, but drew poor ratings and was cancelled after less than two months. Later in the 1990s, she played Helen Hunt's mother on Mad About You.

Her second husband, Joe Hamilton, had been a jazz musician, but after marrying Burnett he produced most of her starring projects. Their daughter, Carrie Hamilton, had highly-publicized drug problems, and became an actress, starring in the TV movie Hostage with Burnett and in touring productions of Rent, before dying of lung cancer in 2002. Another daughter, Erin Hamilton, has had several hits on the dance charts, including covers of "Dream Weaver" and Cheap Trick's "The Flame." Erin Hamilton is an out lesbian.

Burnett sued the National Enquirer in 1981, after the tabloid falsely reported that she had been in a drunken argument with Henry Kissinger in a Washington restaurant. Burnett won the case, and was awarded several hundred thousand dollars. She donated the money to charity.

By virtually all accounts, the good-natured wise-cracking Burnett seen on her variety show was the real Carol Burnett. Her beloved grandmother, Mae Eudora Jones White, died in 1967 at the age of 82, but Burnett never stopped tugging her ear at the end of every episode. In the show's third season, Burnett received a résumé from a 10-year-old fan who wanted a career in comedy -- Jim Carrey, who received a long, personal letter of encouragement from Burnett. When she received her star on Hollywood Boulevard, Burnett had it placed in front of the theater where she had been an usher. And in 1989, when Burnett's friend Lucille Ball died suddenly on Burnett's birthday, Burnett received a bouquet from Ball several hours after hearing the sad news -- Ball had ordered the flowers in advance for Burnett's birthday.

Hamilton, her husband, wrote the theme song for The Carol Burnett Show, which she sang at the end of every episode. "I'm so glad we had this time together, just to have a laugh or sing a song, seems we just get started and before you know it, comes the time we have to say, 'So long.'" And then Burnett would wave and shout, "Good night, everybody."

Father: Joseph Thomas Burnett ("Jody", b. 1907, d. 1954 tuberculosis and pneumonia)

Mother: Ina Louise Creighton Melton (switchboard operator at Variety, d. 1957)

Sister: Chris Frauchinger (half sister)

Husband: Don Saroyan (actor, m. 15-Dec-1955, div. 1962, d. 1990)

Husband: Joe Hamilton (TV producer, m. 4-May-1963, sep. 1982, div. 1984, d. 1991 cancer)

Husband: Brian Miller (musician, m. 2001)

Daughter: Carrie Louise Hamilton-Templin (actress-writer, b. 5-Dec-1963 with Hamilton, d. 20-Jan-2002, lung cancer)

Daughter: Jody Ann Hamilton (TV producer, b. 18-Jan-1967 with Hamilton)

Daughter: Erin Kate Hamilton (singer, b. 14-Aug-1968 with Hamilton)



High School: Hollywood High School, Hollywood, CA (1951)

University: University of California at Los Angeles (dropped out)



Emmy 1962 for The Garry Moore Show (performance)

Emmy 1963 for Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall (performance)

Emmy 1972 for The Carol Burnett Show

Emmy 1974 for The Carol Burnett Show

Emmy 1975 for The Carol Burnett Show

Emmy 1997 for Mad About You (guest actress)

Golden Globe 1968 for The Carol Burnett Show

Golden Globe 1970 for The Carol Burnett Show

Golden Globe 1972 for The Carol Burnett Show

Golden Globe 1977 for The Carol Burnett Show

Golden Globe 1978 for The Carol Burnett Show

Kennedy Center Honor 2003

Peabody 1963

Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses 1998

Library of Congress Living Legend 2000

Presidential Medal of Freedom 9-Nov-2005

Hollywood Walk of Fame 6439 Hollywood Blvd (television)

Traveled to the USSR 30-Sep-1988

Risk Factors: Former Smoker



TELEVISION

Mad About You Theresa Stemple (1996-99)

Mama's Family Eunice Higgins (1983-84)

The Carol Burnett Show Host (1967-78)

The Lucy Show Carol Bradford (1966-67)



FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR

Toy Story 4 (14-Jun-2019) [VOICE]

The Secret World of Arrietty (17-Jul-2010) · Hara

Post Grad (13-Aug-2009) · Grandma Maureen

Horton Hears a Who! (3-Mar-2008) [VOICE]

Once Upon a Mattress (18-Dec-2005)

Broadway: The Golden Age (Apr-2003) · Herself

The Trumpet of the Swan (1-Mar-2001) [VOICE]

Get Bruce (24-Jan-1999) · Herself

Moon Over Broadway (7-Sep-1997) · Herself

Seasons of the Heart (22-May-1994)

Noises Off... (20-Mar-1992)

Fresno (16-Nov-1986)

Between Friends (11-Sep-1983)

Life of the Party: The Story of Beatrice (29-Sep-1982)

Annie (20-May-1982) · Miss Hannigan

Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (28-Aug-1981)

The Four Seasons (22-May-1981) · Kate Burroughs

HealtH (12-Sep-1980)

Friendly Fire (22-Apr-1979)

A Wedding (29-Aug-1978) · Tulip Brenner

The Front Page (17-Dec-1974) · Mollie Malloy

Pete 'n' Tilly (17-Dec-1972)

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (25-Dec-1963)



Author of books:

Carol Burnett: What I Want To Be When I Grow Up ( 1975 , memoir)

One More Time: A Memoir ( 1986 , memoir)

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection ( 2010 , memoir)

Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story ( 2013 , memoir)







Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript.

Do you know something we don't?

Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile







