New Yorker Carol Burnett profile

I have to say this is a lesser entry in their tradition of great, in-depth, profiles. I learned hardly anything new , but ji read a dozen or more anecdotes that I already knew quite well. Maybe that’s why she’s made it this far —and it is more or less the author’s end point: WYSIWYG.

For FUCK'S sake!!! CAROL!!

I do like that chair and ottoman very much.

Agree, r1. I dove into this loooooooong interview hoping I'd learn something new, some new insights, but it's basically just the Carol I've known since I was a kid, discovering her on The Garry Moore Show. Actually, I wish she'd talked more about Garry and the weekly effort of putting on that show as it's sadly either forgotten or unknown now. And that's really where she got her start.

The most interesting but: they would rehearse Mama’s Family skits as “ straight” scenes, and agreed it was all far too dark for their taste.

bit*

R5, that's not a new anecdote. The skit was the Maggie Smith episode and she suggested they do it straight and Burnett called it "heavy".

It's a shame the younger generations don't really seek out entertainers like Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle, Gary Moore and Danny Thomas, Sid Caeser and Red Skeleton.

Carol going will be a profound loss to the industry. No different than Lucy.

I’ve read she was difficult on the set of “Annie.” Any truth to that rumor?

The writer is very good, and tried hard to mine for new ground, but ultimately even a casual Carol fan knows most of these stories.

Sad that she seems to be estranged from one and possibly both of her surviving daughters.

That’s not the anecdote, but I’ll take your point.

The profile skips over her two main forays into heavier drama: Friendly Fire and Pete n’ Tillie.

I haven't had the chance to read the article yet, but is there any mention of Vicki Lawrence? I wonder how frequently they see one another as Vicki is still doing her show and jetting about on her private plane hither and yon for personal appearances.

My sister knew Erin from Bennington. She was quite the fucked-up teen.

Her one daughter was into drugs. I don't know why she would be estranged from the other one, though.

Two were druggies

What ended the marriage to Joe Hamilton?

I knew her love of All My Children would somehow make its way into the piece and voila! There it was. She was so devoted to that show.

[quote] Her one daughter was into drugs. I don't know why she would be estranged from the other one, though.

Carrie and Erin have both struggled with drugs - Erin was institutionalized a few years back and Carol got custody of her grandson (Erin's child) so they are not speaking.

[quote] is there any mention of Vicki Lawrence?

Briefly, a quote from Vicki. Carol and Vicki have had a few falling outs. They're on a speaking basis now but considering the body language of the last two TV specials for Carol (the one on CBS and the 90th birthday one on NBC) they aren't exactly close as sisters any more.

Maybe Vicki was rude to Carol in an Applebee's, too!

R16 money and sex. What else.

One of these days, Vicki, they're going to lock you up.

Carol, you got splinters in the windmills of your mind!

Does it mention her close, close friendship with Julie Andrews?

Read the damn article. Of course it is mentioned.—just one close not two

I haven't heard that Ann Miller story before. The one about egg.

I wanted to hear Carol talk about her disastrous experience performing on Broadway in Fade Out, Fade In and how her affair with married man Joe Hamilton complicated it even further.

The drama with Carol and Vicki is largely because of Mama. Carol refuses to discuss Mama's Family and will only talk about the Burnett show sketches in interviews. She fell out with Vicki because of the syndication run and she was divorcing Joe when she did the NBC show. No good memories.

I think Vicki's one-woman show has also caused some squabbles as well, because the character is owned by Burnett's production company, but Vicki feels it's her character because she played it and made it the success it was. Typical business stuff.

Full of ridiculous errors like saying Fresno was a short lived series when it was a mini series. The writer bizarrely keeps praising her turn as Miss Hannigan which was not well received at the time anyways. I'm glad that she said that starring in Moon Over Buffalo was a career regret because in the documentary, she's repeatedly trashed.

She was dreadful as Miss Hannigan, desperately mugging through it all. And that's saying something!

I love Carol, but her the vast majority of the comedy from her show has aged so poorly, I couldn't get through that Maggie Smith sketch posted above. It is so obvious and belabored. I thought she was a disaster in Annie as well. I've never found her to have any subtlety at all, but in the 70s, I stayed up late and watched her show every Saturday night without fail. I liked her a lot in Robert Altman's A Wedding, still an underrated movie, imo.

In Moon Over Buffalo the very able cast was saddled with a lousy unfunny play which they tried valiantly to make work, and it just wasn't possible.

R28. Sounds familiar...

Clips of her on The Garry Moore Show are even more unfunny and dated, sadly.

[quote]The writer bizarrely keeps praising her turn as Miss Hannigan which was not well received at the time anyways.

That's not true. Burnett did get raves from some critics. Pauline Kael said she was the single best thing about the movie. There was even some talk of an Oscar nomination.

Carol was good in A Wedding and The Four Seasons, but it was obvious that she wasn't a film actress. TV and film are totally different animals. The camera didn't love her, and she usually came across as flat on the big screen. Lucille Ball had the same problem.

It was The Front Page where she was god awful...

Ugh......I mercifully have forgotten about that Front Page movie. How the hell did Billy Wilder lose so much talent?

Buck would have never been killed by friendly fire...

[quote] Does it mention her close, close friendship with Julie Andrews?

There's a description of them scissoring and eating each other's snatches in the article.

In a way Carol was a slightly more modern Martha Raye without the singing voice.

Far better, more famous and more influential. That’s a dumb post^

Is there a good biography of Burnett? Did she ever write an autobiography?

Carol was always a horrible singer and although she used it to her advantage comedically, when she tried to sing straight, she was terrible. Her tone is really unpleasant and her technique always has me thinking she's about to go into the Tarzan yell.

It sounds like she did write an autobiography but she didn't reveal anything interesting in it.

Or the Polident, R39!

Or marrying a homosexual.

Didn’t she star in a Bway play about her own life—with her grifting mom?

Alcoholic not grift.

She lived it and wrote it. She didn’t act in it.

She wants Allison Janney to play her but isn't she too old?

[quote]The camera didn't love her, and she usually came across as flat on the big screen. Lucille Ball had the same problem.

And yet, Ball had a long film career before Lucy, including a stint at Metro.

R46, she wrote it. That whore Linda Lavin played her grandma.

Carol was really good in Pete N Tillie but she got to do a lot of her schtick. Her water fight with Geraldine Page was a scream and probably got Page an Oscar nomination.

Burnett has never gotten an Oscar Nomination

R50 - Ball was under contract and as "Queen of the B's" worked for years in film but never quite broke through - she seems a bigger film star in retrospect because she is "Lucy," but her career was essentially over when she and Desi risked everything they had on I Love Lucy.

^The question wasn't whether or not Lucy became A-list, but that she was "flat" onscreen. Were that the case, she wouldn't have had a film career at all.

Yeah, I don't think it can be fairly said that Lucy was flat onscreen, especially in her pre-ILL years. She really glowed in Technicolor. They nicknamed her Tessie Technicolor, in fact.

But Lucy/Mame, oh yeah, she was flat alright.

I don't think Lucy/Mame was flat, she was just too old. I have to argue that if there was anyone who was flat onscreen it was Lansbury.

In The Manchurian Candidate Lansbury virtually jumps off the screen, hardly flat. Likewise, you can't take your eyes off her in her screen debut Gaslight, which earned her an Oscar nomination. She's even imminently watchable in a small supporting role in The Reluctant Debutante in which she manages to steal scenes from Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall.

Flat? Hardly.

Team Vicki on the Mamas Family issue. Carol contacted Vicki about doing another sketch comedy show with the Eunice and Mama characters. Vicki told Carol she had signed with Joe Hamilton Productions to revive Mamas Family for syndication and Carol quit talking with her for a few years.

Mamas Family has continually been in syndication since it went off the air in 1990.

R41, she wrote a boring book in the mid-80s titled One More Time. She said it was letter to her daughters. And that's accurate because they are likely the only ones who found her some of her stories and anecdotes interesting. It was over 350 pages and only covered her childhood, teen years and early start in showbiz.

Lansbury's two big chances were Bedknobs and Broomsticks and then Something For Everyone where she essentially played Mame. In both, she was not a compelling leading lady and it had a lot to do with her round, flat face. Pauline Kael likened her to another not ready for the movies, Gwen Verdon, in that both were capable of playing weird old bats.

She wrote Carrie and Me and This Time Together. Carrie and Me was probably the most revealing, but she glosses over the early beginnings of her relationship with Joe Hamilton and his being a married man with 8 kids. I don’t think she ever said a word about her step kids. I read elsewhere Joes family sided with his ex wife and were devastated that the marriage broke up.

non paywall link below

Crazy to think that a person would have to be 60/65 years old at the youngest to really remember Carol Burnett at the height of her fame with The Carol Burnett Show.

As a child I loved her and never missed her show. Now I look try to look at some of those sketches and think they are awful and incredibly unfunny. One of the most overrated performers in show business. Pauline clearly never saw Annie on stage with Louden who was the best thing in that musical. Carol seems to have had a lot of important relationships that have gone sour. Her one daughter dies and she's estranged from the other two? Well she's never lost Julie who hasn't made any appearances since Carol's 90th birthday. Julie was nowhere to be seen on her 90th. Has she reached the point where we will not hear of her again until her death?

As a child, I enjoyed her show. But her personality doesn’t appeal to me. She seems kind of angry and bitter, and there is a shallowness about her that I can’t quite explain. I did find her funny on The Larry Sanders Show.

I didn’t know that Lyle Waggoner died.

I hated her charwoman. It wasn't funny, touching or really anything. Even as a kid I thought it was a pathetic attempt to gain a signature character. However, the first time we saw Eunice, we knew that was the one.

R65, Kael indeed did not see Annie onstage, but was shown the screenplay before it was filmed. She said she thought it was appalling, but also noted a problem with the locket moment. You can't half it. That's why the plot point is changed to having the locket kept with her belongings with Miss Hannigan.

1) One More Time, was actually a great book...a very blunt and poignant look at her early life and her messy parents and life being raised by her Grandmother in a tiny apartment in Hollywood.

2) You can be younger than 60 and remember the Burnett show...they cut out most of the musical stuff and syndicated the sketches for many years under the title "Carol Burnett & Friends". It was mostly sketches from the last 5 years of the show with a big emphasis on the Family sketches and movie spoofs.

3) Many of the sketches still hold up. Obviously, the Family sketches are great; MUCH better than the inane Mama's Family shit. The movie parodies are funny (if you like old movies and understand what they're about). There's some very funny standalone sketches...there's a great one with Carol as a neurotic woman visiting her shrink played by Harvey and she blames everything rotten in her life on the fact she was bullied by a male playmate when she was a kid, who stole her pail at the beach...that bully turns out to be the shrink. The show had good clever writing at times, but yeah....it was very broad comedy of that time. And, while I'm a huge fan of Carol and the variety show, I found watching the whole intact hour long episodes to be a bit excrutiating. The musical numbers are cute...for about 2 minutes then it's just corn that goes on and on and on.

4) As for the movies, it's hit and miss. I hate Friendly Fire...trying to hard to present her as dramatic. Pete n Tillie is actually mostly fun until they kill the kid and gets too maudlin. She's very funny in A Wedding which is a fun trainwreck. I'm not a fan of her Hannigan...but, the whole movie is really a mess. And, she's not terrible but Hannigan really works best with an actress who seems believable that she hates children.

Carol's best drama work...her stint on SVU where she played an old hasbeen actress who murdered her husband. She was really great in that!

I write to her around 1975 and asked if I could be on her show. I got a lovely letter back from her letting me know that that wasn't possible and gave me tips on how to pursue a career in entertainment if that's what I wanted to do. She also sent me an autographed 8 x 10. I treasure both to this day.

I can't read the whole article, I didn't realize she was estranged from her two living daughters, that's sad. I know her daughter Carrie died and seemed like a troubled woman. A buddy of mine did the first national tour of RENT in the late 90s and said Carrie was wonderful, and of course he met Carol a number of times when she came to see the show. He said Carol had really bad breath.

Paywalled

I've always said Harvey was funniest on her show. I thought Carol was good playing a drunk in a TV movie life of the party.

[quote] He said Carol had really bad breath.

R73 I’m guessing your buddy didn’t ask her to do the Tarzan yell.

Dorothy Loudon must've resented her so much.

When I see her now, I can't connect her to who she was in the '70s. Something about her is fundamentally different.