Carol Creighton Burnett

Six-time Emmy Award winner Carol Burnett has demonstrated such versatility since ending the 11 year run of the "Carol Burnett Show" that she is as widely recognized for her dramatic abilities as she is for her comedic and musical talents.  Americans fondly consider Carol Burnett a true living legend in entertainment, having bestowed more People's Choice Awards upon her than any other woman in the award show's history. She has also received five Golden Globes and in 2003 she was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and in 2005 The Presidential Medal of Freedom. Some of her other notable awards include the Peabody Award for "Friendly Fire," and the Ace Award for "Between Friends" with Elizabeth Taylor. Carol has enjoyed a career about which most performers can only dream; moving easily from the stage to television, from feature and television films to variety specials.

Carol’s second book, This Time Together – Laughter and Reflection, has now spent over two months on The New York Times Best Seller List. The book was published April 6 by Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House. This look back is filled with hilarious and touching anecdotes from both her remarkable career and personal adventures.  What started as a letter to her daughters as a record of her life and their family history turned into Carol’s first book, One More Time, a critically acclaimed memoir published by Random House which reached the non-fiction best sellers lists in 1986.

Carol portrayed the villainess Kangaroo in 20th Century Fox’s 2008 blockbuster animated feature “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who” in which she co-starred with Jim Carrey and Steve Carell.

Last year Carol was nominated for an Emmy for her guest appearance as a murderer “In Law and Order: SVU.” In her 2005 version of “Once Upon A Mattress” for ABC TV, she played Queen Aggravain, and  Tracey Ullman co-starred as Princess Winnifred, the role Carol made famous during its smash Broadway run.  She also starred as Winnifred in two previous television productions of the musical.

The CBS Special “The Carl Burnett Show: Let’s Bump Up The Lights,” was broadcast in May of 2004, and reunited Carol with Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner. The show featured the spontaneous and hilarious moments that were seen at the beginning of every “The Carol Burnett Show” – where Carol and the gang answered questions from the studio audience. Carol's previous special, "The Carol Burnett Show: Show Stoppers"   with Harvey, Vicki  and Tim attracted nearly 30 million viewers. It was the fourth most watched  program  of 2001 and was  nominated for three Emmy's including "Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special."

In April 2002 "Hollywood Arms," directed by Harold Prince, had its world premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre.  The idea for the play was conceived by Carol's daughter, Carrie Hamilton, who had died of cancer in January of that year. Carrie and Carol  co-wrote the script based on  Carol's 1986 best-selling memoir One More Time. The production went on to make its Broadway debut at The Cort Theater on October 31, 2002. To perpetuate Carrie’s love of the performing arts, Carol has created The Carrie Hamilton Foundation.
Carol last appeared on Broadway in 1999 in the Stephen Sondheim musical review “Putting It Together;”  the production was first mounted in 1998, to great critical and commercial success, at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. Her Broadway appearance, prior to "Putting It Together, was in 1995 with Philip Bosco in the Ken Ludwig farce "Moon Over Buffalo."  Best Actor In A Play Tony Award nominations were bestowed on both Carol and  Philip  for their performances in the hit show.   

In 1996 Carol began her much acclaimed appearances as Jamie Buchman’s (Helen Hunt) mother on NBC’s “Mad About You,” for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy.  The episodes, which were among the series highest rated, continued into the 1997 season.  1994 was a busy year for Carol.  She produced two specials for CBS, “Men, Movies & Carol," which spoofed the cinema and guest starred Tony Bennett, Scott Bakula, Michael Jeter and Barry Bostwick; and "Carol Burnett: The Special Years," featuring the most memorable moments from nine of her specials.  "Seasons of the Heart," a dramatic telefilm on NBC, in which she co-starred with George Segal and Malcolm McDowell, also aired that year.

Carol spent most of her childhood in a less-than-glamorous section of Hollywood and attended UCLA before heading to New York.  It was a rough beginning as jobs were tough until Carol staged her own musical revue, featuring her out-of-work roommates from a theatrical boarding house performing material by unemployed writers and composers.  Soon offers for summer stock and 13 weeks' work on Paul Winchell's Kiddie TV show followed.  Shortly thereafter, while performing at The Blue Angel in New York, she was spotted by talent bookers from both "The Jack Paar Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show."  Television audiences of both shows were doubled over with laughter at Carol's now-legendary rendition of "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles."

After guest spots on Garry Moore's  morning TV show of the time, Carol went on to make an appearance on the evening telecast of "The Garry Moore Show."  During the first year of the "Garry Moore Show," she simultaneously performed the lead role in the off-Broadway musical, "Once Upon a Mattress."  The show was an instant hit and later moved on to Broadway.

The first of her several specials with Julie Andrews followed, "Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall," an hour musical show on CBS.  Juggling both Broadway and television, Carol starred on the stage in "Fade Out, Fade In," and in a number of televised specials, including "Carol & Company," with Robert Preston; a 90-minute version of "Once Upon a Mattress"; an original musical, "Calamity

Jane"; "Carol + 2" with Lucille Ball and Zero Mostel, and "Carol & Company" with Rock Hudson.  In 1967, Carol returned to Los Angeles to begin what would become the longest-running musical comedy variety show in television history: the Emmy winning "The Carol Burnett Show."

Although the 11-year run of "The Carol Burnett Show," which won 25 Emmy Awards, kept her extremely busy, she managed to find time to headline in Las Vegas with friend Jim Nabors as well as make her stage debut in a non-musical, "Plaza Suite," at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles.  She starred in another legit outing, "Same Time, Next Year" with Dick Van Dyke and then the Gower Champion-directed production of "I Do, I Do!" with Rock Hudson.  Her second Julie Andrews special followed, "Julie and Carol at Lincoln Center," along with starring roles in the feature films "Pete 'N Tillie" with Walter Matthau and "The Front Page" again with Matthau and Jack Lemmon.  During the 1973-74 season, while still doing "The Carol Burnett Show," she co-starred with Alan Alda in "6 Rms Riv Vu" on CBS and the following year portrayed four characters in a 90-minute special television presentation of George Furth's comedy/drama, "Twigs."  Teaming with opera star Beverly Sills in "Sills & Burnett at the Met," which aired during the 1976-77 season, Carol won a Christopher Award. 

Carol has also starred in a variety of film and television projects since she made the conscious decision to bring "The Carol Burnett Show" to an end in 1978, after the series  won a total of 25 Emmy Awards and while it was still enormously popular.  Other productions include the critically acclaimed and highly rated musical special "Julie and Carol: Together Again" and in 1998 the telefilm “The Marriage Fool” in which she again co-starred with Walter Matthau.  In recognition of this vast body of  television accomplishments, The National Association of Broadcasters inducted her into their prestigious Hall of Fame. 

Additional feature films include "The Four Seasons," "Chu Chu and the Philly Flash," "Annie," and two films directed by Robert Altman, "Health" and "A Wedding," for which she won the San Sebastian Film Award as Best Actress.  Her most recent film credit is the starring role, opposite Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, in the adaptation of the hilarious British stage farce, "Noises Off," directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Home audiences saw her in such television movies as "The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank," "Friendly Fire," for which she received an Emmy nomination, "The Tenth Month," as well as the HBO films "Between Friends" with Elizabeth Taylor and "The Laundromat," directed by Robert Altman.  Other television specials include "Dolly and Carol In Nashville" with Dolly Parton, "Burnett Discovers Domingo" with Placido Domingo and a two-hour ABC presentation of Neil Simon's play "Plaza Suite," which she had performed on stage in Los Angeles.  In 1991 she hosted two highly acclaimed CBS specials, "The Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show," and her own "The Carol Burnett Show: A Reunion," two of the network's highest rated shows during the season. 

Carol never lost her love of performing before a live audience and since 1990, she has appeared in numerous productions of "Love Letters," starring opposite such leading men as John Cleese, Tony Roberts, Charlton Heston, Tom Selleck, Brian Dennehy and Cliff Robertson.  She returned to musical comedy in the 1993 Long Beach Civic Light Opera productions of "From The Top!," (an original musical written especially for Carol by long-time collaborators and friends Ken and Mitzie Welch) and Stephen Sondheim's "Company."
Carol's social and charitable endeavors are legion. She has donated scholarships to her alma mater, UCLA, on whose board of trustees she serves and where she has established "The Carol Burnett Musical Theater Competition." 

In addition to UCLA, Carol has also contributed to scholarship funds at the University of Hawaii for ethics in journalism, and created scholarship funds for performers at Boston's Emerson College and The College of Santa Fe.  Carol continues to give without hesitation to numerous charities, always remembering that she has been generously given to as well.

Did you know that Carol wanted to be a cartoonist?  I did.  I remember her saying that on her show when I was a kid and thought it was so cool because I was also an aspiring cartoonist at the time. Carol still draws, and quite well I might add. ~Marcella The cartoon originally came from Doodle for Hunger)