The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Carol Burnett revisits her legendary career
The veteran comic is coming to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre for two nights of laughs.
Carol Burnett was a groundbreaking female sketch comic who nabbed her own variety show in 1967 and over 11 years brought mirth and joy to tens of millions of Americans.
Nearly four decades after she sang her signature sign-off song on “The Carol Burnett Show” for the last time on CBS, her legacy remains indelibly etched in American television history. Burnett, at age 83, has been touring all over North America doing a stage show that is an effective thank you for her fans, old and new.
She will spend two nights at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre Oct. 24-25 recounting stories from her illustrious life in Hollywood. Appropriately, it’s called “Carol Burnett: An Evening of Laughter and Reflection.”
The show includes clips from her past and a lengthy questionand-answer session with the audience.
“It’s always fun,” Burnett said in an extensive 45-minute phone interview. “I don’t get thrown for a loop very much. I’m able to deflect if necessary.”
One of her favorite questions came from a woman in the balcony from a show in Texas about eight years ago. She asked: “If you could be a member of the opposite sex for 24 hours and pop back to be yourself, who would you be and what would you do?”
“I said a prayer to myself,” Burnett said. “‘I’m going to open my mouth. Whatever comes out, it’ll be your fault, Lord.’ I didn’t know I’d say this, but what came out was, ‘I’d be Osama bin Laden and kill myself.’ Thank you, Lord. The audience went nuts!”
Unlike shows such as “Laugh In” and “Saturday Night Live,” her sketch show largely avoided politics and current events, an antidote to the tumultuous times that Walter Cronkite would report every night on the evening news.
“We did a lot of obvious physical humor and stuff,” Burnett said. “There were times we got a little more edgy, but we were never given that title. For the most part, we went for belly laughs.”
One advantage of that approach: Many of the sketches hold up even today. She has sold DVD packages of her show, and many of the most memorable sketches are on YouTube, where the younger generation that wasn’t around in the 1970s can watch.
”I have my own YouTube channel now,” she said. “Now when I go around the country, my audience ranges from 9 to 109. It’s great. I get fan mail from 10-yearolds and teenagers.”
The show’s success was elevated by the chemistry among her cast members, which over the years included Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman and Tim Conway.
They would often crack each other up mid-sketch. Burnett said she never did so on purpose, but Conway was the most mischievous, especially opposite Korman. “Harvey was a patsy when it came to Conway,” she said. “Conway would throw new lines at him all the time.”
Conway would play it straight and say his exact lines during dress rehearsal, then go rogue during the real show. “A sketch that went four minutes during the dress would become 10 minutes by the second show,” Burnett said. “Usually, we’d air the craziness from that second show.”
Arguably her most famous sketch has a deep Atlanta connection: a spoof on “Gone With the Wind” called “Went With the Wind.”
Burnett said the sight gag is what made it so memorable. She entered the scene wearing a curtain rod dress, which legendary fashion designer Bob Mackie created.
Korman played Ratt Butler. “That gown is gorgeous,” he proclaimed on stage. Burnett, as Starlet O’Hara responded, “Thank you, I saw it in the window and I just couldn’t resist it.”
Although “The Carol Burnett Show” lost ratings in its final years, CBS left Burnett alone. They even wanted a 12th season. But Burnett voluntarily pulled the plug before things got too stale, aware that pop culture was shifting away from her type of humor. She also said she missed Korman, who had left the show after the 10th season.
If she were to do the show today, she’d love to hire Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig. And she’d want Kevin Spacey. “He is very funny and he sings,” she
said. “He does imitations like you wouldn’t believe. I saw Kevin on an ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio’ with James Lipton doing different celebrities.”
Burnett has not done much TV in recent years, making occasional appearances on talk shows and being feted with things such as the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and Kennedy Center Honors.
“Did I die?” she cracked. “It’s always an honor. I know it’s a cliche. But it really is.”
Given Burnett’s strengths, you’d think she’d be a natural doing stand-up comedy.
“I did a little bit when I was starting out, but I didn’t enjoy it,” she said. “I really like locking eyeballs with people. I’m a sketch performer. There was this famous vaudevillian Ed Wynn. He was in the ‘Ziegfeld Follies.’ He was in his 70s when he was on (Garry Moore’s) show. We got on the subject of comedians vs. comic actors. A comedian says funny things like Bob Hope. A comic actor says things funny like Jack Benny. I realized that’s what I want. I wanted to say things funny.”