Carol Burnett (Photo courtesy Elite Entertainment Inc.)
In August 1954, a rare Category 5 hurricane, named Carol, roared into New York City simultaneous with aspiring actress Carol Burnett. Its fierce rains slapped against the windows of her Algonquin Hotel room.
Burnett, alone in a metropolis she’d never before visited, felt comforted by the rain. In her life, unsettled skies often heralded a good turn of events.
“It cheered me up,” Burnett recalls in a recent interview. “I was alone and feeling lonesome. And boom! [In] came the hurricane.”
The next morning, Burnett called one of the few people she knew in the city, a former University of California Los Angeles theater classmate, surprised by Burnett’s choice of the high-dollar Algonquin. The friend extended an invitation to room at the Rehearsal Club, a boarding house for women seeking a career in New York City theater.
When ultimately frustrated by the actor’s plight of unsatisfying auditions, Burnett took the advice of an agent/counselor and, with the boarding house residents and friends, put on “The Rehearsal Club Revue,” which drew celebrities and talent representatives. The Revue helped lead her to star in the Broadway musical “Once Upon a Mattress” (1959-60), and 133 appearances during 1959-62 on the “Garry Moore Show,” and 11 seasons of the comedy-variety “Carol Burnett Show” (1967-78).
She clicks off the “Carol Burnett Show” stats: “It was a Broadway-style revue. I mean, Harry, we had a 28-piece orchestra, 12 dancers, a repertory company of performers, two guest stars a week. We had 65 costumes a week by Bob Mackie — a total of 17,000 costumes for our run.”
Burnett, at 86, is active and working, which includes her Saturday, July 20, “Evening of Laughter and Reflection” at the Altria Theater. The presentation resembles how she opened her television show.
She explains, “It’s all random, no planted questions, I don’t want that. Flying without a net. Tell you the truth, Harry, it keeps the old gray matter ticking.”
The tour became poignant with the death on May 14, a few days before we spoke, of her television show colleague and friend Tim Conway. She acknowledged the tough emotional time, and she said she dedicated her Durham, North Carolina, show to Conway. “The audience understood. I talked about his relationship with all of us. And then I said, 'Let’s bump up the lights and see what happens.' "
She may answer questions about her current roster of projects that include a Netflix program, “A Little Help With Carol Burnett,” in which celebrity guests receive unusual advice from precocious children. Burnett presides over the program like a funny and indulgent grandma.
She’s also among the co-producers of a film based on Burnett’s 2013 memoir, “Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story.” Carrie Hamilton, her eldest daughter, overcame drug addiction during her teens and flowered into a musician, actor and writer. She contracted lung cancer that spread to her brain and died in 2002 at age 38.
At the time, Hamilton was writing “Sunrise in Memphis,” about a young woman’s pilgrimage to Graceland, and also adapting for the stage her mother’s first memoir, “One More Time,” about Burnett’s fraught upbringing in San Antonio and Hollywood. Hamilton did not live to see the Broadway production directed by Harold Prince. Burnett hints at “whispers” about bringing “One More Time” to television.
Actress and writer Tina Fey is among the producers of “Carrie and Me,” which also include “I, Tonya” writer Steven Rogers.
Burnett says there is a person in mind to portray her in the Focus Features film. “I have an important vote on who is cast,” she deadpans.
“Carol Burnett: An Evening of Laughter and Reflection,” comes to the Altria Theater at 7:30 p.m. on July 20. $67 to $252.
