Carol Burnett is all ears. Including the one she liked to tug at the end of her popular TV variety show.
The legendary comedian shares stories and video clips from her six decades on stage and screen, and will happily field questions from the audience, April 6 at The Bushnell.
Asked during a phone interview last month what she’d like to tell her Connecticut audience, Burnett barks in her inimitable voice “Tell them to come on with the questions!” She does between 10 and 20 live shows like this a year, depending on how busy she is with TV projects.
Burnett says the Q&A section always invigorates her.
“The weirdest question I ever got,” she says, “was nine years ago — that’s key to the story. I got asked ‘Carol, if you could be a member of the opposite sex for 24 hours, who would you be?’ I said a little prayer, didn’t know what I could say at first. Then I said, ‘I’d be Osama bin Laden. And I’d kill myself!'”
Burnett assures us that the question sessions are “all random. There are no plants in the audience at all.” The nature of the questions can change sometimes if she has a new book out, or a new TV project.
Currently, she has both. She just made the pilot for a new series, “Household Name,” produced by Amy Poehler’s production company. “I play an actress who’s over the hill, and has to sell her mansion. A new family moves in, but under the condition that my character still lives there. It’s kind of based on a true story; Hugh Hefner did that.”
Her new book, “In Such Good Company” from “The Carol Burnett Show” that ran on CBS from 1967 to 1978. In it, Burnett tells behind-the-scenes tales of working with “Carol Burnett Show” regulars Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Steve Lawrence. She also recalls some of the show’s “amazing guest stars,” a long list that included Lucille Ball, Rock Hudson, Mickey Rooney, Bing Crosby, Carl Reiner, Jerry Lewis, Ray Charles and Carol Channing. She even recalls an awkward meeting at a party with playwright Edward Albee.
“The Carol Burnett Show” took a few episodes to hit on its winning format. But from the start, Burnett writes in “In Such Good Company,” “We did know how we’d close the show. The cast, the guest stars and the dancers would all be on camera taking bows. I would sing our theme song, ‘I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.’ … I would then have my guests for that week sign an autograph book, and after having pulled my left ear as a signal for Nanny, my grandmother who raised me, we’d all wave good night.”
Burnett says that at live shows like the one coming to The Bushnell, “Sometimes people will have read a chapter in the book and say ‘Tell that story again.’ And since the DVDs of the shows came out, people ask about specific sketches.”
From The Beginning
Burnett’s career began well before she had her own long-running series. She was in the comic ensemble of the well-respected “Garry Moore Show” from 1959 to 1962, starred on Broadway in the original production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” appeared in a TV remake of the musical “Calamity Jane” and made guest appearances on such shows as “The Jack Benny Program,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Get Smart” and “Sesame Street.”
Her movie credits include Billy Wilder’s 1974 film of “The Front Page,” “Noises Off” (directed by Peter Bogdanovich), Alan Alda’s “The Four Seasons,” the cult comedy “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash” and the Robert Altman projects “A Wedding” and “Health.” She was Miss Hannigan in John Huston’s film of the musical “Annie” and her voice can be heard in the animated films “Horton Hears a Who!” and “The Secret World of Arrietty.”
Her breakthrough performance was one she made happen herself, convincing her housemates in a theatrical boarding house in New York City to stage their own revue. “We all wrote the things we wanted to do. I did a couple of comedic sketches. From that show, three of us got agents.
“It was a wonderful time to be in New York,” she recalls. “I fell in love with it from the beginning.”
Carol Burnett continues to stay active on the entertainment industry. “I just was with Julie Andrews last week,” she says in response to a question about their Emmy-winning 1962 TV special “Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.” “We were at a tribute to [CBS CEO] Les Moonves.”
Asked whether she has plans to do more stage plays, she mentions a six-week run of “Love Letters” she did with Brian Dennehy but says “I wouldn’t want to do a long run of anything. I prefer doing TV, where it can be different every time.”
Asked which women she admires in comedy today, Burnett replies, “The usual suspects — Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy.” She also appreciates performers with range, admiring her old friend Glenda Jackson as someone who can “do heavy drama, Shakespeare and Noel Coward.” In her own career, Burnett has “always liked to do different things. I prefer comedy, though.”
She insists, however, that “I am not a joke-teller. Stand-up, I couldn’t do. Back when I was on ‘The Garry Moore Show,’ one week the guest was [vaudeville star turned TV comedy pioneer] Ed Wynn. He was talking about comedy. He said there’s a difference between a comedian and a comedic actor. A comedian says funny things. A comedic actor says things in a funny way.”
So, not a joke-teller. But unquestionably a supreme question-answerer.
CAROL BURNETT — AN EVENING OF LAUGHTER AND REFLECTION is at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford, April 6 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $48.50 to $88.50. VIP tickets are $253.50 and include a copy of “In Such Good Company.” 860-987-5900, bushnell.org.
