Carol Burnett was born April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas to Jody and Louise Burnett.  Shortly after her birth, she was sent to live with her grandmother and great-grandmother.  The earliest thing she could remember was bathing in the kitchen sink when she was about two.  She also remembers getting mad at her mother when she would pull her thumb out of her mouth.  She was named after her mother’s favorite actress, Carole Lombard, and she was almost born in a movie theater.  Her mother was watching a reissue of Rasputin & the Empress and never made it to the end.

     For the first 3 years of Carol’s life, she lived with her grandma (Nanny, a hypochondriac Christian scientist with a buried past) and her great-grandma (Goggy).  She was very close to both of them.  Goggy and Carol used to chase each other around the house all day tickling each other, but Carol would try not to tickle her too hard because she thought she would break.  Goggy was very religious.  She would pray every day and on Sundays she would pray all day.  She would never talk to anyone or do anything other than pray on Sundays.

     She was very close to Nanny, even more so than Goggy.  Everyone used to call her Nanny’s shadow.  She was scared to be away from her grandmother for even a second.  Her grandmother would always tell everyone she was dying.  She would have “fits” where she would pace around the room, feel her pulse, put her hand on her chest, and then lie down and breathe heavily.  I think that is why Carol was afraid to leave her side.  She always thought that if she left her for even a second, she would die.  When she was around 3 her grandmother would go to church and she would go to Sunday school.  Sunday school would always let out a few minutes earlier than church so Carol would sneak up to the door of the church and search for Nanny.  One day she could not find her, and she started to panic.  So she snuck into the church and crawled around under the pews to see if Nanny had died and fallen to the ground without anyone noticing.  She did not see Nanny anywhere and she began to panic when a lady noticed her on the floor and announced to the church that there was a little girl crawling around on the floor.  That was the first time she had ever seen adults laugh.  She had thought that adults were always serious and never smiled until that day.

     She used to make her grandma take her false teeth out and grin for her.  She thought that was the funniest thing in the world.  Once she stole Nanny's false teeth and would not give them back until she threatened to never smile for her again.

     Her first food was cream of wheat.  It saved her life.  She had some type of medical problem when she was a baby.  They said it was a “wall” in her stomach that would not let her keep the milk down, so they gave her cream of wheat thinking it would form a hard ball and be able to push its way through the wall.  Thank God it was successful.

     When she was four, she went to stay with her parents out in Santa Monica California.  Her father had a bad drinking problem which caused her parents to split up and send her back to her grandmother and great-grandmother.

     Once her mother scraped up enough money, she sent for Carol and her grandmother to come live in Hollywood with her in a small one-room apartment.  Nanny and Carol shared apartment room 102 and her mother had her own apartment room down the hall. It was not the Hollywood we all think about though.  It was a small depression scared neighborhood.  Carol was seven at the time and did not even know her own mother.  She loved the way her mom looked and she loved to stare at her when she was getting ready to leave.  She thought she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, and she wished her mom could love her as much as Nanny did.

     At age seven, Carol became famous in her family for swearing.  Her cousin Janice (nine months older than Carol) would visit a lot and she and Carol would get in fights.  Janice would hit, kick, and bite Carol and Carol would just stand there and swear at her.  They were not always fighting though.  When they were not fighting they were the best of friends.  They used to get in a lot of mischief together.  Once they were in church with Janice’s mom (Carol’s aunt) and Nanny.  The lady standing in front of them had a fox fur (head and all) around her neck.  Carol and Janice each pulled one of the eyes out of the fox's head and then started giggling about it to the point where her aunt would get so mad she would pinch Janice.  By doing so, she caused the girls to laugh even harder until they both wet their pants.

    On Carol’s ninth birthday she woke up with the chicken pox.  That was one of the worst years of her life.  During the course of that year she developed allergies, had nine fillings in one day on her teeth with no Novocain, and a got a strange rash on the back of her left calf.  A year later she had her tonsils yanked.

     Nanny and Carol’s mom would constantly fight over money.  Nanny would complain because she thought that her mom should either get a job, or marry a rich man.  Her grandma would always brag about never being in love with a man.  She was married six times but they were all only for money.
 Carol’s best friend’s name was Ilomay.  They both had mothers but lived with their grandmothers so they immediately had things in common.  They got along great and never almost never fought.  They used to climb the letters on the Hollywood sign and play in a vacant lot on their street.  They lived right across the street from each other.  Ilomay was the only person aloud to see the inside of Carol and Nanny’s apartment because of how messy and smelly Nanny kept it.

     Carol’s first job was an usherette at Warner Brothers Theater.  She loved watching movies so the job was perfect for her because she could see all the free movies she wanted.  Even if she only saw parts of the movie at a time, she would eventually see the whole thing.

     She hated buses.  She and her grandmother used to take 3 different buses when they went to visit relatives and she hated it.  She especially hated the smell.  A few years ago she saw an elderly lady and a small girl sitting on the same bench she and her grandmother used to sit on waiting for the bus.  She pulled up to them and handed the lady a $50 bill and told them to take a cab.

     Carol always loved acting.  She and Ilomay used to pretend they were actors and act out every movie they saw.  One time she got bored and her friend Asher was sitting in the lobby of her apartment building.  So she changed her clothes and crawled out the window of her apartment then came back in the door and asked Asher  where Carol was.  She told him she was Carol’s long lost twin sister, Karen from Canada, and she spoke with an accent.  Asher believed her and told her that Carol was in her apartment room.  So she went into the room and closed the door.  Then she changed her clothes back to “Carol”  and crawled out of the window and came back through the door and asked Asher if he had seen her sister.  He bought the whole thing and told her that he had no idea she had a twin.  She told him that the whole thing was “hush hush” in her family and it was not supposed to get out and that if he said anything she would kill him.  This whole shenanigan went on for about half an hour or so, until she accidentally left half of her Carol outfit and half of her Karen outfit on.  Asher finally caught on.

     My favorite quotation from her book was when she talked about God.  She said “I believed in God, or something.  It wasn’t the God they all talked about.  I didn’t seem to know or trust that God.  Maybe because it didn’t look to me as if they did either.  It’s just that whenever I shut up long enough and listen, something would talk to me.  It still does if I just shut up and listen.”

     When she was eleven, her mother gave birth to another girl.  She was seeing a married man named Tony and he was her new daughter's father.  Once Chrissy was born, Tony disappeared.  Her grandmother scared him away.

     When she was around eleven or twelve she stopped fearing being away from her grandmother.  She still worried a lot about her, but she was not scared to leave her for a while.  Her dad was on the wagon and trying his best to stop drinking all together.  He was doing pretty good, and she would spend weekends at his house.  Those visits stopped when her fathers mother died and he had a drink to calm his nerves and fell off the wagon.  He showed up at 102 to pick her up drunk and she flipped out and beat him up.  It took two neighbors to pry her off of him.

     Chris soon became Carols responsibility.  At first she loved to do it because she loved her new little half sister very much.  But then it became a hassle because she was not aloud to leave the house until Chris was down for her nap and sleeping.  She would blow on her eyelids to get them to close.
 From seventh grade to twelfth grade she had a crush on a guy named Tommy.  He was the reason she never changed her last name when she married.  She wanted him to recognize her name when she became famous and remember her.

     At fifteen, she thought nothing she did was right.  She felt out of place and invisible and she was very unpopular.  That was also when she got her allergies.  If anyone even touched her nose she would sneeze.  She tried joining the swim team and when she was about to dive someone bumped her nose and she sneezed as she hit the water and blew the whole thing.  She would stay up late every night not wanting to go to sleep because she knew that if she went to sleep she would have to wake up the next day and go through her pathetic excuse for a life all over again.

     Her first shot at acting was in ninth grade.  She played a gum chewing, wise cracking maid of a typical family.  She was a hit.  Everybody loved her and laughed hysterically at her performance.

     She wanted to go to UCLA really bad, but she knew they could not afford it.  Somehow she knew she would get to go though.  She had a vision of herself sitting in the classroom at UCLA.  A few weeks later, she got an envelope in the mail.  There was no return address and no note.  All it said on the envelope was “Carol” and all that was inside was a $50 bill.  To this day she has no idea who sent that money.

     She wanted to major in journalism but they only had one journalism class so she majored in Theater Arts-English.  That was when she learned she really wanted to be an actress.  She just had not known it.  She realized that she could do two things really well:  sing and make people laugh.

     The first UCLA performance she took part in made her famous on campus.  She actually had complete strangers coming up to her in the halls and asking for her autograph.  From then on she finally felt as if she belonged.  After her first year of college she brought home her first award for “most outstanding Newcomer” received by the Theater Arts department.  During the summer of her first year of college she started dating a man named Don.  He was a little bit older than she was but they loved each other.

     Don and Carol wanted to go to New York (music comedy capitol of the world) really bad because that would be an excellent start for their careers, but they were both poor.  Somehow she knew she would end up there soon though.  Just as she knew she would end up in UCLA.  She had a vision of herself in New York.

     At a “going to Europe” party for one of her teachers, she and eight other members of the Theater Arts department and the Music department were hired to sing as the entertainment.  She and Don did a duet.  They did fantastic. After the performance they met a man she refers to as Mr. C.  He was very rich and he thought that they did a wonderful job.  He told them they should go to New York and start their careers and they explained that they were poor.  So he told them to get in contact with them and he would give them $1000 each.  At first they did not believe him but they went anyway and sure enough, the man handed them each a check for $1000.  All he said was to pay him back in five years, no interest, and to never tell anyone his name.  They also had to promise that “when” they made it, they would remember him and how he helped them and someday help another person the way that he helped them.

     In August, 1954, she was on her way to New York, without Don (He would not go until the next year).  On her way, she stopped in at the Olive View Sanitarium to see him on her way to New York.  That was the last time she ever saw him.  He was weak and thin, and he had almost no energy.  He died three months later.  Carol's mother had a vision of him in her sleep the night that he died and he was calling to her for help.  She rushed the Sanitarium but it was too late.  He was dead.

     Once in New York Carol stayed at a small hotel specifically for young women interested in being actresses.  She shared a room with four other women.  A year later, her boyfriend Don arrived with two other buddies.  When she saw him she fell in love all over again.

     In 1955, she was elected club president and called the first meeting ever.  She had a great idea for the girls to put on their own performance.  About fifty of the girls thought the idea was dumb and left.  The remaining 20 thought it was a good idea and stayed.  They put on their performance and invited every agent in town to come see it.  They did a great job and had the agents calling them!

     When she first made it to television (The Paul Wincell kiddy show on NBC -- she was hired by Paul himself), she ccalled her grandmother with the exciting news.  Her grandmother told her to shout “hello” to her at the end of the show.  Carol explained to her that if she did that she would be fired.  Then Carol got the idea to have a secret signal for her grandmother that would mean “I love you Nanny”.  The signal would be for her to pull her ear.  So at the end of each show she would pull her earlobe and her grandmother would know that it was meant for her.  That day, after the show, she and Don were married.  They moved into a one room apartment above an Italian restaurant for $110 a month.  Her mother and grandmother hated that she married him because he was just as poor as she was and he was Armenian.  Carol had on and off jobs doing television specials and being the guest on different talk shows and comedy acts.  That was how they paid the rent.  She also did a few situation comedies.

     I think her favorite job was when she was hired by Gary Moore.  She spent thirteen weeks on his show that ran five days a week.  He told her to come back anytime she had new material and she took him up on that offer.  Carol’s mentor, Mr. Willi, called her on Christmas to tell her that his office had shown a kinescope of one of her appearances on Gary’s show to the Ed Sullivan Show producers, and they booked her for a guest shot the first week in January 1957 and made $750.

     Carol came home to 102 in 1958 for a visit. Chris was only twelve and Carol did not like what she saw.  Her baby sister was wearing a tight sweater, bright red lipstick, and had shaved off her eyebrows and drew them on with a pencil.  She thought that Chris was getting out of hand so she asked her mom for permission to kidnap her and take her back to New York with her.  Her mom agreed, but they could not tell Chris or Nanny because they would protest.  Once Chris was in New York and she and Nanny heard about the plan, they were both hysterical.  They finally calmed down when Carol explained how much better off Chris would be in New York with her and Don, and she promised to get Chris braces.  About three weeks later, Carol woke up in the middle of the night and found Chris writing a letter to her mother.  When she was finished with the letter she insisted that Carol mail it right away because she dreamed that her mother died and she was scared that her time was running out.  The day after her mother got the letter she died.

     Carol was becoming very famous in New York.  Money problems were almost scarce now.  They enrolled Chrissy in an all girls' school in New Jersey.  She did not mind that it was an all girls' school because she did not want any guys teasing her about her braces. The school was one hour away from new York, in the country, had nuns everywhere, and required uniforms.  She came home to New York on weekends.

     Before she even went to New York, she had visions that her first major performance would be directed by George Abott and sure enough, it came true.  The project was called “Once Upon a Mattress” and it was a spin off of The Princess and the Pea.  That June, five years to the day, she repaid her $1000 to Mr. C and they arranged to have lunch.  It went great.  Not long after, she got news of his death.

     She began to work with Gary Moore and stayed with him for about three years.  She was a regular on his show.  In 1960 she parted with Don because they barely ever saw each other.  She was becoming famous and he was not.  They were growing apart so they just split up.  She divorced him in 1963 so she could marry Joe Hamilton.

     Nanny wanted moved out of 102 because the memories were too painful, so Chris and Carol helped her move into an apartment up the street.  When her grandmother was eighty-one, she had a forty year old boyfriend.  She died in 1967 when Carol’s second daughter, Jody, was born.

     Carol Burnett won several Emmy awards and had her own show (“The Carol Burnett Show”) for eleven years.  She also worked with on “Mama’s Family” for a long time and stared in the movie Annie.  She has been making people laugh for three generations.  Another interesting fact about her is that she is the first person to ever win a libel suit against the tabloid National Enquirer.  She has done much to be proud of, but she considers her three daughters (Carrie, Jody, and Erin Hamilton) to be her greatest accomplishments.

     I think Carol Burnett is very influential because she shows that hard work and determination can take anyone to the top.  After all, when she started out she was dirt poor and collecting welfare (was not called that at the time), but she never let that discourage her, and she kept working until she made it to the top.