Interview with Carol Burnett
Carol Burnett has been many things in her 60-year career: a best-selling memoirist (“One More Time”), a Broadway playwright (“Hollywood Arms”) and, to generations of movie musical-loving children, the only Miss Hannigan that a little orphan named Annie ever really had to worry about.
But it is as a stellar performer on TV variety shows — first as a regular on “The Garry Moore Show” from 1959 to 1962, then as the host of “The Carol Burnett Show” from 1967 to 1978 — that Ms. Burnett, 82, will always best be known. A new 22-disc DVD box set, just released by Time Life, compiles the best episodes from the first five seasons of the Burnett show, none of which have been seen in decades. (“The Lost Episodes,” a 6-disc DVD set out Sept. 15, contains episodes that have not been seen since their original airing.)
Ms. Burnett, an Emmy winner as well as the recipient of a special Tony, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Kennedy Center Honor and the Mark Twain Prize for Humor, will receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in January. These are edited excerpts from a conversation in which Ms. Burnett spoke about the genesis of her classic variety show and her lasting influence on TV comedy.
Q. It was unusual for a woman to get her own comedy variety TV show in the 1960s. How did you get yours?
A. I had a 10-year contract with CBS that I signed when I was leaving “The Garry Moore Show.” There was a clause that if within the first five years I wanted to do an hourlong variety show, all I had to do was push the button and CBS would have to put it on.
Q. You waited almost five years to push that button. When you did, how did the network respond?
A. I called New York and got one of the vice presidents of CBS on the phone. He said, “You know, Carol, variety is a man’s game. It’s really not for girls.”
Q. What did he want you to do instead?
A. He said, “We’ve got this great sitcom we’d like to talk to you about called ‘Here’s Agnes.’ ” Can you imagine? I said no, variety is what I love. I don’t want to be the same character every week. I want to do different characters like I did on Garry’s show, and I want to have guest stars, I want to have music, I want to have dancers, singers, and I want a rep company like Sid Caesar had.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/arts/television/carol-burnett-talks-about-her-show-and-a-new-award.html?_r=0
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