Carol Burnett made her television debut in the 1950s and has remained a beloved figure ever since. She rose to prominence in the early 1960s, but her career truly skyrocketed in 1967 when she launched her own CBS variety show.
Despite the network’s initial hesitation about having a female host, Burnett’s perseverance led to the creation of The Carol Burnett Show. The show quickly became a hit, drawing 30 million viewers every Saturday night and establishing Burnett as a television legend. Over its 11-season run, she expanded her influence into films, other TV series, and dramatic roles.
Burnett’s impressive list of awards includes a Grammy, a Tony, multiple Emmys, and so many Golden Globes that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named its television excellence award in her honor.
She has also received the Kennedy Center Honor, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the Television Critics Association’s Heritage Award, two Peabody Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Remarkably, Burnett continued to make waves even as she approached her 90th birthday, celebrating with a highly acclaimed TV special. To learn more about the incredible life and career of this American comedy icon, read on for a look at Carol Burnett‘s transformation from age 9 to 90.
#1. Carol Burnett had a difficult childhood and invented an imaginary twin
As a child, Carol Burnett faced the challenge of her parents’ divorce, which led her to live with her grandmother in a small Hollywood apartment. Despite the hardships, she found joy in her imagination.
To entertain herself, Burnett created an imaginary twin named Karen. She would dress in different outfits to portray both herself and Karen, delighting the building’s other tenants. Although she eventually found the act too tiring to maintain, she believed that some of her audience genuinely thought Karen was real.
Burnett also developed her famous Tarzan yell at a young age. In an interview with USA Today, she reminisced about how, at around 9 years old, she and her cousin would watch movies and then reenact scenes.
After seeing a Tarzan film, her cousin played Jane while Burnett took on the role of Tarzan, which required mastering the iconic yell. “So, I taught myself to do the Tarzan yell,” she said.
In a conversation with Larry King, Burnett revealed that she had once taught opera star Beverly Sills how to perform the Tarzan yell. She shared that the secret to the yell is simply a yodel.
#2. How one laugh changed Burnett’s life
After graduating from Hollywood High School, Carol Burnett attended UCLA, where she enrolled in the playwriting program. As part of her curriculum, she was required to take an acting class, which marked the beginning of her stage career. Her first performance was in a student-written one-act play, where she portrayed a hillbilly girl.
“The first show I was ever in was a student-written one-act script, and I played a hillbilly girl,” she told The Toronto Star. “For some reason, when we were in front of the audience, I decided to stretch out all my words, and my first line came out ‘I’m baaaaaaaack!'”
The audience’s enthusiastic laughter enveloped Burnett in a warmth she had never felt before. “All of a sudden, after so much coldness and emptiness in my life, I knew the sensation of all that warmth wrapping around me,” she recalled.
That moment was transformative, igniting a desire in her for more laughter and guiding her to hone her skills in various UCLA student productions.
“I had always been a quiet, shy, sad sort of girl, and then everything changed for me,” she said. “You spend the rest of your life hoping you’ll hear a laugh that great again.”
This newfound passion led Burnett to New York City in pursuit of fame, fortune, and more laughs.
#3. A parody song about a politician put her on the map
The term “overnight sensation” hardly captures Carol Burnett’s early years in New York, where she struggled to land acting roles. “I was a hat-check girl, an usher, everything except an actress,” she told The Toronto Star.
While performing at New York’s Blue Angel nightclub, Burnett and a friend crafted a song parodying the fervent fan reactions Elvis Presley was getting. In the song, “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles,” Burnett sang about her obsession—not with Elvis, but with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
The quirky tune became the highlight of her act and led to an invitation to perform it on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show. The song was such a hit that she ended up performing it on television three times in just a few days.
When Dulles was later asked about the song on TV, Burnett watched in disbelief from her small apartment as he responded, “I make it a policy to never discuss affairs of the heart in public.”
This single performance catapulted Burnett’s stalled acting career into the limelight. As comedian Phyllis Diller recalled in an interview for the PBS series Pioneers of Television, “She made Life magazine with it. She became a known person.”
#4. She became the toast of Broadway with Once Upon a Mattress
In 1959, Carol Burnett secured the lead role in the musical Once Upon a Mattress, which was based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Princess and the Pea. Although the role was originally intended for a well-known star, director George Abbott chose Burnett, an unknown at the time.
“So that was like a dream come true, you know?” Burnett told Broadway World. “How that happened was just kind of a miracle.”
The musical was initially booked for a six-week run at the off-Broadway Phoenix Theater. To draw attention and extend the show’s run, Burnett and the cast staged a picket outside the theater in full costume, demanding that the show be moved to Broadway.
“We got into the New York Post, not even in the theater section, but on page two,” Burnett recalled. “It was about how the cast was picketing its own show to get another theater. And we did.”
Once Upon a Mattress has always been special to Burnett, leading her to revisit the role multiple times throughout her career. She first appeared in a 1964 television adaptation and then again in 1972. More than 30 years later, she returned to the show in a 2005 television version, this time as Queen Aggravain, the mother of the character she had originally played.
#5. Her talent burst through on The Garry Moore Show
While starring in Once Upon a Mattress, Carol Burnett was also invited to join the cast of The Garry Moore Show. Balancing a hit Broadway show and a major television gig was too appealing for the ambitious young actor to pass up, so she took on both roles.
“I had two jobs of a lifetime at the same time, and at first, I had no days off at all,” Burnett recounted in an interview with Maclean’s. This demanding schedule required Burnett to dash from Moore’s studio to the stage of Once Upon a Mattress each night before the curtain went up.
Eventually, the grueling pace took its toll. “One Sunday matinee, I actually fell asleep onstage, on top of the mattresses,” she remembered. “The whole show is about the princess not being able to fall asleep on those mattresses, but I was so exhausted that I just kind of passed out.”
Burnett left Once Upon a Mattress in 1960, with Anne B. Davis, who later became known as the maid on The Brady Bunch, taking over her role. She stayed with The Garry Moore Show until 1962.
CBS, eager to keep Burnett in their lineup, signed her to a 10-year contract. An unusual clause in the deal allowed Burnett to produce 30 one-hour variety shows for the network within the first five years, setting the stage for her future successes.
#6. The Carol Burnett Show made her a household name
As the five-year mark of her CBS contract approached, Carol Burnett and her second husband, Joe Hamilton, had just welcomed a new child and bought a new house. In need of extra cash, Burnett decided to activate her option for a variety show. “The next day, CBS tried to convince me to do a sitcom,” Burnett recalled in Maclean’s.
They argued that variety shows were typically male-dominated, with stars like Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, and Sid Caesar. Despite their pressure, Burnett turned down their offer to star in Here’s Agnes and held firm in her decision. “Can you just picture it?” she mused in an interview for the Academy of Achievement.
This decision led to the debut of The Carol Burnett Show in September 1967. Unbeknownst to Burnett, she was making television history. “I didn’t think about that,” she said in Maclean’s.
“I just threw it out there into the universe and said, ‘Que sera, sera.'” Her goal was simply to produce the best show she could. “We just went about trying to get the best people and put on the best show and have the most fun,” she explained in a PBS American Masters documentary.
That approach proved successful. The Carol Burnett Show ran for 11 seasons and won an impressive 25 Emmy Awards, solidifying Burnett as one of the biggest television stars of her time.
#7. The sweet secret behind her iconic ear tug
Throughout the 11 seasons of The Carol Burnett Show, fans noticed a charming habit of Carol Burnett’s: a small tug on her left earlobe, usually while bidding goodnight and singing her signature farewell song, “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.” This gesture became a beloved trademark of the show.
The earlobe tug wasn’t just a quirky habit; it was a secret signal Burnett had devised years earlier to communicate with her beloved grandmother.
“It started when my grandmother wanted me to say hello to her when I was on television,” Burnett explained in an interview with People. Unable to do so directly, Burnett and her grandmother came up with the earlobe tug as a way to say, “Hi Nanny, I love you, and I’m fine.”
This personal touch continued long after her grandmother’s passing. At the 2019 Golden Globes, Burnett honored her memory with a subtle tug on her ear while receiving an honorary award.
The repeated gesture even had a physical impact over the years. “Years ago, a reporter from Life magazine measured my left ear, and it was one millimeter longer than my right ear,” Burnett shared in her memoir, In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox, as excerpted by MeTV.
#8. She successfully sued a supermarket tabloid over a bogus story
In 1976, Carol Burnett was outraged when the National Enquirer published a fabricated story about her.
The tabloid claimed that Burnett had been involved in a raucous argument with Henry Kissinger at a Washington restaurant, where she allegedly offered her dessert to other diners and spilled wine on someone.
The report suggested that she was drunk, but both Burnett and Kissinger, along with other witnesses, refuted the claims.
Determined to clear her name, Burnett filed a $10 million lawsuit against the National Enquirer, accusing the tabloid of libel and malicious intent. The case went to trial in 1981, and while the jury did not award the full $10 million Burnett sought, they did grant her $1.6 million in damages. Burnett emphasized that her victory was about principle rather than the financial award.
“If they’d given me $1 plus car fare, I’d have been happy, because it was the principle,” she said. “They didn’t give a darn about my rights as a human being. I didn’t do a thing to the National Enquirer; they did it to themselves.”
The National Enquirer appealed the decision, and in 1984, Burnett reached an undisclosed settlement with the tabloid.
#9. An unexpected foray into the world of soaps
While working on her variety show, Carol Burnett managed to carve out time for lunch in her office while keeping up with her favorite soap opera, All My Children. Burnett’s dedication to the show was intense.
During a month-long European vacation, she arranged for a friend to send her a telegram every Friday summarizing the week’s episodes. However, her plan hit a snag when staying at a hotel in Lake Como, she was awakened by a hotel manager delivering a telegram with dramatic plot twists. “The telegram said, ‘Erica was kidnapped and has been found in a coma,’” Burnett recalled.
Her passion for the soap opera caught the attention of All My Children creator Agnes Nixon, who reached out to Burnett with an offer. Nixon proposed creating a character specifically for her, to which Burnett eagerly agreed.
“I said, ‘Absolutely!’” Burnett told Vulture. During her hiatus, she flew back to New York, where a storyline was prepared for her. Thus, Verla Grubbs was introduced—a character who was the long-lost daughter of Pine Valley con artist Langley Wallingford. Verla made her debut in 1983 and returned to the show for several appearances over the years.
#10. A return to Broadway 30 years later
Despite her early Broadway success with Once Upon a Mattress, Carol Burnett did not return to the Great White Way until 1995. That year, she starred in the new musical Moon Over Buffalo, playing a married couple of actors grappling with personal crises and preparing for a visit from a Hollywood director. Her co-star was Philip Bosco.
The reviews for Moon Over Buffalo were mixed. Variety critic Jeremy Gerrard criticized the play’s quality but praised Burnett’s performance, noting, “The happy occasion of Moon Over Buffalo is the return to Broadway after 30 years of Carol Burnett.” This sentiment was echoed by others, leading to a Tony nomination for Burnett.
Interestingly, while Burnett was working on the show, a behind-the-scenes documentary titled Moon Over Broadway was filmed, capturing her return to the stage. The documentary received stronger reviews than the play itself. Burnett also returned to Broadway in 2014, briefly replacing a lead in a revival of Love Letters.
#11. Carol Burnett’s Broadway play based on her childhood was bittersweet
After Moon Over Buffalo, Carol Burnett’s next Broadway venture was as a playwright rather than an actress. In the late 1990s, she teamed up with her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, to write a play called Hollywood Arms. The play, named after the dilapidated apartment building where Burnett had grown up with her grandmother, drew on Burnett’s own childhood experiences.
When Hollywood Arms premiered in late 2002, Burnett’s joy was overshadowed by profound grief. Her daughter Carrie had passed away earlier that year at the age of 38 from lung cancer. Burnett shared her complex emotions about the play during an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live.
“There are so many layers,” she explained. “It’s about growing up with these women and my dad, and I look at it and think, ‘Oh my God, that really happened.’ And then there’s the layer of it being a play that my daughter and I created together. I feel her presence with me constantly whenever I’m in the theater.”
More than two decades after Carrie’s death, Burnett continues to feel her daughter’s influence. “There’s not a day, or almost a moment, that goes by that she’s not with me,” Burnett told People in 2023. “We worked together, laughed together, and cried together. She was a force.”
#12. Carol Burnett guested on Glee, Desperate Housewives, Hawaii Five-0 and more
After the passing of her daughter in 2002, Carol Burnett channeled her grief into her acting career, becoming a sought-after guest star on television. Over the next two decades, she made notable appearances across several shows.
In 2006, she joined the cast of “Desperate Housewives,” one of the era’s biggest hits. A few years later, she made a memorable appearance on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” as a former Rockette turned strip club owner who also turns out to be a murderer. Burnett enjoyed the role and appreciated the show’s family-like atmosphere, which contributed to her Emmy nomination.
She also featured in two episodes of “Glee” as the mother of Jane Lynch’s character, Sue Sylvester. Burnett’s television credits continued with roles on “Hot in Cleveland,” “Angie Tribeca,” and “Hawaii Five-0,” where she played Steve McGarrett’s beloved aunt. Burnett expressed her enthusiasm for working with the cast, particularly praising her rapport with Alex O’Loughlin.
#13. Her lawsuit against Family Guy fizzled
Carol Burnett’s legal battles weren’t limited to supermarket tabloids. In 2007, she took on “Family Guy,” the popular Fox animated series, in a lawsuit that marked a new chapter in her fight for her rights.
This time, Burnett’s lawsuit was about copyright infringement, not libel. She sought $2 million in damages after an episode featured an animated version of her famous “charwoman” character mopping the floor of an adult bookstore. Burnett’s legal action was met with a dismissive response from the studio.
“‘Family Guy,’ like ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ is known for its pop culture parodies and satirical takes on celebrities,” a spokesman for 20th Century Fox Television said.
“We are surprised that Ms. Burnett, who has built her career on spoofing others, would sue ‘Family Guy’ over a comedic portrayal.”
Unlike her previous victory, Burnett did not succeed in this case. The judge dismissed her lawsuit, ruling that the First Amendment protected “Family Guy” in its satirical commentary on public figures, including Burnett.
#14. A late-in-life TV comeback
Even though Carol Burnett’s film and television work has slowed down with age—she celebrated her 90th birthday in 2023—she has remained active and engaged. In 2022, she made a memorable guest appearance on the critically acclaimed drama Better Call Saul, a prequel to Breaking Bad.
As she shared in an interview with AMC, her friendship with Vince Gilligan, the creator of both series, motivated her to pursue a role. “I told him, ‘I’d be happy just to say one sentence. I’d love to be part of the show,'” she recalled.
Burnett’s next role was even more exciting. She joined the cast of the 2024 Apple TV+ comedy series Palm Royale, starring Kristen Wiig. During a panel at the Television Critics Association press tour in February 2024, Burnett revealed that she agreed to the part without even reading the script.
“I only needed to hear who was involved: Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Ricky Martin—an incredible cast,” she said, according to Deadline. “I wanted to work with them and get to know them. Plus, I was in a coma for the first few episodes and still got paid, so it was a win-win.”
As Burnett continues to shine in comedy, her enduring appeal ensures that she and her fans are delighted with the time they’ve shared.
