Carol Burnett with Lee Callahan Seattle

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
My guest is Miss Carol Burnett.Hello. Hello, is this Miss Burnette.
Yes, it's Lee Callahan and Seattle, Washington. Hi. Lee,
I'm I'm sorry. I'm gonna starttittering and cavetching and going on. Do
you get that all the time withjust about anybody? No, I mean,

(00:20):
what can I say? I'm justalways flattered. Oh good, I'm
glad you've got a show. It'scoming up here on Sunday night in Seattle.
Yeah, McCall hall, have youbeen there? No, I've never
been. Oh, you're gonna loveit. Oh, I am, And
I've often thought I should move toSeattle because I am nuts for rain.
Oh well, you'll love it here. It's really nice and moist and green,

(00:42):
and it's a great town. We'dlove to have you, So come
on over. Okay, hey,miss Burnett. Ca Okay, Carol Burnette,
geez, where do we start?Your audience is part of the show.
They are, Yes, they're mypartner. Right. It's just like
now I'm not getting up to doa stand up routine I've done. They

(01:03):
are. They're my partner. It'sso great. It's like the beginning of
the Carol Burnett Show. Correct whenyou open the floor, you bring up
the lights. You bring up thelights. Yep, Oh how fun.
How is the audience doing? Ohthey're doing it. I've done this for
quite a few years. I don'tdo it all the time, but they're
willing to participate. The thing thatI do, however, is I open

(01:29):
the evening with about seven minutes ofsome of the best funniest q and as
that we ever had on our show. So that gets the theater audience,
the live audience in the mood.So they watch a film, so they're
watching it, and then they knowwhat is expected for the rest of the
evening. And then I come outand say, okay, let's bump up

(01:52):
the lights and raise your hands.And it's all random. I never know
who I'm calling on or what they'regoing to ask. Oh that is so
excited. Uh what's the most frequentlyasked question you're getting? Oh, gosh,
I get a few. Is Timreally that funny in real life?
Yeah? Uh? Do the Tarzanyell? Uh? Huh do that?

(02:14):
Yeah? And uh? But anduh, how did you find Vicky and
Harvey and you know the Gang?Okay, well these are a lot of
mine, So I guess we couldreally start asking because they're mine, and
I'm not going to ask you todo the Tarzan yell. I'm afraid.
I'm in a hotel room. I'mliable to scare somebody across the hall.
I was you cut me off.I was gonna say it, not until
the end of the conversation. No, I'd love for you to do it.

(02:38):
Boy. Okay, So I'm watchingyour show as a kid, and
every night you did come out andjust thrill me with that bringing up the
lights and that was probably you didn'tknow what to expect at the time either.
You just really brought them up exactly. I remember when we were first
going to start our show leeby Uh. It was suggested by the producer you

(02:59):
know who said, instead of hiringa comedian to come out and warm up
the audience with jokes and stuff,that it would be better for me to
just come out and be myself infront of an audience and have communication and
conversation with them so that they wouldget to know me better and then I
could go for the rest of theshow and throw on wigs and be crazy

(03:22):
characters and everything else. But theyhad a they had a feeling that they
knew me, and so that wasa good idea. I was terrified at
first. I thought, oh mygosh, what if nobody asked anything?
And then I was terrified that theywould, you know, right exactly yeah,
And I thought, am I goingto do that? But after like

(03:43):
three taping, three showings and ithad been on the air, then the
audience got the they knew what wewere doing, and so then they got
more free and it became one ofmy favorite things too. But I never
knew what anybody was going to saywhen I call, or who was going
to pop up in that audience?Was that? I mean, like Burt
Reynolds, right, did he popup there? He popped up? I

(04:05):
didn't know he was standing in theback, you know. I guess he'd
been doing something one or the otherbecause there are but five six studios on
that floor CBS, so he mighthave been over across the hall with Jim
Nabors or with the Sonny and Cherand so forth, and just came in
to catch at the beginning of ourshow and then thought he would just surprise

(04:27):
me. I think he came upand made out with you. Oh yeah,
I remember that. Oh yeah,great, great stuff? All right,
let's talk about where I first sawyou. Actually, I was such
a TV history buff that I sawimages of you and a little bit of
you on the old Gary Moore Show. Oh wow, I know, and
you you sort of did you siton a stool and tell stories. It

(04:50):
was kind of a like performance art, you know, at the beginning of
performance art. I don't remember.Oh, come on, I really don't
I would sit on a stool andtell stories. Yeah, I don't remember
that. Okay, well forget that. Then you came up with a lot
of your characters there, including themop Bucket lady right now. That was

(05:11):
actually done when I was doing aspecial in nineteen sixty two with Robert Preston.
Oh my god, that's so great. You mean the guy the music
man. Yeah wow. We dida show together called Carol plus Carol plus
one. I think it was,you know, starring Robert Preston, and

(05:31):
he was my guest and it wasjust the two of us. And so
at that time, David Rose,who was a very popular musician, had
a hit song on the record calledthe Stripper and it was like a burless
strip tease kind of a beat.And so I remember I was home and

(05:56):
I was listening to it in thedisc jockey who was going to play it
that this has turned out to bewhat they call then the housewives favorite song
to listen to on the radio.So I got the idea of what if
they were sweeping or what if theywere ironing and then they go, you
know, with a doll bump,do you know that kind of rhythm?

(06:17):
And what would happen? And thenI took it a step further and thought,
what if it was a cleaning ladyin a burlesque house who imagines that
she and she's cleaning up after theshow and the theater's empty, and who
imagines that she's Gypsy rose Lee andthe music is in her mind and she

(06:39):
does this mock strip tease, youknow, thinking that she's gorgeous and you
know, with this ratty sweater andarmy boots and all of that. So
that's kind of how she was born. That's wonderful. The early days of
television. Could you just have somuch more fun? When did they just
hand you the canvas and say doYes? They did, and it would

(07:00):
never happen again today, Yeah,never, because they're just too much interference
from the suits, as we callthem with all the research and whatnot.
Yeah, and they're always trying tosecond guess the audience. And that's a
mistake I think, because I thinkif you go out and you have fun
and you're doing what you think isright for yourself, they'll either take it

(07:25):
or they won't. But to tryto second guess an audience, I think
is dangerous and it's not fun.No, it's not. You can really
kill it, or you know,you assume that the audience is kind of
dumb and dumb down exactly. Yeah, yeah, everybody. Carol Burnett is
my guest today. I'm delighted she'scoming to Seattle on Sunday night. She's
going to be performing at McCaw Hall. You've got to go because you are

(07:47):
in the show. You get toask Carol questions, just like on the
beginning of her show, The CarolBurnett Show. I've got to get back
to how you got started because youmoved to LA as a girl. But
then you did New You and thenyou did TV work in New York and
TV work in LA. How didyou How did they find you? Well?

(08:07):
They Yeah, you have to makeyour own breaks. And I was
living in New York. I gotI wanted to go to New York,
and I got the chance to go. And I was living at a place
called the Rehearsal Club, which wasa house in the mid fifties in New
York, mid fifties literally in midfifties street wife that housed young ladies interested

(08:35):
in the seat and so it wassponsored by some very wealthy women in New
York. So we only had topay eighteen dollars a week room and board,
which was fantastic. But in orderto stay at the club, you
had to prove that you were youcould have a part time job in another
field. I checked hats the Wayne, Can I interrupt, Miss Vernet?

(09:00):
You played a hat checker in someof your comedy bits, did you not
know? Oh? Sure, that'sgreat. So at this house, did
you have to also prove that youthat we were actively trying to get go
to auditions and trying to get anagent and stuff like that. So I
finally got an interview with an agentand he said, well, let me

(09:22):
know when you're in something and I'llcome see you. And I said,
but that's the catch twenty two.I can't get in anything unless I have
an agent. And if I don'thave an agent. How do I get
it? You know? And hesaid, well, go put on your
own show. Wow, I said, okay. I went back to the
rehearsal club very naive, and therewasn't a cynical bone in my body at

(09:46):
all, thank god, because Iwas raised on those happy movies with Nicky
and Judy. And so I calleda meeting of all the girls at the
rehearsal club. There were about twentyof us, and I said, this
agent said we should put on ourown show. So let's so we did.
What happened was we wrote it.One of the girls had a boyfriend

(10:07):
who wrote original music and could playthe piano. He was terrific, Peter
Daniels, and he later on becamekind of famous. And one of the
girls was a great dance and soshe would be the choreographer and we would
each bring our own act, soit was like a little musical comedy review.

(10:28):
And then we took the first actand showed it to the ladies who
sponsored the club, and they gaveus two hundred dollars that's a lot,
two of yeah, to rent twonights at the Carl Fisher Concert Hall in
New York, on fifty seventh Street, and we sent penny postcards out to
every agent, producer director in townsaying you're always saying let us know when

(10:52):
you're in something. Well this iswe're in something, and it's the state,
and use this penny postcard is yourticket. There's no charge, just
come and see us. Wow.And they did, and so three of
us got agents out of it.Are the other were the other women names
we would recognize, not in thatparticular era, Okay, no, uh,

(11:16):
later on, I know Sandy Duncanlived there for a while and there
have been a few and uh uhVon Craig who was later Batgirl. Oh
right, yeah, yep, absolutelyyeah, and so but it uh they
it was it was a fun show. Yeah, it sounds like a really

(11:37):
fun show. And were you,you know, were you grabbing your comedic
talents at that time? Yes,yes. What I what I did was
I did a sketch with one ofthe other girls where we played boys,
uh like young kids, you know, and one she was my little brother
and I was protecting her. Soanyway, it was a cute sketch that
I had done actually at U Cl A. And then I decided earth

(12:03):
a kit at the time had doneNew Faces of nineteen fifty two where she
sang a song called Monotonous and shewas in these tight torriot or pants and
this sexy top and she would slitherfrom one chaise lounge to another. There
were three on the stage and justlike a cat, you know, just

(12:24):
be wonderful. So I thought Ishould do Monotonous as a kind of a
raggedy housewife. This was a precursorto the charm woman in fuzzy slippers,
in an apron and a baggy dress, hair and curlers and slither from one
broken down chair to another. Wow, it's so funny. So it would

(12:45):
the takeoff onearthed kit and they gotit right away. So right on stuff.
And your cute little body. Iknow you're you know, I know
that's weird to say, but youwere really fitting, really cute and really
athletic. Yeah, I both,yeah, But I never you know,
I did a lot of my ownstunts, yes, but I learned by
doing them. I never was taught, really no, So my backside quite

(13:09):
often looked like a road map ofNew Jersey. You know, it was
pretty bruised, and you forgot totake stunt classes at UCLA. Yeah,
well, but I wanted the job. So they Gary said, can you
jump out of this window at theend of the sketch? Sure? I
said, oh god, Now Garyyour director at the Carol Burnett Show,
Gary Moore. Oh, Gary Mooreon the Gary Moore Show. Yeah.

(13:31):
Wait, Because I had the endof the sketch, I had to jump
out of a window and it didn'teven occur to me to see what would
be on the other side. Sowhen I landed, I landed on a
mattress that the stage hands had putthere. And I remember I sat up
after this was rehearsal, and Isat up and I said, oh gosh,

(13:52):
everybody, thank you for the mattress. They looked at me, said,
and you say you do stunts.I guess I expected to go splat.
I don't know. That's so great, everybody. My guest Carol Burnett,
and she's coming to town Sunday night, McCall Hall. And the show
is called Laughter and Reflection with CarolBurnett. It's a conversation with Carol and

(14:16):
you the audience. The show isselling well, but get there because you
want to be a part of thisgreat event. You want to see Carol
Burnett and if you grew up withher. I remember that on your Carol
Burnett show you had some really famousgood friends. And oh yeah, I
know that. You know, yourregulars were sensational. But Julie Andrews,
Beverly Sills, these were your pals, they were my pals. Actually they

(14:39):
were never a guest on my show. We did specials together. How funny
I would have thought they were bothon because I guess your specials ran all
the time too, well they did. And you know, I remember Julie
and I did three one at CarnegieHall. Ten years later we did another
one at Lincoln Center, and tenyears after that we did another one at
the pantae As Theater in Hollywood,and Beverly and I did sylves and Burnett

(15:05):
at the met Yes, which wasone of my favorites. Also, yay,
I'm not selling you can't. I'mnot saying you can't sell a song,
because you can, uh huh.But Beverly Sills, weren't you a
little intimidated? No? Because shewas so down to earth and you know,
insisted that I call her Bubbles,which was her nickname. And we

(15:26):
were from totally different worlds, soit wasn't that there was any competitionary that.
In fact, our opening number wasWe're only an octave apart, and
it was a very funny number.And you know, I've said our voices
are the same, and Beverly said, yes, we're only an octave apart.

(15:48):
And then we started to sing this, and then of course she went
whoa way up and then the cameracut to me just looking a scamp at
that voice. An honest reaction totally. And then we did The Ladies Who
Sing the Blues, which was aspecial material with original songs. But it

(16:10):
was like I would sing a bluesnumber and then she would do the equivalent
of the blues from an opera,you know, because she said, we
sing the blues too, but wehave to sing them in every language.
That's beautiful. And it was agreat medley. And then we ended with
a tap dance finale, Oh fun, and she tapped away and it was

(16:34):
really great fun. I loved her. I know me too. What a
great woman. Hey, you've gota movie coming up, I do,
Yes you do, ma'am. It'scalled Postgrad. Oh. I made a
big jump, I really know.I went from the sixties to to two
thousand and nine. I was lookingall over the place, like, I
think, that's so great because youhave been working and working and working.

(16:56):
Well. What I really enjoyed doingwas a law and order. Oh yes,
now it's called Ballerina this episode,are you sinister? Yes? Yes?
And I was thrilled I got nominatedfor an Emmy for it as in
a drama. Great. Yeah,as a guest actress and a drama.

(17:18):
I did not win. I lostto the wonderful Ellen Burston, but just
to be nominated in that particular categorywas a kick for me. Yeah,
that's great. Now you worked withoh god, the great actress who's on
that show whose name escapes me,Marsa Mariska Hargate. Oh yeah, did
you know her mom? Yeah?Well I had met her briefly way way

(17:44):
back when I was playing Las Vegas, and she was there and we'd attended
some sort of a function or somethingtogether, and she was so nice.
In fact, I found a photographfrom that evening that I sent to Marishka
did she have it? Because shewas She always ask people, you know,
of our era, if they knewher mom and me and I really

(18:04):
bonded. I just love that girl. She is so professional and sweet and
funny. Yeah, and it's areal down to earth gal. And of
course her mother. Everybody is JaneMansfield. Jane Mansfield, the actress from
Yeah. I bet, I betshe really wants to know because she was
very young when her mom, shewas a baby practically when yeah. Oh

(18:26):
wow, Well I'm glad you couldgive that to her. That's the first
thing I looked at when I sawthe stills of that show is that,
Oh look at there's Mariska and there'sCarol. I bet she asked you a
question. Yeah, that's great stuff. Hey, I think I have to
let you go. They said,I have twenty minutes with you, and
I could spend a decade with you. Trying, aren't you sweet? Trying
to catch up on over fifty yearsof fantastic entertainment to all of us.

(18:49):
And oh, thanks, Lee,that's so nice of you. Well,
we really appreciate it what you've givento us all these years. Thank you
so much, Carol Burnette, Thankyou Lee. We'll see you Sunday night
at your show at McCaw Hall.Supera