Carol Burnett: She turned a tragic childhood into a tremendous career

Carol Burnette: An early life of poverty

Carol Burnette is known worldwide for her unique brand of comedy which includes television, movies, and Broadway. A 30 minute variation of The Carol Burnette Show, Carol Burnette and Friends can still be seen on MeTV weeknights from 11:00-11;30 PM. The slapstick antics, the comradery of the cast and famous guest stars all combine to give viewers side-splitting laughs that have not been rivaled to this day.

What many fans may not be aware of is that Burnette's performances came from an early life filled with pain and humiliation. Her successes and multifaceted career helped her overcome her early struggles and she indeed made lemonade out of the lemons that life handed her as a child. There was no therapy, counseling, or mantras on how to love herself and no one to remove young Carol from the poverty, dysfunction, and shame she endured yet she persevered in spite of it all.

Burnett was born Carol Creighton Burnett on April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas. Her mother was Ina Louise Creighton Burnette, a publicity writer for movie studios. Her father Joseph Thomas Burnett, was a movie theater manager so you could say that entertainment was in Carol's blood.

Carol Burnette: Raised by her grandmother

Carol was left with her grandmother Mabel Eudora "Mae" Jones at a young age because both of her parents were alcoholics and they divorced in the late 1930s. Subsequently, Ina Louise moved to Hollywood, and Burnett and her grandmother moved to a nearby one-room apartment. They lived in a boarding house in an impoverished area of Hollywood, California along with Burnett's younger half-sister Chrissie. In skits on The Carol Burnette Show, Vickie Lawrence portrayed Chrissie who was the kid sister of Carol's character. This was done in honor of her real lief sibling.

When she was in second grade, Burnette says she briefly invented an imaginary twin sister named Karen She actually"fooled the other boarders in the rooming house" into believing that Karen was real. Carol would switch clothes and dash in and out of her home by using the front door and the fire escape. She said she became exhausted from the routine so Karensimply vanished never to be seen again.

Burnett has said that she taught herself her famous Tarzan yell at the age of nine, and years later realized this was an ideal vocal exercise for volume. This yell became a fan favorite and people in the audience would at times ask Carol to do it for them. Her musical abilities came from her family where her mother could play the ukulele and her grandmother was a trained musician who could play the piano, The trio at times sang popular songs of the day in harmony together as they sat around the kitchen table.

Burnett says that her grandmother frequently took her and Chrissie to the movies. She admitted there were times they would take a few rolls of toilet paper home from the theater. Someone reading can probably relate to the shame of not being able to purchase a roll of toilet paper and taking a roll or two from some public place out of sheer necessity.

Carol Burnette: Mother issues

In her 1986 memoir, One More Time, Burnette shares a painful moment that turned out to benefit her in later life. She said she was influenced to write the sketches for The Carol Burnett Show because of the movies she saw as a child. She was also motivated by a comment her mother once made. Ina Mae had told her daughter "You can always write, no matter what you look like.' Reflecting back on the incident Carol wrote, "God, that hurt!"

Burnette's breakout performance was in 1959 in the Broadway production of Once Upon A Mattress and as they say "The rest was history."Carol is not alone in having lived in poverty, raised by a grandparent, stealing to survive, having alcoholic parents who divorced, or a mother who made cruel comments. Her success should motivate all who had traumatic childhoods that you can overcome and find your own place in the world.