Carol Burnett

  b. 1933 | American actress

At The Bottom

— 1954

Big teeth, a gawky figure and seemingly no opportunities to break into the theatrical world of New York City.

Carol Burnett was an aspiring actress with big teeth, a gawky figure and seemingly no opportunities to break into the theatrical world of New York City.  She had recently moved there with her boyfriend after their junior year at the University of California at Los Angeles.  Though she’d performed in a number of musicals and comedies while at UCLA, Burnett had only been a theater major for a little over a year, and her resume was awfully thin for someone looking to make a career on stage.  When she began approaching agents, they either turned her aside or assumed that she would only be able to find work in a chorus here and there.  When she expressed an interest in leading roles, they rolled their eyes or stared back in disbelief. To get by from week to week, Burnett took a job as a hat check girl at a restaurant on 49th Street, where she earned enough to pay the rent at the boardinghouse where she lived.   Recent family trauma had only added to the challenges Burnett faced that year.  Her father, Joseph Burnett, had just died, having drank himself to death over the course of many years; her mother, also an alcoholic, would succumb three years later.  Though Burnett’s parents loved her and had never mistreated her, alcohol had always disrupted their lives, and they had never been able to provide a stable home life for her. Burnett had been raised for the most part by her grandmother, who did not approve of Burnett’s move to New York and asked her to come home by Christmas if she had not become a star.