"Carol Burnett, the ninety-two-year-old legend of American comedy, keeps a document on her home computer listing hundreds of performers she's worked with, from Harpo Marx to Zooey Deschanel. She has stories about them all, and she recounts anecdotes about long-dead colleagues as if they happened yesterday. There's the one about Marlon Brando, who called her, out of the blue, to ask where she'd got her chin done."
"One morning last fall, Burnett was at Television City, the studio lot in Los Angeles where her variety show was filmed, a half century ago, to shoot a cameo as herself on "Hacks," an HBO Max series about the second act of an aging comedian played by Jean Smart. The two women first met in the early two-thousands, when Smart read for a part in a stage play based on Burnett's life."
Carol Burnett, at ninety-two, maintains a document cataloging hundreds of performers she has worked with, from Harpo Marx to Zooey Deschanel. She preserves and recounts vivid anecdotes about colleagues spanning decades, including stories involving Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier and Betty Grable. Burnett continues to perform on television, shooting a cameo on the HBO Max series Hacks and reuniting with Jean Smart, who first connected with her over a stage reading and later cast her as a guest mother on Hot in Cleveland. Burnett's presence on contemporary series connects mid-century show-business memory to a new generation of comedians.
Read at The New Yorker
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]