This Time Together Read online

  Also by Carol Burnett

  One More Time

  For Brian

  Our legacy is really the lives we touch, the inspiration we give, altering someone’s plan—if even for a moment—and getting them to think, rage, cry, laugh, argue … Walk around the block, dazed … More than anything, we are remembered for our smiles; the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the ones we bestow on a total stranger, who needed it RIGHT THEN, and God put you there to deliver.

  —Carrie Louise Hamilton

  December 2001

  Contents

  Introduction

  Jimmy Stewart

  Early Days in Hollywood

  Tweety, Mama, and Chris

  Alfred Hitchcock and the Epaulets

  Remembering the Early Days in New York

  Stretching Pennies

  The Dress

  One Rainy Night

  The Rehearsal Club Revue

  John Foster Dulles and the Blue Angel Nightclub

  Once upon a Mattress and George Abbott

  Rumplemayer’s and the Mean Hostess

  Garry Moore’s Variety Show

  My Dog Bruce and The Office

  Walking Alone at Night in New York City

  Nanny and the Auditions

  Nanny’s Visit to New York

  Aunt Iney

  Viewer Discretion Advised

  Fans

  Lunchtime at the Turkey Farm

  Tarzan and Bergdorf Goodman

  John Steinbeck and the Twenty-fourth Floor

  CBS vs. My Variety Show

  Our Rep Players

  Vicki Lawrence

  Harvey Korman

  Lyle Waggoner

  Tim Conway

  Conway’s Cancellation

  Australia

  Bob Mackie

  Jim Nabors

  Talking to the Audience

  The Writers’ Room

  Cary Grant

  Cary, Harvey, and Tim at the Racetrack

  Adrienne Lenore Weingardt

  Carol Channing and Food for Thought

  Lucy

  Lucy, Zero, and Carol + 2

  Dinner with Lucy at the Farmers’ Market

  Jody and Ray Charles

  Erin and Diplomacy

  My Chum Julie Andrews

  A Very Bad Hair Day

  Julie, Mike Nichols, and the Lady in the Elevator

  Laurence Olivier

  Walter Matthau

  The Front Page and Mea Culpa

  Restaurant Reservations

  All My Children

  Keeping Up with Pine Valley While in Europe

  Joan Crawford

  How Not to Make Small Talk with Royalty

  Stanwyck and the Leprechaun

  A Girl Named Kathy

  The End of the Run

  Annie and John Huston

  Turbulence

  Living in a High-Rise All Alone

  Body by Jake

  Dating

  Marlon Brando

  Mr. Computer

  Beverly Sills

  Questions and Answers on the Road

  Brian

  Pets

  Hal Prince, Hollywood Arms, Carrie

  Obituary

  Carrie and the Fib

  What’s Next?

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  During the past few years, I’ve zigzagged across the country appearing in various theaters performing Laughter and Reflection: A Conversation with Carol, Where the Audience Asks the Questions. It’s just the audience and me. The evening lasts ninety minutes, beginning with seven minutes of old Q & A clips from our TV variety show to give the audience an idea of what the evening is going to be like. Then I come out onstage and ask for the lights to be bumped up, so I can see everyone.

  Lights up.

  ME: Tonight is all about any questions you might have for me … about our show, the people I’ve worked with, moments that stand out in your memory that you’re curious about—anything at all. So just raise your hands, and here we go!

  It’s always a little scary, because I’m working without a safety net. There are no “plants” in the audience, because if the event feels pre-planned, it takes the fun out of it. The audience can tell it’s off the cuff, and through the years people have been pretty enthusiastic—and aren’t at all shy about raising their hands. When I call on someone I never know what the question will be. I have to say, it keeps the ol’ gray matter ticking and the blood pumping.

  However, through the years there have been questions that were asked over and over, which gives me a breather by allowing me to count on being able to tell some set stories. If these questions weren’t asked (for instance, if the audience was sitting on its hands), often I could bring up the subject myself and tell the story anyway. (Whew!)

  What follows are some of these stories that I’ve shared over the years in response to various questions. Some have to do with our gang on the variety show, embarrassing moments, famous people, not-so-famous people, family, and so on. Since I’m not planning on doing too many more of these story evenings in the future, I figured I’d write up my favorite stories for my grandkids and anybody else who might enjoy them—who might have some fun and laughs and maybe some nostalgic moments as well.

  Many years ago, in 1986, I wrote a memoir called One More Time, which was couched as a letter to my three daughters, telling them all about my growing up in a dysfunctional yet loving family. That book didn’t take my life beyond age twenty-six. This time I’m emphasizing episodes and anecdotes that have brought me to the present time, although I’ve also included a few stories from childhood that bear repeating.

  Originally I began writing this book as a simple series of anecdotes, but as I got into it I found that I went into more detail than I usually do onstage. I also found myself writing about things that I haven’t talked about onstage but which resonate with me. Some of them are even serious. These thoughts and feelings just kind of poured out onto the page. They might not be as amusing as some of my other remembrances, but they’re memories I’d like to share. So what follows is a kind of memoir peppered with anecdotes here and there. I hope you enjoy it.

  Jimmy surprising me on our last show, 1978.

  COPYRIGHT © 1978 GUNTHER/MPTVIMAGES.COM

  Jimmy Stewart

  My grandmother Nanny and I were at the picture show. I hadn’t reached two digits yet in age because I distinctly remember my feet couldn’t touch the floor of the movie house. Nanny and I were still living in San Antonio, Texas. My mama and daddy had gone ahead to California, where Nanny and I would later wind up.

  The feature had just begun, and his face lit up the screen. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was talking to a beautiful lady in a nightclub somewhere. I’m not sure what the movie was. It didn’t matter. He had a kind of crooked smile and spoke with a soft … what kind of voice was it? A drawl? The camera followed him as he stood up. You could see how very long his legs were. I was sure his feet never had trouble reaching the floor. “Skinny as a string bean,” Nanny said. After the picture show, we went home to the old house, and I couldn’t get the man in the movie out of my mind. He wasn’t just an actor like all the others I’d seen in picture shows. This man was different. He spoke to me. I tried to explain this to Nanny.

  “Nanny, I know that man.”

  “What do you mean, you know him?”

  “I just do. He’s my friend; we just haven’t met yet.”

  “That’s nice, dear. Drink your Ovaltine and go to bed.”

  Years later in Hollywood—it was 1958, to be exact—I received a call from film director Mervyn LeRoy. He had seen me in a couple of appearances on television and asked if I would meet with him. I w
as in my early twenties and just getting started, so naturally I was thrilled by his interest. He suggested that I come out to the Warner Bros. studios the next morning and meet him on the soundstage where he was shooting a movie.

  “Why don’t you get here a little before lunch, so you can watch us shoot a scene?”

  Wow. I had never been on a real movie set. I owned one decent suit, one good pair of stockings, and one pair of re-soled high heels. My purse didn’t match, but it was all I had. I took the bus to Burbank. The studio guard had my name on his list and pointed me toward the soundstage. I waited for the red light outside, which meant “keep out,” to stop spinning. It stopped, a bell rang, and I walked into a huge cavern—cameras, lights, cables on the floor, ceilings as tall as skyscrapers, and catwalks everywhere you looked. At the far end of the stage I saw a small set. It was up on a rolling platform about two feet off the ground. It was an office—a desk, one chair, a filing cabinet, and a door. The stagehands were securing it under the spotlights.

  Mr. LeRoy came over to me and introduced himself. “Glad you could make it, Carol. We just have a small scene to do before we break. Shouldn’t take long.” He motioned me to a chair out of the way. “Okay, let’s go for one!” An actor climbed up onto the set and took his place behind the desk.

  Mr. LeRoy called out to another actor behind the set door. “Ready, Jimmy?”

  “All set back here, Merv.”

  The voice. I knew it immediately. Oh my Lord, I’m in the same space as my idol.

  Mr. LeRoy called, “Action!” and Jimmy Stewart walked through the door and presented a badge to the man at the desk. That was it. End of scene.

  “Cut! That’s a print!”

  The movie they were shooting was The FBI Story. Lunch was called, and Mr. LeRoy asked me if I’d like to meet Jimmy. He was still up on the set, and Mr. LeRoy gave me a helping hand as I climbed up onto the platform. We were introduced. I was inches away from the face I had loved since I was a very little girl. He smiled and said he was glad to make my acquaintance. He shook my hand. He looked into my eyes. He seemed in no hurry to go to lunch.

  What was it about him that drew me to him in such a deeply personal way? I admired other actors—I was a big fan of a lot of them—but there was something about him that was different. I felt it every time I saw him in the movies. And now here he was. What I had seen on the screen was amplified a hundred times in person. The warmth. The humility. The humor. The heart. A lump popped up in my throat, signaling the beginning of tears. Overwhelmed, I knew I had to get out of there before I started to cry. I felt like an idiot.

  Trying to be funny or flip or whatever it was, I gave a stupid little salute and piped up with what must be one of the dumbest things I could’ve come up with: “Well, guess it’s time to tie on the ol’ feedbag!” With that I whirled around and stepped off the two-foot-high set right into a bucket of whitewash. For a nightmarish moment I just stood there frozen, my back to them with one foot in and one foot out. Frozen.

  Not wanting Jimmy Stewart or Mervyn LeRoy to realize this was an accident, I decided to head for the door, hoping (praying) they’d think I’d done this for a laugh. I didn’t look back. I proceeded to drag that bucket, my right foot still in it, clear across the soundstage, about five miles. The whitewash was squishing away in my ruined shoe, making gurgling sounds accompanied by the scrape of the bottom of the bucket on the floor. Squish … gurgle … scrape. Squish … gurgle … scrape.

  I didn’t hear any laughter.

  I opened the door into the glaring sunlight and pulled my sopping foot and ruined shoe out of the bucket. I truly don’t remember what happened after that. Obviously, I must’ve caught the bus and gone home. I don’t remember hearing from Mr. LeRoy again.

  Wait, though. There’s a happy postscript. Years later I had a successful TV show on the air, which my husband, Joe Hamilton, produced. Hollywood is a small town, and my husband and I got to know Jimmy Stewart and his beautiful, terrifically funny wife, Gloria, through mutual friends, and developed a close relationship.

  I remember one time when we had a party at our house and invited the Stewarts. Gloria called to accept, with a caveat.

  “We’re going to be there all right, but I have to warn you, Jimmy doesn’t like to stay up late, so don’t be upset if we leave shortly after dinner. He likes to be in bed by ten o’clock.” No problem. We were just thrilled they were coming.

  Our guest list also included Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, Jo Stafford and Paul Weston, and Mel Tormé—all fantastic singers and musicians. After dinner, we all went into the living room, and Paul Weston sat down at the piano. As the musical part of the evening began, I fully expected the Stewarts to say their goodbyes. But Jimmy Stewart didn’t get up to go home. Instead, he walked over to the gang gathered around the piano and joined in. It was a sight to behold. There he was, harmonizing with the best of them. Later Gloria came over to me and said, “He’s having the time of his life. I don’t know how I’m going to get him out of here!” They were the last people to leave the party. It was after one in the morning.

  Honoring Jimmy at the Kennedy Center, December 1983.

  COURTESY OF CAROL BURNETT

  Gloria called the next day to say that anytime we had another party like that to please invite them. Jimmy had had a ball.

  We saw each other fairly often in those days. Jimmy Stewart even surprised me on the final episode of my variety show, in 1978, by showing up and playing the piano, singing his favorite tune, “Ragtime Cowboy Joe.” A few years later, in December 1983, I was thrilled to be in the television segment that saluted him at the Kennedy Center Honors. I sang “You’d Be So Easy to Love,” which he had sung to Eleanor Powell in the 1930s movie musical Born to Dance. Afterward he sent me the sweetest note.

  Dear Carol,

  We had a fine Christmas. And the best Christmas present I got was you coming all that way to D.C. to sing to me at the Kennedy Center. Bless your heart. All my love.

  Jimmy

  That note is framed on my desk at home.

  Jimmy Stewart returned the favor a few years later, when I was being honored by the Variety Club. Again he surprised me. He pulled up a stool, held my hand, and sang “You’d Be So Easy to Love” right back to me. As you can imagine, it was a moment I’ll cherish forever.

  At one point I did tell Jimmy the story of the bucket of whitewash. He was kind enough to say he didn’t remember, and maybe he really didn’t. No matter—I got a laugh out of him when I told him about it, even if it was years later.

  I will always feel like Jimmy Stewart was a part of me. There was some strange connection there that drew a little girl to him all those years ago in that darkened San Antonio movie house, when I first realized that I knew him.

  And yes, Nanny, he was my friend.

  And dreams really can come true.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself …

  Early Days in Hollywood

  Nanny—my grandmother—raised me. She was my mama’s mama. She is the one I pull my ear for on television (still, to this very day). It began as a way of saying “hello” and “I love you.” Later, it also included “Your check is on the way.”

  I learned years later that Nanny had been quite the coquette in her time, having had six husbands. She was also a Christian Scientist who happened to be a hypochondriac. As a little girl I often prayed for her, and if that didn’t work, she would hit the aspirin bottle. When we’d wake up in the morning, I would ask her how she’d slept. Instead of replying, “I didn’t close my eyes,” she’d feel for her pulse, sigh, and say, “Well, y’know, I just never quite missed myself.”

  Nanny and I moved to California from Texas when I was seven, to be with my mama. The two of us lived in a one-room apartment with a pull-down Murphy bed, while Mama lived down the hall with my baby sister, Chris. Mama and Daddy were divorced, but he would come to see us often. He had a drinking problem, but he was a good-natured drunk. Tall and lanky, he looked a lot li
ke Jimmy Stewart. I often think that that might have been the connection I felt when I first saw Jimmy on the screen: a sober Daddy. Unfortunately, my own father wasn’t sober long enough to hold down a steady job, so we wound up on what in those days was known as “relief.”

  We were poor, but so was everyone else in our neighborhood around Yucca and Wilcox, one block north of Hollywood Boulevard (but a million miles from Hollywood). Nanny and I would “hit the boulevard” as often as we could, to see the movies. (My ticket cost a dime and Nanny’s cost a quarter.) In those days, movies were uplifting. The good guys met with happy endings and the bad guys didn’t. The actors in the musicals were my favorites: Betty Grable, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Everything was beautiful in the movies.

  After the movie was over, Nanny and I would go into the ladies’ room and steal the toilet paper out of the stalls (she’d put the rolls into an empty shopping bag to take home), and we’d be set for another month. Then Nanny and I would hightail it back to our one room. I’d meet my best friend, Ilomay, in the lobby and we would go up to the roof and act out the movies with the famous HOLLYWOOD sign looming on the hillside behind our building. I’d be Betty Grable and Ilomay would be June Haver, singing and dancing all over the roof. I poured all my dreams into happy endings, just like in the movies we saw.

  I think that’s when the performing bug bit. But never in my wildest fantasies could I have ever imagined that one day I would have my own TV show, where Betty Grable, Mickey Rooney, and Rita Hayworth would be among my guests!

  Tweety, Mama, and Chris

  I was in college when Mama started to have a drink or two every day. Her own dreams of being a journalist and interviewing movie stars had bitten the dust. Early on she had written some freelance articles for Pic and Collier’s magazines about Bob Hope, Rita Hayworth, and George Montgomery. But the pickings were slim, and she never wound up with a steady job.