This Time Together Read online

  I was attending UCLA and working a part-time job. I had visions of someday having enough money to go to New York and be in Broadway musicals. I kept them to myself, however.

  My baby sister, Chris, was around nine when Mama presented her with a parakeet for her birthday. Chris was thrilled with the gift and promptly named the bird Tweety. Mama had a fit. “TWEETY! ARE YOU NUTS? Every damn parakeet in the world is named Tweety, for godsakes! Don’t you want to be original?”

  Chris was about to cry. Mama said, “STASH! Now that’s a great name for the bird. STASH! Perfect.”

  Chris let out a howl. “He’s my bird! You gave him to me! He’s mine and I want TWEETY!”

  They went round and round, until finally Chris won. Mama poured another drink and lifted her glass to the bird. “Okay, okay. Here’s to you … Tweety.”

  It wasn’t long before Tweety wrapped his little feathers around Mama’s heart. He kept her company while Chris was in school, and Mama taught the bird to talk. Tweety would look in the mirror and say, “Pretty bastard,” and if someone entered the room, he would say, “Where the hell have you been?” Mama even gave him a taste of whiskey, which he grew to like. She would put two shot glasses on the table, one with water and one with whiskey. More often than not he’d go for the whiskey, and Mama would double over with laughter.

  Mama would take naps, sleeping on her back, and Tweety would climb up on her stomach, bury his head in his fluffed feathers, and nod off, rising up and down with Mama’s breathing. They’d even snore together.

  Tweety was still slugging ’em back at age eighteen.

  Alfred Hitchcock and the Epaulets

  When I was a freshman at UCLA I spent the summer of 1951 working as an usherette at the local Warner Bros. theater on Wilcox and Hollywood Boulevard, one block from our one room on Yucca Street. My salary was 65¢ an hour. The girls’ uniforms consisted of maroon harem pants made of some kind of satiny material, short-sleeved jackets trimmed with gold braid (mine was too big), and a Shriner-type fez to top it all off (mine was too small). We looked like a tacky combination of Yvonne de Carlo’s Arabian Nights character and a Buckingham Palace guard. One more thing: the shoulders of the jackets were adorned with epaulets.

  Our manager was Mr. Batton, a tall, thin, gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed little mustache. He was a spiffy dresser—and a wolf. That’s what the other girls told me. On a slow night he’d chase the pretty usherettes around the balcony.

  He was also certifiable. He never gave us verbal orders. He gave us hand signals he had made up—his own personal Batton brand of sign language. It wasn’t that he couldn’t talk; he simply felt he shouldn’t have to, because this was a more efficient way to run the show. Every morning, promptly at eleven-thirty, he’d line up his troops in front of the candy counter for inspection. There were six of us standing at attention: eyes straight ahead, shoulders back, stomachs in. He’d then do an about-face, march clear across the lobby, turn back to face us, and go into his signal routine.

  Mr. Batton would go from right to left, one girl at a time. When he pointed to a girl and held up two fingers, it meant she was being assigned aisle two; three fingers meant aisle three, and so on. If he made the letter C with his thumb and index finger, it meant she was to work the candy counter. Every girl was required to salute and march to her post, cutting square corners. He’d usually save me for last. He would turn his left palm up, facing the ceiling, and then touch the middle of his hand with his right index finger. This meant I was appointed the “spot girl” position. This was the job that required the loudest voice: mine.

  I would salute, then march to the middle of the lobby and stand in the glow of an amber-colored spotlight. I was on the alert for further instructions, which came quickly. Mr. Batton would make a gun signal with his thumb and index finger, which meant “shoot.” Then I’d wait for the second signal telling me what aisle I should “shoot” the customers to. If he wanted me to shoot them to the balcony, he would turn his palm down and put his index finger up into the middle of his palm. Bingo. As the matinee customers handed their tickets to the doorman, I would blast out, “Ladies and gentlemen, up the stairway to your right!”

  I would stand like this, yelling directions, for what seemed like hours without a break. One time I was dying for a drink of water, and I caught his attention as he was on his way to his office.

  “M-Mr. Batton?”

  He looked at me.

  “Mr. Batton … could I please use the water fountain? I’m thirsty.”

  He came at me like a tank.

  “Burnett!” Lord, he’s actually talking.

  “Yessir?”

  “Don’t you ever do that again!”

  “What should I do?”

  “You snap your fingers until you get my attention, and when you do, you open your mouth and point to the back of your throat!”

  As I said, certifiable.

  A few weeks later I got fired, and it was all Alfred Hitchcock’s fault. His suspense thriller Strangers on a Train was playing at the theater, and I loved it. Every chance I got I sneaked in to watch a scene or two, even when I was on spot duty. I was careful and never got caught. I saw the movie so many times I had the dialogue down pat, plus I had an enormous crush on its star, Robert Walker.

  Late one weeknight, when the theater wasn’t crowded enough to need spot duty, Batton signaled me to aisle two. I loved aisle duty because I could stand inside the theater and catch my favorite bits of the movie. One of the best ones was the climax, where Walker and Farley Granger are in a fight to the death on a merry-go-round that’s spinning completely out of control.

  At this very moment a couple came in and wanted to be seated.

  These were the days when there were no set schedules for the features. People didn’t seem to care if they watched a movie from the beginning or not. Often they would come in and sit down right in the middle of the movie, stay until the end, and wait for it to start all over again, right after the news and cartoon. When the movie got to the part where they had first sat down, they would get up and leave, saying, “Okay, let’s go. This is where we came in.”

  I, however, was a purist. I felt it was very important for a story to be told from the beginning to the end.

  Back to the couple who wanted to be seated. They had to be out of their minds. This was Hitchcock, for godsakes! There were only ten minutes left! They could go to the bathroom, get some popcorn, visit the water fountain—anything! That way, by the time they got to their seats the movie would be starting all over again from the top. I tried to reason with them.

  HER: We wanna sit down now.

  ME: If you’ll just wait a couple of minutes, it’ll be over!

  HIM: What for?

  ME: Well, it’s a very exciting surprise ending. It would spoil the whole picture for you—you jerks.

  HER: My feet hurt.

  HIM: You got a flashlight there? We wanna sit down.

  He took my flashlight and opened the door to aisle two. I was close on their heels, whispering for them to please wait. And then I blurted out, “BUT IT’S ALFRED HITCHCOCK!” A bunch of customers, already seated, turned toward us and let out a loud “SHUSH!” Somehow I managed to get all three of us back into the lobby and close the door to aisle two. While I was trying to explain the essence of Hitchcock suspense to these dodos, Batton came bounding down the balcony stairs, straightening his tie and his hair.

  “What’s going on here?”

  There was no explaining. I was wrong and the customer was right.

  Batton looked at me, ran his index finger across his neck, indicating I was a goner, and reached out to my shoulders. Yes, he actually ripped off my epaulets. I was drummed out of the corps. I saluted and cut my square corners as I crossed the lobby, changed into my civvies, and walked the long block home.

  A few years ago, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce asked me where I wanted my star to be set into the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard’s “Walk of Fame.” Yep,
it’s right there in front of where the old Warner Bros. theater was, at Hollywood and Wilcox.

  One other note: the old theater, renamed the Pacific, closed some time ago, but a few of the interior fixtures are still intact. Some of the kind folks in charge had heard about the Hitchcock episode all those years ago, and in December 2006 they presented me with the original door to aisle two. It’s now in my home. I smile every time I open it to go into the family room.

  Nanny’s visit to New York.

  COURTESY OF CAROL BURNETT

  Remembering the Early Days in New York

  Somehow I always knew that there would be a way for me to get to New York and pursue my dream of a career in musical comedy. And now here I was, on borrowed money from a wealthy benefactor and his wife, who had seen me perform at UCLA. The man had asked me what my goals were, and I had said that someday I’d like to go to New York and be onstage in a musical directed by the king of Broadway musical directors, George Abbott. (I wasn’t aiming too high!)

  The remarkably generous gentleman offered me enough money to fly to New York and have a little left over until I could find a job. There were four stipulations:

  I must use this money to go to New York.

  I would pay the money back in five years (no interest).

  If I was successful, I would help others out.

  I must never reveal his name.

  He then wrote out a check for $1,000. I had never seen that many zeroes in my life!

  Nanny just about fainted when she saw all that money, grabbing her wrist and feeling her pulse. Then she started thinking of all the ways she could spend it. I explained about the requirement that I use this money to go to New York. She didn’t want me to go. “It’s freezing in New York. Your blood’s too thin. You’ll be dead in a week.”

  I promised I would write faithfully every day. Then I kissed Nanny, Mama, Chrissy, and even Tweety goodbye and set off on my adventure with my cardboard suitcase, carrying as many clothes as I could stuff into it, which weren’t many. I had never been farther east than Texas.

  Before I left I went to see my father to say goodbye. He was on a cot in a charity hospital, suffering from tuberculosis aggravated by years of drinking. We visited for a long time, and I told him all about the man who had lent me the money. As I was getting ready to leave, he looked at me sadly and said, “Carol, I wish I could’ve given you that money.”

  I bent over to kiss him. “Daddy, I know that if you could have, you would have. I love you.”

  He said, “Save me a ticket for your first Broadway show!”

  He died shortly after I got to New York. It was the summer of 1954.

  Stretching Pennies

  I was lucky to get a room at the Rehearsal Club, a four-story brownstone in midtown Manhattan that housed twenty-five female show business hopefuls. I was assigned to a room furnished with five cots and five dressers—and shared by five young women. One closet. One bathroom. Five women. I was given the corner cot and dresser. The bathroom always had newly washed stockings, panties, and bras hanging on the towel rods. The closet looked like it had exploded, leaving skirts, blouses, coats, sweaters, and shoes piled on top of one another from ceiling to floor. In a funny way, I felt right at home, because that was the way Nanny had always kept house. Room and board? Eighteen dollars a week.

  The Rehearsal Club was famous. The movie and play Stage Door were based on this legendary building. The place was sponsored by several high-powered professional New York women, which accounted for the low rent. The requirement for living there was that you had to be pursuing a theatrical career. If you weren’t fortunate enough to have a full-time job in your chosen profession, you were allowed to work part-time in other areas to meet the rent. However, you had to prove that you were actively making the rounds: going to auditions, studying (voice, acting, dance, etc.), and trying to land an agent.

  My college sweetheart, Don Saroyan, had followed me to New York and found a place to live across the street from the club, rooming with two other members of his UCLA cohort. His goal was to be a Broadway director.

  The club was also very proper; no men allowed beyond the downstairs parlor.

  I got a part-time job working four days a week as a hatcheck girl in a ladies’ tearoom: Susan Palmer’s Restaurant, on West Forty-ninth Street. I don’t know what I was thinking. After I got the job, it became clear that women don’t usually check their hats. Fortunately, the holidays were approaching, and the ladies loved to shop; I earned a quarter every time they checked a package. I averaged $30 a week, which left me with $12 to splurge after paying rent at the club. I was never hungry, though. The restaurant fed me lunch, and the club included three squares in the $18 rent.

  Winter was upon us, however, and I needed a warm coat. I had never needed one in California, but I sure had to have one in New York. Nanny managed to send me $20, so I took the subway downtown to S. Klein’s department store, famous for its low prices, and managed to claw my way through the hordes of shoppers hunting for bargains. I wound up with a black-and-white number made of some kind of nubby material. I tried it on and it felt heavy and warm. I also thought it was quite attractive, but when I modeled it back at the club one of my roommates, Joyce, opined, “It looks like unborn linoleum.” That’s all I could think of the rest of the winter, ducking Joyce every time I wore it.

  I was thrilled when spring finally sprung.

  The Dress

  I went to open calls (sometimes known as “cattle calls”), which were auditions where all of us hopefuls (without agents) would line up for hours waiting for a chance to be seen and heard by the producers of the latest Broadway musical that was casting. I’d sing maybe two lines before I heard, “Thank you. Next!”

  I figured I had to stand out more, which meant a special audition dress. I couldn’t afford more than $5, so I talked four other girls at the club into pitching in $5 apiece so we could buy a “community dress.” With $25 in hand, we trotted off to Bloomingdale’s to find THE dress that would fit us all. No easy task, because we weren’t all built the same, by any means.

  We knew that to stand out in an audition the dress should be a bright color. It had to have long sleeves to cover skinny, plump, and average arms. It had to have a full skirt to hide any wide behinds. The material had to have a little give to accommodate each of us in the waistline. Luckily, we were all pretty close in that department.

  We pored over racks and racks and finally found a loud orange number that pretty much met all our requirements: high neck, long sleeves, full skirt. Each one of us tried it on and agreed that this was IT. We plunked down our combined $25 and marched out of Bloomingdale’s proud as punch that we had accomplished the impossible.

  We agreed that the dress would be signed out only if you had an audition, and then you’d be responsible for returning it to the community closet, dry-cleaned and ready for the next girl to sign out. I wore it several times. I never got a job out of it, but I did get several callbacks for “the girl in the orange dress.”

  I finally gave up on it when another girl in an orange dress showed up at a cattle call and she got the callback.

  I switched to yellow after that.

  One Rainy Night

  It was a Saturday night and all four of my roommates were out on dates. The skies had opened up and it was pouring outside—my favorite kind of weather. I’ve always loved the rain, and I believe it brings me good luck. I was sitting on my cot listening to the radio and reading the newspaper. A song from the musical Pajama Game started to play just as I turned to the theater section and saw an ad for this mega-hit. Not that it needed an ad; Pajama Game was the most successful show on Broadway in 1954. It starred John Raitt, Janis Paige, Carol Haney, and Eddie Foy Jr. Best of all, it was directed by the great George Abbott.

  I looked at the ad again and something clicked: Eddie Foy Jr. He had cut his teeth on vaudeville and was now the featured comedian in this show. A neighbor of ours in Hollywood who worked as an extra in lots o
f films had appeared in a movie with Eddie, whom he described as a “helluva swell guy for a movie star.”

  That did it. The rain, the song on the radio, the ad—right then and there I decided to meet Eddie Foy Jr. that very night and ask him for a favor.

  I plowed my way into our bulging communal closet and dug out my pair of galoshes and the plastic raincoat I had bought at the dime store. I tied a scarf around my head, grabbed an umbrella, and headed out into the downpour for the St. James Theater. I almost lost my umbrella when the wind blew it inside out.

  I got to the stage door just before the final curtain. It was unlocked, so I slipped inside to find myself backstage in an actual Broadway theater. I could hear the orchestra and the chorus blasting out the finale. The old doorman, looking like every doorman in those old movie musicals (he was usually called Pops), came over to me. I was dripping water all over the floor, looking like the poor man’s Eve Harrington from the movie All About Eve.

  POPS: Yeah, kid, whaddya want?

  ME: I’m here to see Eddie.

  POPS: You know Eddie?

  ME: (nodding) From California.

  I looked down at the floor; I usually do when I’m telling a fib. And that’s when I noticed I had on one black galosh and one brown one.

  POPS: Wait here, the show’s almost over.

  At that point, I heard what sounded like a huge clap of thunder. It was applause! The audience was going wild. Suddenly I saw the stars running into the wings and then back out front again and again, taking their bows. When they finished they headed for their dressing rooms while the audience was still cheering. I was mesmerized. Is this what it’s like?