Carol Burnett

Published Oct 13, 2015, 4:00 AM

Carol Burnett's stage and screen career is one of the great showbiz success stories. From her early days on Broadway, to the 11-season run of The Carol Burnett Show, to her luminous big-screen turn as Miss Hannigan in Annie: Burnett's numerous Emmy and Golden Globe awards and nominations speak to her plasticity, her genius -- and her hilarity. Carol Burnett sits down with Alec Baldwin to talk about the unlikely origin of her show, recall her roster of A-list friends, and to explain how nudists dance.

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policy makers and performers to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today is Carol Burnett. What brings you to terra? You you fix and you start it? I love you that that that gown is gorgeous. Thank you, Stan Wind and I just couldn't resist. That's Carol as Starlett O'Hara making a grand entrance wearing a set of curtains as a dress with the rod still attached. Harvey Corman is smitten as Captain Ratt Butler in this Gone with the Wind parody on the Carol Burnett Show. The chemistry between the players on this show Burnett, Corman and also Vicky Lawrence, Tim Conway and Lyle Wagoner is legendary. The show ran for eleven seasons. The first five seasons have been recently released on DVD. They haven't been seen since airing over forty years ago. It is incredible and you see them and it's the first time we did the soap opera takeoff. The first time, you know, Vicky and her when we started out, and we were pretty raw, pretty braw. We're gonna get to that because when I watched the show, I saw so many little tells and so many little things about how you guys crack each other up. Obviously there's there's things you guys do to each other and you can just see you almost with joy and almost loathing that they're like, you're kind of torturing. It's like getting the giggles in church. Yes, you know. But Alex, when we started the show, uh, I wanted to do it as a live show. We couldn't really do it live because the studio, which I love that studio because it was like a TV City TV City, uh Studio thirty three, which is like a little theater. You know, it's like senium and the seats are down. It's not like the teared things that you have, you know when when other shows, you know, and so I loved that, but we couldn't There were no flies in the theater. By that I mean where you could fly the scenery in and out and really do a live show. But I wanted it to go fast because we had a studio audience there and I couldn't stand to keep them waiting, because if they get bored and sit there for a long time while we take our time changing clothes and so forth, we lose them. So we lose that energy and enthusiasm that that you get when an audience is hot. So I would have a bet with the stage hands that I could do a skin out change faster than they could move that sofa across the rough. And also I didn't want um. I didn't want to stop and do pick ups something went wrong. I figured unless the scenery fell down and knocked us out in ahead, I wanted to keep going. So when somebody would add lib or do a bit that we had not done before, we never broke up on purpose ever. Ever, I just well, let's it was understood that you would add lib. It was understood that that was well. We never said it. It just started happening, so we just let it go. Who was the bad boy in church? Usually? Do you have comedy insurance? Yes? Yeah, because Harvey was trying to put him on and then Tim came up and topped him. I don't suppose you have comedy insurance down there, do you? Yeah? It was brilliant. I don't believe when you watch this shows. When you watch these shows, you're lost episodes. So that audiences from our show understand that it was sixty seven through seventy. Those eleven years and the first five years of the show you're referring to as the lost episodes. And when you see so this is the crowd young, and you see over eleven years people get older. Harvey has a nice kind of auburn color to his hair, and then Harvey has like a steel color to his hair, and Vicky grows older, and everybody, not in any bad way, but everybody in eleven years is a long time. You don't see that on TV. But I will say with all sincerity that I don't think you'd have to go to Fred ash Stare and Gene Kelly in my mind to find someone who is as trim and fit and lithe as you on stage. You never had to exercise a day in your life. The show was your workout. The things you do when you're scissoring your way across the floor during the fire scene because you think the fire is happening. I look at you, and oh my god, look at this woman. What she's doing to herself was it physically as demanding as it seemed, I never felt that. No, I'm just in it. Well, you know, the the adrenaline starts pumping when you're performing and everything. And I'm really not that live. I mean, I I still can't touch my toes without bending my knees. I'm not that good. But I was able to do a lot of stunts and things like that. I don't know. I just threw myself into it. You don't think about it when you're doing it. And I never hurt myself. I got a few bruises here and there once in a while, but I never broke a bone jumping out of windows, falling downstairs, crashing through doors with burn metals exactly. Yeah, and that and and there you do that exit with Burt medals. I mean, I always joke with people and say, when I was young, and I was younger, I was pretty fit. I said, now I'm older, and I probably could do some of those things again. But it's more my doubts or my more of my concerns about it. I say to somebody, like, in my real life, I might not be as physically engaged as I was, But if you pay me a couple of million dollars. I can still run down the street with a gun in my head. It's always funny I can do what if the characters doing that? You know that I'm saving a baby from climbing into a well. I totally agree. And uh, in fact, I never knew sometimes how I was going to do a character until I got into the outfit. Interesting, I've worked from the outside in. You know some actors worked from the inside out. I Uh, there were lots of times I had no idea what I was going to do until I went into the costume fitting and saw what Bob Mackie had created for me. How did that union with him and that collaboration with him begin? Where did you first meet Bob? Well when we were getting ready to do the show, and we said, you know, costuming is going to be really important because the costume designer isn't going to just design for me. That costume designer is going to design for every everybody you see on the screen, dancers, singers, guest stars, rep company. Everything you see has to be coordinated by the one person. So um we had seen um Alison Wonderland on television. I remember Carol Channing was the Queen of Diamonds or Hearts or something like that, but fantastic, wonderful costuming. And then I'd seen Mizzy Keener I think it was in Vegas, and aside from the gorgeous gowns she wore, she also did a lot of fall down humor and you know, fat suits and crazy outfits and so forth. And the common denominator was Bob Mackie, and we said, you know, we've got to meet Bob Mackie and see if maybe, you know, he would be the one. So we got in touch with him and he came over to her house bing bong. I opened the door and there stood this guy that looked like he was twelve years old, just fresh and adorable, and he came in. He was about twenty four five years old, and he we just liked him right away. We knew he had the talent. So we hired him right then on the spot. And it was one of the best decisions. You see me, who was we my husband? To talk about your husband, well, Joe, Joe Hamilton's was the producer of the Gary Moore Show. That's where we met. And so when I was going to do my show, of course he was going to be the producer. So we were, and you were on Broadway. I had been, and then we moved to California. For moving to California, well, I ready, I was raised there. Yeah, I was raised in your grandmother in Hollywood. I didn't know that. I'm I know you grew up in San Antonio. No, I grew up I was seven years old. And then we left and moved to Hollywood at a granny's house. That's right. We're in Hollywood, a one room apartment, one block north of Hollywood Boulevard, the one that Now this is what you pulled on your ear? Yeah, that was hello to her? Yes, yes, And where was she at the end of her life, still in California? Was still in California? Did she come and see? Well, she she died before I got my show, but she had seen me do the Gary Moore Show, in the had Sullivan Show and so forth. And you accomplished. Yeah. Well, at first when I got the chance to go to New York from California, because I wanted to be on Broadway, I wanted to be ethel Merman, Mary Martin, you know that. And she was not for it. She said, you're bloodstooth it and you'll be dead in a week in New York. Why do you think she said that she didn't want me to go. She was trying to talk to you out of it. Yeah, she didn't want to lose you. Correct to show business. Correct is the sodom and gomra. She just didn't want me to be away from her. Yeah, to leave her. But when I got my first show, it was a Paul Winchell Kitty TV show, I auditioned and I got a gig on that, and I called Nanny and I said, Nanny, I'm going to be on Paul Winchell Show Saturday. And she said, well, say hello to me and said, Nanny, I don't think they're gonna let me say so. We uh, we figured out I'd pull my ear, which meant hi, Nanny, I love you, and then lay or when I got successful at Mannheim, Nanny, I love you. Your checks on the way and when you when you go. How would you describe when you're on Gary Moore show. You're one of a company, Yes, and you come to Los Angeles to do your show and you're part of a company, But you're not just part of a company. You're the star of the show. With your show, however, But I remember Gary Moore and I learned a lot from him. He was so wonderful and it was his show, The Gary Moore Show, and it was very popular, variety comedy variety show. And Derward Kirby was a sidekick Gerward and me and Mary and Lauren were the second bananas, but he never treated us as second bananas. For instance, Alex, we would come in on a Monday to read the script for that week, and he'd look at it and he said, and he'd have a joke or something. He said, you know, I can't I can't give this joke to Durward he can do it better than me. Or give this line to Carol. She she can't say it funnier than I can't. So it was a true rep company, and that's what I learned about my show. He set a true you know, so his name was on it, but we were a true rep company. My name was, you know, the head of it. We were a true rep company. Because when that happens and you don't want to hog it, you know, uh, the show gets better. You give it to Tim, you give it to who's got yeah, and and do it you know, Oh, you know, years ago when I was doing the Gary Moore Show. One of the guests that week one week was ed Wynn, you know, the old wonderful Vaudevillian comedian. And so we were sitting around lunch one day and he was regaling us with stories and stuff, and he said he started to talk about the difference between a comic and a comedic actor, and Gary said, what is it? He said, well, a comic says funny things like Bob Hope. A comedic actor like Jack Benny says things funny. Well that good. So Joe, your husband and you you get out to l A, you start to do the show. Who's in charge creatively? Who's the final word creatively? We both you and your husband. Yeah, we've done cast the show. Where did you find them? Well, Harvey was on the Danny Kay Show. Danny had a comedy variety show and Harvey was his How many years did show run? You know, I don't know, fine, something like yeah more than two right, And he was going to go off the air. And we had seen his show and love the show, and we said this, Harvey Corman is just sense. It's like Carl Reiner to Sid Caesar and Art Carney to Jackie Gleeson. You know, we wanted to get a rep company. We said, oh my god, and Danny's show was going off the air when we were going on. We said, let's get Harvey Corman. So that's what we did. I practically attacked him in a parking lot at CBS. I think we had already called his agent, but I I ran into him. Not I wasn't in a car, but I ran into him in the parking lot at CBS, and I just grabbed, you gotta be on my show. You gotta be on it. So we got him and Tim, well, Tim was it a regular at the get go. He yeah. We had him on maybe twice a month or something until duh, finally the penny dropped him. We hired him in the ninth year for every single week. I mean, was he had He was it something you just hadn't considered. He wasn't available, he didn't want to sign on. Well, he had done a couple of other shows in the meantime he did. He had a variety show that didn't work, and he had a comedy western that was filmed, which was a big mistake because Tim needs to be in front of an audience. You know, I have a funny story about his can's elation for this one. It's a funny s cancelation story i've ever heard. He was doing this show called Wrango and it was he was inept cowboy and it was filmed and so, and it was not very good. So he's in the motor home after they've done one scene one day and he's changing and putting on his boots and stuff like that, and there's a knock on the door and it was an underling actually from ABC, who was sent to tell him that the show was canceled. But he was nervous and he said, I'm uh warn't Warren Tart or somebody from ABC MI MI, Mr Conrad and Tim said why how are you? What? What can I do for you? And the guy said, uh, stop doing this. You can pack up your dressing room. He just didn't. He he took off his boots and went home. In fact, every show he'd done only ran about thirteen weeks because that was an arm then and then it was canceled. So at one point he had a license plate that said thirteen weeks. But what a genius? Who was the woman you're in a sketch, and I was maybe one of them, the one with the French revolutionary sketchy. She was. She was on our show nineteen times. She was. She's still with us. Nanny's about she's in her nineties and she was wonderful to work with, absolutely wonderful. You you are you see you're talking to someone who you know. Back then show business with show business, he did Broadway that you did, uh sitcoms and variety shows like yours, the old great variety shows that you don't see as much anymore. You did game shows, passwords there passed Alan Luddon. Yes, you saw you saw Geene Rayburn with that antenna like microphone match game. Richard Dawson was smash my gosh. And who was the one that was Klugman's wife Brett Brett Summers those people because you knew they all had like a flask, they were having a drink. It was a party. Well they did that with Hollywood Square, Hollywood Square and everybody would get Snucker exactly. We would do Paul lind in my house to harass my mother. I had a childhood that was just immersed. It was just a wash in this comedy. I watched you, I watched Gleeson, I watched Alan Funt. I mean, I'm a kid born in nine, grew up in the sixties watching TV, pretty much a bandon TV after that. And then I go and I go to acting school, and of course everyone wants to do O'Neil and check Off and Ibsen, and we all want to plumb the depths of our soul, and rightfully so. But then I do a sitcom and I realized I'm stealing from all those people. And I saw and no one more than Corman, no one more than And he is so talented. He was one is timing and his tone he could when he did still Zachary Scott in Mildred Farce. You know, unbelievable, how he smarmie he was, and he channeled Clark Gable. I mean, I swear he didn't know how he was. He was so nervous that week when we were going to do Went with the Wind, uh, and he said, I can't do Gable. But the minute he got into the drag, he became again what I was talking about. He became custom lead the way, yeah, and the wig and the and the mustache and the whole outfit. And everything. He became Clark Gable. The show is, of course. I mean I want to talk about it in terms of not how things have changed, because I think people beat that to death a little bit. But I mean, you're a woman at your show, and did everybody uh treat you the way you wanted to be treated? Back then? It was all like yeah, yeah, sure, honey, put Joe on the phone. That's about right. Well, I it was my doing too, you know. I in that era there the only one who really would speak up was Lucy. She was very strong. But it's not in my nature to take over confront or anything. You know, like if if a sketch wasn't working or something, instead of like Gleason or Sid would say, let's look, guys, the stinks now, come on, you gotta fix it. But but you know they would do that. I would say, I'd call the writers down into the rehearsal hall and I'd say, you know, guys, um, I'm not doing this too well. Do you think maybe you could help me out with a different line here there? Because you know, otherwise I would have been a bit in their you know. And yeah, and I wired the writers. How many writers did you have Well, we had about seven for the comedy, and we had three special material writers who did all the original music and songs and medley and finales and so a music department, right, and uh so that was fine, but I would have a saying. I'd walk into the writer's room. Ernie Rosen was our head writer, and I said, you know, I'd love to do Mildred Pierce. Can we do Mildred Pierce someday? Or I want to do Postman Always Rings twice, Double Indemnity, African Queen Love Story, all of those you got, Well, we never did that. Let me go back and do that one, you know. And so they would do that. But I did dream a sketch once. I dreamed can you say it on the air? Sure it was. I dreamed it, and we put it on the air. I was in a shower, I mean the door covered me, you know, and the water was coming down and I was getting wet and washing and I'm singing, well on the moment I wake up, dream a little dream of you, and I'm singing. The band is playing so forth, and then I turned the water off, get a towel, kind of dry off, wrap it around myself, opened the door exit and the camera pans in and there are three musicians in tuxedos playing ringing wet your there. It worked, It was very funny. So you had those writers, and how much writing did you do? Didn't expand over the years, but you became more confident. How about this? Not about this? We wrote on our feet. When we get the sketch, we'd start to rehearse and Harvey would say, you know, can I just feel like saying this instead of that? So we do it. I would do it tim so forth, and I have to compliment our writers. They never complained. They came down and if it was funny and working, they said, great, keep it in. Carol tells a story about her friend Lucy All addressing the writers of The Lucy Show. When the pilot wasn't working. Lucy wasn't afraid to speak her mind. She told her kid, that's when they put the S on the end of my last name. Explore the here's the thing archives. I talked with Kristin Wigg, who early on preferred her scenes unscripted for some reason. It was less scary to me than having words in front of me, because I think when you're handed a script. You know that you're supposed to do it in a certain way. People will think like, how is she reading this? But when you're improvising, there's nothing to compare it to and you can do Take a listen at Here's the Thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing. The Carol Burnett Show was an ensemble show that welcomed the biggest stars of television and film as its guests. Burt Reynolds, Jerry Lewis, Phillis Diller, the Jackson Five Share. Everyone wanted to work with Carol. That was what we talked about, you know, the get go. I said, you know, aside from having a rep company, I want to have guest starts, but I don't want to have a guest star stay, like a Steve Lawrence who would come on and just sing a song and maybe we'd see him next in the finale. I wanted to integrate everybody into the show so many times, I mean almost every sketch, Almost every guest star we had, we put in sketches, so they were throughout the show. Remember the company? Yeah, correct, And so that's certainly what Bert was without naming names when people came out? Were some better than others? What did you do when they came on? Did you just kind of diminish their role the show? No, they were all pretty good, but some were you guys, that fabulous h Steve Lawrence is one of the funniest human beings in the world and hysterical, and he was one of my favorite sketch performers. We did Postman Always Drinks twice, we did African Queen together, we did Double Indemnity together, we did um uh from Here to Eternity together, I mean. And he was brilliant. And so when we first went into syndication many years ago, we had to cut all the music out, so it was only a half hour in syndication of the sketches because of cost of clarences and all of that. So Steve, of course all of his music was cut out and so forth. By one time he during this time, he and Edie were in an airport one day and these teenage girls ran up to him and said, you're that funny guy on the Brunette Show. And he used to say, if you're long cut my song, don't cut the sketch cut my song. I can sing anytime. Yeah, but I can't do this anytime. Who were some of the other ones that came on that you ken Berry wonderful one, but saying dance he was in Crush, Well he's he's a great dancer, great huffer, and he sings and he's funny. He was adorable, and so we used him a lot. Bernadette Peters was the first. She was a kid. She was the first person we asked, we signed. She wasn't on on our very first show, but she was the first person we asked to be on our show. Someone that surprised you. Oh gosh, I didn't remember who was a movie star. Maybe they came on and surprised you. Betty Grabel. No, we had Betty on because I was raised in the forties and so you know, she was my favorite movie star and so I was thrilled when we got her on the show. She was funny, very very sharp, funny, wonderful sense of humor. And at the same time on that show was Martha Ray. So we had Betty Grabel and Martha Ray. And that was the first time we ever did the soap opera as The Stomach Turns, and it was they were in it. Uh, your show plays during a time of incredible politic upheaval in the country, the late sixties in the early seventies. It doesn't get anymore tumultuous, pretty heavy. And was that something that you cast an eye toward or did you decide to ignore it completely? Well, I don't know if it was a decision to ignore it, but we we just didn't do it. Nothing political, No, because I don't know. I'm a clown and I just wanted to I'm gonna ask you about it. I just want Betty Belly laughs. That's what I wanted, you know, like a Sid Caesar. You know, I loved his show, and so that's really consider yourself a comic or comic, a comedic actor, comedic at it not because for you that range I want to get back to the Vietnam era thing, but for you, you see you come in and of course the wardrobe and the wig and the eyebrows make it in mildred fierce the moment you walk in. But also you have that core of Joan oozing out of you when you walk on. I just then you dump out of it and you can you can go from one extreme to the other and then you're a clown and then you're doing voices and you're the character's collapsing and you know, in the family sketch, Unie and Mama and Ed you know, sorry, sorry, well we did. We did about thirty five of those. And one time we had Maggie Smith on the show and uh so the sketch was with the family. Maggie Smith was a school teacher and she called Unice and uh Ed and Mama and to talk about the fact that unison ed son was a bully. Bubba was you never saw him, but was a Bubba in school and she wanted to discuss it with us. Well, during the course of the sketch, she discovers why poor Bubba is that way. It's because of this horribly dysfunctional family. Right. So, I don't know whose idea was in rehearsal. Might have been Harvey's, might have been mine, I don't Uh. We decided, just as an acting experiment, let's not do it as these characters. Let's do this sketch as if it's a it's a one act and so we did it. We didn't go over the top with the screeching and all of that. We did it very straight. Now, those sketches never had jokes in them. They were all about character. So when we did that, it was devastating. It was like doing a very serious one act when when Eunice is trying to defend her role as a mother, it was very very serious. So that was really great writing. And then we topped it off with the way we talked in all of that. Yeah, and then it became funny. It was a great piece of writing and a great acting experiment. We just did it in rehearsal to go back to that period, so your own uh politics didn't enter into the show or your husband's and you were better off for that. I think so, because now you know, when we're seeing stuff it holds up even though it was forty years old because it's not topical, you know. So in a way that that was a blessing. We almost didn't get on the air because CBS didn't want us explain that they didn't want what me to do a variety show. They didn't want a variety show. They didn't want you, they didn't want me to do it. Well, what happened was when I left the Gary Moore Show, I signed a ten year contract with CBS, and there was a strange clause in the first five years of the kind was that if I wanted to do an hour long variety show, all I had to do was push the button, and CBS would have to put on thirty one hour pay or play variety shows with me. So hobably, what they called up the Burnett clause, which means that's never happening again. That's true. And so I thought, you know, I'm not gonna never you. I would never exercise that clause. Well, five years, we're almost up. There was a week left and I hadn't been working, and we were we just bought a house, or put a down payment on a house in California. We had two little babies, and Joe and I looked at each other. He said, yeah, we'd better push that button. It was the last week. There were a lot of between Christmas and New Year's. So I called. We were in California and I called the Vice president here. I said hi. He said, oh, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. How are you. I said, well, I'm calling to push that button, and he'd totally forgotten. He had no idea what I was talking about. And then they called me back the next day. He said, Carol, you know it's not for gals. For comedy, variety is a man's game. They wanted me to do a sitcom where I would play Agnes, and I said, I don't want to be the same person week after week. I want to I want to do this, And they had to put us on the air otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you about this. Now, you partnered with your then husband. You didn't stay married to him. We were married for almost twenty years, right, and you got divorced. But but during the time you were married, that was a good thing. We were doing the show. Yeah, you're doing the show, and you're doing a show with your husband, day in, day out with your husband. See, I love that idea. And some people think that's anathema to them. They never want to do that. Well, like, well, I kind of like the extent you want to say. I let him be the boss. He protected you. Yeah, he totally protected me, and you know I could just come in and have fun, right, he let you. He worked with the writers and the this and that. You know, the time that I would work with the writers was when we were staging it and that's when I do you think you were funny? Yes? Did you crack him up? I'm not really that way in person, as they say in real life. Don't you love that term in what somebody like in real life? I'm very kind of quiet. And and was he honey, Yeah, he had a great sense of he yeah, he was. He wasn't a performer in anyway. Well, he actually was a member of the Skylarks, which was a okay, the Skylarks was a great musical group like the High Lows, and you know, and uh he started out writing special material music material for the Dinah Shore Show years ago. You know, your show was done in a different era in terms of standards and practices. What was that like? Did you sit there sometimes they go, Now we they left us alone, They left you alone. We had when you stick that sword in Harvey Corman's crotch? What did they say about that? It was an accident? Was it an accident? You? Oh? You know one time though we were doing we had this wonderful censor, sat Charlie pett John, God bless him. And he was a who We just loved him anyway. He never bothered with anything. So Harvey and I were doing a sketch where I was a nudist and I was being interviewed by him like Edward R. Murrow, you know, and I'm behind a fence that says keep out, and I'm bare shoulder and you know, I'm leaning on the fence bare legs with high top sneakers on. So it was jokes about a nudist colony, right. So one of the lines was Harvey said, so tell me how how do you new this? What do you do for recreation? And my line, well, we have dances every Saturday night, you know. And he said, oh, how do you new this dance? And my line was very carefully well for some reason the higher ups Charlie didn't mind that line. They said, no, that's too too suggestive. Come up with something else. Are you ready? So this is what we came up with, and this is what went on the air. Uh So, what do you do what we have dances every Saturday night? Well, how do you it? A stance? Cheek to cheek and they left and that was funnier. You know, there's material that gets uh um revived and it comes up and none more so than Annie and you are the miss Hannighan as far as I'm concerned, Thank you. And who directed that film? John Houston? Was that like for you? Well, it's very funny. Um, you know he was not really uh into musicals, right, Yeah. I have a theory. Race Start produced it, okay, and I have a theory. Race Start never liked to get a no out of anybody. I think this is all in my mind that Ray called John Houston to play Daddy Warbucks. That's my theory. And because he would have been wonderful daddy, and uh, he didn't. Mr Houston didn't want to do it. So Ray, not wanting to get a no, said well then how about directing it? That's my theory, you know. But Henny did the movie. Finny did the movie. Yeah, and Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters. We were the villains, the three villains, and uh, I love doing it. I loved doing uh. And something that was just great fun was we would sing live. I sang Little Girls live. It was not prerecorded. The orchestra was previously was not. They would play and I sang they played a track and you sang when I sang live and great number you and him doing are you doing that? And him doing easy streets two takes. I said, print, that's it. Yeah, he knew what he wanted, had the right people. One of the funniest pieces of direction I ever got was when I went to him and I said, uh, I talked to him. I said, you know, I think she should drink, because she's really drink. I mean that she should have a little you know, you know, uh, knock him back every so often because she's miserable, you know, and Ncy's kids and so forth. So the only kind of solace she gets is to knock them back a little bit, you know. And so he said, well that's a very good idea, dare Yes, that's good. And so I said, okay, so I'm not gonna play her drunk, but I'm gonna play her like she you know, she kind of she needs one. As the first scene was with Hannighan and um the secretary who was coming in to get to get Annie, you know, And so I said, Mr He called me John, Dear, Mr John, how do you see this? How do you want me to do? He said? He said, just cavort, Dear. I had we finished, uh, we wrapped. But what they did they made a big mistake. They filmed Easy Street with four dancers and singers on the Easy Street with Monkey Grinder and we would jump on on fire escapes and jump all. It just was overkill. At that time, they spent a million dollars on that one number. It took a week to shoot, and Tim and Bernardette I said, this is just it should just be the three villains in the orphanage because that's the way it was in the original, and they are killing this song. So but okay, So it wrapped. So I went back to Honolulu and I had um a procedure done on my chin. I had always wanted a bit because I had a weak chin. And so this oral surgeon, no no, he pulled it somehow. He pulled this out three millimetersn't have the full John Delorian implant. No, no implant. So anyway, so I had a little more of a chin, which I felt it was good. It wasn't Kirk Douglas. It was just a little more of a chin, okay. So I had that done by this oral surgeon in Honolulu. Now two months later, uh, I get a call from Ray Start. We're gonna re shoot the Easy Street number. I said, well, that's great. I said, but great. You know, now I have a chin and he said, oh, and I explained it to him and he's, oh, with all that Hannigan drag, you Are'm not gonna gonna worry about it. Also, it's not going to be picture to picture. It'll be a totally separate thing. So but we're just going to do it with the three of you in the orphanage and it is great. So we all flew back and we report to work and there's John Houston sitting here and so forth, and we're gonna shoot it. And he said, well, this is what I want to do. He said, I would like to take it from when Carol ran into the closet to get Annie's locket when she comes back out, that's where we'll pick it up. And I thought, oh, So I went up and I said, Mr Hugh called me John, Mr Houston, Uh, two months ago, when I ran into the closet, I didn't have a chin exactly. Now you're picking up where I come out of the closet and I have a chin. I just thought I would call that to your attention. And here is what he said. He thought and thought, and he said, oh, well, well, dear than just come out looking determined. Is that a great piece of direction? I remember that. That's clever. Um. I want to say this. You know who you are to all of us who grew up watching TV then, and I can say to you from the bottom of my heart and without equivocation, what people think it was they think of you, when they think of you was You're the most talented woman that was ever on TV. You're the most talented woman that was ever on TV. You really are. Because there's a lot of people who are like you, and they did some things that were great, but none of them did as much as you did as well as you did, and had the warmth and the sweetness and the nut and the insanity. I mean, I'm assuming there's some therapists out there who must know something about you out there in Beverly Hills. You won't get into that, but you are the most talented woman that was ever on TV ever. Excuse me, I've got to go now and buy a bigger hat. Just look determined, Just look to just look determined today. Just Cavort, just Cavort out there in New York. I'm so glad we had this time together, just to have a laugh. Horse. If you've seen the Carol Burnett Show, then you recognize this tune. Carol ended her show each week singing this song that her former husband and then producer wrote for her. So the Screen Actors Guild will bestow the two thousand fifteen Life Achievement Award upon Carol Burnett early next year. Dream this is Alec Baldwin. You're listening to Here's the thing at a time. Four things you have to do. But the time I like the best is any evening I can spend a monde. You

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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