Carol Burnett's Hollywood

Hollywood has always had a hardscrabble side to it. Just behind the glitz and the glamour is a seemlier life of small apartments and alcoholics. This is the Hollywood that Carol Burnett grew up in. Her parents were both alcoholics and divorced when Burnett was very young. She was raised by her grandmother Mae in a tiny apartment just a block or so north of Hollywood Blvd. Her mother lived in another apartment in their building. She was a poor kid and she knew it. Carol Burnett grew up sleeping on a couch and keeping her few clothes on the shower curtain rod in the bathroom of her grandmother's tiny apartment. The Hollywood she grew up in was the Hollywood of the 1930's and 40's, its heyday, she was so close and yet so far. In her memoir "One More Time" she writes of her childhood that to some could have been filled with misery and sadness but her reflection is filled with fun and funny stories. Her grandmother whom she called Nanny comes off as a true character, a pack rat Christian Scientist with palpitations and a quick temper. Carol's parents were at best ne'er do wells with drinking problems who had enough sense to let Nanny do the actual raising of their daughter. There was also a half sister Chrissy born out of wedlock when Carol was about ten. Life was not ideal.

Some how Carol Burnett was able to rise above what could have been a sad lot in life and become one of America's most beloved television stars. She has won Emmy's, Golden Globes and The Presidential Medal of Honor. There is now a square named after her not far from her childhood home on Wilcox and Yucca at the corner of Highland and Selma by her Alma Mater Hollywood High School.

Carol Burnett took that difficult past and created some of the funniest performances in the history of television. Her childhood home is still there about a block and a half from her star on the Hollywood Blvd. Walk of Fame. She is the Hollywood success story.