It’s been 44 years since “The Carol Burnett Show” went off the air, but it still brings joy to millions of fans to this day. The show is so beloved that you would think it was easy to get network executives to put it on television, but this could not be further from the truth.
In a new interview, Carol Burnett herself recalled how hard she needed to fight to get her sketch comedy show on TV.
Burnett Recalls Fighting For Her Show
While appearing on the Dear Multi-Hyphenate podcast, Burnett recalled leaving “The Garry Moore Show” in the late 1960s when she became popular enough “to do other things.”
“CBS offered me a contract to stay with them for 10 years where I would be obligated to do one special a year — an hour-long special a year and two guest appearances on some of their sitcoms,” the 89 year-old explained, according to People Magazine.
Burnett partly credited her “great agent” for scoring her a contract that included a stipulation stating that “within the first five years if I, Carol, wanted to do a comedy variety show, CBS would have to put it on the air for 30 shows, fair play, that if I ‘push that button’ they would have to put it on whether they wanted to or not.”
Related: Carol Burnett Reveals Why She Has No Plans To Retire At 89
Burnett Calls Up CBS President
In the final week of her fifth year on the agreement, Burnett called the president of CBS to say that she felt that it was time to “push that button.” Unfortunately for her, however, the head of CBS did not remember this clause of her contract.
“And he said, ‘what button?’ and I said, ‘You know where I get to do 30 comedy variety shows.’ He said, ‘Well, let me get back to you,'” she recounted. “He called me back the next day and said, ‘Comedy variety is a man’s game…it’s not for you, girl.'”
After listing out the names of men who did variety shows like Dean Martin and Milton Berle, the CBS executive told Burnett, “And we got this great little sitcom we would love you to do called ‘Here’s Agnes.'”
“Oh, my, God. Could you imagine?” Burnett said of this moment.
Burnett Fires Back At CBS Executive
Burnett fired back at the CBS president by saying, “I don’t want to be Agnes every week, I want to have an hourlong show… I want to guest stars, I want music, I want dancers, I want singers, I want sketch comedy on and on and on,’ And Michael they had to put us on the air.”
“They did not have faith in this,” Burnett stated. “…I remember just before the first taping we got all together in a ‘Kumbaya’ moment, and I just said, ‘You know what, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we know we have 30 shows so let’s just go out there and have fun!’ Well, 276 shows later, that’s exactly what we did.”
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“The Carol Burnett Show” ended up running from 1967-1978, and during that time, it won 25 Primetime Emmy Awards. It has since ranked number 17 on TV Guide’s 60 Greatest Shows of All Time, and it made the list of Time Magazine’s 100 Best TV Shows of All Time in 2007.
It’s sad to imagine a world where “The Carol Burnett Show” does not exist. Thank goodness Burnett fought so hard to get this piece of television magic on the air!
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