Glad to have time together

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — If things had turned out as Carol Burnett originally planned, you might be reading her work in this newspaper every day. On the comics pages.

"I was pretty much of a nerd in school, and I wanted to be a journalist and a cartoonist," Burnett told TV critics. "I entertained the idea of having my own comic strip and writing it. And I would draw constantly."

But her "other love" was the movies. Which led to performing.

And, eventually, she became nothing short of a television legend, appearing on "The Garry Moore Show"; doing big-event specials with the likes of Julie Andrews and Beverly Sills; and starring for 11 years in "The Carol Burnett Show" (1967-78), the last successful prime-time variety show on TV.

Burnett's career is recalled in tonight's installment of "American Masters" (8 p.m., Ch. 7), appropriately titled "Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character."

As has been well documented, Burnett grew up poor in Hollywood. She and her grandmother were big movie fans, attending as many as eight movies a week in the late '40s and early '50s.

"I am so grateful for that, because the movies of that era — somebody might look at them now and say, 'Oh, they're so old-fashioned' and so forth," Burnett said. "But they gave this little girl hope. The bad guys got their just dues, and the good guys always came through. And I was kind of raised without cynicism because I love the movies and so I never felt cynical. I never felt angry. I never felt that I couldn't do anything. I really had a Mickey (Rooney) and Judy (Garland) mentality. And I think that saw me through a lot of stuff.

"There is beauty out there. There is fun. There is music. There is laughter."

It's that kind of attitude she brought to her performances, her variety show and her audience.

"Why do we get into this business as kids? I mean, when you really think of it, we get into it to have fun," Burnett said. "And I know that sounds ... like Pollyanna, but I think if you go into it with that attitude — you get in the sandbox, you put on a costume, you play. Why are you doing it? You're having fun. And if we could impart that to our audience and have fun with each other, that's going to make our show successful."

And made all of us glad we had that time together. ...

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com