Carol Burnett Says Anonymous Strangers Helped Her Out Of Poverty
It’s hard to believe that TV’s legend Carol Burnett was once in poverty. But in the Netflix series A Little Help with Carol Burnett, we learn more of her life.
“There’s something bigger than we are,” she told People. “I don’t want to sound woo-woo, but there are so many wonderful coincidences in my life.”
As People writes, herparents, Creighton Burnett, an aspiring writer, and Joseph Burnett, a movie theater manager, moved west from San Antonio in the 1930s, drawn to the bright lights of Los Angeles. Instead, their fortunes floundered. The pair soon split up and both became alcoholics, and their daughter sometimes blamed herself.
“I was raised going to the movies in the 30s and 40s when there was no cynicism,” she says. “I never saw the dark side. I think those movies may be what did it for me — an imprint on a young mind and a young girl growing up that everything’s possible. You can be happy.”
When she was admitted to UCLA, she was too poor to afford the $50/year tuition. Then one day, an envelope arrived in her apartment mailbox. In it was the money she needed to get her education. “I still don’t know who it was,” says Carol of the anonymous benefactor who allowed her to enroll. “But I got to go to UCLA.”
Another time, one man she met at a party offered to help her and her future first husband, actor Don Saroyan, go to New York. He offered them both $1,000-interest free loans, on the condition that they be repaid in five years, and if they found success, they would help others achieve their dreams. And one more thing: They could never, ever reveal his name.
“I promised I wouldn’t,” says Carol, who has kept the donor’s identity secret ever since. “His wife told me he’d also helped somebody start a restaurant and another person run a gas station. He liked the people he picked and felt that they had a chance and were sincere, so he sponsored them.”