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 For The Burnetts With Love  

She lived with her maternal grandmother, called "Nanny" (Mabel or Mae Eudora Jones White, 1885-1967), when small in San Antonio while her parents were living in Santa Monica, California, trying to find work.  Her great-grandmother, "Goggy," (or "Dora" was Sarah Eudora Haney Jones), also lived with Carol and Nanny.  Her parents eventually separated and she and Nanny moved to Hollywood and lived in an aging apartment building down the hall from her mother.  Carol described Room 102 as a single cluttered room with Nanny in a depression- scarred neighborhood.  And she described Nanny as a hypochondriacal Christian Scientist with a buried past.  Carol attended UCLA, studied theater arts and then went to New York.  After little success, she teamed up with college friends to put on her own show.  She sang a song that Eartha Kitt had sang in a skin-tight sex kitten dress.  Carol sang it in a frumpy house dress.
Her accessibility is her treasure.  She's one of us.   Carol said her desire to be funny emerged from a need to escape a painful childhood, what with Nanny always having her "hissy-fits," and Carol thinking she would die at any minute and leave her.
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In her book written as a long letter to her daughters, One More Time (1986), she said, "I was never able to share that much.  I closed myself in real early because it made me feel safe.  I put a wall up.  And then I was able to let things out only by being somebody else.  It worked.  Its what kept me going.  Funny, even after I was grown-up, there were times when I was more at home in front of millions of people than I was at home."

She was a dominant variety personality of the seventies and would tug on her ear as a secret gesture to Nanny and wave good-bye.  We were entranced.  If you have not read, One More Time, I encourage you to do so.  I laughed and cried all the way through it and after I had finished, I found myself shaking my head all day and saying, "poor Carol."  The New York Post wrote: "Written for her three daughters...Burnett's is the moving story of growing up in a loving courageous family which faced poverty, alcoholism and divorce."  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said: "Truly Generous and Heart warming...over flowing with compassion and humor.  Nearly every page provides a smile, a chuckle, or an outright laugh."  Another said and I agree, "I loved it and didn't want it to end..."

Carol never knew too much about her Burnett family, only the name of her father and that he was born in Texas.  He took Carol to visit her grandmother Burnett several times, who lived in Santa Monica, California.  Carol's father, Joseph "Jody" Thomas Burnett was born 15 April 1907 in Belton, Bell County, Texas and died in November of 1954 in Los Angeles of tuberculosis and pneumonia at age 47.  Jody married Ina Louise Creighton Melton in San Antonio, Texas where they attended High School together in 1924.

Joseph Thomas Burnett was son of Joseph Hiram Burnett (1878-1930) and Nora Belle Potter (1880-1945), both of Belton, Bell County, Texas.   Nora was the grandmother Burnett that Carol visited with her father.

Joseph Hiram Burnett was son of John H. Burnett, born 1835 in New York and was still living in 1900 Bell County, Texas and died before 1910.   John married Matilda D. (1849-1900+) of North Carolina.

Carol Burnett's family was researched by June Baldwin Bork and her story can be found in The Burnetts and Their Connections, Volume One.
 

      (Graphics and Text - Courtesy of Carol Burnett)       Back to "Burnetts and Their Connections"