Burnett gets generous 'American Masters' treatment

PBS' "American Masters" continues its thematic miniseries on apparently unhappy humorists with "Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character."

Debuting at 9 p.m. Monday on WTTW Channel 11, it follows on the heels of "Good Ol' Charles Schulz" earlier this week. If it takes a gentler approach, that's in part because Burnett's humor was gentler, if no less empathetic, than the "Peanuts" comic strip, which could be quite caustic and despairing behind its childhood sweetness. "A Woman of Character" isn't quite a warts-and-all profile, but it does study a few personal blemishes up close, even if it offers nowhere near the indictment the Schulz portrait did. Burnett's career might have been tinged with tragedy, but she can hardly be called unhappy.

Burnett was and is a beloved comedian, but the odd thing is "The Carol Burnett Show," as fondly remembered as it is, was never really a top-echelon hit. For most of the '70s, it completed CBS' boffo Saturday-night lineup, right after "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Bob Newhart Show," teamed early in the decade with "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H." Yet it never ended a TV season in the top 10 in the Nielsen ratings and for most of its run resided comfortably if humbly in the top 25.

Yet Burnett left an indelible stamp on the medium. When her show debuted, in the fall of 1967, Red Skelton, Dean Martin and Jackie Gleason all had variety shows in the top 10, and Ed Sullivan, the Smothers Brothers and even Lawrence Welk were in the top 20. "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" was only beginning its leap to the top of the heap. When Burnett's show ended, however, just over 10 years later, it was the last variety show left standing.

She endured by taking the old form -- Peter Bogdanovich calls it a mixture of vaudeville, satire and burlesque -- and making it sophisticated enough to seem contemporary. Above all, though, she kept it playful, funny and "generous," a word that keeps popping up where Burnett is concerned. That makes her show seem almost quaint now compared with the cheap yuks of today's variety heirs ("Saturday Night Live" and "MadTV"), as well as the cruelty of reality TV.

"She was never cynical," Jenna Elfman says, going on to point out that "The Carol Burnett Show" wasn't insulting or hard on its characters.

"She's like celebrating people," adds Tracey Ullman, who insists that even at Burnett's most hideous, as in the Eunice character from the skit that would later become the Vicki Lawrence series "Mama's Family," there's a charitable treatment of the person she's playing.

"Woman of Character" returns to Burnett's roots to show she was a child of alcoholic parents raised by her grandmother, and that dysfunctional family life was the source of much of the humor in that running skit.

Later, she had a daughter who won a battle with drug abuse, only to succumb to lung cancer just when it seemed she had her life in order. Along the way, Burnett's first marriage failed.

"She is clearly tempered the way steel is by adversity," says producer Hal Prince.

Yet through it all Burnett kept much of that tragedy hidden, at least in her work. Unlike Schulz, she rarely mined it for her humor. She could be insecure about her talent, generally hiding her singing ability in comic sketches, but otherwise she trusted herself to make things funny, either with her malleable facial expressions ("You'd sometimes suspect it was made of rubber," says Betty White), or her flair for slapstick pratfalls. At the same time, she created an open work environment that produced the easy ad-libs and offhand comedy that became her show's trademark.

"She's the most generous star I've ever seen," says co-star Tim Conway, responsible for much of the onstage laughter the cast generated.

"It just couldn't be helped. It's like giggling in church," Burnett says. "But it was always real."

In addition to that open work environment, what distinguished Burnett and her show was her natural rapport with her audience. She usually began each program with a Q&A session and ended, of course, with her singing "It's Time to Say Goodbye" into the camera, with a tug of her ear -- a not-so-secret signal of greeting to her grandmother.

Burnett, of course, is still living, and that too makes the documentary a little more respectful toward her, a little more willing to skirt uncomfortable topics and avoid finding fault. It never really gets deeply into her own flaws (if any), the way the Schulz profile did. So perhaps "American Masters" will get a chance to revisit this subject in more depth after the inevitable. Until then, however, this is a loving portrait, as charitable toward its subject as Burnett herself is toward her colleagues and audience.