Long before she became a star, Carol Burnett grew up in the literal shadow of the Hollywood sign.
Burnett appeared on Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang With Amy Poehler” podcast this week, sharing memories of growing up in a Los Angeles where “You didn’t have to lock your doors.”
“And every morning when I would go out getting ready to go to school, I’d look up and there was a Hollywood sign,” she recalled, adding, “And we used to climb the Hollywood sign. The other neighborhood kids and I — now you can’t get near it.”
“We would fly kites or roller skate and they would say, ‘I’m bored. Let’s go climb the sign.’ So we did. And it was just, it was kind of rickety then, they’ve fixed it up now,” Burnett said.
“And there were splinters and I would climb up, and get splinters, and it’s a wonder we didn’t break our neck,” the 92-year-old shared. “And then the ‘O’s’ were my favorite. And I would just hang over the ‘O’s’ and say, ‘Hello, Hollywood. Hello.’ We do the Tarzan yell and all of that.”
Burnett lived with her grandmother at the time and while she had fond memories, times were often tough for her family.
“I lived with my grandmother in one room, a block north of Hollywood Boulevard,” she said. “And we were poor. Our rent was $1 a day, $30 a month, and sometimes we could hardly manage that. And so I graduated from Hollywood High. And I desperately wanted to go to UCLA. And my grandmother said, ‘Forget it. You know, we can’t afford the tuition, there’s no way.'”
She remembered tuition for the school was $50 for one semester, and she used to hope to fund something to help her reach her goal.
“So we lived in this apartment building [and] every morning, I would check — there was a pigeonhole mailbox for all the apartments — and I would look out and see if we had a little letter or something in our slot,” Burnett recalled.
Then one morning, she did discover a letter in the slot that she took home and opened.
“My name was typewritten on the envelope. And there was a $50 bill. I do not to this day know where that came from,” she said.
Burnett has been asked many times over the years if she knew who sent the life-changing money, but she insists she doesn’t.
She told People in 2018, “There’s something bigger than we are. I don’t want to sound woo-woo, but there are so many wonderful coincidences in my life.”
Burnett went to UCLA where she studied theater and headed to Broadway after graduation, and the rest is Hollywood history!