On April 26, 1933, Carol Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas. She was still an infant when her parents moved to Los Angeles to better their lives; however, that didn’t quite happen. She was just 8 years old when her mother had a child with a man who wasn’t Burnett’s father, which led her parents to divorce. Sadly, Burnett blamed herself for her parents’ split and their heavy drinking. “There was an awful lot they were going through that I, as a child, took personally. It had nothing to do with me, I didn’t cause it,” she said in a 1986 interview with UPI.
Burnett and her half-sister, Chrissie, were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, Mabel Eudora White, in a tiny apartment in Hollywood. “It was not a pleasant childhood,” Burnett admitted, though she reasoned it could’ve been worse. “There are some that were happier and some that have been really miserable. Mine was not miserable.”
Burnett may have grown up poor, but she was also in the epicenter of the entertainment industry. Despite being flat broke, her grandmother’s one indulgence was taking the girls to the movies. Sitting in a darkened theater, watching stories that were a world removed from her own life, resonated with Burnett and imbued her with optimism. “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,” she told People.
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