Carol Burnett Immortalized With New Award In Her Honor At 76th Golden Globes
Carol Burnett will forever be a part of the Golden Globe Awards. The legendary comedian and five-time Golden Globe winner will be honored with an inaugural television special achievement award at the 2019 ceremony, Variety reports. The new award will be known as the Carol Burnett Award and will “celebrate the highest level of achievement in the medium,” according to a statement by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Carol Burnett has been a comedy trailblazer for more than 50 years, HFPA president Meher Tatna said in the statement. Not only was she the first woman to host a TV variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, which ran on CBS from 1967 to 1978, Burnett, who has won six Emmys, a Grammy, two Peabody Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, was also the first woman to win both the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and Kennedy Center Honors.
The comedy legend has won more Golden Globes than any other person in television history. Now, the beloved 85-year-old star will be the first recipient of her namesake award at the 76th Golden Globes. Carol Burnett will appear at the live 2019 Golden Globes ceremony to accept the award, and with any luck, she’ll end her speech with her telltale ear tug.
Funny fashion flashback: Carol Burnett's most iconic TV looks https://t.co/45kfdWBBq3 pic.twitter.com/EpsocfR2DV
— New York Post (@nypost) January 4, 2019
The new award in Carol Burnett’s name is the TV equivalent of the Golden Globes’ other special award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which is awarded to those with achievements in the movie industry. Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges will receive this year’s DeMille Award, according to TV Guide.
Carol Burnett started her TV career in the late 1950s, playing Celia Howard, the girlfriend of Buddy Hackett’s title character, on the NBC sitcom Stanley. The actress went on to appear on some of the biggest shows of the 1960s, including The Garry Moore Show, The Twilight Zone, and The Lucy Show. But Carol Burnett will always be best known for headlining her iconic sketch comedy series for more than a decade on CBS.
For 11 seasons, Carol Burnett and her comedy troupe Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner ruled the variety TV landscape. The Carol Burnett Show premiered on September 11, 1967, and was consistently at the top of the ratings during its original run as Carol and her comedy troupe delivered spot-on parodies of soap operas, movies, and TV commercials. The Carol Burnett Show was also known for its closing song, in which Burnett sang “I’m so glad we had this time together” before famously tugging her ear at the end of each episode in an unspoken message to her grandmother to let her know she was thinking of her.
While The Carol Burnett Show was a ratings hit, Burnett told Variety she took each season as it came on the CBS comedy show.
“For those 30 shows we were just going to have a ball,” Burnett told Variety in 2018.
“That was the idea. We didn’t know if we’d ever get to do any more than those, but we knew we had 30 shows, and we were going to make the most of them.”
The 76th Golden Globes airs Sunday, January 6 at 8 p.m. on NBC.
