I've just finished re-reading Carol Burnett's wonderfully-written, cannot-put-it-down, don't-want-it-to-end 1986 book "One More Time, A Memoir" in which she writes about her childhood in Texas and Hollywood, leading up to the early years of her fabulous career in television, film and writing.
While glued to her riveting and entertaining memoir, I felt like I was a member of her extremely dysfunctional, yet very lovable family, the center of which for Carol were her divorced parents Louise and Jody (both chronic alcoholics), her maternal grandmother "Nanny," and her half-sister Christine.
One of the things that jumped out at me while reading the book was the fact that her father Jody Burnett (born 1907 in Texas, the youngest of three brothers) lived for a time after the divorce (circa 1940) in Santa Monica with his mother Nora at 915 Wilshire Boulevard, on the north side of the boulevard, between 9th and 10th Streets, "...in a tiny place that looked kind of like a lean-to, right off 10th Street behind a sporting goods store."
Today, that address, 915 Wilshire does not appear to exist, and there is no sporting goods store. My best guess is that 915 Wilshire was where The Slice Pizzeria is located today, adjacent to the alley that splits the block. On the other side of the alley, fronting on Wilshire is something very rare: what looks like an old bungalow home. Neither the bungalow nor the pizza place show an address to the street.
Moreover, before her parent's divorce, Carol wrote in her memoir that she and her mother and father lived "...in a little place on Montana Avenue" in Santa Monica.
Ms. Burnett spent most of her childhood in a small apartment hotel in Hollywood, right off Hollywood Boulevard. Her mother Louise (born 1911) lived in one small studio in the building and, down the hall, Carol lived in another studio with her maternal grandmother "Nanny," to whom she was extremely close.
At about age 11 in 1944-1945, young Carol began visiting her father Jody and paternal grandmother Nora on weekends in Santa Monica, sometimes bringing along her best friend, Ilomay. These visits were made possible partly by the fact that Jody had entered into a "dry period" and was not drinking.
Carol and Ilomay would ride the Pacific Electric red streetcar from Hollywood to the Beverly Hills station, where Jody would meet them, and they'd all complete the final leg of the trip to 915 Wilshire by bus.
On Saturdays, Carol and her girlfriend would walk the ten blocks to the beach at Santa Monica "...and spend the day getting sunburned." On Saturday nights, Jody would take the girls to "an early double-feature, and we'd all share a box of popcorn." In her memoir, Carol continued, "Those were the best weekends. I loved them."
The weekend visits came to an abrupt end after a little over a year when Grandmother Nora died, sending Jody back to the bottle, something young Carol absolutely despised about her father. Carol's hatred of drunks and drinking explains why she was so hurt by an item published at the height of her career in the National Enquirer that she was seen in a fancy restaurant, drunk (she sued the Enquirer and won).
When Carol graduated from Hollywood High School in Winter 1951, Jody could not attend because "he was sick in a charity hospital."
Carol writes in her memoir that the last time she saw her father Jody was in August, 1954--just before she left Los Angeles to jumpstart her career in New York City. Jody was a tuberculosis patient in the "charity ward" at what was then known as Olive View Sanitarium.
Three months or so later, in New York, Carol received word that Jody had died. She wrote: "I'm in New York, and he's dead. In Venice Beach somewhere...with a bunch of wino buddies."
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