True!
Carol Burnett's show was on from 1967-1978! Eleven years! Amazing!
I remember that when it first came on I was quite interested in seeing it, only to find out our CBS affiliate did not carry the program. I have no idea why and do not remember what they aired instead, but it was maddening to me. Couldn't do anything about it. It wasn't for several years later until they carried it (I guess they got the hint
eventually, but that's when I went off to college and had limited access to watching TV. I have no idea now what I have or haven't seen of the entire series, as I know there were long stretches I watched the 1/2 hr. syndicated episodes that cut out all the music.
I have a friend that we try to visit 3-4 times a month (except, of course, last year) and he's a huge Carol Burnett fan and has all the DVD releases of her series that have been out. (It takes some kind of genius to figure it all out. None of the releases that are out there are in order of release date. Some releases overlap with some episodes. It's too crazy.) However, a few years ago he asked if each time I came over if I'd like to watch an episode with him, starting with the episodes in order of release date and, of course, I've never seen those before (the first five years were never syndicated in any way for some rights reason) and if I had've seen them it would've been in black and white. So what a treat for me. We just finished all of the released episodes of the first three seasons.
I know that young kids have always liked Carol Burnett, and I was thinking how odd it was to have, for the first several years anyway, on at 10pm at night. Dean Martin, yes! But Carol, no. Of course, CBS thought it would bomb having a female host of a variety show.
I first came to Los Angeles in 1977 and that fall I saw two separate tapings of her variety show, from the 11th season. I'm afraid I don't remember much detail from either one I saw. That season Dick Van Dyke replaced Harvey Korman, who had left, and I remember thinking he just didn't fit in there. He didn't think so, either, and left midway through. I don't even recall Carol doing a Q&A with the audience. Who knows why? I do remember that one of the sketches they did was a take off on the movie San Francisco and they titled it Fran Sancisco. At that time I didn't have a TV set for about a year and I don't think I even got to see the ones I saw taped on TV! That may be one reason I don't remember much about what they did. I only remember being there.
In the 90's I saw a taping of one of her specials and I also saw her in a production of the musical Company at the Long Beach Civic Light Opera in, well, Long Beach. Duh, LOL! And on September 8th, 2001, on one of my usual morning Saturday visits to the Century City Shopping Center to see a movie or two, I went in Crate & Barrell to check something out and one of the few people in the store that morning was....Carol Burnett. She was by herself and talking to a sales person about packing and shipping whatever she was buying to someone as it was a gift. Normally I'd just remember that I once saw CB at C&B, but I remember the date specifically because it was three days before 9/11.
My friend who works at The Grill on the Alley in Beverly Hills, says that Carol is a frequent patron of the restaurant and that she is one of the nicest people ever. She often comes in with others like Steve Lawrence, who's a good friend, but my friend says Steve Lawrence has dementia and/or Alzheimers (?) and doesn't know where he is or who he is half the time.
He's 86 and Carol is 88!
As for that Carol/Anita sketch...I'm going to ask my friend if he knows if that's one of the episodes he might have from Season 11, or try to find out if it was one of those 4 episodes from the 1979 Carol Burnett & Co. summer series. (Not to be confused with Burnett & Co., another brief series.) Early 1978 when they taped the last episodes seems a bit too early for the "Prop 6" intimation, but, then, summer of 1979 seems a bit late.