I couldn’t get the laughter out of my head. It wasn’t career. It wasn’t even a choice. It was a calling.
My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.
In ’57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.
You know, one wonderful thing that came out of my Enquirer experience is that, in my case, it was ruled tabloids are magazines. Which means they didn’t have the protection that a newspaper has.
People invite me to dinner not because I can cook, but because I like to clean up. I get immediate gratification from windex. Yes, I do windows.
What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don’t think I could write a novel. I don’t think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters.
I’ve always been able to recount things and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that.
What I do when I write is I just write the way I would tell it, so it comes out just exactly the way I would talk to you.
I love to write. I have always loved writing. That was my first love.
I always preferred working with somebody so I could look into their eyeballs and play tennis.
I always felt that I was more of an actress than a – I can’t tell a joke to save my soul, but that I was a comedic actress.
My interesting diet tips are eat early and don’t nosh between meals. I mean, I can pack it away.
When someone who is known for being comedic does something straight, it’s always “a big breakthrough” or a “radical departure.” Why is is no one ever says that if a straight actor does comedy? Are they presuming comedy is easier?
I have a great memory.
I never regretted turning down anything, I never regretted losing a job because I always felt something else was out there.
I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy.
I don’t eat much meat, fish, or poultry.
She lit another cigarette and smiled. “And that, kid, is when they added the S to the end of my last name.” I laughed right through the kumquats. I miss her. She died early on the morning of my birthday in 1989, and I got my flowers and the card from her that afternoon.
As for the career, sometimes I catch myself daydreaming about being young again and doing it all over. Then I bring myself up short when I realize how incredibly fortunate I was.
Our legacy is really the lives we touch, the inspiration we give, altering someone’s plan – if even for a moment – and getting them to think, rage, cry, laugh, argue... Walk around the block, dazed... More than anything, we are remembered for our smiles; the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the ones we bestow on a total stranger, who needed it RIGHT THEN, and God put you there to deliver. – Carrie Louise Hamilton, dedication page.
I loved it. You gave it more production than that f – – ing Jack Warner!