![Carol Burnett & Sutton Foster: "Once [again] Upon a Mattress"](https://gobattlemountain.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/carol-burnett-sutton-foster-once-again-upon-a-mattress.jpg)
Carol Burnett & Sutton Foster: “Once [again] Upon a Mattress”
New York has always been a place where stars are born, but every once in a while, the city gives rise to a legend. In 1959 a new show opened written by Mary Rodgers, daughter of Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, and it starred a newcomer named Carol Burnett.
The show, “Once Upon a Mattress,” was an adaptation of the old fairy tale, “The Princess and the Pea,” about the princess who could feel a pea under a stack of mattresses. And from the start it seemed like Princess Winnifred was a role Burnett was born to play.
It was her Broadway debut, and a golden opportunity for a girl who grew up nearly penniless. It was also ironic that Burnett played a princess on a pile of royal mattresses, and yet she didn’t have her own bed until she was 21 years old. “I slept on the couch; I lived with my grandmother in a one-room apartment in Hollywood, until I left to go to New York,” Burnett said. “And then I lived in a wonderful place called the Rehearsal Club, and I had a cot. And I thought, Wow, this is nice. I have a bed for the first time.”
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Her threadbare upbringing might explain her ferocious work ethic: in 1959, between “Mattress” and her regular CBS network gig on “The Garry Moore Show,” Burnett was working seven days a week.
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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Source: cbsnews.com