This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection by Carol Burnett Review: A Warm, Witty Memoir from a Legend

This Time Together grew directly out of Burnett's live touring show, Laughter and Reflection: A Conversation with Carol, in which she fielded unscripted questions from theater audiences across the country. That conversational DNA defines the book's structure: rather than a chronological, chapter-by-chapter autobiography, it is assembled as a series of short, episodic memories — each one self-contained, anecdote-driven, and rooted in a specific person, place, or moment. The table of contents reads like a scrapbook: "Jimmy Stewart," "Alfred Hitchcock and the Epaulets," "The Dress," "Nanny's Visit to New York," "Fans," and dozens more. The publisher describes the result as "touching and hilarious" and "100 percent Carol Burnett — funny, irreverent, and irresistible."

The memoir's richest material lies in Burnett's accounts of the celebrity friendships and professional relationships she accumulated over decades at the center of American entertainment. She writes about Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, and Julie Andrews, among many others, grounding each portrait in a specific incident rather than a general appreciation. The behind-the-scenes story of the "Went with the Wind" sketch — the moment she swept down a staircase wearing a gown made from curtain rod and all — is given its full backstory. Other episodes track the prank she and Julie Andrews played that went wrong in front of the First Lady, the time her famous Tarzan yell deterred a mugger, and the elaborate ruse she constructed involving a faked wooden leg to secure service at a celebrated ice cream parlor. These are the kinds of stories that belong to a singular show-business life, and the book is organized to deliver them with maximum comic timing.

Published commentary on This Time Together was genuinely enthusiastic. The Barnes & Noble review excerpt draws on a critic who wrote that Burnett's "short memories, of the people she met and interviewed over the years, on- and off-camera, bring it back — the golden age of variety shows," adding that "Burnett has a writer's eye for the moment, the detail, the slip that reveals character." Fellow performers were equally forthcoming: Julie Andrews stated, "I cannot recommend it highly enough." Hal Prince called Burnett "an excellent writer — so spot-on intelligent and hilarious." Tony Bennett offered that the book made him feel "every American family prays that they can have someone as lovely as Carol as their next door neighbor." That those endorsements come from collaborators who knew the events firsthand gives them a particular weight.

The memoir is also a chronicle of The Carol Burnett Show, the CBS variety program that ran for eleven seasons and won twenty-five Emmy Awards, reaching millions of viewers each week. Burnett traces the arc from her early years in New York — attending the Rehearsal Club, working Garry Moore's variety show, stretching limited finances, performing in Once Upon a Mattress under director George Abbott — through to the heights of network television. For readers who grew up watching the show or who are drawn to the history of American variety television, this thread of the book functions as an informal institutional history of that era, told from the inside.

This Time Together is designed for readers who want proximity to Burnett's voice and personality rather than a densely researched or architecturally complex autobiography. Its episodic, anecdote-first structure is its greatest asset for fans, but readers seeking a sustained narrative — a deep examination of Burnett's creative process, the business of television, or the personal difficulties she references only in passing — may find the format intentionally light. The book's own opening passage describes the live show format that inspired it: "It's just the audience and me. The evening lasts ninety minutes." That intimacy is what the memoir replicates. It is, by design, a companion piece from a performer to her audience — generous, accessible, and crafted in the spirit of shared laughter.