Bob Mackie Says He’s ‘Always Embraced’ Famous ‘Curtain Dress’ Carol Burnett Wore on Her Sketch Comedy Show

Carol Burnett had some memorable costumes during the 11-year run of her eponymous series.

Pieces made for The Carol Burnett Show they were the work of in-house costumer Bob Mackie, who created more than 70 looks a week for Burnett and her guests.

Of the more than 16,000 outfits Mackie created during her tenure, a few stand out, among them Burnett’s draped dress, which she famously wore portraying Scarlett O’Hara in a sketch Gone with the wind! a comedic take on the award-winning film Gone with the wind.

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While Mackie auctioned several costumes, he donated this one to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

During a conversation with Bob Mackie and Carol Burnett at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday, Oct. 20, Mackie told Turner Classic Movies’ Dave Karger, who moderated the discussion with Burnett, that he “always embraced” the costume.

“You’re happy whenever you get a good laugh,” Mackie said. “It can be the worst joke in the world, but if you laugh, you’re happy.”

Bob Mackie and comedian Carol Burnett speak during a Q&A as part of the 25th annual Newport Beach Film Festival in Newport Beach, California on October 20.

Michael Tullberg/Getty

Konzum pays homage to the scene in the award-winning film when Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) comes up with a plan to create a new dress using her mother’s curtains as much as her mother’s (played by Hattie McDaniel) shagra.

“For those of you who can’t sit and watch for four hours Gone with the wind, here’s our version,” Burnett once reflected on the sketch’s origins.

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During their conversation with Karger, Burnett and Mackie also recalled the fanfare surrounding her looks during question-and-answer segments on their show.

“And… [when] We started, Carol was just going to wear a little cape over her first costume at the first show we did, and nobody was really happy with that,” Mackie recalled. “A week later, suddenly she had to wear a whole new dress every week, which I was fine with.”

Burnett added, “I never wanted to see what I was going to wear for the Q&A until I went to the rehearsal. It was always a surprise, ‘oh, what’s my dress this week?’ ”

In a scene from ‘The Carol Burnett Show’, Carol Burnett comes down a flight of stairs wearing an outfit made from a window curtain during a parody of ‘Gone with the Wind’, August 20, 1976.

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Burnett also shared a question-and-answer segment that stemmed from executive producer Bob Banner’s desire for audiences to connect with the real Burnett.

“Instead of a comedian coming out to warm up the studio audience, he said, ‘he should come out and be the warm-up and do a Q&A and we’re filming it.’ And at first I balked at the idea because, I said, what if no one wants to ask a question or what if they do and I don’t have a quick answer.

“She continued, “He said, the reason is we want the audience to get to know you before you go into wigs and blackened teeth and fat suits and all that… let people know who you are. And so I said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it four times, for four weeks, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll forget it.’ But I started to like it because it wasn’t written, people would start raising their hands. Some of them would come and want to sing… so sometimes we just had the best time.”

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Bob Mackie and Carol Burnett in October 1969.

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Mackie called the end of the series “a little bittersweet”.

“I just loved doing the show. I loved getting a laugh when it happened,” he said.

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Although the two don’t see each other “as often as we’d like,” Burnett says, they’ve taken every opportunity to work together over the years. .

“When we stopped the show, I started doing more specials… like with Placido Domingo and Beverly Sills. And again, Julie Andrews and Bob always designed those specials. We still worked together. And I did a play on Broadway. He designed it. Whenever I had to do something, I said, Bob, are you busy? Can you do that?”

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