When the fifth Granada Theatre Legends Gala kicks off this Friday, September 13, it will do so with the help of one of the greatest performers in the history of American culture. Carol Burnett, a Santa Barbara resident for the past two decades and a longtime supporter of the arts in our community, will be among those honored as “legends,” along with Meg and Dan Burnham and the organization Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) . The Legends Gala is the Granada’s most significant fundraising event and among the most lavish and glamorous benefits of the season in a community flush with such elaborately conceived and painstakingly executed events. Guests will join event chairs Merryl Snow Zegar and Anne Smith Towbes to honor Burnett, the Burnhams, and OSB in a theater transformed for the occasion into a festive cabaret with dinner and entertainment.
This year has been special for Burnett, as the Granada Legend designation is not the first or the most prestigious award she has received in 2019. In January, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) — the group responsible for the Golden Globes — created a new lifetime achievement category for television and named it the Carol Burnett Award. The award recognizes “outstanding contributions to television on or off the screen” and is seen as the counterpart to the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in film. The first recipient of the Carol Burnett Award? Why, Carol Burnett, of course.
When I spoke with Burnett recently by phone, she said that she was “stunned” by the honor and especially grateful to the HFPA for recognizing her at a time when television has entered into what many consider its second golden age. Burnett told me that she loves to binge watch the great contemporary television cable series and is a fan of Breaking Bad. Burnett has been in Santa Barbara for 20 years now, having “found a house for the summer in Montecito” two decades ago, and quickly realized that she and her husband would be even happier if our town was their main residence.