Carol Burnett says she used to climb and hang off Hollywood sign: 'A wonder we didn't break our neck'
- - Carol Burnett says she used to climb and hang off Hollywood sign: 'A wonder we didn't break our neck'
Sydney BucksbaumFebruary 4, 2026 at 10:34 PM
0
Carol Burnett in 2024
John Salangsang/IndieWire via Getty
Carol Burnett had a wild past during her younger days in Hollywood.
On Tuesday's episode of Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast, the Palm Royale star revealed that she and her friends used to the climb and hang off of the Hollywood sign — before it was walled off by fences, of course.
"We used to climb the Hollywood sign, the other neighborhood kids and I," the comedy legend told Poehler. "Now you can't get near it."
Burnett lived with her grandmother in Los Angeles as a child, and reiterated that it was a different time in the city: "You didn't have to lock your doors."
The Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, Calif.
DAVID SWANSON/AFP via Getty
She remembered how she and her friends would get the idea to climb the iconic Hollywood sign.
"We would fly kites or roller skate and they would say, 'I'm bored. Let's go climb the sign,' so we did," Burnett revealed. "It was kind of rickety then, they've fixed it up now. And there were splinters and I would climb up, and get splinters. It's a wonder we didn't break our neck."
The nonagenarian comedian added that some of her fondest memories were hanging out in the middle of the letters.
"The 'O's' were my favorite," Burnett said. "And I would just hang over the 'O's' and say, 'Hello, Hollywood, hello!' We do the Tarzan yell and all of that."
Later in the podcast episode, Burnett retold the story of how an unknown benefactor helped her go to college at UCLA when she couldn't afford the tuition, which ultimately kickstarted her entire legendary career in comedy with The Carol Burnett Show.
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
"We were poor — our rent was $1 a day, $30 a month, and sometimes we could hardly manage that," Burnett said. "I desperately wanted to go to UCLA, and my grandmother said, 'Forget it. You know we can't afford the tuition, there's no way.'"
At the time, tuition for one semester at UCLA was $50. And one morning, Burnett discovered someone mysteriously left her that exact amount.
"There was a pigeonhole mailbox for all the apartments, and I would look out and see if we had a little letter or something in our slot," she said. "So I go up, and there's a letter in this slot. This one morning, I came out and I opened it up in our room. My name was typewritten on the envelope. And there was a $50 bill. I do not, to this day, know where that came from."
Watch the full conversation with Burnett above.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
