BLAIRSVILLE, Pa.— Actress and comedian Carol Burnett was honored by a Pennsylvania museum dedicated to actor Jimmy Stewart, a Hollywood star she was smitten with as a toddler during a trip to the movies with her grandmother in San Antonio, Texas.
“I saw this long, tall drink of water up there in black and white and I said, ‘He’s my friend. I know him,’ ” Burnett said before receiving the award. “And it came to pass.”
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Burnett received the museum’s Harvey Award at a Friday night fundraiser for the James M. Stewart Museum Foundation, based in the actor’s Pennsylvania hometown of Indiana, about 45 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The banquet was a few miles away in Blairsville.
Past winners include actors Janet Leigh, Shirley Jones, Ernest Borgnine and Rich Little, the comedian and impressionist known for his stammering imitation of Stewart. The award is named for the 1950 film in which Stewart befriends an invisible rabbit. It is typically given to someone with entertainment industry connections to Stewart.
Burnett, 81, has fewer professional connections with Stewart than most past winners, but perhaps none has a deeper emotional connection.
Burnett has called Stewart her idol. “I have talked about him, I have worshiped him,” Burnett told the audience at the final episode of “The Carol Burnett Show” on March 29, 1978, ending an 11-year run on CBS, on which Stewart made a surprise appearance.
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