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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
"Hollywood Arms" (directed by Harold Prince, at the Cort Theatre) is also the name of the cheap and cheerful residential hotel in Los Angeles where Carol Burnett, who wrote the autobiographical play with her late daughter, Carrie Hamilton, grew up in the early nineteen-forties. Even before the lights go down, the curtain calls our attention to the geography of the place--a silk screen shows the iconic hillside whose fifty-foot letters used to spell out the word "Hollywoodland." The original sign represented an almost insolent dream of hope for this beleaguered nation at the fag end of the Depression; nowadays, however, it is a cliche that carries with it an irony that is almost Presidential in its obviousness. But, since the ambition of "Hollywood Arms" is to re-create the hothouse of acrimony and regret that produced the hilarious Burnett, you come to the play expecting more than just a hoary tale of pluck and luck. And, although the playwriting struck me as plodding and unfocussed, the show does bring fascinating news of the landscape of the comic interior.
The young Burnett, who is called Helen in this somewhat fictionalized version of her memoir, was abandoned by her mother, Louise, who wanted to pursue a career as an entertainment journalist,...
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