My grandmother and I saw an average of eight movies a week, double features, second run.

Carol Burnett has often credited her upbringing with her grandmother, Mabel Eudora “Dee” White, for shaping her imagination and comic sensibility. In interviews and memoir-style recollections, Burnett describes how, during her childhood in Hollywood, she and her grandmother spent much of their free time at neighborhood movie houses. They would watch inexpensive “second-run” screenings—often double features—sometimes using the cinema as both entertainment and refuge. The remark about seeing “an average of eight movies a week” reflects that formative routine of near-constant moviegoing, which exposed Burnett to classic screen comedy, melodrama, and performance styles that later informed her work on stage and television.

The quote underscores how immersion in popular culture can function as an informal education. Burnett’s emphasis on “double features” and “second run” evokes a working- or lower-middle-class moviegoing economy: lots of films, low cost, and repeated exposure. Beyond nostalgia, it suggests that her comedic timing and character work were partly learned by watching performers closely—absorbing rhythms of dialogue, physical comedy, and emotional turns. The presence of her grandmother highlights mentorship and companionship: art is encountered not only individually but through relationships. The line also hints at cinema as escape and as a training ground, where a future entertainer studies human behavior and storytelling in concentrated form.