A Five-Year Legal Toothache

Carol Burnett seeks $10 million from a sensation-monger

Not since the Lee Marvin "palimony" case has a Hollywood courtroom drama attracted such attention. As an expectant crowd lined the corridors at Los Angeles County superior court last week, Actress-Comedian Carol Burnett arrived for the first day of proceedings in her $10 million libel suit against the sensationalist weekly tabloid the National Enquirer (circ. 5.1 million). Said a determined-looking Burnett: "I'm very happy to be here. It's like a five-year-old toothache and I'm finally at the dentist."

Burnett's suit arises out of a 1976 Enquirer item. "At a Washington restaurant," it said, "a boisterous Carol Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger. Then she traipsed around the place offering everyone a bit of her dessert" and "accidently knocked a glass of wine over one diner and started giggling instead of apologizing." Burnett demanded and got a retraction, in which the Enquirer admitted that the "events did not occur." Unsatisfied, she compared the Enquirer to "a hit-and-run driver who, when you're in the hospital, sends you a bouquet of crabgrass."

Enquirer Attorney William Masterson contends that Burnett suffered no damages from the story, "even if it was defamatory." Burnett's lawyers maintain that she was so upset she was forced to delay rehearsals of a television special that she was working on with Opera Star Beverly Sills. The story, which implied she had been drinking, was particularly painful to Burnett because her parents both died of alcoholism. The Enquirer's attorneys are expected to include in their defense the issue of freedom of the press. But Burnett, among others, argues that the First Amendment also requires a responsibility on the part of the news organization. Her attorneys are lining up supporting testimony from such witnesses as Kissinger, MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman (Kissinger's dinner partner at the Washington restaurant, reportedly the Rive Gauche) and Burnett's husband, Producer Joe Hamilton.

Within the Hollywood community, the trial is being watched as closely as the bottom line on a production contract. Waiting in the wings with their own seven-or eight-figure libel suits against the Enquirer are Rory Calhoun, Phil Silvers, Paul Lynde, Agent Marty Ingels and Wife Shirley Jones, Ed McMahon and Rudy Vallee, all of whom evidently agree with Burnett that "it's time to stand up and be counted and not let people like this get away with it."

The gathering legal onslaught is reminiscent of the mid-1950s, when lawsuits, particularly those by Robert Mitchum and Heiress Doris Duke, severely dampened Confidential magazine's penchant for unfounded gossip. Confidential's circulation plummeted from 4.1 million to about 300,000, and the magazine folded in 1969. The Enquirer boasts that the Burnett case is the first libel trial since Generoso Pope Jr. bought the tabloid in 1952. But that is because it occasionally settles out of court.

In the late 1960s, the Enquirer shed its "I Ate My Baby" image in favor of miracle diets, life-after-death tales and celebrity muck. A fact-checking department was developed in its Lantana, Fla., headquarters, and all gossip items had to be backed up by two independent sources--who were often paid by the Enquirer. But faced with flagging sales and increased competition from Rupert Murdoch's racy rising Star (circ. 3.5 million), Pope soon ordered up more pizazz. The outcome of the Burnett case and other suits may well determine whether he ordered up too much.

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