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Carol Burnett as Princess Winnifred in the musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress, May 2, 1960.
Credit: Image Donated by Corbis - Bettmann
In the summer of 1958 the theater company of the Tamiment Playhouse in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains wrote and produced Once Upon a Mattress, a musical comedy based upon the popular children's book, The Princess and the Pea. Eight months later, the play began a successful run on Broadway starring Carol Burnett, a Tamiment alumna. From the 1930s into the 1960s, Tamiment was a great training ground for Jewish American entertainers, including Danny Kaye, Imogene Coca, Woody Allen, Jerome Robbins, and Carol Burnett.