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Calif. officials unveil ‘Johnny Cash Trail’

SACRAMENTO, Calif.

The city of Folsom has completed the first section of the “Johnny Cash Trail,” which will pay tribute to the country-music icon and his 1968 album “At Folsom Prison.”

City officials unveiled the first section of the 2.5-mile trail Saturday — a pedestrian and bike bridge designed to echo Folsom State Prison’s east-gate guard towers, according to the Sacramento Bee.

The trail will traverse prison property and link to area trails.

The newspaper reports that the city is planning a $3 million fundraising drive to pay for a 2-acre park next to the bridge and art installations along the trail — including a 40-foot steel statue of Cash.

Carol Burnett gets Jimmy Stewart award

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 told The Associated Press before receiving the award. “And it came to pass.”

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 typically is given to someone with entertainment-industry connections to Stewart.

Burnett, 81, has fewer professional connections with Stewart than most past winners, nearly all of whom have worked with him professionally, but perhaps no past winner has a deeper emotional connection.

Burnett has called Stewart her idol. “I have talked about him; I have worshipped 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.

Associated Press