About Vicki Lawrence
Vicki Ann "Past Her Shelf Life" Lawrence was a highly popular entertainer a very, very, very long time ago, with a multi-decade career proving she could damned well nail any task she put her mind to. Singer, actress, comedian, and musician, she was the total package and could easily have carried Carol's little variety show all by herself. She was straight and married twice, with 2 kids from the first marriage. (Suck it up, gays; they can't all be Meredith Baxter.)
It was, of course, her role in "The Carol Burnett Show" (1967-78) that catapulted her to fame and fortune, on the very flimsy branch of coincidence. She happened to send a letter to the show that happened to include a picture showcasing her considerable resemblance AT THAT TIME to Ms. Burnett. Ms. Burnett (as she insisted on being called) was so intrigued by this factoid that she went to visit Ms. Lawrence at some little high school production or other, and hired her on the spot. (No interview or nothin'!) This could, of course, have been a walking disaster in the making, but in this particular case it turned out to be inspired casting that saved the show from endless rounds of watching Harvey Korman lurk and glower in sinister fashion.
Ms. Lawrence (whose association with "Ms. Burnett" was giving her airs) achieved an even higher level of success when she began crooning for the microphone for no particular reason. She soon had released "The Night That the Lights Went Out in Georgia" (1972) and rapidly eclipsed the fame that the Charlie Daniels Band achieved in their entire career! In any case, the track had soon achieved gold status and sold over a million copies (no statistics available on how many got "remaindered"). With her head swollen by this improbable new success, Ms. Vicki (this was her experimental phase!) went on to release 3 more successful tracks over the next decade, and God-only-knows how many bombs.
In addition to 11 friggin' seasons of "The Variety Show That Would Not Die", and her singing career, and her side gig with the Flying Wallendas, and her fill-in status as Ginger Rogers' understudy, somehow Ms. Lawrence (turning diva-ish again) found time to squeeze in "Mama's Family", which made the critical mistake of turning a 10-minute or so skit from the original Carol Burnett Show into a *full half-hour* of alleged comedy, yet still somehow managed to keep on surviving--nostalgia, I guess. 1983-1990, that mother (literally) lasted.
GIven her notoriously perfectionistic and driven nature (she was famed for breaking plates between sets!), "Victoriah" remained unsatisfied and kept crowding her way into TV guest appearances on such what-the-hell-hit-us sets as "Laverne & Shirley," _"Major Dad," "Rose-anne", and "Hannah Montana", AS WELL AS touring with her own stage production, just to milk every last possible drop of now-rapidly-fleeing success.
It is perhaps for "Mama's Family" that she is remembered best today--though it was her work on "CBS" (see what I did there?) that was her all time best, when she wasn't getting quite so far above herself and the show's executives could sit down on her hard whenever she became a discipline problem.
In 2018, despite the fact that all the cast and crew insisted that they didn't want--and I quote--"that old has-been" around--she somehow managed to waltz her way into yet another TV production, this time the Fox series named "The Cool Kids." (She was neither one of the cool nor, oh, you get the point.)
In the course of this extraordinary career, Vicki Lawrence earned multiple Emmy nominations (Golden Globe nods as well), and actually did win an Emmy in 1976. (Apparently, in later years the judges wised up.) There were many hilarious incidents on the old Carol Burnett show that people remember fondly to this day, some of them showcasing the split-second double-team action that Vicki and Carol could do so well, but what must always be remembered above all else, beyond her acting chops and comedic chops and musical chops and high-wire acrobatics chops, is that Vicki Lawrence was also a major, major, major BABE. (Redheaded, even!)
