Vicki Lawrence’s late husband used to be teased by his buddies at a local bar.
“When are you going to let Vicki retire?” they asked, as if she needed or sought his permission.
“Vicki can’t retire,” he countered. “Working is Vicki’s golf.”
“Besides, what would I do with my time?” Lawrence says by telephone from her kitchen in Long Beach, California. “My children are grown. Everything’s pretty much in control.”
And, she could have added, she has fans who know her work and want to see her. Each year, she appears in theaters across the country and attends a few Comic-Cons, both as Vicki Lawrence and as one of her best-known and most popular characters, Thelma Harper, or Mama, from TV’s “Mama’s Family” and, before that, sketches on “The Carol Burnett Show.”
On Friday and Saturday, Nov. 13 and 14, Lawrence brings her traveling show, “Vicki Lawrence & Mama: A Two-Woman Show,” to New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse for two performances, at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday.
She says she opens for Mama, beginning the show by relating her life story as Vicki, then donning Mama’s famous flowered dress and spouting the wisdom TV audiences continue to hear on MeTV reruns and an oft-watched YouTube video.
“Mama has a lot of freedom,” Lawrence says. “She can comment on just about anything. The show becomes topical. I read the day’s news, and anything that strikes Mama as worthy to talk about can come up.”
Mama has been part of Lawrence’s repertoire for more than 50 years. She was 24 when, during the seventh season of “The Carol Burnett Show,” producers decided to introduce an ongoing sketch, an internal sitcom of sorts, with Lawrence, who joined the show at 18 to play Carol’s younger sister, now playing the wisecracking, take-no-prisoners mother of Burnett’s character, Eunice.
That sketch eventually became a series of its own, “Mama’s Family,” which aired for two seasons on NBC and four more in syndication, from 1983 to 1990. During that time, Mama became part of American television lore.
Lawrence says that when she first began doing “Vicki Lawrence & Mama” in 2001, just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she expected to see older audiences, people about Mama’s age, which she calculated then as the late 60s and now has moved up a decade or two.
“I was surprised when I saw the audience. In those early days, I entered as Mama from the back of the house and through the audience. I’d see people of all ages. People came with their children. I stopped at a row that was filled with young men, guys of college age. As Mama, I asked what brought them here. They told me they watch ‘Mama’s Family’ every day. It’s their break from school, their comic relief. They never miss a show.
“It turned out I had a college-age fan base. Like I said, the audience was filled with people of all ages. A lot of that is because ‘Mama’s Family’ has never stopped running. It’s on MeTV. The few times a year I put on my Mama gear and go to Comic-Cons, children know Mama and want a picture with her.”
One irony is that when Lawrence was first approached by “Burnett” producer Joe Hamilton to move “Mama’s Family” from “The Carol Burnett Show” to a separate spinoff, she said no. She didn’t want to do it.
“There were lots of reasons which, thank goodness, turned out not to matter, once the show became popular. One was on Carol’s show, I was doing the sketch with her and Harvey Korman. These are the people who put me through what I call the Harvard School of Comedy. I came from college theater to work on ‘The Carol Burnett Show.’ These people were my education. I didn’t want to do the show without them.
“Then there was my age. I was 24. Look how lasting Mama has become. Now I’m grateful. Then, I wasn’t sure I wanted to play an old woman in an old-fashioned dress that was designed to make me look heavy. I wasn’t convinced it was the right direction.”
By 1982, “The Carol Burnett Show” had been off the air for several years, but Lawrence was still receiving acclaim for playing Mama. That year, she earned an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress in a limited series or special for the television movie “Eunice.”
“That was fun. The nominees that year were Claire Bloom, Judy Davis, Rita Moreno, Penny Fuller, and me. They were all in these grand dramatic parts, and I was Mama. At the ceremony, Harvey Korman sat next to me and said, ‘There’s no way you’re going to win this thing, but enjoy it.’ So I did.”
“Mama’s Family” premiered the following year, with Lawrence in the lead and a cast that included some of television’s best-known performers. Although Burnett and Korman were not regular cast members, Lawrence had Ken Berry as Mama’s son and, in the early years of the series, Betty White and Rue McClanahan, before they were each cast on “The Golden Girls.”
“I saw Betty during the time ‘The Golden Girls’ was being put together, and she told me she was expecting to be on this new show and would be leaving ‘Mama’s Family.’ What a reversal in roles! She went from being brassy on our show to being the nice one.”
Another cast member was Dorothy Lyman, who had appeared on Broadway and developed a large following as Opal Sue Gardner on ABC’s daytime soap opera “All My Children.”
“Carol was obsessed with ‘All My Children.’ We broke rehearsal every day so she could watch it. We were building the cast for ‘Mama’s Family’ when Carol pointed to Dorothy and said, ‘You need to get her.’ Imagine Dorothy’s surprise when she got a call from Carol Burnett. She was doing both shows at once. She’d be in New York all week doing the soap, then fly to L.A. to shoot ‘Mama’s Family’ on the weekends.”
The topical nature of “Vicki Lawrence & Mama” means no two performances are exactly alike. Lawrence has a basic script she developed with writer Monty Aidem, who began working with her when she had a syndicated talk show in the 1990s.
“The show and the topics Mama brings up have changed so much in the 25 years we’ve been doing it. Some things common now didn’t exist in 2001. I like the idea of being freewheeling.”
Lawrence says her career is one of the strangest and luckiest in show business.
“I never expected to be working this long, but I’m doing something I enjoy and for which I have an audience. I have no reason not to do it.”
Her career began with a fan letter and a telephone call, similar to the one Dorothy Lyman received from Carol Burnett.
Lawrence grew up in Inglewood, California, not far from the CBS studios where “The Carol Burnett Show” was produced. She had appeared in high school productions, and a newspaper mentioned her resemblance to Carol Burnett.
Lawrence took the initiative to write Burnett a letter and enclosed the newspaper clipping. Burnett was looking for a young actress to play her sister, Chrissy, in sketches on her variety show. She looked in the telephone book and found Lawrence’s father’s name.
There was a telephone call. There was a meeting. There was a job. There was a career.
Lawrence says she is taking it a bit easier lately. She used to be on the road constantly. Now, she works perhaps one or two weeks a month.
“New Brunswick will be my last date for 2026. I used to work on holidays, but now I want to spend them with my children and grandchildren.”
Like Mama, Lawrence has seen how much the world has changed.
“I am not hurrying anything, but I tell my children that before total calamity happens, I’ll be out of here. Then, I begin to feel guilty because of the mess I’m leaving them in.”
We agreed that this is one reason comedy is important.
Which leads to a funny comment. I end every interview by asking if there is anything a reader should know that wasn’t covered. Most people say, “No, I think we’ve been fairly complete.”
Vicki Lawrence said, “You haven’t asked me about the Iran war.”
We left it at that. Maybe Mama will fill in the blank.
“Vicki Lawrence & Mama: A Two-Woman Show” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, and 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, at George Street Playhouse, 11 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick. Tickets range from $62 to $102 and are available at .georgestreetplayhouse.org) or by calling 732-246-7717.
