Vicki Lawrence: I watched. I remember watching Carol when I was a teenager. Sorry, Carol. I was in love with. I found her on the entertainers with Bob Newhart actually had a crush on John Davidson. And I remember watching Carol and thinking she was very broad, very, very much almost like a clown. And then I do remember seeing Once upon a Mattress watching that, because we did it at our high school. It was our high school musical when I was seven. I think I was a maybe a junior. And I remember seeing that on television. That’s mostly what I remember of Carol Burnett.

Interviewer: What did you think you said? Thinking she was very broad. Did it seem unusual to you at the time to see a woman being so broad and being such a physical?

Vicki Lawrence: At the time. I was in love with Dick Van Dyke, who is also very physical and broad. And I actually tended to be more in love with male comedians than fame. I suppose that would be right, wouldn’t it? But, Carol. Yeah. Very, very broad. Physical slapstick, reminiscent of a lot of Imogene Coca. I thought in our show of shows. It’s different, though.

Interviewer: I mean, do you think she was sort of that was you doing something that was a different.

Vicki Lawrence: Carol, to me, was almost like. She was just she was the most broad comedian I had ever watched. I think just took everything way out into the stratosphere on beyond almost more of a clown than than a comedian.

Interviewer: See somebody before you met her. She’s somebody thought about it.

Vicki Lawrence: Well, like I said, I was it I was in love with the guy. I was in love with the male comedians. And actually, my my role model was Mary Tyler Moore. I was absolutely in love with. But I was trying so hard to be Mary when I met Carol. So I had my little flip, you know, when I wore the capris. And then Carol messed up the whole deal.

Interviewer: So tell me first story from the very first day that I entered high school, everybody said that I looked like Carol Burnett. And actually the first day of high school I remember going into I was matriculating the very first day in a big school new have to go to different classes, that whole deal. And I went into my history class and sat down in some big, tall, lanky guy with crazy hair, walked by and stared at me and took a seat behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. And I turned around and he said, You look just like Carol Burnett. And I said, Well, you look just like Abraham Lincoln. She did. He looked, I think, much more like Abraham Lincoln than I did, Carol. But Abe didn’t have a television show. Anyway, I after hearing this over and over and over, and I had now cut my hair short to go to high school, I was in the mood for that new little short, cute haircut. And everybody kept saying it to me over and over. So I met at my mom’s urging, wrote her a fan letter and told her that I looked like her, that that I watched her on television, that I’d love to meet her someday and didn’t really ask for too much of anything. But she, I guess, thought I guess she was right in the midst of thinking about putting The Carol Burnett Show together. And I quote, I enclosed in with my letter and closed a clipping from a contest that I was gonna be in, Miss Fireball, which was our local firemen’s ball. And they wanted some girl to sing and dance. So they were having a contest. And the gal in the newspaper had said that I bore a striking resemblance to a young Carol Burnett. So I close my little article, you know, so she wouldn’t think I was a nut case and mailed it off to her. And she took my dad’s name out of the article, found us in the phone book and called me after school, which to me is one of the most remarkable things about Carol, is that she’ll follow our hunch and and, you know, find them most interesting. Unusual. She’s still quite a bit on our show. She would just bring people on that she thought were interesting that nobody else had found yet. And looking back on it, I was just absolutely an idiot. I had no idea from stage right and stage left as like Harvey said, forget, forget stage right, stage left. You could barely find the toilet. And I and I feel like I got to go to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.

Interviewer: Do you remember that call?

Vicki Lawrence: I do remember that phone call. I know Carol has a much different memory of it than I do, but I remember being absolutely speechless. I couldn’t speak when she said, hi, this is Carol Burnett. And I knew I mean, I knew it was her. But I can nothing will come out right now. So I hand the phone to my mom and my. And Carol said, I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to Vicki. Put her back on the phone. Tell her she doesn’t have to say anything. All she has to do is listen. And she said, I want to come and see the contest that you’re going to be on. I’m very pregnant, so I would prefer not to be seen. So I want you to get me two seats way in the back, and I will probably sneak in and sneak out. And then I’ll call you in a few weeks and we’ll have lunch and discuss your career, sweetie. And I thought, my gosh, this woman is nuts. She’s crazy. She’s out of her mind. So, yeah, I made all the arrangements for her to come to the contest. And, you know, I then thought the night of the contest, there’s no way Carol Burnett is going to come into the Miss Fireball contest. And sure enough, and she came and watched the contest and crowned me when I won the contest and. And then kind of disappeared from my life. I didn’t hear from her for the longest time. This historic can go on and on for days and years.

Interviewer: So what did she tell you about what they were looking for?

Vicki Lawrence: She actually didn’t. Did I did not meet her. I heard that she had the baby. Thank goodness. Like a month or so later. And I was singing at the time, as it was saying in a group when I was in high school called The Young Americans. And we were doing a recording session we were doing when those Firestone Christmas albums. And so we were on the way to this session. And I said to the guy that I was riding with. I said, I wanna stop and get some flowers and I’m going to stop into St. John’s where she had the baby, because I’d heard it on the radio and say hi. And he said, we can’t you’ll never get in to see Carol Burnett. And I said, well, I know her married name now. So maybe. Maybe. And I you know, of course, nowadays, your previous shot for being some sort of a stalker or a terrorist went into the hospital, went to the maternity ward. There was nothing going on. So there were you know, the nurses were sitting behind the station doing nothing. And I said, I’m here to see Mrs. Hamilton. And they looked up and they said, oh, my God, you must be her sister. Well, what do you. Baby, they took me right into her hospital room and she was very sweet and hindsight, very sweet and said, I have not forgotten you and I promise as soon as I get my tummy back. I will call. And it was a number of months later that I heard from the executive producer and her husband, and they wanted me to come down to CBS and talk to me. They want to talk to me about the sort of show they’re going to put together called The Carol Burnett Show.

Interviewer: And it’s amazing. What did they tell you about the show and what they wanted you from?

Vicki Lawrence: They were putting together a segment called Carol Says that was loosely based on her, her early life in New York when her sister Chrissy lived with her. And what I auditioned to play her sister.

Interviewer: Wasn’t there a test?

Vicki Lawrence: Yes, they were there. There was a test. They had apparently narrowed it down from many, many actresses to me and one other actress who was really an actress on a soap opera. I didn’t look anything like Carol. But she was an actress and I was a wreck, you know, and she had like flowers from agents and managers and, you know, and I had nothing in my my little dressing room. And, yeah, I mean, we’re just being a total geek. I think the only reason that they they hired me is because she thought it would be a novelty to have somebody that looked so much like her.

Interviewer: She must’ve also seen something in you. You could do it.

Vicki Lawrence: I guess she has. She has often said to me, because I feel like I almost everything wonderful in my life, I owe to Carol from my my career to my farm, my husband, my father, everything almost everything wonderful has happened because of Carol. And so I have often said, you know, I’ve tried to say thank you and that it would never have happened because I thought I was going to be a dental hygienist. I thought I was gonna learn to clean teeth, marry a rich dentist and hang it up. And she totally sidetracked me. And she has often said you would have you would have ended up here one way or another. Anybody can open a door for you. You’re the one that has to walk through. I’m not sure how that would have happened, but she seems to think it would.

Interviewer: Do you remember at all or were you aware, you know, just taping what the network reaction was?

Vicki Lawrence: I was not I was not privy to any of that. I was just a geek. I was fresh out of high school and I don’t know anything nowadays. I think for sure the suits would come downstairs and get her and say, get rid of her and find us an actress. I don’t think what happened to me would it would happen nowadays.

Interviewer: So in those early shows. What was your role as.

Vicki Lawrence: My early memories of The Carol Burnett Show were standing in the background of the Carolyn sketches. I’d have, you know, several lines, not enough to two for the entire sketch to be on my shoulders. By any means. And, you know, I’d find myself, like, hanging up the coats in the coat closet and I’d see Harvey and Carol down in front doing their deal. And the audience would be kind of a wash behind them. And I would just think, what the hell am I doing? You know, and then I you’re a cue line and I snap out of it because I would have to say something. I was I started at UCLA and on The Carol Burnett Show the same fall. So I was 18. And we did the show. Oh, gosh. Well, I had to be September something, 1967.

Interviewer: Did you watch or try to figure out how this all works?

Vicki Lawrence: What didn’t I learn in those early days? The early days. They brought in Danny Simon to come to do the sketch comedy directing, and Danny would take me aside at lunch hour and and just work tirelessly with me. He would say, OK, grab your schoolbooks, come to the front door and yell Carol. And I would come through the front door and throw my books down and yell, Carol. He’d go, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is that the way you come through the door and throw your books down and yell, Carol and I? Yeah. And he said, My God, we have so much work to do. It was just really I was really a geek. And Harvey, in the early days, really, I think, you know, Carol kind of had a show to run. And yes, she gave me a huge leg up, but she really had a show to run. And I think it was Harvey more than anybody who took me under his wing and taught me most everything that I know about the nuts and bolts of sketch comedy advice. I think most of the advice that I ever got from Carol, I learned by watching and she is the most giving and nurturing, supportive person that I have ever had the joy to work with. And the early days of The Carol Burnett Show, much of the staff who knew her from New York and her earlier days would say to me, this is where you get out into the real world of show biz, because they’re saying that it was a very special place. I’ve often referred to it as the Emerald City because it’s it’s it’s rare that you get back there. It’s a very hard place to get to. It was a very special, nurturing atmosphere. I mean, if you were doing something funny on stage, Carol, be the first one out of her dressing room to leave the applause on the laughter. And Mimi Harvey used to say this is just this is not this is not the way it is in the real world. She’s just the most giving, wonderful, supportive person. And I always used to strike me as amazing that she would walk into the set and know everything about everybody. She would know the props. Man, the prop man’s dog was having surgery that day, or she would know if someone’s kid was going to her final show. She knew everything about everybody.

Interviewer: Were you sort of being a woman? She was the first woman. I just wondered if that was.

Vicki Lawrence: You know, I was so young and so stupid that I don’t really think I could appreciate anything that was going on. I know at the time they never expected The Carol Burnett Show to fly. I remember hearing stories subsequently about everybody going in for meetings with the president of the network. And the show wasn’t even on the on the board, you know, on the scheduling boards that they do. They never expected it to fly. So it’s such a daven have been a part of it was. But, you know, I was so young and so green. I don’t think I was privy to any of the business stuff that was going on.

Interviewer: I had no idea show to find its way. I mean, it seems like a lot of the staples of the show. Yeah. It’s sort of way in the beginning.

Vicki Lawrence: I don’t even know that so much. You know, I was just so young. And so, I mean, The Early Burnett Show was like an out of body experience for me. It was really like, what am I doing here? And I would watch it on Saturday nights when it would come on the air. And it was like for me, it was like watching home movies. You know, I was I just was. What am I doing here?

Interviewer: What about as a physical comedian? Did you learn anything about how you use your body? I mean, she seems like just performers through her body.

Vicki Lawrence: Yeah, she was all about the physical comedy and us. Consequently, I think that’s sort of what I learned was broad physical comedy. And to this day, it’s the most fun for me to do. I’ve brought physical characters, but she, you know, had like a Gumby body. She she still does, which is amazing to me.

Interviewer: And so it really is your clothes in the bag. How did how did your work evolve on this show and was sort of encouraging you to do more? Sort of. How was that?

Vicki Lawrence: I can only assume that Carol was encouraging of me. Otherwise, I really do believe the suits would have come down and said, could we please get an actress in here? And it was oh, gosh, maybe not until the second season that they gave me a small role in a take off of the Newlywed Game, where I played one of the one of our writers, Kenny Solms. I played his wife. Lyle was the husband of one of that, whoever the guest star was. And Carol, I can’t remember exactly. I know. I think Lyle was the emcee. Harvey would have been one of the husbands and Carol would have been one of the wives. And and I I latched onto this really dumb character that I played for a lot of years on on the show. And I was just it was a small enough part that I think Carole felt if she’s cute, it’ll be a great little steppingstone for her. If she’s not, the whole sketch won’t fall apart. And I really think that’s kind of the way they nurtured me along.

Interviewer: What was Carol’s in terms of behind the scenes writers or production?

Vicki Lawrence: I kind of know how much I don’t know how much Carol really did behind the scenes. I mean, it was her show, so I’m assuming that she did. Have a handle hand and all of that stuff on the set. The most giving the most no. I mean, I would sit in the corner and do my needlepoint. And Carol would say, you know, I need a. We need to make a few cuts in the scene. Vickie needs a better joke on page 17. And I would say I do. And she’d say hi. Yes, you do. You know, just very nurturing and. Cared for everybody and. Never give up. I remember Shane Harvey would work and work on sketches to make them work when it seemed like they weren’t working and they would just never give up.

Interviewer: And so what were her roles in terms of with Joe? Was it pretty clear what the roles were?

Vicki Lawrence: Not to me. Not not to me. I really had no idea about any of that.

Interviewer: Do you remember the first time the whole case got together. The first show taping doing, I guess doing the first show.

Vicki Lawrence: Oh, gosh. Do I remember taping the show? No, I probably had two lines.

Interviewer: Right. Let’s see, um, what about, um, I want to I want to talk about some of your some great episodes that you were in. I don’t know what some of your favorites were, but, um, I was just watching one the other night in the jail with, uh, Lily Tomlin. You just talked. Can you talk about that?

Vicki Lawrence: You know, I think some of the stuff that I did. I did. I guess just out of being fearless, because I didn’t know any better. And if it would make Carol laugh, then I figured I was going the right direction. But I think I just learned to kind of lay it all out there and go for it. And the harder you push, maybe the funnier it will be. And. Yeah, it seemed to be kind of no holds barred. The Carol Burnett Show and very you know, we always worked in front of a live audience. So you always had that feedback, which was great. Which is not like a lot of other shows. It’s been my experience sense that you’ll go on a comedy set and you want to you want to push the envelope and you want to play and have fun. And there are just so many suits involved now and and so many constraints. And the writers are so sure they want it just the way they want it, then it’s just not it’s not as it’s not as Kerwin’s to say. It’s like playing dress up in the sandbox, you know, ways to get to play in the sandbox. And it’s it’s not like that anymore.

Interviewer: It’s just great. Well, I mean, I understand that you rarely stop to talk about how we we are schedule was too.

Vicki Lawrence: It’s on the schedule. It’s a dress rehearsal, an air show, because that’s the way Carol was trained in New York. You did the dress rehearsal and then you did the show live. So consequently, that’s the way the schedule read. Although they were both they were both taped straight through identically in front of two different audiences. After the dress show, you would get a few notes about, you know, changes or, you know, you miss this mark or we’re cutting this line or whatever, and you would barrel through it again like a live show. And we didn’t change unless I mean, we didn’t we weren’t like a life show unless there was a set change that just logistically would take a few extra minutes or a wardrobe change that would logistically take a few extra minutes. But other than that, we went like a bat out of hell and mean. And you could set your clock by that show. I mean, the the whole week you could set your I’ve never been on a set sense where if it says on the schedule, you’ll be done at three o’clock this afternoon, you could make a three 30 appointment and keep it. And I have never been on a set where taping is taping. And when you’re done, you’re done. I mean, you could count the number of pickups that we used to do on on one hand.

Interviewer: One of the things that people show was start. I’m just wondering what you can talk about that was that people do things intentionally. To laugh just.

Vicki Lawrence: I you know, I used to watch the grown ups crack each other up, and I think it was a good catch. Halfway through the run of The Burnett Show, before I ever felt that I had earned the right to, you know, because people say, well, how did you keep him cracking up? I didn’t dare. It was well into the run of the Burnett Show before I felt that I had earned the right to play with the grown ups. And I’m totally into Momma, which was midway through the run of that show before I ever dared to step out of the box and try to crack everybody else up. But yeah, I think that that’s what everybody loved about The Burnett Show, is that it was like being there live. You never knew what was going to happen and what did happen. You got to see on the air. So I think that’s really what America loved so much about the show. Well, Carol loved her character so much that she could tell. I mean, I particularly remember one time when we were doing a family sketch and Tim had been now been incorporated into the family and we had a rough dress rehearsal and Tim cracked up ever. Everybody fell apart. And Carol was in tears. And she said before the air show, she said, I want I do not want us to laugh. I do not like to break the fourth wall with these characters. They’re very personal to me. And it is really well-written. And we will not break that fourth wall. And of course, who broke the fourth wall with a home run? So, yeah, no, she didn’t she like she loved her characters. I don’t think she meant to crack up, but to do it was trouble. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s the the sketch with the elephant. It was it’s Dick Clark’s favorite blooper. I mean, that that blooper has had a career all its own as far as I’m concerned, you know, because you always have to sign a release before it’s on bloopers. So, yeah, it’s had a career of its own blooper. did. I did. It was it was the only two, you know, we finished the dress rehearsal and everybody fell apart with the exception of me. And. And, Carol, I mean, you remember seeing Carol and I think she was down here in my face looking up at me with tears in her eyes going, go on, Mama. Go on, Mama. And I just thought, this woman has fallen apart. She’s a basket case. Between shows. The director came in, he came in, knocked on my door and said, there is only one note for you. The elephant story will be different tonight. And good luck. And he that was it. He walked away to my dressing room. And by now, I’m married to my husband, Al, who was the makeup man on the Carol Burnett Show. And I said, Stan, how does Tim get away with it? Because I knew how how important this was to Carol not to not to break up. And I said, what? How does he get away with it? And Al looked at me. He said, Get him. So it’s Al’s fault, it’s really Al’s fault. I, I did. I got him.

Interviewer: There was also another one, I think, actually. Do you remember this sketch where you and Harvey are playing a wealthy couple and then you have Carol and Tim as the maid and butler who do everything for you and. She’s feeding you?

Vicki Lawrence: Oh, well, she’s feeding me. And what I got, I got I don’t know what tickled her. What tickled me was just the feel of the food and the spoon on my you know, how your mom puts the scrapes it off. And it was that that started getting me tickled. Just the feel of it. And the more I would get tickled, the more she would actually do it and play with it.

Interviewer: So I’m just talking about the family sketches. They were so unusual, really. I mean, because can you just talk a little bit about how they came to be? Because they they are funny, but they’re also. Kind of heartbreaking. Yeah, yeah. How did you all go into that, knowing this?

Vicki Lawrence: Well, the family sketches, as far as I know, were written by two of the writers that they both hated their mothers. So for them, it was like a comic exorcism to get this horrible woman out on paper. And they had intended for Carol to play that part. And the unintended for a guest star to play Eunice. But when Carol saw that, Carol, we saw the material before we ever before Ike, certainly before I ever saw it. The first time I ever saw stuff was on our Monday morning table read. But apparently she decided when she read the script that she wanted to play Eunice, that that was the part that spoke to her and that she wanted to give mama to me. And I have often said a yet another gift from Carol because she is just such an incredibly wonderful character to play. But the sketches on The Burnett Show, if you look back at those sketches, they were very strident and very sort of almost one dimensional and almost mean spirited sometimes. And Mama was mad. She was not. And I think she needed some femme tab’s badly. And, you know, I remember going into those sketches, you know, at the time it was just another because everybody says, oh, gosh, how come you got the old lady? At the time, it was just another lady to play, because that’s really what I did. I was the supporting female. So Carol was always the ingenue and I was always the wicked witch or this instrument or the schoolmarm or the or the grandma. And so I just was really trying to find kind of an older version of what Carol was doing with Eunice. And then, you know, Mama was kind of, for me, loosely based on mothers I have known. And we all have a lot to draw on there. And the southern mother in law that I had at the time for a brief moment. And I remember those feeling like they were almost like little plays. They really a lot of the sketches took up almost. They did take up half of that. Our show, one sketch.

Interviewer: Yes, it seems like the show was changing in some ways it was getting broad kerick maybe a little more character oriented than a lot of the stuff we had done prior. And I don’t think.

Vicki Lawrence: I think maybe the family sketches were a little more character oriented than a lot of the broad physical stuff that we had been doing prior. And Carol certainly embraced those characters. And I mean, they really spoke to her and it was her idea to do them southern kind of west Texas, which was part of her dysfunctional upbringing. So she and the writers had never intended that. And I remember the writers saying this is going to offend the whole southern half of the country. You can’t do it this way. And it got such a reaction from the fans that it hadn’t ended up becoming a regular running piece. And those writers, because of the writers, would take it. That was back in the days of typewriters. So you would hear the typewriters going for weeks at a time. You know, like a week or two weeks. And then you’d hear it was a male and a female writing partner and you’d hear them screaming at each other. She would do all of the female parts. And he would do all the male parts. And then it would be quiet for another week and you’d hear just the typewriter. I’m going to take like five, six weeks to write one of the sketches. And by then, you know, we were just like couldn’t wait to do a family sketch. Well, I think, you know, she has spoken about her a little bit of a dysfunctional upbringing in West Texas being the root of all that. So I think that’s where she went. And I to me, I think. Those characters are a lot like momma in particular, very much like Archie Bunker in that we all know him, but none of us will fess up to being him. So nobody ever takes offense.

Interviewer: You know, when you played Mom, it was pretty amazing. No time. Time’s up.

Vicki Lawrence: Well, there was there was no time to stop, Carol, and stop. So the actually the early family sketches, if you look at them, what Carol and I went when when I first started on the show, we used to do like the showgirl makeup and then you could do on your wardrobe changes. But back in the early days, we did two sets of upper lashes. A set of lower lashes. You know, you did the glam makeup and you went through the show that way. And so the early family sketches you look at, mama is hysterical. She’s got these showgirl eyes on behind these little round glasses. And it’s very funny. And when we did, like maybe the second or third one, I think it was El Al came to me and said, you know, we really need to take five minutes to rip off the lashes, knock the ruesch down, take the lipstick off and and just let a little bit. But that was about it. I remember one time, one show I had to put on a bald cap for as the world turns. No time to fix your hair. Before the good nights. I threw on a wig and then I was just I was so young at the time that I was appalled that during the good nights when Carol had already signed the autograph book, she ripped my wig off. And there I was, bald in front of America. And like, I hadn’t been bald 10 minutes ago in the sketch. You know, I’m such a child. Mama’s family came about because we did a special after the Burnett Show had gone off, actually before that, Carol’s husband came to me about this. Oh my gosh. Eighth season. Ninth season. Maybe I had just had a baby, which maybe I don’t remember anyway. He wants to do a spinoff with Momma. And at the time, I had just spent nine months feeling kind of fat, not so beautiful. And I thought, how could I possibly do Momma without Eunice and without ad? And what happens if it doesn’t fly? And he said, well, you’ll come back here. And at the time I thought with my tail tucked between my legs, I mean, I, you know, I it to. I was so on I couldn’t figure out how. I didn’t make sense to me. I know he was very upset. Carol, on the other hand, I remember coming down the hall towards me when she had obviously found out and said, because we’re going to get to see you still get to do it on the show. And so it wasn’t until after the Burnett Show went off the air that Carol commissioned a 90 minute special called Teleplay called Eunice. And we were all in Hawaii after the show had gone off the air and we had condos in the same area. And she came out of the pool one day and I was lying face down at the pool is kind of almost asleep. And she threw the script down in front of me on the on the on a cement. And it said Eunice. And she said, Read this if you want to do it. And I read it. And I said, Well, Mama dies at the end. And she said, don’t be greedy. You want to do it or not. And I said, Yeah, sure, I want to do it. So we did this special, which CBS was not all that crazy about. They held it and held it and waited and waited. And finally, when they aired it, it did great in the ratings. I got nominated for an Emmy, which just absolutely blew me away. And we were we were invited up to Carol’s house. Carol and Joe invited us up for dinner me now to screen it before it ever went on the air. And we’re on the way up to the house. And my husband, who is half greek and I swear is a gypsy, said, you be ready. They’re going to ask you to do this. So they’re gonna ask you to this spinoff. And I just went, OK, whatever. Anyway, it was we watch we screened those special, which was great. And no sooner did the credits roll than Harvey and Joe and Carol were all over me. Like, I got batsuit and said, you have to do this as a spin off. You have got to do this as a spin off. And I said, but how do I do it without you? They said, we’ll come and visit. We’ll come and play. We’ll do it. But you have to do this. And remember Carol sitting me down and saying, honey, do this for a few years and then you can do whatever you want for the rest of your career. But she said you need to do this to this really how Mama’s family happened. Yeah.

Interviewer: What was Carol came on,.

Vicki Lawrence: Carol and Harvey guested, you know, often on few episodes during the first. Oh, gosh. Season two and a half maybe. Yeah.

Interviewer: I just want to ask you about Harvey Korman. How can you just talk about how big a part of the success of the show was, Harvey?

Vicki Lawrence: Well, Carol tells a story about them sitting around brainstorming, casting, and everybody sang the street cleaner. I don’t think, you know, Harvey or Carol tells a story about sitting around before the Brunette Short ever even started brainstorming who they would cast. It was a kind of accident. I think the way they found Lyle, it was certainly an accident the way they found me. And he kept saying. There is that street sweeper. Oh, I say. OK, so start over again, everybody saying and everybody kept saying, what we need to find is Harvey Korman type because he was just wrapping up the Danny Kaye Show at the time. And Carol said, this is the way I’ve always heard the story, Carol said. Has anybody thought to ask Harvey? Harvey was still hanging around CBS. He was still on the you know, he could be spotted in the in the parking lot. So, Carol, to the way I always heard the story, approached him in the parking lot. So would you be interested in doing my show? And that’s how Harvey came on board. And I took to my mind. Harvey is arguably to this day the best sketch comedian ever and ever. He just embodies his characters and just works one hundred and ten percent at making things funny and making and really is Dye’s into the characters and tries to be those characters. I mean, I just think he’s a really incredible actor, slash comedian and. Was I mean, he taught me, as I said, most everything I think that I know about sketch comedy from dialects to these great dialects. Make your props, your friends, you know, learning about priming. I literally got a crash course in comedy from Harvey, who I was in a lot of those movie takeoffs because I didn’t know. So he would explain to me. Here’s who you’re playing and here’s what you need to go watch. And here’s what you need to know. Because if we would get a script on Monday morning and I would say Vicky is playing, Maria Ouspenskaya and I would look at Harvey and, you know, he was like, later, later, later we’ll talk. Earlier we did the Marx Brothers. I didn’t know there was a Harpo Marx. I knew Groucho and Chico. I wasn’t really. You know, I wasn’t really I didn’t know that. Yeah, I no, you helped me with all of that stuff and I I think was invaluable to take care, Carol. He was just a rock. He was a crazy rock there. There is no question a crazy rock. Remember, at one point, Carol put a sign on his dressing room door. It said, Mr. Happy go lucky because I think sometimes Harvey was more of a diva than Carol. Well, we know Harvey was more of a diva like Carol.

Interviewer: What were the circumstances? Why? When and why?

Vicki Lawrence: Why did he leave? I think he just felt that it was time for him to move on. And it was unfortunate. I don’t really know all the details as to why he left. But as far as I know, it was just he thought it was time.

Interviewer: Was it something that had been discussed? Do you know, or.

Vicki Lawrence: Probably between them? I don’t. As I said, I didn’t. I did not know that much about the business ins and outs or his temperament or.

Interviewer: What happened after he left?

Vicki Lawrence: Somebody was brought on after Harvey left, we spent a season with Dick Van Dyke. And I mean, to me, it was just such a gaffe. Just to be able to sit in the audience and watch him when he pretape dance numbers or just. And it was probably nerve wracking for him because what a horrible circumstance, I think, to come into the last season of the of The Carol Burnett Show. I think a really, really difficult. But to me, I had idolized him for so many years to get to hear him worrying about that part in a scatch, you know, because he had the dressing room right next to me. So I would hear him worrying about whether he was gonna be funny or good or whether it was right for sake. Your Dick Van Dyke, of course. Well, but and I remember the night he did a takeoff on Singin in the Rain and he had to flood the whole stage. So they pretaped it the night before the the night before we taped it just to sit and watch him work was just such a joy. He was such a nice man.

Interviewer: Talk about singing with Carol. I heard that. Perhaps not as you’re singing voices for other skills. Did you feel comfortable singing? Did you prefer to sing?

Vicki Lawrence: As far as I know, she preferred to sing with someone. We used to have great fun on the duets and the music with those medleys that we would do that were like one hundred and fifty songs long. You know, I, I, I used to say that I know that I could win. Name that tune hands down because I know the first 20 notes of every song ever. You know, I crash course again and all the standard CNO and the. And Kenny and Mitzi were so fun to work with. We stayed put. Ever. I just did a show the other day where we had to do music. And I thought, isn’t it a shame I don’t do it like we used to do on the Burnett Show. They put everything on a cassette for you. It was cassettes in your car back then and you’d throw the cassette in and it wasn’t they weren’t even in your car yet. You had to have a cassette player, I think, for, you know, the first number of years that we did this. And you would learn, you know, like Mitzi would do Carol’s part and Kenny would do my part. That’s how you learned your songs on the way to work. You would just listen to the audio. And, yeah, the duets and all that stuff were great fun. I don’t know if Carole was insecure with her voice. Why on Earth? Because to me it was like singing with a Broadway person. So I felt like I never had the volume, never had the range that she dad always had to really step up to the plate and give it my very best shot to keep up with her, I thought. And she used to do this wonderful, funny thing. She did squiggles on her. You shouldn’t read music. So she’d make all these squiggly marks that were always insanely hysterical to me on her. I have no idea how she read it, but she could read from her squiggles over the words like phonetics, where she where the melody went was hysterical. The squiggles was she thought it was that way in terms of her work. I mean, look so effortless when we see her either singing or doing this. Was there a lot more work behind it? People realize or was it just the. I don’t know how how innate the music or her musical. I want to say no, because she would pore over the squiggles and listening and very carefully to the tapes. And and I just think that the way The Burnett Show ran it, just everybody had a job and everybody did their job beautifully. And the musical department. I mean, that was a part of our day. It was like almost like a school day. And the first thing you do in the morning was go work on that music for a half hour or an hour. And it was just that. And that play, the Burnett Show ran like a tight ship and just. And I suppose that’s Carol and Joe. They just put together an incredible staff. Everybody did their job perfectly and nobody but it into anybody else’s job. Consequently, everybody got to do their job as beautifully as they could. And it was the show just ran so smoothly because of it.

Interviewer: What about her sketches and germs? Did. I mean, you all did, but she especially did every kind of character imaginable. And I’m just wondering what you saw about her process. Did she just slip in and out of these characters? Did she have to find a character? How did that.

Vicki Lawrence: Well, you know Carol lived for the movie takeoffs because that’s what she grew up with. And so for her to slip in to. Any of those movie characters, I think, was easy for her because it was her childhood. It was. It was playing dress up. And I don’t I don’t remember ever seeing her really. Trouble. Hard for her. Maybe she did. I know. And I can’t think of them, but the sketches that I remember being such huge undertakings where the movie takeoff’s and she just lived to slip into those characters. And I do have to say again, Bob Mackie, my gosh, what I find was he and he was probably the youngest person on the staff besides me when the Burnett Show started. I remember sitting out in the audience and talking to Bob, and he was only maybe 22 to my 18 at the time and had apprenticed under Edith had. And I’m not really sure how she found him, but he was in his own right, a comic genius, because if you remember on any given occasion, if you weren’t sure who the character was, you couldn’t quite find it. Wait till you see Bob on Wednesday morning and then it will all become abundantly clear who you are.

Interviewer: Can you just describe the final episode?

Vicki Lawrence: Well, I think final shows are always hard. It was it was sad. It was it was time, and I think everybody felt it was time, but still sad because it’s a whole chapter of your life that now looking back to me is almost surreal. It’s it’s almost emotionally a hard place to get back to and revisit because it’s such a wash of memories. Like people say, we’ll say, name your favorite character, name your favorite scatch, name your favorite moment. It’s just eleven years, a wash of favorite memories and moments. And to me was just so much fun. And where I grew up and where I became a mom and a mother and an adult and. It’s just such a very special place that, yes, it was hard to say goodbye, but I think we everybody knew it was time and we knew it was what Carol wanted. But, yeah, it was emotional. It was emotional.