Inteview Vicki Lawrence and Carol Burnett

well eunice was uh you know she was a blowhard uh throughout the you know all the sketches she always thought she could have been something really big and done something and mama was always raining on her parade and um but eunice used that as a hook not to do anything because she really had no self-esteem and so she blamed mama for everything you know for keeping her from being a star from keeping her from being somebody and that's what i loved in the characters i just thought that was i when we first did the family the couple that had been on a couple of times i had a manicurist in uh l.a and she was russian and she was doing my nails she says you know that family that family is just like my family in russia so just everybody they identified well yeah yeah that's not quite far and away the most real characters we ever did on the brunette show you remember the one when we did with maggie smith yes and but when we go into the school room and you know and we're talking about boba my the son our son whom we never see of course but uh and one day in rehearsal either harvey said it or i i can't remember but we said let's do this just as a straight one act let's not do the characters with the accents or anything let's play that just just as an acting experiment just to play it as if we're doing it it was so serious it was there wasn't one laugh and then you layer it with well you know it the way we talked and then it got silly and got funny but it was there were i don't i don't think there were ever any jokes written for those characters jokes no it was all character driven yeah yeah it would be an exciting experiment for any acting school to do that to say okay we're going to take one thing here it is here are the lines do it straight now how are you going to make it fun how are you going to make it funny i remember about doing the eunice play that i wanted to take it from the beginning uh even before eunice was married to harvey and when uh mama was younger and you and then take it all the way through their lives and then through the fact that mama would be dead at the end of it and uh i just wanted that complete thing to happen and i thought uh dick clare and jenna mcmahon wrote a beautiful script and then betty white was on it and kenny berry played phillip right yeah and uh it uh i thought it did very well it was a 90 minute a 90 minute teleplay that you commissioned as as one of your specials for cbs and yeah we'll be bringing it out to the pool we were in hawaii at the time and i was laying on a lounge chair face down you slap slapped it down on the cement in front of me and said read this so if you want to do it and i read it and i said well it's good but mama dies at the end and you said don't be greedy i didn't yes you did you said don't be greedy you want to do this or not so yes yeah of course really i mean it brought tears to people's eyes yeah it was really good it was really well written yeah and betty came we came back from the funeral and betty wanted to get all the goodies that mama had you know all she was doing as the evil sister was i think oh that's a lovely lamp i i don't know you don't want that unis mama mama would want me to have all of that you know that was really kind of like real life i think so that's right that's that's what they wrote yes i wanted it to be more a little more real uh in the last act i mean the first three acts are kind of like what we did on our show you know over the top and funny and silly but once mama died and we come back from a funeral it didn't get serious we couldn't get too many laughs out of that nor did we want to yeah you know it was a play yeah eunice was a play it wasn't live but it was taped in front of an audience and uh we did it like we used to do our show my show when uh you know we didn't want to keep the audience waiting ever so we barrel right through well you take it what do you remember i was hoping we would sit here today and you'd tell me like a bedtime story like how did it really happen well i do remember that i love the family so much and then you know we went off the air but to keep it going and to keep it why not do a spin-off and call it mama's family okay now here's what i remember in the i'm going to say the ninth season maybe the beginning of the 10th joe came to me sat me down you all were blocking on stage sat me down in the audience and said i've made a deal for you to spin mama off into a series and i said yeah what now i had just been pregnant mind you for nine months and not terribly attractive and not really wanting to play an old lady every week so he lays this all out on the table he's made the deal and i said well who is what about carol what about harvey you don't need them and i said but i what happens if it doesn't fly if it doesn't go he said you'll come back here i said with my tail tucked between my legs no no no no no i don't want to do it and i remember the very if if it wasn't that afternoon it was the very next day you coming down the hall going i'm so happy this is so good to do it on my show and i didn't hear another word about it until we went off the air and you came to me with a script called eunice in hawaii a year after we went off the air you had commissioned this teleplay that aired on cbs i don't know whenever and you i remember you invited me and al up to the house to screen that tv show now you know being nothing if not greek said you just wait you just wait and i swear those credits had not even rolled and you and joe and harvey were all over me one yes i remember that god is your mama's family yeah i'm glad i'm glad you agreed i i yeah well yes so that's what i remember well you remember more than i do because i i wasn't privy to the conversation you had with joe that day you weren't no well how weird is that i know that he's going to take it away from the show and not tell you oh no well i don't remember being told oh wow okay and then i guess what did he sell it to grant tinker on a golf course or something i have no idea i think so because we went without a pilot no pilot so we were sort of like on the ground running trying to figure out what the heck mama's family was when we were on the air and then all of the young guys that worked at nbc hated it because it got green lighted without a pilot and they didn't number one didn't understand a royal comedy number two they really didn't understand a young woman playing an old woman it was like we were almost doomed from the get-go hardly well but i mean kind of thought yeah well it's like what they thought with our show with my show they didn't want me to do a variety show they said it's a man's game so yeah and then they didn't want you to play an old lady when you're a young lady right young woman so i i don't know it's that mentality of the suits yes yeah so that's being not too mentally together a little disabled sorry bless their hearts yeah but still scary to have done it with them and all of a sudden to be alone um it was like sort of starting over well but you had that character down so beautifully and everybody knew you and you knew you in that and they loved you in it so i you were scared but none of us were scared i know you weren't i was though i was i knew you would be wonderful very nervous yes i was researching ken not too long ago and i don't even remember why but i happen to look up his interview for the television academy which goes into the archives if you ever want to study television and kenny said they asked him about playing philip and he said well many many actors played phillip the first person to play him was roddy mcdowell and then alan alda played him and then tommy smothers played him and in front and i'm like you know you know this is in the archives yeah and i i just thought you know mama is like a game of post office it changes from actor and actor is handed down from generation to generation and nobody knows what the heck the truth is where they they interchanged the roles except alan alda would play one son tommy smothers played another roddy played another a good bit of trivia how many children really did mama have well okay alan alda eunice betty white uh tommy smothers and barati so she had five children so six children wow i guess and i'm the only one you picked on i guess was the only one i don't know about that she's the only one that took it to heart nobody everybody left yes we got green lighted without a pilot so i think we sort of had to find our way while we were while we were on the air and i think a lot of the goal of the writers was to fill in the missing holes with eunice and had gone and you know you had to have adults and you had to have [Music] somebody people for her to pick on you had to have antagonists so in comes naomi you know and incomes the grandson bubba and and comes adult and and kenny and i've been watching kenny the last a few nights and oh god he's so funny he's so funny he's like just having a right arm just there for you constantly well you know he was one of our favorite guests we kenny was practically a regular on the show and and yeah and they dancing a big gift to me such a i mean just solid as a rock yeah the timing and the physical comedy and sort of entitled of all of my children and sort of self-assured unlike eunice and uh so kind of more able to make her own way in the world and and and i think she felt the world revolved around her yeah ellen was so beautiful and was the the apple of mama's eye but ellen didn't really give a quit about staying at home and i think ellen split and probably married early you know to get away but she had all this she had great self-confidence because she was so beautiful and again she didn't kowtow to mama whereas eunice was was a wart i'm just always trying to please mama and always trying to get and yes like betty could please her i mean uh betty white's character ellen could please mama by just uh giving her a phone call once a year and eunice uh forget it whatever she tried it it didn't work but what what great characters they were you know you just and i think really how true that is of any family that you look at like you look at siblings and you'll go well how did that one turn out so normal and how is that one so dysfunctional and how is that yeah she was awfully mean on the burnett show she was i think sort of one-dimensional and when we started the series um it was really uncomfortable to me it didn't feel like a sitcom and um uh i asked to bring harvey in at the end of two tapings and uh i said i need help and you know he was such a mentor to me he sat me down he said she's got to be silly now she's got to be she's got to be a peacock she's got to be sick you can't expect people to come home after a hard day at the office pop a beer and watch this woman screaming at people for a half hour every week and want to come back and i said but she's never even smiled harvey and he and he said to me she is you you are she and once again he said any character you will ever do is in your gut and um and you know he said if you can smile she can smile if you can laugh she can laugh and he was really i would say responsible for setting her free and uh it was a little upsetting to the writers to dick and jenna it was not the mama that they loved well that was because there wasn't you listen there wasn't that all that hope you had to you had to be less you couldn't be mean every week right it was no whereas we could do it as a sketch every once in a while that was fine because of the locking horns but uh harvey was absolutely right you were right yeah yeah so yeah so she turned into a really fun character really fun harley was more of a of an actress director roger more of a camera director so it worked we did that in the beginning on the brunette show yeah yeah we had a director that came in and directed the comedy sketches a stager you know a stager and uh yeah and then we'd have the director in the booth didn't that come about on your show alistair quince but that wasn't about the family we never did it for the family you didn't do it on the brunette show i don't know somebody must have thought that was a great idea to just kind of have him intro them so it would seem like a masterpiece theater so somebody thought that was a cute little comedy hook i think that the first few episodes that carol was in that eunice was in was really it was the writer's job to kind of turn it more from eunice's family into mama's family yeah that's true and um uh to focus more on what mama is having to go through at the hands of her daughter who is absolutely flipping nuts well yeah and eunice came in of course wanting to take over the wedding and and sing and of course it was pitiful so nobody wanted to hear her you know but she wanted to sing and uh i remember i loved that bit and um and then it was pretty funny you were funny in that episode you were very funny what is a promise oh lord yeah oh you know what else we should really talk about is the fact that dorothy lyman was probably on mama's family because of you that's true i think you're responsible for a good deal of the casting i i loved her on all my children she she was the original opal yeah on all my children and so we hit it off and and i just thought she was so terrific and i just remember that i was talking to joe about it and i had him watch her in some of the all my children episodes and i said wouldn't she be great for uh that role in mama's family and so he liked her and i was i said look if if dorothy can come out and test for i'll go on and do opal on all my children but she's not here if you need me i'll come up they didn't need me however i was i was so into her performance and and her talent yeah that uh i was willing to go back and subscribe my children junkie we used to have to break the lunch break on the burnett show the last few years was when all my children was on the air and we all had to sit and watch out well we didn't all but i i remember i got hooked on it just like you did so carol's into it i'll just see what's going on here and uh yeah and i remember the dorothy the first time she came in she walked in i mean she was cast and as she walked into the rehearsal hall she turned the chair around backwards straddled it with her legs and said hey and i just went oh my god this gal is i think she intimidated all the guys but she was i remember why they bonded or how this could come about it was because we had a common enemy in that cell it you know that so naturally we we got together and bonded you know that that would make us do that and uh of course it was short-lived but then i think yeah that scene on the porch is wonderful because i think what we bond over is our sex life if i recall because you say that is just like you know those little uh what is it the nature videos where the the fly refiner intakes are flying around mid-air and they mean they don't even know what happened that's what's happened it's kind of like that and mama says yeah it's kind of like that was kind of like that for me too and it's just it's very short-lived on the porch but i think again was the writer's attempt early in the series to to give some resolution to to the mama and eunice character so that we could go on without eunice and and concentrate on mama's family i only remember ever really having one argument with the writers and it was a script that they wrote where my my dead husband's brother comes back from the merchant marines and they wrote a script where we end up sleeping together and i said to the writers i read it and i said you know she is nothing if not bible belt and she would never i don't care how dead her husband is she would never sleep with her brother-in-law and i remember joe saying you listen to her listen to her and rewrite that script it's the only argument i ever remember having with her and it wasn't even an argument it was just like we need to rewrite the second half of this show so at the end of the show i think the family doesn't really know what happened but you did yeah yeah oh lord and an aunt who had that kind of relationship they never spoke they hardly ever spoke he would go to a room in the house and she'd go to another room in the house and if they did speak she might be yelling at him and he would just turn it off yeah he would turn it off he just you know and i i think that's what daddy was right and he disconnected from the family he didn't want any of the responsibility no no no not his job so he just leave me alone why not yes yeah it's a great handle for a comedian and it's a great hook for the audiences and you still hear about him on the street you'll still have people come up and say wake up and smell the coffee i just had somebody i just emailed rick hawkins the other day emailed me back and he said well all i can say is good lord mama how the hell should i know that's funny

Channel: Jimmy Allen Junior

Views: 14,744

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Id: bUpYWvxFYG0

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020