New career high unlocked
Interviewing Emmy winner Vicki Lawrence represented a new career pinnacle for me. I have adored her since I was 3 years old. I still remember seeing her burst onto the set of Win, Lose or Draw with that glorious red hair and unmistakable energy. From there, I watched her faithfully on the daily parade of syndicated game shows, from the various incarnations of Pyramid to the Password franchise, always rooting for her team to win. One of my favorite things was watching her banter back and forth with her good friend Dick Clark.
“I loved those games, and I did a lot of them,” Lawrence told me during our May 2 phone interview. “He was a very good friend, and I learned to dance from watching his American Bandstand show.”
It was on American Bandstand that Lawrence, in 1972, received her one and only gold record for her No. 1 single, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” Though there is an infamous clip of Carol Burnett presenting her with the award, Lawrence quickly clarified that it was Clark who first handed her the honor.
“I remember they wouldn’t let me sing the song on the show until it became a hit,” she recalled. “It would have helped the record to go ahead and sing it.”
Her daytime talk show, Vicki!, which debuted years before Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres found enormous success with a similar happy, celebrity-oriented style. In my opinion, Lawrence pioneered that format, yet history often forgets her role in it. It was difficult for me to imagine that she could experience that oversight without bitterness.
“I did go through a period of that,” she admitted candidly. “It was a very depressing period of my life, but I don’t like to look back. I would much rather look forward.”
Despite Emmy nominations spanning talk shows, variety programs, television movies and comedy, she views success through a far more personal lens.
“I have a very wonderful life,” she said. “I have a beautiful family, and I live in a beautiful spot.”
I brought up one of my favorite performances from The Carol Burnett Show — the unforgettable “Body Language” number featuring the Jackson Five. Michael Jackson would later become one of the most influential dancers the world has ever seen, and yet Lawrence absolutely held her own beside him.
“Michael and I used to run into each other at the same market,” she recalled with a laugh. “We would always say hello to each other from the produce section. I miss him. He was just phenomenal.”
Of course, when it comes to comedic redheads, Lawrence does not dispute that Lucille Ball remains the queen of them all. Lawrence had the opportunity to work with Ball on several episodes of The Carol Burnett Show, an experience she still treasures.
“She was a very ballsy lady,” Lawrence remembered. “She was very outspoken, but also very lovely and encouraging.”
Lawrence’s admiration for fearless comedic women clearly extends beyond Ball. When I mentioned Rue McClanahan and Betty White leaving Mama’s Family after its NBC cancellation to star on The Golden Girls, I confessed that I had always thought Lawrence would have made a perfect guest star on that legendary sitcom.
“I was a good bit younger than those girls,” she said. “But I loved bawdy women like Betty White, and I think that’s because I’m one of them.”
Another thing many people may not realize is that Lawrence released a second album several years after The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia. The album, Newborn Woman, is something she remembers with far less enthusiasm.
“That’s a good thing,” she joked when I brought it up. “It wasn’t a very good album. There were people who wanted to make the record with me, and I said okay, but it certainly wasn’t my idea, and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to at all.”
We discussed her late husband of 50 years, CBS makeup artist Al Schultz, who passed away in 2024. Schultz holds a unique place in entertainment history as the last person to professionally apply makeup to Elvis Presley before the singer’s death.
“I was about two weeks away from giving birth to our son Garrett,” Lawrence recalled. “Al really bonded with Elvis, but he came home very upset after that session.”
According to Lawrence, Schultz told her, “If someone doesn’t help that man, he won’t be with us much longer.” Three months later, while Vicki and Al were taking a nap, news broke that Presley had died.
As our conversation continued, I found myself reflecting on why this interview meant so much to me personally. My great-grandmother, Granny Rose, is the closest thing I have ever had to the character of Mama. Her birthday fell just four days before mine. Vicki’s birthday is the day after mine. She always liked to say that “everybody who was anybody had a birthday in March.” How serendipitous, then, that she once voiced a character named Granny Rose in The Fox and the Hound 2.
“It was so much fun,” she said, professing a mutual love for classic Disney animation. “I wish I could have done more of it. I would love to do a whole Disney movie. A lot of the big stars are doing them now, and I would love that opportunity.”
Vicki Lawrence’s comedy has helped my family and me through our darkest moments and has revolved around some of our happiest. My eternal gratitude goes to her and her agent Sanford Brokaw for an opportunity I’ll treasure forever. I’m thankful beyond words.
