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Thelma "Mama" Harper is the quick-tempered, blue-haired matriarch of the Harper family who lives with son Vint and his wife, Naomi, who were forced to move into Mama's basement after losing money in a business deal gone awry.
- Overview
- Network Run
- First-Run Syndication
- Harper Family Tree
- Recurring Characters
- Episodes
- Home Media
- Syndication
- Post-Television Show Appearances of Thelma Harper/Mama
The show is set in the city of Raytown, which actress Vicki Lawrence later revealed to be Raytown, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City (although the script writing suggests the setting was Raytown, Mississippi, given the rural southern nature of the series). The television series revolves around the wacky misadventures of the Harper family, extended ...
Beginning the series
In the ninth season of The Carol Burnett Show, producer Joe Hamilton wanted to spin off Mama into her own series, but Lawrence turned him down. She did not wish to wear a "fat suit portraying an old lady every week", and she had misgivings about playing the role without Harvey Korman (who played Mama's son-in-law, Ed Higgins) and Carol Burnett (who played Mama's daughter Eunice Higgins) regularly by her side as in "The Family" sketches. Burnett and Korman told Lawrence that they would only ap...
Plot details
For 1½ seasons from 1983 through 1984, Mama's Family ran on NBC. In the series' first episode, Thelma Harper lives with her uncomfortable, uptight spinster sister Fran (Rue McClanahan), a journalist for a local paper. Thelma's son Vinton (whose wife Mitzi had left him to become a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas) arrives to inform Thelma that he and his two children, Sonja and Buzz, have been evicted from their home and need a place to stay. Much to Fran's chagrin, Thelma allows the trio to mov...
Opening theme discrepancies
Korman appeared at the beginning of each episode as the stuffed shirt Alistair Quince (a parody of Alistair Cooke), who would soberly introduce the program in the style of Masterpiece Theatre. These monologs were cut out of the later syndicated reruns.Korman also performed the voice of Thelma's unseen late husband, Carl, in flashback episodes. An extended version of the show's opening theme song, with repeated melodies, was used during the original NBC run, but was never used in reruns. The h...
Series rebirth
After Mama's Family was canceled by NBC in 1984, it was later relaunched in first-run syndication in 1986. Lorimar Television had just merged with Telepictures and were looking for new projects for the then newly commenced first-run syndication market. After observing high ratings for NBC's Mama's Family in summer reruns, production staff decided that the show deserved a second chance and ordered 100 episodes for syndication.Bubba, the son of Ed and Eunice, comes to live with Thelma after his...
Absence of Carol Burnett as the "Eunice" character
According to Lawrence's autobiography, Vicki!: The True-Life Adventures of Miss Fireball, Burnett resented Lawrence for accepting the role of Mama for first-run syndication with producer Joe Hamilton (who owned the Mama's Family characters). It was during this time that Burnett was involved in an acrimonious divorce from Hamilton, who produced both The Carol Burnett Show and Mama's Family.Burnett felt Lawrence had been disloyal to her and held a grudge against her until Hamilton's death in 19...
Series end
After Mama's Family was picked up in first-run syndication, ratings for the series improved, becoming the highest-rated first-run program in syndication. According to Ken Berry, Lawrence had seemingly grown tired of playing the "Mama" role by 1990 and wanted to end the show. According to Lawrence, who would reprise Mama on stage for many years thereafter, the series ended because it had reached the standard threshold of 100 episodes, and the syndicator no longer needed to produce anymore, eve...
Magenta= CrowleysOrange= HarpersBlue= Harper childrenRed= Harper in-lawsCarl Harper, a predominantly unseen character (although once played by Ken Berry in flashback scenes of the series finale), he is the deceased husband of Mama and father of Ellen, Eunice, and Vinto...Effie Crowley Harper, Thelma's cousin (in season 2) and later her sister-in-law (in season 4), known for her rum balls deceptively filled with alcohol bestowed to the family. She lives in nearby Ce...Reverend Lloyd Meechum, the Harpers' henpecked minister. Played by Earl Boen.Alberta Meechum, Reverend Meechum's stuck-up, catty wife and a perennial thorn in the side of Thelma Harper. Played by Anne HaneyAltogether, Mama's Familyhad six seasons consisting of 130 episodes. The show's first life consisted of 35 episodes, making for two seasons. The show's second life consisted of 95 episodes, making for four seasons.
On September 26, 2006, Warner Bros. Television released season 1 of Mama's Familyon DVD. The DVD release features the syndicated versions of the episodes, which edits roughly three minutes from what originally aired. Warner Bros. claimed to only own the rights to the syndicated form. Due to issues relating to ownership rights between the show's pro...
After the series finale in 1990, the entire series (including the NBC episodes) was placed in off-network syndication, airing in most cities every weekday. Mama's Family also ran on TBS from January 1997 until August 2006 premiering weekday mornings. In October 1998, TBS aired a full hour of Mama's Family weekday afternoons at 6:05 pm/et and then m...
Vicki Lawrence has been reprising her role of Mama in her untelevised touring stage show, entitled Vicki Lawrence and Mama: A Two-Woman Show. In the show, Lawrence first performs stand-up comedy as...Lawrence has also appeared in her Mama role on several Halloween-themed episodes of the 1998–2004 run of Hollywood Squares with Tom Bergeronat the helm.Lawrence appeared on RuPaul's Drag Racein the "All-Stars" season as Mama in the skit "RuPaul's Gaff-In."Lawrence appeared on The Queen Latifah Show as Mama the Monday after Mother's Day2014 in a comical skit that aired prior to each commercial break. Lawrence also appeared on the show 8 days later al...Mama's Family: Created by Dick Clair, Jenna McMahon. With Vicki Lawrence, Ken Berry, Dorothy Lyman, Allan Kayser. Mama's Family originated with Thelma "Mama" Harper, and her younger sister Fran living together in Mama's house.
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- 1983-01-22
- Comedy
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Mama's Family - Mama Takes Care of Naomi's Sleezeball Manager. Jeffrey Dean. •. 234K views • 9 years ago. •. 22.
THIS PLAYLIST CONTAINS THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON OF THE FABULOUS SHOW "MAMA'S FAMILY." EPISODES: 1#. Vint and the Kids Move In 2#. For Better or For Worse 3#...
17 de set. de 2020 · From Season 1 Episode 3, "The Wedding: Part 1," - Mama braces herself for the wedding of her son Vinton to her next-door neighbor Naomi, whom she doesn't care for. The already tense mood is ...
You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family. In a blue-collar Midwestern suburb, members of an extended, eternally squabbling family struggle to live together under one...
