According to the Associated Press ( AP ) Tesday night ( 1/1/02 ) Carol Burnett left the show she was doing ( I think it was somewhere in Florida ) to be at the side of Carrie Hamiliton , her daughter who is gravely ill and is expected not to live past this week.

Didnt say her daughter's illness but I have read here that its lung cancer.

The piece did say that Burnett is also "having problems" with her other daughter. Carol has TWO other daughters, wonder whats going on with that? Jody I know but her the only other thing I have heard about her youngest daughter is that she works with Chasity Bono on gay rights.

The article talked about Joe Hamilton's 1991 death from Cancer
and said that his death was the cause of the cancellation of Mama's Family as that show was very popular in its later years.

I found that to be very interesting as I have a copy of Vicki Lawrence's Bio and though she does talk about Joe Hamilton's cancer and how it affected the members of the cast ( Vicki says that Joe would continue to smoke and such even after losing an eye and a large chunk of his face to cancer- even "hiding" the damaged areas with a paper towel ), Vicki doesnt say much about why Mama was cancelled. I always assumed that it was because she wanted to do something new as she was getting ready for her now defunct talk show "Vicki".

That news about Carol Burnetts daughter is sad. I remember hearing about one of Carols daughters having a drug problem when she was a teenager and how Carol helped her get clean. That's also sad to hear about Joe Hamiltons cancer and his death in 1991. Mama's Family went off the air in 1990 so maybe it just got cancelled because he was sick.

"Mama's Family" ended production because it had enough episodes (over 100) for 5-day-a-week syndication. In the 80s, quite a few shows cancelled by the networks were revived in syndication, but generally only long enough to get over the 100-episode mark. "Charles in Charge" and "It's a Living" each ended production after 4 years of first-run syndication (just like "Mama"), even though they were both still popular. When you don't have a network subsidizing the cost of new episodes, there's no reason to go on once there are enough for reruns.