Barbara Mandrell - Acting Career

Acting Career

In 1980, the TV program Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters premiered on NBC. In addition to hosts Barbara, Louise, and Irlene Mandrell, the show featured musical guests and comedy sketches. Each broadcast also closed with a gospel song, and in 1982 Mandrell released her own inspirational album, He Set My Life to Music. As a result of her busy schedule, she began suffering from vocal strain, and on doctor's orders pulled the plug on the television program in 1982. In 1983, she premiered The Lady Is a Champ, a Las Vegas stage show.

Mandrell had the starring role in Burning Rage alongside Tom Wopat in 1984 just prior to her car accident. Later, she also had guest star roles on hit shows, including: Empty Nest; Diagnosis: Murder; Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; The Commish; Baywatch; Walker, Texas Ranger; and Rockford Files. She even had a recurring featured role in the late 1990s on Aaron Spelling's daytime drama, Sunset Beach.

Many of these performances can be seen on late-night television or on the DVD box sets of the respective shows. In 1990, she wrote an autobiography called Get to the Heart: My Story, which was a New York Times Bestseller for more than three months, and in 1997 became a highly rated CBS TV Movie of the Week starring Maureen McCormick (Marcia on "The Brady Bunch"). Mandrell promoted her autobiography on shows such as Sally Jessy Raphaël show, Geraldo, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, with whom she shared the "Woman of the World" honor in 1992. In primetime, she appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Ralph Emery's Nashville Now, and she even "rapped" during one of her three Arsenio visits.