Gail Edwards

Gail Edwards is an American retired actress whose career spanned Broadway, television, and film. She was raised in Coral Gables, Florida, where from an early age she choreographed, costumed, and performed in neighborhood musicals, with her father handling the curtain and lights. In sixth grade, Edwards played Little Mary in The Women at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Coconut Grove, Florida, a performance that playwright George Abbott singled out when he came backstage after the show.

Before establishing herself in television, Edwards built a foundation in theater. She wrote, produced, and starred in the off-Broadway musical Becoming, which earned the Miami Herald Critics' Choice Award three times prior to its New York debut. While in New York, she signed with the LeMond/Zetter Management Group and subsequently landed the role of Sandy opposite Peter Gallagher in the East Coast tour of Broadway's Grease, a production that brought her to Broadway in 1976. She also produced and starred in two additional stage productions, The Good One and Vanities, both of which earned her the Drama-Logue Critics' Award.

After relocating to Los Angeles in 1976, Edwards signed with the Ro Diamond Agency, later moving to the Gersh Agency, and began accumulating guest-star credits on series including Happy Days, Lou Grant, M*A*S*H, and Taxi. In 1979 she auditioned for a Witt/Thomas production and was cast as Dot Higgins on ABC's It's a Living. The series ran on ABC from 1980 to 1982 and was later revived in first-run syndication from 1985 to 1989. Edwards, along with Barrie Youngfellow, Paul Kreppel, and Marian Mercer, was one of only four cast members to remain with the show across both its network and syndicated runs. Following ABC's cancellation of the series in 1982, the producers of Happy Days offered Edwards the role of K.C. Cunningham without her knowledge; her management declined the opportunity, and Crystal Bernard was subsequently hired for the part. Edwards did not learn of the incident until years later. In 1985, when It's a Living resumed production for syndication, Edwards and Bernard became co-stars on that series.

Throughout the 1980s, Edwards appeared in numerous movies-of-the-week and accumulated additional guest-star credits on series including Benson, Buffalo Bill, Doogie Howser M.D., Knight Rider, and Night Court. She also appeared in the premiere episode of Amazing Stories, which was directed by Steven Spielberg with an original score by John Williams.

In 1990, Edwards was cast as divorced mother Hilary Kozak in the CBS sitcom The Family Man, produced by Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett, reuniting her with the former Happy Days producers. After that series was cancelled in the summer of 1991, Miller and Boyett asked Edwards to join their hit ABC series Full House in the role of Vicky Larson, a talk show host who develops a relationship with Danny Tanner. Edwards made her Full House debut late that year, with the Vicky character initially appearing as a substitute host for Rebecca Donaldson on the fictional Wake Up, San Francisco. Vicky and Danny's relationship developed into an engagement by the show's seventh season. Her Family Man co-star Scott Weinger also joined Full House at that time, playing Steve Hale, the high school boyfriend of D.J. Tanner.

Concurrently with her Full House tenure, Edwards held the recurring guest role of Sharon LeMeure, the fast-talking mother of Six, on NBC's Blossom. That role reunited her with former It's a Living producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas, who produced both series. Edwards concluded her work on both Full House and Blossom in the spring of 1994 and retired from show business at that time, relocating to the Southwest.

In September 2017, it was announced that Edwards would return to acting by reprising the role of Vicky Larson in the third season of the Full House sequel series Fuller House. She appeared in the Season 3 finale, "Here Comes the Sun," and later made an additional appearance in the series finale, "Our Very Last Show, Again."

Among other notable points in her career, Edwards opened for Frank Sinatra at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach on March 24, 1974, at an event benefiting Danny Thomas's St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and served as a backup vocalist for Sergio Franchi's U.S. tour in 1976. In 2001, she was inducted into the Coral Gables High School Hall of Fame alongside Janet Reno and Al Del Greco.