The curtain had barely come down on the Vicksburg Theatre Guild’s final production of “I Remember Mama” Sunday when its director, Roy Bailey, spoke about his own.

Bailey, 77, had just been presented with the third-ever Lifetime Achievement Award given by the VTG.

He recalled that his mother had known he was meant for the theater when he was very young — just 3 years old, dramatically banging his head during a temper tantrum. A few years later she took him to his first movie audition.

“She was not a stage-door mother,” Bailey said from the stage of the Parkside Playhouse, holding the plaque he’d been presented by VTG board president Mike Calnan. “She had little or no interest in plays or movies herself, but she supported and lovingly believed in me. First and foremost, I remember Dolly Jackson, my mama.”

Calnan said the board voted unanimously to honor Bailey, following the nomination by Bailey’s assistant director on “Mama,” Amy Melton, who also acted in the play and is the group’s assistant director of marketing.

“She saw what an awesome job he was doing directing the play, and became very passionate about wanting to see him recognized,” Calnan said. “It was an opportunity for all of us to re-learn what his accomplishments had been before our time.”

Bailey was not yet 30 when he began acting in Vicksburg’s record-setting melodrama “Gold in the Hills” in the early 1960s, after moving here from his native Louisiana.

“I grew up in Baton Rouge, and Baton Rouge is an artistic town,” he said. “If you didn’t play sports (in high school), you’d better be involved in something artistic — music, fine arts, drama.”

In ’60s productions of “Gold in the Hills,” Bailey usually played the villain, Richard Murgatroyd. He never got to be the hero. “I wasn’t the type,” he laughed. “My hair was a lot darker then.”

Bailey worked as a reporter and photographer for The Vicksburg Evening Post. He married in 1962, and, with his wife, Glenda, went back to Louisiana for several years, working in newspapers and broadcasting. They returned to Vicksburg in 1967, Bailey again worked for the Post before going into public relations and later teaching, which again took Bailey away from the area.

The couple returned in 1984, he said, and he took teaching positions first at Chamberlain-Hunt Academy and later at Hinds Community College.

Off and on since 1961, however, he’s continued his work in the theater, and estimates that he’s been in at least 100 performances of “Gold in the Hills” and other plays.

“I’ve known Roy Bailey since I was in high school,” said longtime VTG actor and volunteer William Mathews, whom Bailey first cast in 1969 as Gold’s Murgatroyd. “He has starred in many productions and has directed very successful plays, including ‘My Fair Lady.’”

Mathews said Bailey also wrote a play called “The Tent,” in which Mathews starred.

“He’s been in ‘Gold in the Hills’ longer than I’ve been alive,” said Melton, who heard plenty of Bailey’s stories as they worked on “I Remember Mama.”

Many were about growing up in Baton Rouge, such as being in a class with a young woman named Dorothy Smith, Melton said. Smith was interested in him but Bailey told her sorry, he was seeing someone else.

Later, Smith went to Hollywood, where she changed her name to Donna Douglas and landed a part as Elly May Clampett on “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

Bailey also likes to talk about his granddaughter, Lindsey, a fifth-grader at Warren Central Intermediate School, who played one of mama’s daughters in the just-completed production, has acted in VTG’s Fairy Tale Theatre and Gold and had the lead role in the 2010 production of “The Bad Seed,” which also featured her grandfather.

“She keeps me grounded with her nightly critique of rehearsals and performances,” Bailey said in his acceptance speech.

Besides Gold, in which he has played the constable for the last few years, Bailey’s other VTG acting credits include “Our Town,” “The Canterville Ghost” and “God’s Favorite.”

His theater credits also include performing and directing for the Westside Theatre Foundation.

The first Lifetime Achievement Award given by the VTG went to Georgina Stanfield in 2006. For more than 30 years, the English-born Stanfield performed various roles, from Lizzie the housekeeper to Old Kate, in “Gold In the Hills.”

The second went to William “Buddy” Hallberg Jr. in 2008. He was 72 when honored for 51 years with the Vicksburg Theatre Guild. Hallberg has been acting since he was a senior at Carr Central High School and won a role in “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

He has performed in many VTG productions, including “Gold in the Hills,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Fantasticks.”