COURTSHIP BECOMES TV

July 23, 1957

BY MARGARET McMANUS, Free Press Special Writer 

NEW YORK – Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz will present the first of their new series of five musical comedy programs at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WJBK-TV. The shows were each scheduled to be one hour long, but this premiere offering will actually run one hour and 15 minutes. (1)

Hubbell Robinson, Jr., executive vice president of programming for CBS-TV, announced that when the network high echelon saw this film they decided it was much too good to cut any of it. 

In a highly unprecedented move, 15 minutes will be borrowed from the Steel Hour, (2) which will go on the air at 10:15 p.m., instead of its customary 10 p.m.

“The heart of the show is in the last 15 minutes,” said Miss Ball. 

“All I hope is that everybody realizes we’re going to run over the hour. It would be awful if I thought everybody was rushing out to the kitchen on the dot of 10 o’clock." 

In New York for a brief stay, Lucille Ball made herself comfortable in her suite at the Hampshire House.

She is a tallish woman – about five feet six, with orange-red hair piled high on her head and very blue eye that miss nothing. 

She was wearing a blue and white polka dot dress over stiff petticoats. 

On a finger of her right hand was an emerald-cut aquamarine ring of notable size, and on her left wrist was a gold watch set with aquamarines. 

*   *   *  

HER CHILDREN, Lucy Desiree, six and a half, a solemn, black-haired little girl, and Desiderio Alberto Arnaz, wandered in and out of the room, fidgeting with small toys and stealing a piece of pastry. 

It was incredible that the sturdy, mischievous boy was the famous baby for whom the television public watched and waited with the mass impatience of an expectant father, not quite four year ago. 

Lucille Ball is obviously a doting mother, hiding the extent of her devotion beneath a brisk matter-of-factness. She is direct, outspoken and amusing, with a lightning-fast facile mind which goes in so many directions that at times her words can’t keep up with her thoughts. 

But she is more than bright. There is also about her the quality of a poet. 

*   *   *

I LOVE BEGINNINGS,” she said. “I love the beginning of a day. I love a new season. I love empty apartments. People are always asking us now if we have achieved everything we want. We haven’t nearly achieved all our dreams. I’m not talking about material things, of course. I love working toward any hope, any goal. The struggle is inspiring." 

There sat Lucy, a woman who, with her husband, has probably amassed a greater fortune from television than any other performer in the business, quite genuinely lyrical about the joys of the perilous climb to the top of the mountain.

*   *   *

THE TOP-RATED show, ‘I Love Lucy,’ had a comparatively long life and they wisely quit it while it was still very popular. Although reruns are being seen each Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. over WJBK-TV. 

Their new series promises to be as successful. The Desilu Production Company is a fabulous money maker, yet Lucille Ball hasn’t a thought of retiring on her laurels and her annuities. "I’m not happy unless I’m working,” she said, “What would I do if I weren’t working? I’m hardly the type to play bridge with the girls. 

"I may not work as steadily, but I must work. In my spare time, there are so many things I want to do.

*   *   *

"I’M AN EASTERN girl at heart and I miss the change in seasons. I can take just so much sunshine. I’ve a deep yearning for New England. I want to spend a winter there, and be snowed in. 

"I want to live a while in Paris, Rome and Switzerland, not just to visit, but really to live for a few months, so that the children can go to school in those places. "I’m the darndest contradiction. I have a longing to know parts of my country which are strange to me, to get the feeling of belonging to them, yet I cling so hard to my roots that Desi can hardly move me out of the living room." 

*   *   *

LUCILLE BALL said that the television characters of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo and the private characters of Lucy and Desi Arnaz are so closely related that it is impossible to tell where the Ricardos start and the Arnaz couple stops. This first show of the new series, which includes in the cast Ann Sothern, Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee and Hedda Hopper, is the story of Lucy and Desi’s romance and courtship. It will have original music, a dancing chorus and a 26- piece orchestra, and the old regulars of the I Love Lucy show – William Frawley, Vivian Vance and Richard Keith. 

*   *   *

IT IS FICTION, based on fact, and Lucille Ball, an unabashed sentimentalist, gets misty-eyed just talking about It. 

"Boy! Desi and I just pushed time away and went right back when we were making this show. We lived through the beginning all over again when we were filming this show. 

"I’m a little sentimental. I spent most of the time looking for a handkerchief. Life was much simpler for us. 

"Now we have a house In Beverly Hills and other dwellings at Palm Springs and – at the beach. There seems always to be a caravan of cars going somewhere, with children and equipment.

*   *   *

"WE KEEP the beach house open until October. Then we start going to Palm Springs every weekend. I told you Desi has a terrible time getting me to move. Wherever I am is where I want to stay." 

Although this is contradictory with her wish to travel, Lucille Ball doesn’t pretend to be a simple, uncomplicated woman. Like most highly intelligent, talented people, she is complex, sensitive, and has conflicting qualities. 

She is efficient, well organized, a planner. 

"I love people who know much has to be done, and go about getting it finished,” she said. 

*   *   *

IT IS REPORTED that she has a temper to go with her hair, and that she can deliver a deadly, well-aimed blow when the occasion demand. 

She is known to be equally kind and compassionate, is generous with praise of her co-workers and writers. 

“Desi is responsible for our success,” she says flatly. “He runs the production company. The only thing I help with is personnel. 

*    *    *  

“HE MAKES all the important decisions about our shows. He has perfect taste. We couldn’t survive without him." 

Miss Ball said her only recreation and relaxation are her children. 

"I work – I have three houses to run,” she said. “Weekends, evenings, days off, we spend with the children. Wherever we go, we take them. 

"I’m forever anticipating them at older ages, especially when they get to the age where they start to criticize their mother. 

"All girls criticize their mother, don’t they? I can hear Lucy now when she’s about 11. She’ll probably look at me and say ‘What kind of hair do you have?’" 

*   *   *

"BY THAT TIME, I’ll look her straight in the eye and say, ‘It’s gray, dear – plain, drab gray.” (3)

It may be gray, but there will never be anything plain and drab about Lucy, She’s as luminous an only a candle can be, which is burning at both ends and is a little aflame in the middle.

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FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) The program in question was the premiere episode of “The Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Show” (aka “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana” not aired until November 6, 1957. 

(2) Desi insisted that the program required the added 15 minutes and convinced U.S. Steel to delay the start of their “The U.S. Steel Hour” program “The Locked Door.” Both shows received record ratings. When the show was re-run, however, it had to be trimmed to one hour. The show is framed in a flashback: In 1957 Westport, Hedda Hopper visits the Ricardos and asks how they first met.  In syndication and reruns, this scene was generally cut out, and the show begins with the boat to Cuba in 1940.  

(3) Lucille Ball never allowed her hair to go gray in real life. She maintained her signature Henna-dyed orange until her death in 1987.  For public events she typically wore wigs. 

Margaret McManus (Free Press writer) was a lifelong journalist. Her second husband was sports broadcaster Jim McKay.  Like the Ricardos, they settled in Westport, Connecticut.