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LUCY PLEASES PUBLIC
June 30, 1952
Incredibly, this newspaper has misspelled the author’s name. Louella (not Luella) Parsons wrote about Hollywood from 1914 to 1965.
At her peak, her columns were read by 20 million people in 700 newspapers worldwide. Louella (or Lolly, as she was sometimes called) was mentioned on “I Love Lucy” and “The Lucy Show,” usually in the same breath as her rival, Hedda Hopper.
HOLLYWOOD.
Unless Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz will be in Honolulu as you read this story. (1) After an un precedented year on their TV show, “I Love Lucy”, which is seen by 30,000,000, they need a holiday.
“Do you think I’ll be criticized because I’m taking time off instead of doing benefits and personal appearances?”
That question is typical of Lucille, who tries hard to do what everyone wants her to, even at the risk of her own health. Her doctor, Mark Rabwin (2), who is also a close personal friend of Lucy and Desi, has insisted she spend week-ends in the hospital to rest because she is so close to exhaustion. Yet, here she is with a guilt complex because she cannot do the many benefits requested of her. Lucille is really the most completely uninhibited person l know. I have always loved Lucy, and I think I love her even more since I’ve grown to know her better these last few years.
In a town such as Hollywood, when an actress zooms to fame as great as that of Lucille, you re bound to hear a few catty, jealous remarks, but I’ve never heard one person express anything but happiness for Lucille.
Two years ago when I spent my vacation in Del Mar, Lucille and Desl were also there and we had many a talk. They were both praying so hard for a baby. Lucille had Just lost her first child. She said at that time, "I’m willing to give up anything – my career or anything – if I can just have a baby. Desi wants a child so much, too."
Then, one day after we were all back from Del Mar, she telephoned me.
"Oh, Louella, our prayers and yours are going to be answered. Desi and I are going to have a baby."
You’d have thought Lucille was a fragile Dresden China Doll the way Desi looked after her. As for Lucille, she rested and stayed home to be sure nothing happened, because she always felt she lost her first baby because she did so much traveling to be with Desi on his tours.
When the baby arrived finally, it seemed after months of waiting. Desi telephoned me at the crack of dawn. "You’re the first to know, Louella,” he said, “and we’re telling you because you helped us pray for our wonderful little girl."
That little girl, Lucie Desiree, is now 14 months old and a darling, and never has a child been so loved.
Lucille and Desi work side by side, not only in their TV show, but In their Desilu productions. Not only do they do their own show "I Love Lucy,” but they are producing Eve Arden’s TV show (3) and others, including Red Skelton’s filmed commercials.
All this success happened to a girl who wearily trod from agent to agent In New York, trying to get a foothold In show business, although she admits she never got a nickel’s worth of encouragement.
“With me,” said Lucille, “things always happen unexpectedly. I might never have come to Hollywood if a girl had not backed out of accepting an offer from the Goldwyn company for an Eddie Cantor picture (4). I had never been to the coast.
"I was coming out of an agent’s office,” Lucille reminisced, “when a Goldwyn representative grabbed me and said, ‘How would you like to go to California?’ He was desperate. Well, I had to get ready in a matter of hours, and you know the rest."
Yes, I have known Lucille since she came here as a blonde with those great big blue eyes. Then she changed the color of her hair and it’s the pinkest hair in the world. She’s been kidded a lot, and a Time article (5) describes her hair as "shocking pink and straw berry orange.”
“With all this television success, what about pictures?” I asked Lucille.
“Oh, I’m not giving up my motion picture career,” she said, “but I don’t know now when I’ll have time. After all, TV Is like pictures."
"Don’t you admit it’s harder?"
"Yes, it is harder,” she answered, “because it’s like making a picture a week. But we love it."
"You and all the world,” I said to her as we parted.
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) Hawaii was one of Lucy and Desi’s favorite getaway destinations. They would travel there whenever time permitted. Lucy Ricardo never got to go to Hawaii, but Lucy Carter did!
(2) Dr. Mark Rabwin was honored to have a character named after him. When “Ricky Has Labor Pains” (ILL S2;E14) January 5, 1953, Dr. Rabwin is played by Lou Merrill. In the 1950s, doctors not only made house calls, but they smoked when they made them!
(3) Eve Arden’s TV show was called “Our Miss Brooks”. It originated on radio, also with Arden. Gale Gordon, Mary Jane Croft, and Richard Crenna, all joined Arden on television, where it ran from 1952 to 1956. In 1956, it also became a motion picture.
(4) The Eddie Cantor picture that brought Lucille Ball to Hollywood was titled Roman Scandals (1933). Lucille became a ‘Goldwyn Girl’ (the film was produced by Samuel Goldwyn) and wore a long blonde wig.
(5) The Time article was also a cover story, published just a month before this column.
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DESI DISCOVERS!
June 30, 1974
BY BEN FALKE, Sunday Group Writer
Who says they never come back? At 57 and in better physical condition than he’s been in for years, Desi Arnaz has finished a pilot which he hopes NBC will convert to a prime time series.
The show is called “Dr. Domingo” and it’s about a doctor in a small northern California town who adds to his income by acting as the local coroner and medical examiner.
"He’s a cross between Marcus Welby and Columbo,” says Arnaz gleefully. If “Domingo” never makes it as a series, Arnaz has four or five other projects in his hopper more than enough to justify the rent on his office at Universal, just around the corner from Lucille Ball Productions. (1)
Desi, who invented television reruns and syndication of hit shows, feels he still has some contributions to make to the medium he did so much to shape 25 years ago.
MENTION ARNAZ’ name and most people think first of “I Love Lucy,” those 180 merry half hours which, ever since they went into syndication, have been showing somewhere in the world virtually every hour of every day. A New York critic complained recently that one station in that city was showing “I Love Lucy” reruns five times a day!
Those who remember TV credit lines also recall Arnaz as the producer and occasional director of “The Untouchables,” another series with gargantuan longevity. (2) Then there was “Desilu Playhouse,” a quality anthology series which introduced many top film and stage stars to the small screen. Not to mention shows like “December Bride,” “The Mothers-In-Law,” “Guestward-Ho,” and others whose ghosts still enliven daytime television.
“I quit the business in 1960 because it got to be a monster,” Arnaz recalls now. (Actually, he says it “beez-ness” his Cuban accent still as thick as ever).
“At the beginning, It was fun but when you art in charge of three studios, with 3,000 people and 35 sound stages working all the time, the fun is long gone."
He and Lucy, after many stormy off-camera scenes, were newly divorced then, so Arnaz moved quietly out of Los Angeles to breed horses farther south, in Del Mar, and to fish and build a showplace hideaway house at Las Cruces in Baja California. He married again in 1967, to a non-show biz lady who shared his love of horses, and he even found time to teach a course in television at San Diego State College. (3)
DESPITE THE FACT that he is (he says) far from the multi-millionaire which all those reruns of "Lucy” and “The Untouchables” might lead you to suspect, Arnaz claims that it isn’t money pressure that’s bringing him back to work now.
“I’m okay for money if I don’t live too long,“ he says with a chuckle. "The funny thing is that I never really cared that much about making money just for the sake of making money. I wanted to be able to take care of my family and to live well which I’ve done. The rest you never see anyway."
What prompted this particular comeback was a call from MCA-Universal boss Lew Wasserman last Christmas. "Lew used to be my agent when I first came out to Hollywood in 1940,” Arnaz reminisces. “To show how low he was on the totem pole in those days, he used to pick me up at my house every morning and drive me to work and I was only making $1,500 a week!
"But Lew called me last Christmas and said, ‘What are you going to do – play golf and fish for the rest of your life? Why not come to Universal and develop one show at a time? We’ll handle all of those administrative details that you hate you just concentrate on the creative end.’
"Well, that sounded very appealing. I already had the idea for ‘Dr. Domingo’ from an old paperback mystery that somebody left in our Baja house, and to tell the truth, I was beginning to miss show business. After all, I’ve been in it since I was 16!"
SO NOW this onetime boy bongo player (4), bandleader and star of many a film musical before he and Lucy developed TV situation comedy, is back behind a producer’s desk.
"Television comedy has changed a lot since we did ‘I Love Lucy,’” he admits. “I don’t think you could do a show like ‘Lucy’ now but some of the things we learned from doing it are still important. "You still have to have a viable premise, not only for the series as a whole but for each individual episode.
"You also need a cast that works together to produce a kind of chemistry. The audience has to like them as people as well as characters in the show.
"That’s where we were so lucky with ‘Lucy.’ I found Vivian Vance playing a prostitute in a play in La Jolla (5) and signed her up on the spot. Then I said to myself, ‘What have you done, you mad Cubano? Suppose Lucy doesn’t like her?’ Luckily, they got along splendidly from the start it could have been a disaster."
How did he invent the rerun?
"I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear,” he says jokingly. “I never even allowed reruns of ‘Lucy’ during the summer which was only 13 weeks in those days. But the reruns got started because we made the big decision to do the show on film instead of doing it live the first time anybody had thought of it.
"They wanted us to do the show live in New York in front of an audience. Lucy works best in front of people. But we didn’t want to move to New York; we had just bought a new house and we liked it in California.
"When CBS bought the show, they gave us a total budget of $19,500 a week – you can’t even hiccup on television for that now. I said to them, ‘Let us film the show in California, that way you’ll have a much better quality print… and we can stay here.’
"They wanted to know how much more it would cost that way; I had no idea so I picked a number out of the air – $5,000 more a week. Now Lucy and I had been getting $5,000 a week between us, plus 50 percent of all rights in the show.
"CBS came back and said okay, they’d give us the extra $5,000 if we would take a salary cut to $4,000 a week. Again out of the blue, I said, ‘Okay but then we have to own 100 percent of the show’ never thinking they’d say yes. But they agreed, and we wound up owning everything."
ASIDE FROM such show business triumphs, Arnaz gets most pleasure from talking about his family his daughter Lucie, and son Desi Jr.
Desi Jr. began his film career with "Red Sky at Morning”; his latest picture is “Billy Two-Hats.” (6)
“I always’ knew Desi would make’ it,” his father says now, “but Lucie was always so stiff and shy when we brought her on the show that I thought she’d be a teacher or something. I never dreamed she’d want to act. But she has just landed the lead role in the touring company of ‘Seesaw,’ so big things could be happening for her, too.” (7)
Arnaz is currently putting his life together into a book, for which he reportedly is getting a $125,000 advance. (8) Despite the stormy scenes he and Lucy used to have when they were married, he says it won’t say anything bad about his former wife, co-star and business partner.
“We’re friends now,” he insists. “We gave a little family party for young Desi on his 21st birthday last year. I looked over at the two kids standing together and said to Lucy, ‘If we never did anything else, that makes it all worthwhile.’ And she agreed.”
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) “Doctor Domingo” did not become a series. The character was introduced on an episode of “Ironside” titled “Riddle at 24,000″ as a ‘backdoor’ pilot. It aired March 14, 1974.
(2) Desi was never credited as director of any episodes of “The Untouchables”. That doesn’t mean he didn’t step in or assist, as he did on some episodes of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”, but he was never credited.
(3) On March 2, 1963, Desi married Edith Eyre Skimming Mack Hirsch aka Edie in Las Vegas, Nevada. The remained married until her death in 1985, just a year and a half before Arnaz’s passing.
(4) Conga drums, not bongos. This is a frequent error by journalists.
(5) Vivian Vance was appearing in the 1943 John Van Druten play “The Voice of the Turtle” at La Jolla Playhouse. Vance had also appeared in the play in the mid-1940s when she had a nervous breakdown, and had to leave the cast. She played Olive Lashbrooke, described as “a promiscuous, worldly girl, questioning the practicality of the lessons in chastity she received as a child and wondering if she is alone in her passion.” Vance, who had Broadway credits, did not appear in the Broadway production. When the film was made, Olive was played by Eve Arden. Vance acted opposite KT Stevens, who played Mrs. O’Brien (the new tenant plotting to ‘blow up the capitol’) on “I Love Lucy.” In some productions, Hayden Rorke (Mr. O’Brien) also appeared in the play.
(6) Red Sky at Morning was released in May 1971. Desi Arnaz Jr. won a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer, Male. His character was named Billy…
Billy was also his character name in Billy Two Hats, released in March 1974.
(7) Lucie Arnaz has stated that she never appeared on “I Love Lucy.” Desi is probably referring to her early appearances on “The Lucy Show” as Cynthia, a character seldom seen but often spoken about. From Hartford in April 1974 to Los Angeles in September 1974, Lucie toured the Broadway musical Seesaw to a dozen cities with John Gavin and Tommy Tune.
(8) Desi Arnaz’s autobiography was titled A Book. It was first published in 1976 by Warner Books. It covers Desi’s life up until 1960. In 2018, an audiobook was released read by Juan Pablo Di Pace.
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CA$HING IN!
June 28, 1953
On June 28, 1953, newspapers were talking about the marketing and merchandising opportunities of the new medium of television, particularly TV’s biggest hit, “I Love Lucy.” America wanted to live like the Ricardos, and Desilu was more than happy to comply, through an array of products. Perhaps the most desirable was the “I Love Lucy” baby doll.
Lucy and Desi not only promoted their sponsors (like Philip-Morris), they also endorsed a variety of products, some tied-in to their show (which they partly owned), but others that were not related, too.
The “I Love Lucy” bedroom furniture was the perfect complement to your “I Love Lucy” pajamas, although the couple here is dressed in their best to show off their bedroom.
In case you wondered if Lucy and Desi were behind the products, they contributed a written testimony to assure buyers.
Another way of keeping the series on everyone’s lips was the “I Love Lucy” comic strip. Here’s the strip for June 28, 1953, which is also about products!
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TV TIMES
June 27, 1965
Every so often a new comedienne is hailed and toasted by the critics and public. None of them in the past 15 years has shown the talent or endurance of Lucille Ball.
Cara Williams (1) was touted as “the new Lucy.” She never came close because the old Lucy was too good for her. Carol Burnett (2) has had some good innings, but is discovering that it takes more than a rubbery mouth and a knack for slapstick to be a great comedienne.
Nanette Fabray (3) skyrocketed briefly as Imogene Coca’s successor with Sid Caesar, but without Caesar both gals found their comedy careers progressing at a very uneven gait.
Elaine May (4) – of Nichols and May – is more a method actress than a comedienne and hasn’t much of a track record without her partner in comedy. Audrey Meadows (5) never found herself as a comedienne after The Honeymooners (with Jackie Gleason).
Connie Stevens (6) tried to follow in the late Gracie Allen’s path of non sequiturs, but her timing is way off the mark. Elizabeth Montgomery (7) rang the Nielsen rating bell consistently this season, but no one knows for sure if she can do it without an imaginary broomstick for a prop.
Martha Raye (8), who is a veteran at the business like Lucy, is the only comedienne that comes to mind as a genuine competitor in this league. Lucy beats her out in the versatility department because she can play it for the quick chuckle or the big belly laugh. With Martha it’s the big boffola or nothing.
Lucy has that rare faculty for bringing a wild line of dialogue or an almost ludicrous situation into the realm of believability. When she and former husband Desi Arnaz were about to embark on the I Love Lucy TV series 14 years ago, a nervous CBS-TV program executive inquired, “But will people believe she is married to a Cuban bandleader?"
His fears were groundless. It didn’t matter if it was a Cuban bandleader or a bowlegged Martian. Lucy can stare at the most hard-boiled skeptics with that wide-eyed by-golly-it’s-true look and convince them of ‘most anything’.
Even within the cramped confines of weekly domestic situation TV comedy, Lucy is able to display enough sides of her many-faceted comedy personality to sustain threadbare plots. As with Charlie Chaplin, the audience savors the technique employed, even though they can foresee every turn in the script.
At a CBS convention of affiliated station managers in Los Angeles last May, Lucy and Don Knotts posed as owners of a "35-watt TV station” in a short skit which wasn’t particularly loaded with laugh-lines. But Lucy in an old blue hat and a wraparound fur neckpiece, and Don in a luau shirt, knew just the attitude to strike. Just their way of standing there was enough to give this audience the message. Sinclair Lewis never said it any better in his novel “Main Street."
Next season (her fourth without Desi) Lucy will play it minus the kids and Vivian Vance, who wanted no more of TV’s weekly treadmill. Lucy may be doing it only because she is responsible for a huge TV production corporation, but underneath that she may also have a feeling of responsibility to a talent she has spent many years developing. It’s fun to be the champion, too.
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) On the Desilu sitcom “December Bride” (1954) had Harry Morgan’s Pete stealing many scenes griping about scatterbrained wife Gladys (who was never shown on camera). When Morgan moved into his own spinoff series, Gladys was finally revealed in the form of Cara Williams on the initially popular “Pete and Gladys” (1960), a show not produced by Desilu. The program did not last long but Cara came was escorted directly into her own series “The Cara Williams Show” (1964). Molded by CBS as the next wacky redhead to follow in the comedy heels of Lucille Ball, the plans quickly went askew following an unfavorable network power shuffle and the canceling of her sitcom after only one season. With her momentum completely gone, her career went into rapid decline.
(2) Although Lucille Ball did not give Carol Burnett her first big break (Broadway and Garry Moore did that), Lucy was her biggest fan and the two developed a life-long relationship that saw them both take turns starring on each other’s television shows. If anyone can claim to be the heir to Lucille Ball’s Queen of Comedy title, it is Burnett.
(3) Yet another funny redhead, Nanette Fabray was born in a trunk and was more known for her Broadway musicals than her television shows. In 1974, Lucille Ball cast her in her first post-sitcom TV special, “Happy Anniversary and Goodbye”.
(4) Elaine May was best known as a writer and monologist. She would be nominated for an Oscar for screenwriting in 1979. She was best known for performing with Mike Nichols. Not really a contender to Lucy’s throne, but in a class of her own.
(5) Audrey Meadows was a real rival for TV’s 1950s housewife as Alice Kramden in “The Honeymooners”. They only problem was that Alice wasn’t funny, like Lucy, but tolerant and in love – like Ricky.
In 1986, redhaired Meadows played Lucille Ball’s sister on “Life With Lucy”. Although critics admired the chemistry between Ball and Meadows, they hated the show, which was canceled after that episode aired.
(6) Connie Stevens was a sparkling strawberry blonde, as sexy as she was ditzy. At the time of this article, she was appearing in a ABC sitcom titled “Wendy and Me” in which George Burns (as himself) was her landlord!
(7) Elizabeth Montgomery had remarkable success playing Samantha Stephens, a witch married to a modern-day mortal in “Bewitched”. Montgomery’s father Robert was an Oscar-winning film director. Her husband was William Asher, who was one of the original directors of “I Love Lucy.” As director of his wife in “Bewitched” the show often strongly resembled “I Love Lucy”. Montgomery was more an actress than comedienne but she had the most fun playing Samantha’s mischievous twin cousin, Serena.
(8) Martha Raye was known as "The Big Mouth” and considered the female equivalent to Bob Hope, combing her comedy with work for the USO during World War II and beyond.
~ INSIDE TV WEEK ~
Monday, June 28, 1965 ~ a network re-run of “Lucy and the Old Mansion” (TLS S3;E22), first aired on March 1, 1965.
One redhead replaced another for the summer of 1965. “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” (a rarely re-run series), replaced “The Danny Kaye Show.”
Wednesday, June 30, 1965 ~ The re-runs kick off with “Lucy Makes Room for Danny” (LDCH S2;E2), first aired on December 1, 1958. It was a cross-over between “The Danny Thomas Show” aka “Make Room for Daddy” and “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” aka “I Love Lucy” to mark the fact that “Danny Thomas” was taking “Lucy’s” time slot and ‘moving’ to CBS. Lucy and Desi did a reciprocal appearance as the Ricardos on Thomas’s sitcom, which was filmed at Desilu.
The day this TV Times supplement was included in the newspaper, this was the headline.
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INTERFERENCE
June 26, 1948
On June 26, 1948, Dorothy Manners’ column reported that Lucille Ball was cast in Interference, a film about pro football starring Victor Mature, to be produced by RKO. Manners remarks that when she saw Ball on stage in Dream Girl, she sat next to famed suspense director Alfred Hitchcock, who praised Lucille as “one of the best actresses in Hollywood.”
If the title of the film seems unfamiliar, that’s because it was changed to Easy Living. The film was based on a screen story by Irwin Shaw, Education of the Heart. RKO purchased it in April 1946. In June Robert Sparks was assigned the job of producing and Charles Schnee the job of writing the screenplay. In May 1948 the title was changed to Interference and RKO announced Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum would play the leads. Neither ended up in the final film.
Victor Mature was under contract to 20th Century Fox but had an obligation to make a movie at RKO which dated from before the war.
In June 1948 Jacques Tourneur was assigned as director. Filming began on July 12, 1948, but not released until September 2, 1949, by which time its title had been changed to Easy Living. It was Lucille Ball’s 71st film.
Alfred Hitchcock’s compliment of Ball may well be apocryphal – or true – we will never know. Although he though Ball “one of the best actresses” in Hollywood, he never hired her for one of his many films. Of course, Lucille was not what was not Hitch’s type – icy but curvaceous blondes. He cultivated a type that was later known as “the Hitchcock blondes”: Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint, and Grace Kelly, to name a few.
Dorothy Manners was substituting for Louella Parsons. Manners (no relation to Miss Manners) was her assistant for 30 years and took over her column in 1965 after Miss Parsons retired. She wrote the column until 1977. She died in 1998 at the age of 95.
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TALKING SHOP
June 25, 1967
ON CAMERA, LUCILLE BALL is the funniest female in America. They gave her a second Emmy early this month to attest to the fact.
With the cameras turned off, she is an interesting combination of several people – hard-headed business woman, mother concerned and even outraged at some of the things being done to today’s children, and talented actress who, happily, does not feel a need to keep reminding everyone around her she is a talented actress.
The last is an attribute rare among Hollywood’s distaff division.
It was in Hollywood this writer met Miss Ball recently and talked with her at Desilu Productions, formerly the old RKO movie studios. Lucille once worked for RKO for $50 a week; now she is president of Desilu and in the process of selling it – for 17 million dollars.
I let a tape recorder run while we talked. So, take the stand, Miss Ball.
Q. You’ve sold Desilu to Gulf & Western Industries for all those millions. Have you turned over control yet?
A. No, not yet. We haven’t signed, or had the stockholders meeting, but it’s coming up, and to all intents and purposes the deal is going thru.
Q. What are you going to do then? What about next year will there be a Lucy Show on television in 1968-69? [The coming 1967-68 season is the sixth for the program, never out of the Top Ten.]
A. I don’t know. I never know about a next year until it comes. They [CBS-TV officials] always start asking me in December, and I tell them in March, April, or May.
Q. Then you don’t know whether you’ll do another year of Lucy Shows after 1967-68, or some other series, or what?
A. O, I wouldn’t do any other series, ever. I may do the Lucy Show again, and I may not. I may just do movies. I really have no idea, not now.
Q. Don’t you ever reach a point where you’d like to put your feet up and not do anything, just loaf, with all that money?
A. Sure I have a wish to put my feet up, but only because I’ve earned it and have something to go back to. To put them up forever wouldn’t interest me. I can enjoy a vacation because it has an end.
Q. What is there to stories about you being peeved because CBS is planning to build a show around Doris Day next year? There were reports in gossip columns.
A. They didn’t come from Doris Day or from me, and both of us are embarrassed. The story is true they have asked her to do something, and there apparently was an assumption by someone they were asking her to be available in case I stop.
Q. But the story is you were angry because they were planning to put so much money into this Doris Day thing, to make it so big?
A. Those are just lines people put in. I haven’t any reason to be peeved, no reason to be anything but embarrassed. It doesn’t matter to me, one way or the other, what they do.
Q. In your biography, provided by your publicity agent, it says that when you were a 15-year-old you enrolled in the John Murray Anderson dramatic school in New York City, and that the first lines you read caused the instructor to “close his eyes in disbelief.” Did that happen, and what were the lines?
A. [Laughing] Something about water and horses, and I said “warter” and “horrrses,” and he imitated me and then kind of gave up in disgust.
Q. After that, you were a chorus girl on Broadway?
A. [More laughter] Nope, never got in a chorus. I had several jobs, but always got fired before a show opened.
Q. Why?
A. I just didn’t measure up. I was tall enough and young enough to be a show girl, but I guess I just didn’t make any impression.
A switch in the interview came about here. Lucille asked a question – How far from Chicago is Northwestern University?
“My daughter Lucie [15 years old] is interested in the drama school there,” she explained. “A lot of great people have come from it, so it evidently has a fine way of teaching. I suggested it to Lucie, in fact, so she could be thinking about it, because she is interested in acting."
WHAT, we wanted to know, did Miss Ball think of the practice of "aiming” shows at the younger generation, of trying to capture such viewers thru sensationalism and sex.
She had thoughts on the subject, angry ones. Yes, it’s being done, she said, and deliberately, in TV.
“But they are doing it in movies even more, and in books even more, more, more,” she said. “I see motion pictures my children have seen, and I tell them, You went to THAT movie – They let you in THAT theater – I don’t believe it.’
"Further, I can’t believe kids can walk up to a rack in a store and buy the books they can buy today. I just can’t believe it, but there the books and magazines are, in any stand all over the country."
Lucille Ball has been "Lucy” on television for 11 years now, from 1951 to 1957 in the I Love Lucy series, and since 1962 in the Lucy Show.
Who is Lucy and what is she like? We asked because characters on the home screens seem to develop real personalities of their own. Lucille Ball recognized this in her answer; she talked as tho of a living person, not an image on celluloid.
“Lucy is very much like I am, I’ve found, in her sincerity and her enthusiasm, almost childish enthusiasm, and in her exaggerations and disappointments,” Lucille said. “And these are the things we play on in the show.
"We’ve found thru the years people love Lucy because she gets into predicaments they can understand. And we’ve found out something else that any man or woman playing opposite Lucy must be careful never to show what looks like real anger towards Lucy, because that will bring the audience down upon them.
"They must be long suffering in enduring the troubles Lucy causes. If they seem really impatient with our gal, viewers will say – in hundreds of letters – ‘My gosh, don’t you know Lucy didn’t really mean to do that to you?"
Maybe it’s just that Lucille, herself, attracts such sympathy from audiences. Because, back when she was playing the wife on radio’s My Favorite Husband, the husband [Richard Denning] also had to be careful not to sound really angry at her on the air.
"If he did,” she giggled, “letters poured in. The ones to him would say, ‘How can you treat her that way?’ And those to me would announce, ‘You should have a more understanding husband.’ Poor Richard, he couldn’t win."
It seems possible. We felt mighty friendly, ourself, towards this Lucy, just from talking with her for an hour.
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
The sale of Desilu went through as anticipated at the end of 1968. Lucy chose to re-invent “The Lucy Show” as “Here’s Lucy” renting space from Paramount and creating her own production company, Lucille Ball Productions.
The photo included with the article is from “Lucy the Stunt Man” (TLS S4;E5) aired on October 18, 1965.
CBS created a sitcom for Doris Day titled “The Doris Day Show”. Like Lucy Carmichael and Lucy Carter, Day played a widow with two children living in California. Like Ball, Day used her own first name for her character, Doris Martin. After one season on Tuesday nights, “The Doris Day Show” moved to Monday’s at 9:30pm, right after “Here’s Lucy” where ratings instantly improved.
Both shows had a very recognizable cast member in common – Nelson, the sheep dog. Other cast connected to “Lucy” were Kaye Ballard, Jackie Joseph (Ken Berry’s wife), Strother Martin, and Van Johnson. Other actors recognizable to Lucy fans were Mary Wickes, Barbara Pepper, Charles Lane, Jerry Hausner, Ross Elliott, Bobby Jellison, Lou Krugman, Shirley Mitchell, Parley Baer, Madge Blake, and many, many others.
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LOVELY, MARRIED & RENEWED
June 24, 1949
“Never underestimate the power of your studio audience in either direction.”
Those red-tinted words of wisdom come from the lady of the pink-tinted tresses, Lucille Ball.
"I’ve learned that if you play up to your studio audience, the listeners at home have a tendency to feel left out. If you go to the other extreme, there’s no studio reaction and those at home think you’re playing to empty seats.
Lucille also points out that it’s sudden death to get mad at a studio audience just because they’re not catching the gags.
“Could be, you know, that the gags aren’t catching!"
Lucille says she heard a comic the other night blast a slow-reacting studio audience with the comment, “I could understand you not catching the gags if they were subtle.”
“Up to that point the show was doing nicely. The audience was not exactly giving out with (you’ll pardon the expression) ‘stomach laughs’. But there were enough pleasant chuckles to keep the opera moving at a good pace. The caustic remark had the effect of a pail of ice water being tossed on every individual in the studio.
"About the only person in radio who can break these rules and get away with It Is Fred Allen. He can blister his a studio audience and they love him for it. But there’s only one Fred Allen.
We try to treat the studio audience attending the ‘My Favorite Husband’ broadcast as normal, adult individuals. The warm-up, a simple explanation of the theme of the show, is delivered by Bob LeMond from the floor of the auditorium. When Bob’s finished the curtains are opened, each member of the cast is introduced and we go on the air.
“No funny hats, no ad-lib asides to the audience. We figure if the script and our own performances won’t turn the trick, it’s too late for a funny hat to save us. But thanks to producer-writer Jess Oppenheimer and his co-writers, Bob Carroll Jr., and Madelyn Pugh, we’ve had great scripts this season."
And Lucille’s right. She’s lovely. She’s married. And she’s been renewed for next season. Very few radio stars can make that statement.
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Walt Taliaferro, Radio & Television Editor
Los Angeles (CA) Daily News -
‘MY GOOD WIFE’ v ‘MY FAVORITE HUSBAND’
June 23, 1949
“My Good Wife,” an added starter on KNBC, 6:30 p.m. PST Fridays, is another comedy about a young married couple, as if we needed another one. I must admit this one is a little different. This married couple, Steve and Kay Emerson, are not nearly so fast with a wisecrack as, say, Lucille Ball and her husband on “My Favorite Husband,” 9:00 p.m. PST the same night on KCBS. Great night for matrimony, Fridays, and if those two programs don’t provide enough for you, tune in Dorothy Dix at 1:45 pm. (not broadcast in west). She’ll tell you how to win back an erring husband.
I haven’t yet made up my mind whether the Emerson’s ineptness at repartee is deliberate – after all, not every young wife talks like Groucho Marx – or whether the script writer isn’t very good at it either. Anyhow, whether by accident or design, the Emersons are a very restful young couple, possibly a little too restful to get anywhere in the entertainment world. In radio, they’re a real novelty.
As a wife Arlene Francis who plays Kay Emerson, wins out on points over Lucille Ball In other regards – talent and looks, for example – Miss Ball is way out front. But how long could you live with a girl who says: “Oh, we don’t miss television. I climb in the Bendix and sing and George looks at me through the little window.” Imagine having a girl around the house who said things like that before breakfast. It’d curdle the milk.
STARTS OFF FAST
“My Good Wife" started out at a gallop two weeks ago, NBC deciding to set the stage and get everything out of the way all at once. The first program resembled one at those synopses of previous in installments in the popular magazines. Steve met Kay, quarreled with her, married her, taught her how to drive, learned he was about to become a father, and became one – all in 15 minutes. One minute later, the dialogue went like this:
“It doesn’t seem like we’ve been married 12 years."
"We’ve been married 10 years."
"Well, that’s why it doesn’t seem like 12."
That, incidentally, Is a little brighter than the conversation around the Emerson household generally gets.
On the second show of the series, the pace settled down to a walk. During the first few minutes the Emersons and their neighbors lay lazily on the grass, not even talking very much. This may be taking realism too far. I mean there ought to be some crickets chirping or something. Things quickened a bit later when Mrs. Emerson decided she was going to help her husband out with his law practice and, of course, messed things up.
YALE, NO LESS
The Emersons are quite upper middlebrow as radio’s young married folk go. He went to Yale, for heaven’s sake, and she not only went to Vassar but led the daisy chain or whatever they do with that daisy chain. What is this – counter revolution? Oh, yes, they live in Larchmont up to their ears in other upper middlebrows. I don’t know what else to tell you about the Emersons except they sound like a nice young couple to have over for a drink some time but conceivably a little mild to entertain you much on the air.
My favorite young married couple is still Ozzie and Harriet Nelson – I put Goodman and Jane Ace off in another category entirely – and while we’re chatting about this sort of thing, I ought to point out Ricky and David Nelson, Ozzie and Harriet’s children, are now playing themselves on that program which solves a lot of problems. I have a spy in the Nelson household, named – in case any congressional ears are pricking – Harriet Nelson, nee Harriet Hilliard, and she is not now and has never been a Communist nor worked on the atom bomb nor designed the B-36.
Anyhow, my spy informed the Nelsons had a little trouble with the kids. The real Ricky and David I listened to the radio Ricky and David and discovered them doing things they weren’t allowed to do or wouldn’t do voluntarily if they were allowed. Being children, they got confused over their own identities. Well now the real Ricky and David are the radio Ricky and David and the split personalities in the kids has been averted. You run into a lot of funny problems in radio.
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FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
It seems pretty clear that NBC was counter-programming CBS’s “My Favorite Husband”. Not only are the names very similar, they were scheduled on the same night, as critic Crosby points out.
The episode of “My Favorite Husband” described above might apply to any domestic sitcom, but was actually titled “Budget – Mr. Atterbury” broadcast June 3, 1949. However, this newspaper is still calling Lucille Ball’s character Liz Cugat, when her name had changed to Liz Cooper in January 1949, to avoid comparison with the well-known bandleader (no, not Desi Arnaz).
Counter-programming by NBC would not stop on radio. When “I Love Lucy” was a juggernaut hit for CBS TV, NBC created a similar show titled “I Married Joan” for star Joan Davis. It was billed as “The adventures of the scatterbrained wife of a respected city judge.” Substitute “bandleader” for “Judge” (played by Jim Backus) – and you’ve got “I Love Lucy.” Like Ball, Davis was a film star of the ‘30s and ‘40s getting aboard the TV bandwagon. Like Lucy, Joan wanted to be in showbusiness. Many of the same situations that Lucy got into, Joan did too. The series even featured a few “I Love Lucy” refugees: Jerry Hausner, Elvia Allman, Bob Jellison, Margie Liszt, Shirley Mitchell, Ross Elliott, and many others. "Lucy” and “Joan” even employed the same director in each show’s first season, Marc Daniels.
"Joan” lasted three seasons, from 1952 to 1955 and is all but forgotten today.
Kay Emerson was not the first domestic radio role for Arlene Francis. In 1940, she took over the role of Betty on “Betty and Bob”, which had been the first successful soap opera. She was one of the hosts of the quiz show “What’s My Name?” beginning in 1938. The show was seen as a model for TV’s “What’s My Line?” which premiered in 1950. Francis would stay with the show for its entire run, including six mystery guest appearances by Lucille Ball.
The husband to “My Good Wife” was played by John Conte. From 1944 to 1946 he was married to Marilyn Maxwell (1944-46) who would later appear with Lucille Ball in the 1963 film Critic’s Choice. He had also been seen with Ball (and Maxwell) in As Thousands Cheer (1943). In 1960 he would work for Desilu in an episode of “The Untouchables” (1960).
Unlike “My Favorite Husband’s” mythical mid-Western Sheridan Falls, the Emerson’s livid in the real New York suburb of Larchmont, an affluent village located within the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, approximately 18 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan. Nearby was the town of New Rochelle, whose most famous fictional resident was Rob Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (filmed at Desilu Studios). Danfield, New York, another fictional town in the area, was the residence of Lucy Carmichael and Vivian Bagley for the first three seasons of “The Lucy Show.”
“My Good Wife” began airing in June 1949, and by April 1950 was nowhere to be found. In October 1949, Billboard reported on a new NBC Gallup Poll that placed the show dead last – with 32 stations voting it poor and only 8 saying it was excellent. The future of “Wife” was bleak. The sitcom was cancelled after 18 weeks to make room for the new Jimmy Durante show.
Meanwhile, Ball’s “Husband” (on CBS), thrived. Coincidentally, the show was initially a replacement for Red Skelton’s show. Skelton and Durante had both worked with Ball on films.
Crosby’s quote from “My Favorite Husband”
"Oh, we don’t miss television. I climb in the Bendix and sing and George looks at me through the little window.”
was spoken by Lucille Ball in the episode titled “Television” on June 17, 1949. A Bendix is a brand of front-loading washing machine. The porthole-like window was similar to the size screen of early television sets.
Crosby’s observation that Liz talks like Groucho Marx is attributable to the show’s writers
Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and Jess Oppenheimer. And let’s not forget that Lucille Ball acted opposite Groucho Marx in Room Service (1938)!
After making the obvious comparison to “My Favorite Husband,” Crosby lets readers know that neither “Husband” nor “Wife” will ever displace “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett” in his domestic dome. The show launched October 8, 1944 and a total 402 radio episodes were produced. When it was optioned for television, it was upstart network ABC that made the sweetest deal to the Nelsons.
As Crosby alludes to, their real-life sons, David and Ricky, did not join the cast until the radio show’s fifth year. The two boys were played by professional actors prior to their joining because both were too young to perform. Crosby’s allegations of possible identity crisis due to watching their parents with other sons on television, might easily apply to “I Love Lucy”, where the real-life Desi Arnaz often lived in the shadow of the young actors playing Little Ricky on television. Mrs. Ricardo and Mrs. Arnaz giving birth to both boys on the same day only added to the confusion – one that still lingers today.
Crosby declines to compare the aforementioned shows with the popular Goodman and Jane Ace. The real-life marrieds had a show titled “Easy Aces”
Goodman Ace cast himself as a harried real estate salesman and the exasperated but loving husband of the scatterbrained, malaprop-prone Jane (“Time wounds all heels”). “Easy Aces” became a long-running serial comedy (1930–1945) but did not make a graceful transition to television, lasting only a few months on the ill-fated DuMont Network. Coincidentally, Martin Gabel, who married Arlene Francis in 1946, had a recurring role on “Easy Aces” during the 1930s.
In a more sarcastic shout-out, Crosby mentions capping off this slew of domestic dithering by listening to Dorothy Dix. Author Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (1861-1951) was widely known by the pen name Dorothy Dix. As the forerunner of today’s popular advice columnists, Dix was America’s highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world with an estimated audience of 60 million readers. Naturally, radio was not neglected, getting their Dix fix when her column took to the airwaves. Due to Lucy’s insistence on interfering in the Mertz’s personal affairs, Ricky compares Lucy to Dorothy Dix in “Fred and Ethel Fight” (ILL S1;E22) on March 10, 1952.
We haven’t yet mentioned this 1940 gem, but we’ll save that for another time!
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ROLLING STONE LOVES LUCY
June 23, 1983
Rolling Stone ~ Issue 398, June 23, 1983
“I Love Lucy” by Lynn Hirschberg
“I never even felt pretty. I was clearly a lesser beauty.”
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JAMESTOWN GIRL on TREASURE HUNT
June 23, 1934
On June 23, 1934, The Warren (PA) Times-Mirror reprinted an item from The Jamestown (NY) Post. Contrary to Lucille’s claim of being born in Butte, Montana, Chautauqua County residents claim her as 100 percent from Jamestown – and the first from the New York town to have success in Hollywood.
Apparently, after a first spate of films for RKO, Lucille had time to return to Jamestown for a visit. There she hosted a press gathering at the home of relatives.
Although Ball had done two films with Constance Bennett – Moulin Rouge and The Affairs of Cellini – she probably doubled for Bennett on the latter, which would not be released until August 1934.
Although The Barbary Coast was made by United Artists (released in 1935), Lucille Ball was not in the cast. Resurrection was to be a sound remake of UA’s 1927 film based on Tolstoy’s novel. UA was scooped by Universal who filmed a sound version in 1931. Another remake so soon would have been unusual, but not impossible.
This item from the Los Angeles (CA) Times confirms that Ball was traveling TO Hollywood to appear in her next picture, The Treasure Hunt. If the title is unfamiliar to fans, it is because the film was eventually re-titled Kid Millions.
This item from the Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer strongly suggests that The Treasure Hunt was indeed the same film known as Kid Millions. The ‘treasure’ of the title was inherited treasure in Egypt, not to be confused with pirate treasure.
The Pride of Jamestown!
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