Classic television goes hand in hand with actress Lucille Ball, who, along with husband Desi Arnaz, revolutionized the medium with their sitcom I Love Lucy in the 1950s. But when it comes to Ball, she had an extensive film career prior to the show, and one in both film and television that continued for decades after.
The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy were significant parts of the 1960s and 1970s, as were various specials like The Lucille Ball Comedy Hour (1964) and Lucy in London (1966), which showcased her willingness to explore new formats and settings. It’s something she attempted to continue doing through a number of others, all culminating in her final series, 1986’s Life with Lucy.
Assessing them all is pop culture and Lucille Ball historian Geoffrey Mark, author of, among others, The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television, who offers exclusive behind-the-scenes commentary on each of them, as well as his honest views on which ones worked as well as the ones that missed the mark creatively.
‘My Favorite Husband’ (1948 to 1951, radio show)
Cast & Characters: Lucille Ball (Cooper), Richard Denning (George Cooper), Gale Gordon (Rudolph Atterbury), Bea Benaderet (Iris Atterbury)
Premise: My Favorite Husband was a radio sitcom about Liz and George Cooper, a happily married couple navigating domestic life. The show revolved around Liz’s mischievous antics, misunderstandings, and her attempts to outwit her husband, often with humorous results.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop: My Favorite Husband married the incredible talents of Lucille Ball to the situation comedy format for radio, and it was a match made in heaven. What was different about My Favorite Husband from a lot of its contemporaries is that many movie stars went into radio in a series of some sort, most of them playing some fictionalized version of themselves and the plots were very repetitive. The audience knew what they were getting with My Favorite Husband, because it was really the first sophisticated situation comedy about marriage and the relationships between an older couple and a younger couple. It broke new ground because of how the show was brilliantly written. They had nine million ways to go with plots, and many of those plots would end up on I Love Lucy, because they were the same writers on both shows.”
Premise: I Love Lucy followed Lucy Ricardo’s constant schemes to break into show business, much to the exasperation of her husband, Ricky. Her antics often involved elaborate disguises, slapstick comedy, and teamwork (or rivalry) with Ethel.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop: One hundred of the most talented craftspeople in Hollywood came together to invent the television situation comedy. In doing so, they created the best situation comedy that has ever been, solidified Lucille Ball as a superstar and broke racial barriers that we are still fighting with today in terms of a white person being married to a Latino.
Cast & Characters: Lucille Ball (Lucy Ricardo), Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo), Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz), William Frawley (Fred Mertz); Guest Stars: Numerous Hollywood legends, including Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray and Red Skelton
Premise: A continuation of I Love Lucy, this hour-long series featured the Ricardos and Mertzes in new adventures, often involving celebrity guest stars.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop: The success of I Love Lucy created a studio dynasty, and in order for Desi Arnaz to run Desilu Studios, which had become the largest studio in the world, Desi could no longer be Ricky Ricardo every week. So the decision was made to do hour-long versions once a month or so. So there were 13 of those made over the course of three years, allowing the plots to have more twists and turns, and the very generous use of guest stars. These specials pretty much exhausted every situation these four characters—Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel—could get into.
‘The Lucy Show’ (1962 to 1968)
Cast & Characters: Lucille Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Vivian Vance (Vivian Bagley), Gale Gordon (Mr. Mooney)
Premise: Lucy Carmichael, a widow with two children, constantly found herself in chaotic situations, particularly in her job at a bank where she frustrated her boss, Mr. Mooney.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop: Times change, tastes change and DesiLu Studios changed. What happens when the largest studio in the world is having trouble selling new shows to the networks? Lucille Ball comes back to television to save the day. It was only two years after the last series and she was done with television; Ms. Ball had to be coaxed into returning and wouldn’t do it unless Vivian Vance was with her and Desi had to be part of the startup team.
A new show was created basing the character on Lucy Ricardo, but making enough changes so that it wasn’t exactly the same. The show broke new ground because Vivian Vance played the first divorcee lead character in a sitcom. It also was the first of the sitcoms to, halfway through its run, almost completely change their format. That has happened many times since, but this was the first, taking the Lucy character from being a widow with children living in suburban New York State to being a de facto single woman whose children were invisible, working as a secretary in swinging Hollywood of the 1960s.
The quick story is that after the third season, following the departure of the original writers, the quality of the scripts went down and Vivian wanted input. When they brought in Gale Gordon, Vivian’s role was also lessened and Vivian said, “I’m flying here every week from my home in Connecticut to do this with you, and there are episodes where I’ve got three lines.” I’m exaggerating a little bit, but Vivian wanted to be included creatively. And the men who were running Desilu, because Desi was gone after the first season, told Lucille, “She’s trying to become your partner and we have to stop this.” And Vivian quit.
So Lucy wanted to end The Lucy Show after the third season, but then they said, “What if we move Lucy to LA and she’s wearing mod clothes and driving sports cars and is a swinging single woman with no Vivian and no kids, but we keep Gale Gordon.” It was one of the most awkward transition episodes I’ve ever seen in my entire life, but Lucille picked up the phone, called Bill Paley at CBS and said, “We’re coming back next year.”
‘The Lucille Ball Comedy Hour’ (1964)
Cast: Lucille Ball (“Herself”/Bonnie Blakely), Bob Hope (“Himself”/Bill Blakely), Gale Gordon (Elliott Harvey), John Dehner (Mr. Henderson), William Lanteau (Mr. Potter), Jack Weston (Cash), Max Showalter (Walter Creighton), Joseph Mell (Sam)
Premise: Lucille Ball portrays the head of a studio trying to track down Bob Hope to star in a TV special about husband and wife television stars. In essence, the first part is focused on Lucy chasing down an elusive Bob Hope all over the world while the second is a show within the show starring the two of them.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop: That show within a show is called Mr. and Mrs, based on an unproduced play by Sherwood Schwartz about television’s most famous, hottest married couple, who, it turns out, aren’t legally married and never have been. Sherwood told me he based it on Lucille and Desi, and that he’d found out that when they got married in 1940 at the Byron River Beagle Club in Connecticut, it wasn’t legal. His frame of reference was that when they got remarried in 1947, that was because people were starting to smell this and they got remarried in the church to stop it. Lucie Arnaz has the marriage certificate from 1940 and it is legal.
In the special, Lucille looks beautiful, and it’s something a little different for her to play this kind of bitchy glamor queen. She and Bob Hope are wonderful in it, and they did it because they’d just done two films together—1960’s The Facts of Life and 1963’s Critic’s Choice. They were even on What’s My Line? promoting their last film.
‘CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years’ (November 28, 1976)
Guest Stars: Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, Gale Gordon and others
Premise: This retrospective special celebrates Lucille Ball’s 25-year association with CBS. It features clips from her different series, interviews with co-stars and behind-the-scenes footage.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop:A clip show of her television career with wraparounds by Vivian Vance, Gale Gordon and other people who worked with her, including Richard Burton, who said he hated her guts but did this anyway. [Lucille’s second husband] Gary Morton put this together; he said he spent entire nights sitting up helping with the editing, picking which clips to use and at the end used a clip of Ms. Ball receiving an award she had already been given on The Merv Griffin Show, accompanied by huge applause—but there’s nobody there, because there’s no audience. This is the last time that Desi Arnaz appeared in a Lucille Ball product.
‘Lucy Moves to NBC’ (February 8, 1980)
Guest Stars: Gary Coleman, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Jack Klugman, Gloria DeHaven
Premise: In a nutshell, Lucille Ball helps create programming for NBC in this special.
Geoffrey Mark’s inside scoop:Ms. Ball signs a contract with NBC, whose sitcoms are dying at that moment in the time before the advent of “Must See TV.” They hired Lucille Ball to literally help create sitcoms for them, and to get that started they did this 90-minute special shot in front of an audience. Doris Singleton, who played Carolyn Appleby on I Love Lucy, plays her secretary and Gale Gordon comes in to help her run the shows. And then, whoever was on NBC at that moment came into her office and did three or four-minute bits with her while the audience went crazy when they arrived.
She decides in the show that she’s going to create a sitcom for Donald O’Connor, so she and Gale Gordon have to convince him to do it. Then the last half hour is this sitcom, a show within the show, where Lucille Ball plays a takeoff on a Salvation Army lady. It’s a small part of a terrible half-hour of comedy. You would literally think it was 1954 again.
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