Farewell to the “Queen of Comedy”: Lucille Ball Passes Away at Age 77 md20

TV audiences were sorry to say goodbye to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz following the run of both I Love Lucy and The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, the latter coming about with the dissolution of their marriage and going their own ways in terms of life and career. That being said, there was a project in development — to the point where a script was actually written — which would have resulted in a reunion of the I Love Lucy cast.

Richard Irvin, author of the new book The Forgotten Desi and Lucy TV Projects: The Desilu Series and Specials That Might Have Been, explains, “I’m old enough to remember when I Love Lucy wasn’t in reruns. It was always one of my favorite shows when I was growing up and I was doing research on another book, when I came across a script titled Lucy Goes to Broadway. I’d heard about the special that Lucy wanted to do when she was on Broadway starring in Wildcat, but I had never seen a script for it before. I requested a copy from, I think, the Wisconsin Historical Society and was sent it. I thought it was a very funny script, it’s just too bad that she wasn’t healthy enough to do the special at that time in the early 1960s. That led me into researching other things that Desilu tried, but for whatever reason didn’t actually get produced or have a pilot that didn’t go to series. That led to the book.”

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack there. To backtrack a bit, the final episode of I Love Lucy (show 180, “The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue) aired on April 4, 1957. Then, Lucille and Desi embarked on 13 episodes making up three seasons of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which debuted on June 28, 1957 with “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana” and concluded on March 2, 1960 with “Lucy Meets the Mustache” (guest-starring Ernie Kovacs). The marriage ended and, again, they parted company.

In between the Comedy Hour and the arrival of The Lucy Show in 1962, the musical Wildcat starring Lucille made its Broadway debut on October 29, 1960, marking her only foray on stage. The book for the show was written by N. Richard Nash, with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh and music by Cy Coleman. Details Wikipedia, “Nash had envisioned the main character of Wildy as a woman in her late 20s and was forced to rewrite the role when Lucille Ball expressed interest not only in playing it, but financing the project as well. Desilu … ultimately invested $360,000 in the show in exchange for 36 percent of the net profits, the rights to the original cast recording and television rights for musical numbers to be included in a special titled Lucy Goes to Broadway, a project that eventually was scrapped.”

Explains Richard, “After Lucy and Desi divorced, Lucy made a movie with Bob Hope as one of her first projects, The Facts of Life. After that, she wanted to star in a Broadway musical, which ended up being Wildcat. Unfortunately, I guess she didn’t figure out how brutal singing and acting every night would be, so she really wasn’t healthy enough to continue in that role.

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“But along the way,” he continues, “Madelyn Pugh Martin and Bob Carroll, Jr., her I Love Lucy writers, came up with the script for a special that CBS was going to produce and air in 1961 that kind of chronicled a highly fictionalized version of how Lucy got into the show Wildcat. And it basically would have included the stars from I Love Lucy as, again, highly-fictionalized versions of themselves.”

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The idea behind the special is that Vivian Vance is in New York City auditioning for a Broadway show, which happens to be Wildcat. Lucy joins her and discovers that she would actually like to star in the same show. “They both agree that they’re not going to compete against each other, but of course they actually have other ideas,” shares Richard. “Eventually what happens is that Lucy does win the part in Wildcat and Vivian is going to appear in a revival of Come Back Little Sheba. The really interesting part is that Lucy during all of I Love Lucy was a poor singer; that was an ongoing storyline with a lot of the scenario for this script having to do with Lucy working on improving her singing.”

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The third part of the I Love Lucy reunion would have come from a critic of Lucy’s singing. Details Richard, “In the hotel where Vivian is staying and they’re practicing singing, somebody shows up at the door complaining that it sounds like someone is beating a dead cat against a drum — turns out to be William Frawley. But there are a lot of jokes about Lucy trying to be a better singer throughout.

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“Eventually,” elaborates Richard, “Lucy goes to see Leonard Bernstein, who says that she’s singing through her nose and he helps improve her singing ability. Then, Bob Hope is also in the proposed special as being one of the backers of the show, and right before the premiere Lucy really gets nervous and says she can’t go on. Bob suggests that Vivian Vance go on in her place, but Lucy quickly picks up and says, ‘Never mind. I’m okay; I’ll go on.’

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“Like I said, I thought it was a funny script,” he reflects. “There was one scene in it where supposedly Vivian knitted a dress for Lucy she was wearing, and when both Lucy and Viv are trying to meet, separately, with the producer of Wildcat, Lucy sees Viv coming down the hall and hides, but her dress gets hooked on a serving cart. When the attendant takes it down the elevator, there’s a whole scene where Lucy is spinning around as the dress comes undone, which you can almost envision given the physical comedy Lucy did on I Love Lucy.”

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Despite the break-up of Lucille and Desi, indications are that he would have been a part of this special as well, making it a full-blown I Love Lucy reunion. Offers Richard, “Although the tag at the end wasn’t written, there were notes from Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. that Desi Arnaz Jr. and Luzie Arnaz would appear, and perhaps even Desi Arnaz himself, because even though they were divorced, there’s a photo [see above] of Desi presenting a model of an oil well to Lucy at the premiere of Wildcat.”

In fact, the site Everything Lucy describes the very end of the special as follows: “Lucy goes into rehearsals where the whole cast helps her prepare. Finally, opening night is a success and Lucy’s now ex-husband, Desi greets her as they all go to Sardi’s to celebrate along with their kids.”

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Wildcat opened on December 16, 1960 at the Alvin Theatre in New York, with a cast that included future Rhoda star Valerie Harper. Unfortunately, a combination of poor reviews and Lucille Ball’s continuing health issues allowed the show to run for only 171 performance. In between, it closed for two weeks, but upon her return in April 1961, Lucille collapsed on stage. That pretty much spelled the end of Wildcat.

To read more about a wide variety of interesting potential series and specials from both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, check out a copy of Richard Irvin’s The Forgotten Desi and Lucy TV Projects: The Desilu Series and Specials That Might Have Been.

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