As I Love Lucy’s 60th anniversary approaches this month, loyal fans have plenty of places to celebrate — from Lucille Ball’s birthplace 100 years ago in Jamestown, N.Y., to Los Angeles, where the famed redhead became television’s queen of comedy.
Let’s start our Lucy tour in Jamestown, about 50 miles east of Erie, Pa.
The official Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center opened there in 1996, seven years after Ball died at age 77.
The museum and its nearby Desilu Playhouse are treasure-troves of Lucy memorabilia. Visitors can view video clips, walk through replicas of I Love Lucy sets and see original costumes from the classic sitcom, which co-starred Ball’s first husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, and ran from Oct. 15, 1951, to May?6, 1957.
Among the favorite displays of Susan Ewing, a staff writer at the center: Ball’s gold 1972 Mercedes, which was donated to the museum by the husband of Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Ball and Arnaz.
“It has her monogram, LBM, on the driver’s-side door,” Ewing said. (Ball married comedian Gary Morton in 1961, after she and Arnaz divorced in 1960.)
Fans can also re-enact classic Lucy bits on the set replicas, Ewing said.
“People can do the Vitameatavegamin commercial right there in the playhouse,” she said. “That’s a pretty popular feature of the playhouse.”
A museum memento not seen on television: the desk belonging to Jess Oppenheimer, creator, producer and writer of I Love Lucy. Atop the desk is Oppenheimer’s original Rolodex, opened to Ball’s phone number.
Oppenheimer died in 1988. His son, Gregg, who donated the desk and Rolodex, has carried the Lucy torch ever since.
“Nobody compares to Lucy,” said Oppenheimer, who finished his father’s autobiography, Laughs, Luck .? .? . and Lucy: How I Came To Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. “ You had this superb cast; you had great writing, timeless stories. There’s not a lot of cultural references that people won’t understand.”
On Nov. 5, he will direct his own play, I Love Lucy: The Untold Story, based on his father’s book. Janet Waldo, Shirley Mitchell and Doris Singleton — who played recurring roles on Lucy — will appear in the play, to be performed at a benefit in North Hollywood, Calif.
The play coincides with a major exhibit — “Lucille Ball at 100 & I Love Lucy at 60” — at the Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles. On display through Nov. 30 are scripts, costumes and memorabilia spanning Ball’s career. Oddities include the autographed plaster cast that Ball wore after breaking her leg in a 1972 ski accident.
The Paley Center for Media, located both in Los Angeles and New York, also is celebrating Ball with “We Love Lucy” public screenings through Oct. 30. Most of the programs are also available year-round for personal viewing at the center’s library.
Even Florida has a stop for Lucy fans: Universal Studios in Orlando, with its long-running Lucy: A Tribute exhibit, which screens classic TV clips and displays props from I Love Lucy and costumes worn by Ball.
