Actors beloved for a long-running television role (or, in some cases, long-running roles) carry a funny kind of baggage with them. It didn’t matter where Andy Griffth showed up in TV or film, the shadow of amiable Sheriff Andrew Jackson “Andy” Taylor and, during the actor’s twilight years, the irascible defense attorney Ben Matlock always hung heavily over his head. Likewise, for all of Angela Lansbury’s many, many accomplishments performing on the stage and screen, certain people could only ever look at her and see their favorite cardigan-loving author-sleuth, Jessica Fletcher.
Lucille Désirée Ball was firmly cognizant of just how strongly the masses identified her with her incorrigible onscreen counterpart, Lucille Esmeralda “Lucy” McGillicuddy Ricardo, from “I Love Lucy,” having played the iconic trouble-maker across the series’ 180 episodes in the 1950s. This was also the main factor that led to her passing on another classic sitcom, “Cheers,” decades later.
Despite the show garnering near-catastrophic ratings when its first season premiered on NBC in September 1982 (by early 1980s standards, that is), those who caught “Cheers” right out the gate immediately recognized it was something special. Ball, it turns out, was among those who tuned in for that initial batch of episodes, which led to a conversation. As co-creator Les Charles recounted to The Hollywood Reporter in an article to mark the series finale’s 25th anniversary in 2018:
“Lucille Ball had seen the show the first season and got in touch with us indirectly that she liked it and would consider coming on. We had the idea of Diane’s mother. We met with Lucy at her house and had a long chat with her. She very wisely decided against it because she felt that ‘Lucy’ fans wouldn’t want to see her as another character. There’s something to that.”
An heir to Lucille Ball’s comedy throne
Considering that Diane Chambers, the inimitable bar waitress played by Shelley Long, got a surprise visit from her mother Helen (Glynis Johns in her sole appearance on the show) as far back as in season 1, episode 20, 1983’s “Someone Single, Someone Blue,” it seems Ball was eager to hop aboard the “Cheers” train well before other big-names started circling the bandwagon. Given her knack for slapstick and repartee, writer-producer and longtime “Cheers” creative consultant David Isaacs argued that Long herself was very much an heir apparent to Ball’s comedy throne. As he told THR:
“For my money, Shelley’s just after Lucille Ball for great physicality and comedy. Pound for pound I think she’s one of the best comic actresses I’ve been around. She brought a uniqueness to Diane that came out of her and she was totally willing to make the laugh be on her.”
Isaacs was right on the money, as both “Cheers” fans and anyone who’s caught Shelley Long’s other comedic work can attest (especially her performances as the Bradys’ matriarch in the 1990s “Brady Bunch” movies and her turn in “Troop Beverly Hills,” which /Film’s BJ Colangelo has declared Long’s “magnum opus”). Hiring Ball as her mother for the “Cheers” universe would have certainly been a fitting nod to this, as well as a cheeky way of allowing Ball to properly pass the torch to Long.
Then again, would audiences have even gone for that type of winking casting at the time? Far be it from me to try and assert I know better in this respect than a showbiz legend like Ball.
