Lucille Ball was beautiful.

I love Lucy! Her show got me through a bad childhood

Melts my icy heart.

I love that fall on her OP.

On the inside?

Not so much, OP.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Vitameatavegamin was a single take!

[Quote]Who else this beautiful is this funny?

Me!

Boobies do not a beauty make!!!

But Sarah Silverman is very pretty. And she has had incredible cutting and pasting. I don’t see an inkling of mutilated Bravo Housewife face.

That dress at R7 is tasteless. But I also love to see Sarah all glammed up: she's a pretty, pretty girl.

I must be the only gay that had no interest in her or I LOVE LUCY. NONE, even the theme song makes me cringe!

R10 NO, homo! Not allowed!!

Carole Lombard

Lucy was pretty but not sexy.

Not everyone has to be sexy. She was smart. She gave us Star Trek!

Ain't got nothin' on this.

I always thought this gal was pretty and gifted at comedy (Not a dramatic actress though!). Not Lucy caliber, but entertained many for decades.

Me me me!

Susan Lucci is a pretty good comic actress, R16. It's too bad she never used that much outside out of AMC.

But I shudder to think what her stand-up act might look like....

R18 She was funny-ish on Devious Maids. It was more like cutesy-gimmicky-funny than haha-funny, but passable, anyway. She is certainly no Lucille Ball!

[quote]Vitameatavegamin was a single take!

Of course it was done as a single take because it was done in front of a live audience. Lucille wouldn't let them stop and go back and fix it. There are several instances where they make bloopers on other episodes and they keep on going. It was well known that Lucy rehearsed and rehearsed until she had it down perfect. Just ask Liz & Dick when they appeared on one of her later series. She rehearsed them to the breaking point.

In addition, she was a cheap bitch. She wasn't going to waste film on retakes (and they were shooting directly on film with three cameras, not doing cheap kinescope).

Vivian definitely looked better than Lucy in this episode

R20 Come on, you have to respect the woman. She was brilliant and confident enough (many in the industry would not be) to credit Desi for inventing the three-camera filming technique, and recording every episode for posterity. I don’t think you can accuse them of being cheap, either. They were running a business, and Lucille didn’t expect the series to last as long as it did.

Hold my beer, bitch.

Neither beautiful nor funny in my experience working with her, OP. Never again.

For reasons well known to her.

The Maharincess of Cultural Appropriation!

I think she and I could have been love—er, friends, if not for that BITCH Ginger Rogers!

Life with Lucy: The complete series is now out on DVD! Her very underrated last show.

Have SJWs canceled her yet?

[quote] I don’t think you can accuse them of being cheap, either.

Elois Jenssen tells a different story. She left the show because Lucy wouldn't pay her $50 more.

And come to think of it, so does Viv. She tells a story of on her first day of reporting to the I Love Lucy set that Lucy handed her a can of cleaner and told her to go scrub the toilet.

Young Lucy was pretty. She was never beautiful with the orange red hair, too much nostril and the thick waist she displayed during her TV career. Lots of other pretty woman were funny, no?

I know someone, name rhymes with Kebra Lessing.

[quote]Have SJWs canceled her yet?

Back in the mid 1990s, Lucie Arnaz was giving interviews where she was considering using technology to remove most of the smoking from the I Love Lucy series.

R28 Never!

The smoking was obligatory because the series was underwritten by Phillip Morris.

Lucy was beautiful and smart as a whip. Without Lucy, there never would have been a Mary Tyler Moore, a Fran Drescher or any of the other woman who produced and crated their own shows. Even with their husbands by their sides, these woman had the talent and appeal to capture an audience.

Based on the interviews I've seen, Lucy wasn't terribly funny in real life.

Viv seemed much wittier of the two.

Hollywood didn’t know what to do with her initially and tried to sell her as a platinum blonde sex bomb. When that didn’t work they tried screwball comedy which was a little more in Lucy’s wheelhouse. She certainly photographed beautifully in Technicolor, with her red hair and blue eyes.

[quote]The smoking was obligatory because the series was underwritten by Phillip Morris.

There is one episode in Season 1 where Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel all sit down in the living room and begin smoking. After that, I don't remember ever seeing Fred and Ethel smoke on the series again.

But yes, PM did underwrite the show and it's funny to see how they inserted themselves in other ways. I think in one of the Hollywood episodes, in a public scene, a bell boy can be heard saying, "Call for Philip Morris."

Madeline Kahn is beautiful and funny. I used to love Lucy, but now find her insufferable. She sucks all the air out of the room.

[quote]Life with Lucy: The complete series is now out on DVD! Her very underrated last show.

If your definition of "underrated" is "sad and embarrassing."

[quote] Viv seemed much wittier of the two.

Vivian Vance never got the credit she deserved. You watch her in that show and she is brilliant. She knew how to be funny without stepping on Lucy's toes. Watch Viv in the chocolate scene. She knew what she was doing.

Lucille has such as bitch rep, but despite being legendary she doesn’t get enough credit. At 19, her legs became suddenly paralyzed from what was thought to be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and a doctor told her she may never walk again. She acted in films—as a contract player who specialized in dancing— for a decade before deciding to downgrade to TV land and settle down. She created I Love Lucy, and she battled with CBS to get Desi to play her Latino husband, which they did NOT want. She put the opportunity on the line and she won. She was accused of communism during the McCarthy era, and she testified that she had joined the communist party to make her grandfather happy—and of all the careers that were obliterated by false accusations, she was totally forgiven because she was so beloved.

She was regarded as a washed-up B-movie player and was 39. At 40, she became a mother and a breakout star, and she turned the TV success into a Hollywood empire. She also fought CBS about Star Trek, which Desilu chose and produced. CBS didn’t like the idea of a multicultural cast in a futuristic sci-fi show, and especially the Russian and the beautiful black woman, and Lucille felt it was important and threatened to pull all of Desilu’s moneymaking productions off the air if CBS didn’t pick up Star Trek.

Think about it. She married a Latino guy, forced a major network to let him play her husband, wrote into the contract that no one could make fun of his accent except Lucy, who did it lovingly. She started and ran a business empire with alcoholic, cheating Desi and then she dumped Desi and kept her company going. Would it have been more admirable for her to have been a nice girl who followed orders and never got realized any of her vision?

This is the best example (I think) of r42.

Viv made this scene.

The whole ensemble was good together. I always thought Desi was a terrible actor and singer but I’ve decided now he was only a terrible singer. He played off the goofballs really well and when he and Fred would get their own harebrained schemes cooked up, he played those well, too.

Viv and Lucy were friends in real life. They didn’t hate one another. Viv was also a trailblazer, for mental health of all things. She talked about her emotional imbalances and psychotherapy all the way back to the 40s, which remained taboo probably until the Oprah effect of the 1980s.

Based on what I've read, Lucy probably felt much closer to Viv than Viv felt to Lucy.

Vivian had a bunch of sisters whom she stayed close to throughout her life. I'm sure those relationships meant more to her than her friendship with Lucy.

She had quite a life.

pretty.

Ohhhh yes Delta was seriously underrated.

Agreed R49. Delta was gorgeous and a very good comedienne. Great timing. Lucy only really excelled with physical comedy. She wasn't witty or great with a line as Lucy Ricardo. Or Mame.

The beautiful, classy LaWanda Page:

R26, According to Lucie Arnaz, Lucy and Ginger were distant cousins.

Life with Lucy was laughable, I'll grant you that

I disagree r50. Lucy had brilliant timing on lines and was considered a sophisticated comediene even through much of ILL. It was the combination of the sophistication and the physical humor that really was groundbreaking. Unfortunately, the sophistication got lost by the early years of the Lucy Show and the subtlety of her timing disappeared as the physical humor got broader and broader. But the public still loved her. (until Life with Lucy, that is...)

Lucille was very good at delivery. Delta’s character is much more of a contemporary sensibility, biting and sarcastic. Lucy Ricardo was supposed to be a little daft and always scheming, and the show was based on a Vaudevillian-style radio show, and so it was a stylized type of comic performance. Saying Lucy wasn’t good is like saying Bette Davis wasn’t good. They were both true experts, just in a very different style of performance than we are used to seeing. There’s no denying her comic timing, though. Without it, she would have flopped.

Here’s a “dancing girl” scene from one of her pre-Lucy movies, and I think it’s really interesting that what she is doing here, seriously, is the same sort of thing that she parodied/had fun with as Lucy Ricardo wanting to get into the show. It’s as if she was lampooning her own prior movie career by playing a wannabe.

[quote]Based on the interviews I've seen, Lucy wasn't terribly funny in real life.

She was hard as nails in real life.

Here she is with Joan!

She's in character here, but here's Madeline Kahn at her prime.

Goldie Hawn.

It's easy to look beautiful when you have 2 pounds of paint on your face.

If she had "old Hollywood" glamour techs..

Cameron Diaz.

She should made more and funnier movies.

Here’s a great photo of young Desi.

[quote]She also fought CBS about Star Trek, which Desilu chose and produced. CBS didn’t like the idea of a multicultural cast in a futuristic sci-fi show, and especially the Russian and the beautiful black woman, and Lucille felt it was important and threatened to pull all of Desilu’s moneymaking productions off the air if CBS didn’t pick up Star Trek.

Well, since Star Trek aired on NBC, your entire premise is ridiculous. Stop making shit up. And speaking of making shit up (from the same moron):

[quote]She created I Love Lucy

No, she didn't. Nor did she create its predecessor, "My Favorite Husband."

[quote] She tells a story of on her first day of reporting to the I Love Lucy set that Lucy handed her a can of cleaner and told her to go scrub the toilet.

Wow. I may have to change my opinion of her. She sounds like my kinda gal!

There were other beautiful women who were good at comedy, the above mentioned Carole Lombard is a good example. The thing with Lucy is that she was so good at physical comedy and that was unexpected from a nice looking movie star, even a B movie star.

Viv was no slacker either. I don't think ILL would have been anywhere close to the hit it was and still so popular what like 60, 70 years later if not for that exact cast. I think take away any of them and the magic would not have happened.

I never liked the later shows with just Lucy and Viv and especially with just Lucy. I never cared for the movies Lucy made either. Like with other classic shows, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, it was the entire cast that made these shows work. Although the MTM show was very special too, but again, an ensemble piece that survived the loss of Valerie Harper but it was never completely as good again but still better than most shows.

Star Trek was a Desilu production. After the first pilot "The Cage" wasn't picked up by the network, Lucille Ball financed the second pilot.

Lucille was a successful and popular gal-for-pay before making it in films. Her appeal is plain even now.

The Lucy of ILL looked very little like that tall gorgeous thin leggy sassy sexy beauty in the clip @ R56.

I've only known ILL from reruns in the late eighties and 1990s. No one I grew up with thought that Lucy Ricardo was beautiful. She hit the wall hard by the time that show started and the hair and clothes of that time were unflattering to her. So much fucking lipstick too! She often looked kind of gross - like she was painted for the back row and her girdle was too tight.

R70 She was styled to look funny, not to be boner inducing. They exaggerated her makeup to make her expressions more extreme/sillier. Oy,

So why did she pile it on even thicker in real life R71? Nah, that was her (unfortunate) look.

R72 It was her trademark. There’s a whole merchandising empire built on it. She was a human cartoon, known for her wild red hair even while starring on a black and white TV series.

Not everyone found her beautiful, I guess...

Lucy did the lipstick outside of the natural lip lines thing even off camera.

Bebe Neuwirth is also funny and beautiful. Plus has an amazing body.

Well, I've been told I've got the face of a god. A goddamn pig! Wheeeeee!

Not quite, r26.....

Lucy wanted Bea Benadaret to play Ethel and Gale Gordon to play Fred. To me, it sounds like horrible casting.

It would have been R80, it would have been and ILL would have been cancelled the first season. Lucy might have been a great business person but she sucked at casting.

Hardly horrible casting, R80 and R81. Both were old pros and would have been fine, especially Bea. But after nearly 70 years, it's impossible to imagine anyone but Vance and Frawley in those roles.

Gale Gordon was not funny.

It had nothing to do with being a pro or even a good actor. Those four had chemistry that rarely happens and when it does the show is almost always a huge hit. You can't hire or pay for that chemistry. It's either there or it's not.

It's not as though wiser heads prevailed on the casting of the Mertzes. Bea Benederet and Gale Gordon had other commitments that prevented them from taking the roles.

Fred could not have the bombast that Gale Gordon always plays. And Bea Benadaret was too mousey for Ethel. Both William Frawley and Vivian Vance were perfect because they didn't overshadow Lucy but still found their funny stride.

Gale Gordon and Jim Backus always "reached" for the laughs. Their trademark was bombast.

And think of all the brilliant Vivian moments. The whining because she got ugly hostess pants instead of a toaster. Or the moment in the operetta when she switches from singing lyric soprano to jazz scat. She was brilliant in the role.

ITA R86.

R65, You know nothing about the business. Google Desilu and Star Trek then shut the fuck up. Also, there was no musical component to My Favorite Husband which Lucy starred in as a radio show so shut the the fuck up again.

If I recall correctly, Lucille green-lighted Star Trek and Mission Impossible at the recommendation of others. She admitted herself she had no idea what those shows were about.

Lucy hired Herb Solow to run production at Desilu. The place had become basically a rental studio under her and she needed someone to develop shows. Solow developed dramas which Lucy wouldn’t have really gotten. Apparently Gene Roddenberry could deal with her when she did get involved with production on Star Trek.

Ball was hardly the only woman producer. Donna Reed only got recognition long after her show went off the air and she still was vetoed by network and sponsor.

Ball was no great beauty and her limited range/style was evident back when she did Stage Door.

She was like a lot of early tv people—B-movies types and over the hill second tier A listers like Robert Montgomery. Her success is not that remarkable, in that context. You could say the same about a range of people from Ronnie Reagan to Eve Arden. Like Ball and Arden, some others did radio between movies and tv.

r88 God, you're stupid, You're still claiming "Star Trek" aired on CBS?

And Jess Oppenheimer created both "My Favorite Husband" AND "I Love Lucy." This is an undisputed fact.

Desilu was the studio for Star Trek. Lucy was instrumental in selling it to NBC and getting it on the air.

She had rather little to do with it. Given her long time relationship with CBS, selling it to NBC would have required someone like Solow with different relationships.

I only remember Star Trek being on channel 11 in NYC.

She had a LOT to do with it....

More of Lucy's involvement with Star Trek....

The article in R96 gives her credit for shows that only rented space at Desilu like the Van Dyke show for which she had no role. Green lighting a reshoot is not exactly making Ball responsible for a show. This isn’t rare.

Look if Pan Bergman hadn’t been banging her, we would have been spared decades of her predictable Schlick.

She went against the shareholders' wishes and fought for a second pilot to be greenlighted. If she hadn't done that, there probably wouldn't have been a Star Trek at all.

I Love Lucy in the 59s was brilliant. From there on when Desi was not directing- not so much. And toward the end of her life I thought she was sort of an angry boozer. Yes she owned her own company, but she came off as an angry woman.

Lucy was so bitter and hard-boiled in her later years. Many of her talk show appearances are on Youtube and she came off as pretty jaded and miserable.

Kirstie Alley

Kirstie was a sexy bitch. And a deeply funny comic actress. The idea that Lucy was the only funny woman ever on TV is kind of crazy. She was a trailblazer and one of a kind. That's true.

Jerry Lewis didn't think Lucy was funny.

At the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, in 2000, during a Q&A conducted by Martin Short, Lewis was asked whether he liked Lucille Ball. His response: "A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world."

Judy Holliday got an Oscar for what is one of the most sustained hilarious performances in "Born Yesterday", and she was very funny and lovely indeed in that and many of her other films. Carole Lombard also beautiful and funny in things like "Twentieth Century" and "To Be or Not to Be". Candice Bergen was very funny and still pretty when she did "Murphy Brown". Rosalind Russell was very attractive and while she was very good in dramatic roles, found her forte in comedy in "The Women".

Lucy was super regressive. She probably would have agreed with Jerry Lewis. She would go on TV and criticize her own children and the "ungrateful actors and actresses of today." She was humorless, unhappy and more than a bit scary. That Desi was a dog, but at some point you make your own choice. Ball chose career and fame over being a good mother or a contented woman. She stayed with Arnaz until the ratings took them out of the top 10. They say she loved him forever. No doubt. When sex goes, all is gone. And the colossal joke for couples "in love" is that later in life - when sex leaves their life forever - they romanticize their disastrous past. Lucy was not so much groundbreaking as lucky. That show should have lasted a year. A certain alchemy - good quality, a bit of Desi sexy and a lot of Ethel and Fred made that show, some Lucy Ball genius comedy. Must have been fun for the first two years.

*good quality writing

For someone who smoked all her life, she aged incredibly well.

Anyway, she always said that the funniest person she knew was Judy Garland.

[quote] She would go on TV and criticize her own children and the "ungrateful actors and actresses of today."

This was entirely generational: she and every star you can think of from the time (Stanwyck, Davis, Crawford, etc) who struggled for their success found their entitled, hippie, Beverly Hills children horrible.

[quote] Ball chose career and fame over being a good mother or a contented woman.

Are you typing from 1919? She was a pretty good mother and family person. I believe her mother lived with them and helped raised the kids. She also took care of Liza for stretches of time when Judy was off doing whatever.

Thanks R108!! Someone cut him a check god dammit. I looked so good for 77! That's my lucky number.

R108 and R109 are the same person.

Lucy was very pretty. She reminded me of my grandmother growing up; they looked similar, especially in their respective old ages.

Not only that R110, but R108 and R109 are also....both YOU!! What are the odds of some ancient fag mentioning Judy Garland in one post and Liza right after? You're a riot of mystery old man.

Lucy was a grotesque old hag. There's no other truth.

When you add 108 + 109 + 111 together it comes to 328. 328 reduces to 13. 13 = #4 in numerology.

One in every 4 posts on this thread are by the same person. Lucy had 4 TV series. Lucy looked 104! She had 4 children, if you count the abortions. She died on April 4, 2004. That's 04/04/04.

Go now child.

Lucy refused to have plastic surgery. She looked horrible in real life but she used tape to pull up that face for public appearances.

Bette Davis also used the tape.

It's so strange to look at actors/actresses from earlier eras and seeing how OLD they looked compared to modern stars.

It wasn't that she refused, r115, it was that her skin didn't make her a good candidate for it.

The photo of Lucy at R110 is from the March 1989 Academy Awards. She would be dead the next month.

We cried when Lucy died.

It's certainly within her rights to "refuse" plastic surgery. Look how Joan Rivers ended up. Maybe people should accept that old people look old.

Like that'll happen.

[quote]It's certainly within her rights to "refuse" plastic surgery.

I don't think it would help much now.

Not beautiful, but quite the glamour puss. Her red hair was perfection.

[quote]Maybe people should accept that old people look old.

But back then they looked REALLY old.

Not beautiful???

I didn't mean that she refused to have plastic surgery as a bad thing. I think people should grow old gracefully and would rather see someone look old than look like a burn victim. That being said, she wasn't originally a redhead, but she definitely had the skin of one, very pale and not the kind that ages well. I know that Ginger was scared of surgery and never had any, though I thought that Bette had some work done along the way.

Lucille Ball on the Three Stooges. 1934.

[quote]Lucille Ball on the Three Stooges. 1934.

*On* the Three Stooges? Is it a stag reel?

Ginger kept her complexion.....

That wasn't Ginger. That was a lifesized plastic doll.

She sure put the grease in greasepaint!

Did they shave off Lucy's eyebrows and just paint on red ones. She would have been beautiful, except for the eyebrows.

Bitch needs to learn to blot.

Lucy's skin was prone to keloid scarring, which would make her a poor candidate for facial surgery.

Lucy wore wigs. She could have hidden any scars from a facelift. It was more likely a cardiovascular problem that made elective surgery a bad idea. Even Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn eventually gave in and had facelifts. Very successfully for Davis, but she had her strokes soon after.

I think Lucy was beautiful but in an asexual sort of way.

Keith Andes didn't think so.

Beautiful Irene Dunne was very very funny and did wonderful drama as well. She could also pull off being righteous like Gregory Peck and not appear insufferable. And she could sing. Like Stanwyck and Grant she was a free agent and though deserved an Oscar for any number of performances never won. Hollywood is a company town. She also married a dentist and remained married to him her entire life.

To Lucy being a star meant being a movie star. The fact that she could never be one no matter how big she was in television caused her no end of bitterness and frustration. I like her very much in Yours Mine and Ours. And that drunk scene which starts out amusing and then turns humiliating is remarkable.

Miss Dunne was an expert comedienne......

[quote]Even Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn eventually gave in and had facelifts. Very successfully for Davis, but she had her strokes soon after.

Davis's strokes were caused by alcohol withdrawal, while she was still hospitalized after having a mastectomy. It could've been easily treated if the hospital staff had recognized what was going on.

Ewww, Miss Dunne was not a looker.

You don't know any women who've had mastectomies do you R140? You're home the next day.

r142 it was years and years ago, things were different back then. Davis had the strokes only a day or two afterwards.

Humorless R128 obsessing about a preposition adds nothing to the topic.

Bette suffered a stroke 9 days after her mastectomy.

It can take several days for alcohol withdrawal to happen and yes she was still in the hospital. It's been in all the Davis bios, and also in her personal assistant Kathryn Sermak's memoir which was published a couple of years ago.

Hepburn had the facelift about the time she was planning COCO?

During the late 1930's RKO pimped out Lucy to cinema owners to show their films. She more than earned her keep by the sounds of things.

r114=Mr. Merriweather.

She truly was breathtaking.

Speaking of breathtaking, I was watching the first episode of That Girl the other day, and it reminded me how much of Julia's Elaine Benes persona was directly lifted from Marlo Thomas' Ann Marie.

Elaine like That Girl. I really don't see it.

Did Elaine ever run through Central Park flying a kite with her face on it?

[quote]Elaine like That Girl. I really don't see it.

Me neither. Just smile and back away slowly.

That Girl had a hot, hot, hot boyfriend. What did Elaine have?

That Girl was supposedly a virgin. Elaine slept with anything that moved.

[quote]That Girl was supposedly a virgin.

Oh, honey. That's what I told Daddy.

I'd take it up the anywhere for a walk-on.