LUCILLE BALL: Did we all stop loving Lucy?

We've had sufficient.

Are you nuts? It's still on TV all the time.

It's available to stream and the DVDs have been out for years. Every Christmas CBS airs some colorized episodes in prime time, which is astounding for a 65 year old TV show.

In other words, there are so many ways for people to watch ILL that there probably isn't a huge demand for them on the nostalgic channels, as opposed to things like Hazel.

R3 Are you saying Hazel is currently more popular than I Love Lucy? Oh, how I wish I lived in that world.

My nieces had never heard of Lucy so I sat them down to watch some episodes. Now they love the show

Ha! What I'm saying is that Hazel hasn't been played as much as Lucy.

My 4 nieces and nephews, all under 13, love the show.

This show sucked. Good riddance.

Am I a fool for loving that kitchen in OP's photo?

The '50s are going on close to 70 years ago so it's natural that I Love Lucy and its titular star are fading into the background. Time marches on, and even legends have shelf lives. Having said that, Lucy isn't going anywhere for awhile.

R8 Agree. Every episode revolved around the premise of; just how jealous and conniving is Lucy going to be today?

Ricky was more likable, he was funnier and Desi Arnaz came across as a nice guy. Fred and Ethel were also funnier than Lucy.

I can recall two funny moments from that show; when Lucy thought Ricky was going to killer and acted like a moving target and when Ricky, Fred and Ethel rehearsed how they were going to calmly react when Lucy went into labor and then how they actually reacted when Lucy started having contractions.

I heard she died.

R11, I hear what you're saying about her costars, but Lucy had moments of brilliance. No one on television was ever funnier than Lucy in Vitameatavegimin. She crushes it here.

I so remember loving that show R13. For me, the funniest part was when the director or somebody comes over to talk to her and the way she looks at him as he's talking to her... It's just perfect. It's exactly how someone who is blotto would be looking at another person. That was the beauty of Lucy. A simple thing could become brilliant in her hands.

I'm going to have to watch it again. There is almost a bit of reverence for it. You don't want to get used to it so you can preserve how great it is.

It was loud and she gave me a headache.

For me, the funniest part is her take between "And it's tasty too!" Spoons it, reacts. "...just like candy." No one could make that as funny as Lucy did. Not then, not today, and likely not in the future.

One of the principle reasons I Love Lucy was so good was that it was directed by Desi. She never shined when he was not directing her. And yes she more or less turned into nasty person as she aged. I don't know why.

My mom MADE me watch old episodes.

I moved to LA a zillion years ago and didn't have to be at work till 11:30 some days.

the local Fox affiliate -- this is when I had a TV with an antenna and you could watch TV that way -- ran I LOVE LUCY every day between 9 and 10 and right when I moved to LA they were on their way to Hollywood.

What a great time; I was in a strange city but had familiar faces on my TV screen.

R6 Maybe we need a Hazel appreciation thread.

Done, R20.

ILL had a very dated setup where the wife was basically a clingy, naughty child and the husband was in effect a parent to her. Ricky was the only real adult in the house. Infantilizing a woman is not a premise that goes down very well with modern audiences.

In contrast, The Honeymooners holds up very well and is still constantly shown in the NYC area, even though so few episodes were made. It has a more modern setup -- in fact, it created a template that's still being used today.

[quote]One of the principle reasons I Love Lucy was so good was that it was directed by Desi.

1. PRINCIPAL, not principle.

2. Desi directed exactly ZERO episodes of "I Love Lucy."

I think I read once that I Love Lucy is shown somewhere in the world at least once every hour on the hour. What I don't understand is why they use the old prints and not the cleaned up DVD prints.

I'll bet R23 has an encyclopedic knowledge of "The Golden Girls" as well.

The 2020s are going to no longer be about "I Love Lucy" reruns. It will instead be all about "Beulah" reruns.

I grew up on reruns of I love Lucy. Loved her then, love her now. But when I watch the show as an adult, I find myself thinking I would wring that woman's neck if she were my friend. Lucy Ricardo was annoying as fuck. Ethel, on the other hand, was a real one.

No, we still love her! Where have you been?

ILL was funny when I was 5 years old. It isn't funny now and the usual "funniest bits" like the assembly line and vitawhatever were derivative of slapstick bits that others had done.

She was not a great actress---not horrible but limited. Like a lot of B players who couldn't carry a picture, she was able to carry a half hour sitcom with a decent supporting cast (Ann Sothern, Donna Reed, Eve Arden are other examples--all better actresses, btw, and Sothern could actually sing).

Yes, she was a bitter old prune in old age. She'd complain about her studio history, always knocking The Three Stooges, even though her comedy owes more to them than say, Noel Coward. She has always been overrated as a studio head--the place turned into a rental lot and was only viable for sale because she hired someone to do a lot of her job, like develop shows.

With time, all this obvious. As for GG--they had 4 funny women, rather than 1 with some straight men/women. It was contemporary to its time and still somewhat relevant---like a lot of 50s tv, ILL was really from an earlier time and her later shows relied on recycled schtick.

Like that fabulous pop standard "Shortnin' Bread."

R29 Go watch Vitameatavegimin. It's really a flawless comedic performance. I mean, if you haven't seen it for a while, I think you'll be surprised.

I think one of the reasons Lucy resonates through the decades is that, don't we all want to be loved despite our faults and foibles? Lucy gets in trouble sometimes, but always is forgiven in the end.

I think it's fascinating that someone brought up The Honeymooners as a somehow more enlightened show than ILL. Ralph threatened to beat the crap out of Alice on a weekly basis. Both shows are dated in some regards, and timeless in others.

So many great Lucy episodes. I love all the episodes where they're on the road to Hollywood. I dunno, I think it's great, Lucy's great, and her supporting cast is pretty perfect on that show.

it still runs on the Hallmark channel. One of the best episodes, a true DL favorite, is airing this moring at 5am eastern: Ethel's Home Town

A ton of responders on the other current Lucy thread voted "Ethel's Home Town" one of their favorite episodes. It is hilarious.

I was just thinking the other day about how many people would show any interest in watching Charlie Chaplin movies today. For me (56 yo) he is the greatest film comedian that ever lived, just as Lucy is in terms of TV. In both cases the art value has not diminished, but the audience has changed. I can't imagine anyone who watches the Kadarshians, the X-factors and the wives of whatever, could be capable of enjoying quality enertaiment.

I was just thinking the other day about how many people would show any interest in watching Charlie Chaplin movies today. For me (56 yo) he is the greatest film comedian that ever lived, just as Lucy is in terms of TV. In both cases the art value has not diminished, but the audience has changed. I can't imagine anyone who watches the Kadarshians, the X-factors and the wives of whatever, could be capable of enjoying quality enertaiment.

I always HATED Lucy and her awful husband. (born in the 70s)

R34, I just saw Chaplin's The Circus for the first time last weekend, and the man still holds his genius. I'm only a decade younger than you, though, and I grew up watching Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd films on a projector/screen in our home, so I was brought up right.

Eh, she was overrated

R37 Yes he does indeed. When I was a kid the silent comedies were often shown on TV (at least in Europe) and greatly admired. All the greats including Keaton and Lloyd. So grateful to had been exposed to the comedic genius at early age.

Times change, I know of twentysomethings that have NEVER seen the Wizard of Oz.

And it makes sense, in the "old days" TV was all there was. You had to watch what was on, good or not. And it expanded your tastes.

Same with music and records. You'd have to listen a lot to find very little. How many of you bought an album only to find there was ONLY ONE good song on it.

Add to that most young people won't even begin to sample old things. I love to listen to OTR and I am shocked how many young people will hear it from outside my office and think it's funny, but would never listen to it (most are free on YouTube), on their own.

It's a form of the filter bubble. This is why Google sucks (well one reason) as your results are personalized. You get the answers, Google thinks you wants and you aren't exposed to new ideas. Everyone's results are different. Even if you're not signed into Google, Google uses your browser profile.

Finally times change. Up until 1955 Broadway and Tin Pan Alley was the source of most music. This slowly eroded during the rock era which ended around 1990 and R&B took over and became mainstream pop. Lucy isn't considered sophisticated or funny, the way blackface is now no longer funny.

"I can't imagine anyone who watches the Kadarshians, the X-factors and the wives of whatever, could be capable of enjoying quality enertaiment."

Oooh, smell you, Nancy Drew! You go on with your "Secret of the Old Clock" deduction skills!

^^^ You do sound like a scat queen, don't you?

[quote] And it makes sense, in the "old days" TV was all there was. You had to watch what was on, good or not. And it expanded your tastes.

You said it, brother! It did expand our tastes. TV exposed us to the tastes of different eras. We viewed comedies from Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers through Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Abbott and Costello, Lucy and Desi to the comedic genius of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Today, everyone hones in on their particular taste. Greater choice might limit curiosity, ironically. Changing tastes in re Lucy is not akin to changing attitudes to blackface though, R40. Lucy saw the potential for comedy in everyday situations, which might still find an audience today. Blackface is just wrong.

What is OTR?

I would never compare Lucy to Lloyd or Keaton--true originals and innovators. Lucy had to follow a script and it was always filled with stuff that was derivative and usually had been acted out by Madelyn Pugh.

Love any reference to The Secret of the Old Clock!

I'm pretty sure I read this as a young gayling

This

Here’s why:

She threw a hot coffee on a stewardess.

She was bitchy and rude to her hairdressers.

She was a total cunt to her guest stars, during “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy”. They include Joan Blondell, Richard Burton and Joan Crawford.

She was a total cunt to Vivian Vance, until Vivian told her off.

She said her ex-husband Desi Arnaz was a “looser.” This man was a pioneer in television, and an excellent producer who insisted on quality productions. Without him, she wouldn’t have attained stardom she so desperately sought. It’s not to say Desi was blameless, but she couldn’t have spoke well of him, at least for his talent and foresight. Desi always praised Lucy and spoke of her in glowing terms.

She was embittered over her marriage to Desi. She never got over it, yet there are two sides to a story. She picked him and chose to stay married to him in spite of his drinking and womanizing. After they divorced, she was still angry and embittered. She became a TV superstar, loved by millions, a powerhouse producer and she had a brilliant career. She made millions of dollars and had her own production company. As an actress and comedienne, she was a genius. She remarried and found love again. Why in the hell was so so mean and nasty? Her children loved and respected her and they turned out well. There were no “Mommie Dearest” books and they speak of her in loving terms.

With this, there’s no reason to be rude and bitchy, particularly to stewardesses and hair dressers.

Although I admired Lucy’s talent, I ceased being a fan. That’s why I don’t love Lucy.

So why Pugh was not the star of the show R44? I bet everthing I own that you could memorize the ILL script without buing funny for a second. That's why Lucy is still admired and imitated to this day. And since she was a comedic genius on par with the mentioned silent greats I don't give rat's ass how she treated her hairdressers.

I grew up in the late 60s-70s watching I Love Lucy reruns. Since then I've rarely seen an episode until about 5 years ago when I purchase the complete series in a box set. It took me a couple of months to watch all the episodes on weekends. I enjoyed them and while I remembered most of them, I didn't recall some of them. This summer I watched them again and they still hold up. I think as long as you wait several years between repeat viewing they are still a good viewing.

R44, of course you don’t give a damn about how Lucy treated her hairdressers. You weren’t her hairdresser or a coffee scalded stewardess.

R49: You seem even more deranged than that obsessed Lange troll.

I still remember being a small child when Lucy died. I had never seen so many adults crying and sad, everywhere. Honestly the only two times that I can compare it to was when Princess Diana died and 9/11. I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy are all available on numerous streaming platforms. I Love Lucy colorized episodes are presented every Christmas on CBS. This year they released a colorized movie length presentation for one night only in 660 theaters, and it still managed to be #6 at the weekly box office. It still airs daily on both Hallmark, Me-TV, and numerous local stations. Every US history book I have seen, includes I Love Lucy, usually with a large photo of her, when it comes to covering the 1950s. Lucy has NOT been forgotten and is still beloved. Truly if someone makes it to adulthood in the US, without being aware of Lucy, they must be extremely unobservant or Amish.

Show business was brutal on women in Lucy's era, no matter how successful they were. Davis, Crawford, Stanwyck, Dietrich and many others all turned into bitter harridans as they aged.

Crawford and Davis were always bitter. Stanwyck never was. Dietrich was too self-involved to notice anyone else.

Dietrich was definitely a bitter old hag at the end.

In anything after "I Love Lucy y," Lucille Ball was nothing other than insufferable. Too bad she didn't just pull a Johnny Carson and fall off the earth when she should have.

R57 oooooh SO edgy!

R57 oooooh SO edgy!

I watched the reruns growing up in the 70's/early 80's. Being a kid I didn't realize how juvenile the humor was. Now I can't stand it because I read about what a cunt she was to everyone, including her children. Same thing with Shirley MacLaine.

R48, I'm not sure she said Desi was "looser." Looser than what? Plus, your entire post is a half-baked regurgitation.

R53, there are no Lucille Ball programs on Me-TV at the moment or for the past few years.

But i do agree with several posters who say she was insufferable in real life. Watching her being interviewed or on a game show is a truly painful experience.

R61 Sorry, I haven't watched me-TV in a few years. It appears that I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show were moved to a two hour morning block on Decades, another nostalgia sub-channel network which is actually co-owned by CBS.

Vivian Vance is far more celebrated by the DL.

I’ve really cared for physical or slapstick comedy or sight gags much, so she was never a favorite of mine. But she’s hardly forgotten.

Uh, OP, the colorized film that came out in August of the show was a massive hit.

There is an interesting comparison to be made between Lucille Ball and Barbra Streisand. Both these individuals uniquely talented in their disciplines, but control-obsessed, bitter, crude, megalomaniacs, began to show elements of their underlying personalities over time. The public saw this and began to question their devotion to people who were so obviously self-loathing, self-centered, and hateful.

There are many accounts of unprecedented rudeness to fans from both Lucy and Babs. The airline incident of Lucy is well-known and was not an isolated occasion. But at least Ball didn't order hotel personnel "not to look at her" as she passed by. It makes one ponder the elements that comprise a celebrity and whether their lives are truly everything enviable by the common folk.

Here are (were) two women that amassed tremendous wealth, recognition, fame, and the adoration of millions all over the world. Yet their animosity and misery is (was palpable. Lucille was repaid with the reception of "Life With Lucy." Babs is now the object of derision from many of the gay fans who initially discovered her quirks and realize that they should have voted for Dawn Hampton, who singing with no teeth up until the last years of her life, was more gracious and appreciative of the few admirers she had left.

Is the Cate Blanchett movie about her coming out already?

I remember years ago Merv Griffin had on both Lucy and Carol Burnett. Burnett is naturally a very funny, talkative person. Lucy is far more reserved, though she could certainly sashay a nice sardonic quip once in a while, but she was pretty serious in real life. A brilliant comedienne and clown, she was also a very good dramatic actress when you see some of her early films.

My Mom thought that back in the early days of tv that Betty White was actually as funny and maybe even funnier than Lucy. My older brother always preferred Vivian Vance on ILL (no, he's straight) and also thought that "I Married Joan" with Joan Davis was a better show.

Ann Sothern was an extremely talented lady who could do comedy and drama really well and also sing beautifully. Eve Arden was one of those people in films (like Thelma Ritter) that you knew, regardless of who good the film was, you were going to enjoy the part of the film that she was in.

I've been watching the "Donna Reed Show" on Amazon Prime as an antidote to all of today's political crap, and it is a reassuring kind of idealized family, with Carl Betz the wonderful hunky pediatrician, Paul Petersen as the typical but very cute son, and Shelley Fabares as the very pretty, self-obsessed daughter (who happened in real life to have the top hit song of 1962 "Johnny Angel). Donna Reed anchors the show as a funny, down-to-earth, available to solve problems Mom who is more active than passive in her at-home housewife status.

Lucy's still fun, though I find it a bit hard to watch "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy" nowadays, though I enjoyed seeing them as a kid in reruns. But on ILL she does do some funny routines, that you would think Ricky could find something to feature her in his show. I mean, they did have Mrs. Trumble and the Mertzes to watch Little Ricky for Chrissakes, plus he could always beat his drums down at the Tropicana too.

Given how often she's discussed on DL, I would say no. Gay men at least still like her.

I'm still disappointed there was no 'Let's Be a HERE'S LUCY episode' thread.

How about a "Let's be a Life with Lucy" thread. that would have more laughs.

More than Life with Lucy ever got that's for sure.

R66 Why should anyone care about an entertainer's private life?

Lucy seemed brittle and bitter on most of her talk show appearances but why should that make Lucy Riccardo any less funny.

Barbra Streisand may be a bitch on wheels... but what difference does it make when listening to one of her recordings from the '60s?

Should we shun great works of art, music and literature if the creator was an asshole? There wouldn't be much left to enjoy.

I don't and I'm not R66. And we shouldn't care. (And if we did we couldn't consume any art, really.)

BUT

As the years went on Ball still kept trying to play the same Lucy Ricardo character but over time she stopped being convincing. By the time she was offered The Manchurian Candidate she would've been more convincing in that than as Lucy. Increasingly, a bitterness and hardness crept into her performance. By the time Here's Lucy ended it was, as someone else said, like Oh, That Rusty.

One reason, not mentioned on DL, as to why her later shows mightn't work is because they were so reliant on guest spots from now irrelevant celebrity. By the '70s practically every episode was Lucy Carter Meets... Milton Berle, Johnny Carson, Danny Thomas, Jack Benny, (peaking with her meeting Lucille Ball). The average DLer who watched as a child in the original run might know who they are but it's harder for a twenty-something to keep up and since the plots are so thin...

Like the way all the 'issues' date the now totally forgotten Designing Women, but youngins still love the more standard sitcomy Golden Girls.

We probably should've stopped loving her once she did that episode where she met herself.

How much of the decline was Lucy? How much was Bob Carroll and Madelyn Davis?

She might've been better remembered if she hadn't turned down BONNIE & CLYDE, THE EXORCIST, and STEEL MAGNOLIAS. They're all pretty well remembered today, but Gary talked her out of them.

She did want to play Bonnie Parker but didn't care for Warren Beatty when the producers refused to cast Gale Gordon instead Gary told her it wasn't worth it and so she went and did Yours, Mine, and Ours instead. The right choice, I think.

In the 1980's, instead of doing Life With Lucy, she should have either done an old broad Golden Girls type show, with other 50s/60s stars, or a comedic primetime soap. I would have loved to have seen her, Audrey Meadows, Harriet Nelson and Eve Arden as four older women in a retirement home. Gale Gordon could have still appeared. Or Lucy in a primetime soap type show as a parody of Jane Wyman.

This has been stated here before, but one think that sets I LOVE LUCY apart from her later shows and indeed, most sitcoms, was the sexual chemistry she shared with Desi, the hot-headed Latin-American. They made for a unusual couple in 1950s America , and you got the feeling that after they kiss-and-make up they have a good hot fuck. The Lucy of her later sitcoms was sexless and increasingly infantile.

R81 Because they didn't give her a husband and rarely even a date. Her specials in the 1970s tended to be better, than the sitcoms, because in these one off stories she tended to actually have men in her life and a sex life. I'm surprised Garry didn't talk her into having him on Here's Lucy as her husband or at least boyfriend.

Also something stated before : Ann Sothern & Eve Arden were better known than Lucy in the 1940s for their comedic talents, but there was always a sophisticated snap to their personas that slapsticky Lucy never possessed. Because of that , the Ann of "Private Secretary" and the Eve of "Our Miss Brooks" seem hemmed in by their plain personas.

I have an interesting perspective, being a former employee of Paramount Gower, the old Desilu lot (one of 3 actually). A few of the older lot workers at Paramount were around during the Desilu years. They say Lucy HATED being the head of the studio, but deeply cared about the people who worked there and felt that had she not stepped in, Desi would have run it into the ground. Apparently he as drinking and carousing rather heavily and was neglecting his duties, mostly because he was burned out. He was a very "hands on" studio head, who felt he needed to be involved in all aspects, plus the acting role he played on the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. They had inked a sponsorship deal with Westinghouse that caused Desilu to have to produce more content then they were able to.

And, supposedly, Lucy's top priority in selling the studio to Gulf & Western was that none of her employees would lose their jobs; which of course did happen as soon as the G&W bean counters started evaluating redundant positions.

For all accounts, Lucy was not a comedienne, but a fairly talented comic actor. I'm told that Desi had a real flair for determining what was funny and coached her and it shows. He knew she was the "talent" and he was the backup behind the scenes but neither would have accomplished what they did without the other. People are complicated, but she left a legacy that still is being enjoyed by the public and generates millions of dollars.

I think comedy has changed from fairly innocuous screwball situations to pushing the envelope with no appreciable talent from the comedians. But yet, we as a society can't seem to turn off the "PC" part of our brains to separate the comedy act from the comedian.

One of the funniest (to me) bits from the Lucy era was the ever cheap Jack and Lucy's neighbor Benny torturing Mel Blanc as a salesman at a department store with repeated requests to modify his order. Finally, it culminates with Mel Blanc's (offscreen) suicide and Benny casually taking his refund from the cash drawer. It's a simple bit, but the interaction between the two uber-talented comedians is what makes it work, but I can't help but think today people would be protesting it for being offensive to mental illness and suicidal people.

I remember watching ILL back in the sixties- and thinking why doesn't she just tell Ricky the truth?

R84 Yes, she was committed to her employees. Many people said that the main thing that upset her the most about the failure of Life With Lucy, was the lost of jobs for all the crew, because she felt that she had let them down. Though she was also hurt because she thought her fans had abandoned her. Of course her devotion to her employees could be a determent, such as insisting on Cam McCulloch as Sound engineer on Life with Lucy, even though by that point he was almost deaf, which isn't great for a sound engineer.

However, you feel about Jay Leno, he was the same about his crew, demanding they be paid for the entire season, even when he left early to facilitate the change to Fallon, and paying them during strikes, etc... I can't help but like people who are loyal to their employees/crew like that.

I have sufficient.

R84 Some of those Benny routines are the funniest stuff from TV in the 50s and early '60s.

His show was uneven but when it's on a roll, it's beyond hilarious.

Benny created a whole world of characters around him when he was on radio and he carried them over to TV. He was ahead of his time. He's really THE master comedian.

[quote] In contrast, The Honeymooners holds up very well and is still constantly shown in the NYC area, even though so few episodes were made.

The Honeymooners doesn’t hold up at all. Jackie Gleason is fat, blustery, and yells all the time. He clearly expects to be the King of the household, and Alice acquiesces to that. Gleason is not the comic genius that Lucy was, and he’s unpleasant to watch as well.

[quote] Jackie Gleason is fat, blustery, and yells all the time

Sounds good to me.

Waaah

[quote]Should we shun great works of art, music and literature if the creator was an asshole? There wouldn't be much left to enjoy.

R73, I agree with you in principle. In practice (speaking in pop culture terms), it's easier to ignore the personality of the performer in music or movies than in TV.

Television is an intimate medium, especially long-running TV series. Actors are more strongly associated with one specific character than a movie actor - even a typecast one - would ever be. No matter how hard the viewer tries to keep actor and character separate, there's a point at which seeing Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo week after week leads to expectations about the actress' own character.

For example, I think one reason Magnum PI was so successful was because Tom Selleck's offscreen persona was so much like his character's (or was carefully crafted to appear to be so). The public tends to like and respond to that.

I love Jack Benny R88. I think he was amazing. There was just something about him. He was funny as shit and could do wonders with just a look.

Nobody knows who Jack Benny is anymore. One of those entertainers who was a household name in his day, but then vanished from public consciousness.

R94 I wouldn't say that "Nobody knows who Jack Benny is anymore." True, he isn't nearly as famous as he was. But, there are still people discovering and enjoying him. Thanks to many episodes being in the public domain, it isn't hard to find The Jack Benny Program, numerous free streaming sites have it and it is staple among the dollar DVD industry. I discovered him as a child in the 1990s, on budget VHS, thanks to Lucy. I bought a budget VHS of a The Lucy Show episode guest starring Jack Benny. Then I had to have his show, which lead me to Burns and Allen and Ozzie and Harriett.

[quote]I love Jack Benny. I think he was amazing.

Jack Benny. What a gal!

I saw the "Lucy Colorized" Movie special this summer. It was five (I think) episodes colorized, plus a documentary short on how the colorization of "Lucy" was done.

It was sold out, in fact, about three days prior, they changed it to a bigger theatre. There were a lot of middle-aged folk in the theatre (plus a smattering of seniors, but not as many as I would have expected). The surprise is how many young people were there, and by young I mean children as well as young adults. I think the colorizations have made ILL accessible to modern audiences in a way it perhaps wouldn't be to kids who don't know how to appreciate black and white.

For reasons related to their early investment in the ill-fated Dumont Network, Paramount could not own TV stations and didn't get into TV until after the other studios. BY the time Lucy sold, the main equity was the hour long series that Solow had developed and whatever was left of the rental agreements for the lot, so once Lucy took her show under own wing, there probably was a lot of overhead to cut.

Ball herself claimed not to be a comedienne and her skill as a comic actress relied on schtick and a persona that began to be visible as long ago as Stage Door. I don't know if Arden was ever a bigger star because she was usually a supporting player and didn't always have the best showcases for her range. Sothern was a star, if only of her B-movie Maisie series but that may have been a bit of a curse. She made ridiculous demands when offered to be Lucy's second banana (equal billing, although Lucy, by then, was the bigger star and the reason people watched). She was a bit grand in her later interviews and I would guess in real life. But she and Arden were better actresses and Sothern was a decent if not memorable singer and songwriter (her sister made a living at songwriting).

Oh, Ann Sothern was a very fine singer, and a really expressive one. Here she is singing the Oscar-winning "The Last Time I Saw Paris". She also did a really terrific job starring in the tv version of "Lady in the Dark". Her "Maisie" films were very popular, and she also made some very good A pictures too.

Barbara Eden has nothing but praise for Lucille Ball, who she says was kind and helpful to her when Eden did the “Country Club” episode of ILL in ‘57. But she had nothing good to say about Ann Sothern, who was an evil bitch to her when she did a “Private Secretary” episode the year before.

And it wasn’t just Eden. Many actresses had similar stories. Sothern got pricklier and pricklier toward other actresses as her own weight began to skyrocket in the late 1950s. In fact, her weight was an issue on The Lucy Show, and it was the main reason she was never asked to be on Here’s Lucy (that plus the fact that no one else besides Lucy liked working with her, and by the end of her Lucy Show run, even that relationship had cooled).

Ann Sothern had contracted hepatitis in 1949 which kept her less able to work for 3 years and that helped account for her weight gain and being less mobile for quite some time. It's true that Lucille Ball and she were very good friends. Sothern was very good as the Countess on the "Lucy Show" though and years later got an Oscar nomination for "The Whales of August".

The Lucille Ball that comes to mind when so hear her name is never Lucy Ricardo, it’s always husky-voiced Lucy Carter.

Here’s a thought from a Gen X woman. Even as a kid, I hated the way the husbands on these shows had so much control over the wives. They weren’t allowed to make their own money. What husband wouldn’t want more cash flowing into the household? You don’t like how she spends your money? Let her make her own money, problem solved.

I just can’t enjoy these shows because I was raised to be a different kind of person.

I felt deep pity for these “spunky” gals (and a smidge of contempt). At least Lucy kept trying, and Ricky had some sex appeal in the beginning. Ralph Kramden was such an asshole I can’t watch that show, and never could.

Lucy and Desi had some great kissing scenes. For the early 1950s, piped into your very home, it was probably quite boner inducing for the emerging petunias of the day.

Eden goes on and on about her one ILL appearance. Yawn. Sothern’s Countess character was considered as a new sidekick for Lucy, but she wanted equal billing and pay. Lucy obviously wouldn’t accept that. Perhaps worse, Sothern stood up to Ball when she was critical of her performance.

Joan Blondell was another potential "Viv rep0lacement": After her big screen role in 1965′s "The Cincinnati Kid", Joan had the interesting experience of essentially “trying out” to replace long-time Lucille Ball co-star Vivian Vance on The Lucy Show. Vance had left the show at the end of the series’ third year, and with a change of venue — Lucille Carmichael moves to Hollywood – the show producers were on the lookout for a new cohort for the rambunctious redhead. Joan came onboard as Joan Brenner, a former movie actress who was Lucy’s neighbor and entry point into zany Hollywood adventures. The only problem was…Joan ended up intensely disliking Lucille Ball, who didn’t feel they had any comic charisma together after one episode put Joan into another to keep trying. At the finish of filming their second episode together, Lucy had enough and mimed a toilet flush after Joan’s final scene. Joan told Lucy to Fuck off, and that was the end of that.

Joan Blondell: “In 1965, Lucy Ball phones me up and says she wants me to replay Vivian Vance, who was retiring from The Lucy Show, and I said, 'Sure.' I'd heard from friends Lucy had become very dictatorial, but what the heck? We went back to the thirties and I loved her comical touches. I did two consecutive shows as a character called Joan Brenner. But Lucy was waspish, virtually directed her own shows, and she went after me but good after we had filmed the second one. Right in front of the crew, she screamed about this and that and I just turned and walked and that was that.” (Source: Interview J. Bawden, 1972)

Lucie Arnaz was quoted as saying the only 3 people who could stand up to my mother was my father, Vivian Vance, and Ann Sothern. Guess Gary wasn't included.

Gary just wanted to play golf all day.

[quote]She might've been better remembered if she hadn't turned down BONNIE & CLYDE, THE EXORCIST, and STEEL MAGNOLIAS. They're all pretty well remembered today, but Gary talked her out of them.

Was she really offered all those roles?

Perhaps Sothern made ridiculous demands because she saw how difficult it was to work with Ball. By then, she was doing My Mother the Car and hagsploitation films, she would have appreciated a regular paycheck from a popular mainstream show, but she might have had her limits. Mary Jane Croft became the de facto second banana, although like on Ozzie & Harriet, a little of her went a long way and she worked best as a recurring player rather than as a regular. I suspect Sothern would have been better this way, too.

Try again, r110. Ann Sothern was anything but rich, and she needed to work. Her two tv series (Private Secretary, for 4 seasons, and The Ann Sothern Show, for 3) were gone by mid-1961. She had gotten fat by Hollywood standards, relegating her to "supporting" roles even though she looked great for her age. Unlike Lucy, Sothern was not a heavy drinker and did not smoke. She was 2 1/2 years older than Lucille, but looked years younger.

Ann's other problem, aside from her burgeoning weight, was her "star" complex. She was nasty to women she worked with who weren't "stars," and she was imperious with everyone, men & women. Her making demands for "The Lucy Show"weren't because she thought Lucille was difficult, but because she erroneously thought she had more public clout than Vivian Vance. In Viv's case, she really did not want to do a fourth season, even under the "three weeks on, one week off" terms she had for season three. So she finally thought, okay, if they give me pay parity with Lucille, I'll do it. Lucy was inclined to say yes - she knew how important Viv was - but Gary (honestly and truly) talked her out of it. And that was that. Lucy was the one and only star.

Sothern, having starred in two series of her own (neither near the popularity of ILL) thought she couldn't take a regular part on a series without being a co-star. That wasn't going to happen, so that was that. The "Countess" only did a handful of recurring episodes. With no lucrative "Lucy" deal, Ann jumped on the offer the following year to do the voice of "My Mother the Car." It was perfect for her, because it was just her and a microphone.

Both Milt Josefsberg, who co-created Here's Lucy, and Tommy Thompson, who co-produced, were on record as saying there was no enthusiasm for bringing Sothern onto the new show as a new character, and that her weight was a big part of that.

Lucy will always be the First Lady of television, but I'm still pissed she was Auntie Mame and not Angela Lansbury

Being Ball's second banana wouldn't have required a nice figure as Vance was frankly a bit shapeless. Sothern was plump in the 50s, let alone the 60s---the joke was that they needed to hide her behind credenzas and bookcases, but in reality they just stuck her behind a desk much of the time and her wardrobe was designed to give her a waist and bust while mostly not showing her ass. They could have done the same on The Lucy Show, and really, most of the attention would always have been on Ball, who had more or less kept her figure and anything not kept would have been girdled in those days. Second bananas don't have to be pretty and having a less flattering figure would have made Lucy look better.

Perhaps she wanted to match whatever was being offered to Vance, but she had none of audience credibility as Ball's second banana.

R111 Exactly, if Lucy didn't agree to give Vance equal status, there was no way she was going to give it to Sothern, regardless of how friendly they were. Especially since she had Mary Jane Croft, willing to recur and play second banana when one was required. Plus I can only imagine that Mary Jane was much easier to work with, for everyone involved.

What’s weird about Mary Jane Croft is that she was so bland and uninteresting on The Lucy Show, but she’s great in her two ILL guest episodes (especially the cheese), “and as Betty Ramsey in the Connecticut episodes.

Why did Vivian Vance decide to leave the show? Had she finally had enough of Lucy?

Viv lived in Connecticut and was commuting back and forth to LA. She had had enough of the weekly series grind and, perhaps, of Lucy as well. Theirs was a classic love/hate relationship. Viv was known to rag on her behind her back and took particular delight in the failure of the movie "Mame." After seeing it, she was allegedly stated: "I could have done a better job!" And she was probably right.

Lucy worked best when she had strong co-stars. Having Desi as her opposite on ILL and Viv on the early episodes of TLS made her rein in her performances to match theirs. Once Viv left, all shackles were off, and she started chewing all scenery in sight. Mary Jane Croft was okay as a bit player, but could ever hold her own against Lucy, and Gale Gordon ...don't even get me started. But the biggest downfall for me was the constant use of guest stars in later"Lucy Show" and almost all of "Here's Lucy".

The talk of Ann Sothern reminded me of a short little scene of Lucy and Ann at a stable in TLS. They run into a horse handler, who turns out to be William Frawley. It was Frawley's last appearance anywhere,and he died soon after.

Here's Lucy is unwatchable. Lucy was just phoning it in by then. She really had no life, no interests etc. All she knew how to do was work. She ignored Gary and didn't really do much with her kids outside of the show. After Here's Lucy ended, she spent most of her time at home playing Backgammon, smoking and drinking.

r116, she'd had sufficient

R119 I actually prefer Here's Lucy to the California episodes of The Lucy Show. To me the quality goes I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Vivian Vance seasons of The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, The post-Vance Lucy Show, then Life With Lucy.

The only thing more insufferable about Life With Lucy than Lucy herself was the supporting cast. That shrieking, over emoting Anne Dusenberry and her fageleh husband especially. Might it have worked with a better supporting cast?

I love the California episode where Viv is visiting, and she and Lucy disguise themselves as biker chicks because a friend’s son has supposedly become part of the hippie counterculture on Sunset Blvd.

R123 Yes I should have said any Lucy Show with Viv.

Gracie Allen was funnier in my opinion, and as for media history I believe that Burns & Allen holds more interest than I Love Lucy.

R125 Gracie was great! Sadly, their show wasn't as slickly produced and a bit avant garde with the regular breaking of the fourth wall and the stage sets, being like actual stage sets instead of standard tv or film sets.

[quote] believe that Burns & Allen holds more interest than I Love Lucy.

Not on a total basis. A little of Gracie went a long way, and the whole “gimmick” of the show doesn’t wear particularly well.

I think the Mothers in Law was funnier than Lucy.

The Mothers in Law WAS Lucy. Desi recycled several of the scripts for Mothers in Law,

Absent the guest stars, her later shows would have had no place to go. She already repeated herself and constantly used the same schtick. The guest stars enabled a somewhat different premise for each show, although basically they're just derivative of the Hollywood season of ILL.

[quote] Maybe we need a Hazel appreciation thread.

Maybe we don’t. Hazel was dreadful. Lucy’s strength was her co-stars and the writing. Shirley Booth didn’t have either. The show is almost unwatchable today.

Yeah, Desi recycled old schlock with The Mothers-in-Law as much as Lucy did with her shows. they both had no new ideas by the mid-60s. And Desi did that atrocious Carol Channing pilot around then.

Which show was the one with Desi Jr. and little Lucie? I remember watching a scene of the 3 of them in a kitchen preparing some food and they all might just as well have put down the pots and pans and just stood there and read straight from the cue cards. All of them had to look at the cards to recite their lines and it was so obvious that it was almost comical, but mostly sad to see how bad it really was witnessing such incompetence. No professionalism there.

[quote] She had gotten fat by Hollywood standards

Hahahahahahaha ....

R126 R127 I respect y'alls opinion but isn't George Burns quintessence of breaking the fourth wall? In later episodes he's always spying in on the action by watching the TV, and then addressing us in the audience. Admittedly some folks find Gracie a little shrill-- to me she's fascinating to watch what's essentially a vaudevillian radio show tranaformed into the very first age of television, first airing in 1950. At risk of derailing this Lucy thread, here's my favorite episode of the Jack Benny Program with him in Gracie Allen drag:

R135 I loved the Burns and Allen episode where Benny guest starred and he and George are feuding. George calls the Jack Benny Program, The Rochester Show, and Jack responds by saying George is the last one to talk about who is the real star of a show.

I didn't find Gracie shrill myself, but I did find that idiot savant routine paled pretty quickly.

It's too bad Gracie always played Gracie in her movies and TV appearances. But most accounts, in real life she was shrewd and smart and funny and much more of a firecracker than the "Gracie" character was. But we never got to see that in her movie and TV roles.

All this shit might as well be pre-Civil War it's so fucking old.

It's sad to learn that people like Lucille Ball and Johnny Carson were such shits. They had given so much pleasure to so many people over the years. It just seems like a disconnect to me.

I stopped liking her ever since she took me into that cul-de-sac.

Lucy wasn't a shit. She was just "hard." Kind of a bitch, but she was very loyal if she liked you. And she could be very supportive of young people she thought were talented (Barbara Eden, Robert Osborne, Carole Cook).

Jackie Gleason was a shit. Johnny Carson was a shit.

Jackie Gleason was a homophobe of the type that existed at that time. I recall one gay comedian whom he had on repeatedly who said Gleason when the comedian touched him on stage.

Said Gleason fired him^

Lucy wasn't all that gay friendly, either. Viv was more of a fag hag.

Well, Viv was a long-time veteran of Broadway musicals and worked with Cole Porter twice. She had plenty of experience with gay men.

But there’s nothing that’s been published about Lucy that indicates she was a homophobe. Robert Osborne was one of her closest friends, after all.

Lucy had several close gay male friends in her later years. A couple of them wrote books after she died. They would hang out at her house and play Backgammon with her while she drank and chain-smoked.

Lucy was also good friends with Cesar Romero.

I Love Lucy worked because viewers loved watching Lucy be all fearful of Ricky and his reactions.

She never had that in another show.

Gale Gordon, it was easy to see how he could be annoying. Every episode he bellowed ‘Mrs Carmichael’!

Too bad she turned down Shelly Duvall’s role in The Shining. We recently had a long thread on that.

R150, I can't even imagine how much more powerful her performance would have been than Shelley Duvalls. Just thinking of how she would have been in the scene when the mother and Danny are trapped in the bathroom and Jack starts breaking down the door with the axe, and Lucy as Wendy whips out her patented 'spider face'!

Damn that Gary Morton. We lost so many cinematic gems because of him.

" Ya call that hot coffee!"

The times have a new I Love Lucy type couple and antics..... it does bare thinking that what was on constantly, I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch are now on less. But then again they now have whole channels dedicated to nostalgia. The U and MeTV are dedicated to old school rerun TV.

[quote]The times have a new I Love Lucy type couple and antics.....

[quote] it does bare thinking that what was on constantly, I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch are now on less.

Do you mean "bear" thinking, by any chance?

Bare thinking. It means just thinking. You don't do anything else while thinking. (Do I have to explain everything to you morons?)

Lol r157, there is no such expression and your supposed explanation is nonsensical

That Lucille Ball wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s in Op’s picture missed the mark on her looks.

R157 meant Bareback Thinking.

I remember Lucy on the Dick Cavett talker one night and he sort of kidded her about being the boss bitch at the studio (RKO?) she was running after Desi sold his half to her. Dick smilingly said something about how great it must feel to have the power to fire whomever she chose and Lucy actually teared up and said it wasn't any fun at all and Dick quickly changed the subject. Just a glimpse into maybe the real Lucy welling up. It was kind of touching.

Is that the interview where's she obviously totally drunk and calls him queer?

Today the show would be "I Love Desi."

Lucy (she/her)

ILL is the only '50s sitcom that's remember today. Or are there others. I can't think of them.

Father Knows Best is still seen on Antenna TV as well as Dennis The Menace. Don't forget The Honeymooners.

The are still some on those kind of channels. But ILL is probably the only one a lot of the public can remember the name of. Maybe Leave it to Beaver.

The Donna Reed Show and The Danny Thomas Show were both long-running and now seem forgotten.

To say nothing of shows like Our Miss Brooks or Private Secretary.

I Married Joan is still beloved the world over

On Cavett 1974

Cavett was an asshole to Lucy. She was right too.

The un-loving of Lucy was cemented with this monstrosity.

Yikes! Who sculpted that? Angela Lansbury?

"The Donna Reed Show" and "Leave It to Beaver" in Donna Stone and June Cleaver, respectively, had 2 versions of the perfect American mother at the time of the late 1950s-early 1960s. "Donna Reed Show" is still on Amazon Prime, and it holds up as a comfort food kind in longing for a pretty picture perfect family dealing with life's different challenges. Plus Donna Reed is also immortalized in Audrey's song "Somewhere That's Green" from "Little Shop of Horrors". Both of these sitcoms do hold up, but without cellphones, and when a modern convenience is a record player, yes, they are dated, but wonderful period pieces.

For example, I think one reason Magnum PI was so successful was because Tom Selleck's offscreen persona was so much like his character's (or was carefully crafted to appear to be so). The public tends to like and respond to that.

Yeah, people love a queeny, closeted actor who supports the NRA....

Another things I like about Donna Reed was that in real life she actually protested against the Vietnam War. Plus Paul Petersen, who played the son Jeff on her show, said the she and Carl Betz, the hunk father, were great people. Petersen started a group for former child stars who had a difficult time to transitioning after their shows were canceled and they were no longer treated as "special" or "stars". Apparently he had a better time than at least 2 or the 3 kids on "Father Knows Best" or Jay North on "Dennis the Menace".

transitioning -- to not being on a tv show, that is, just realizing what some people might make of that word nowadays.

A lot of TV shows are based more of a merging of the actor and character's personality than films. Someone like M tries challenge herself and us from film to film. Most sitcom actors just turn up and try to be likable and humorous every week for years.

Ball was still trying to play Lucy Ricardo in the '70s... And it's already been said here that an '80s Lucy sitcom might've worked if she'd tried to play a Sophia Petrillo type character.

A quote I used to hear associated with Lucille Ball -- "Don't fuck with success". She probably thought the Lucy character had turned her from a well-known Hollywood actress in films into a household tv superstar and didn't want to mess with it, even though it had gotten very tired by the time she did "Life With Lucy". Plus she was a physical comedienne, and it's hard to do pratfalls and such when you're 30 years older.

Paul Petersen is a Republican. Donna was too until her son was drafted to Vietnam.

The Donna Reed Show is pleasant and cozy, but it never really tries to be funny. Donna always looks as if she's thinking about her face's best angle. Lucy was okay with embarrassing herself. Maybe partly out of desperation (her career never took off until she started playing Lucy). But Donna and maybe some of the other leading lady types who transitioned to TV in the '50s I don't think were really interested in having people laugh *at* them. Lucy didn't seem to mind.

Do any of us really watch most of these shows today for the laughs or is it just for the soothing, affluent lifestyle they portray?

Why doesn't YouTube have a Loretta Young entering rooms dramatically in gowns montage?!

Maybe we really all have stopped caring...

I think the questionable success of her attempts to try something different left her afraid to depart from her Lucy persona. It did keep working. And the she was consistently in the top ten and five until 1973. There was a big drop off in ratings in the final year of HL. I don't know why. It's not as if the quality did (or could've) declined.

Funny to think that Lucy was "only" 77 when she died. That was a fucking OLD 77! She looked decrepit and ancient for years before her death.

Cher, Susan Sarandon and Lessica Lange, among others, are now just a handful of years younger than Lucy was when she died.

Jessica Lange is a heavy drinker and smoker and looks as awful as Lucy did, R182. Worse, actually, given that now twenty-five year old facelift that makes her look as if she's permanently sucking on a lemon.

Cher can't stand near open flames. Lucy couldn't really get plastic surgery her skin was too thin. There's a name for it, actually. It's been mentioned on DL before.

Sarandon, though, still looks great.

R182 Because those women have been able to have face lifts. It is well known that Lucy's skin prevented her from being able to have a face lift, so she relied on tape under her wigs, to smooth her face.

Donna Reed wasn't a clown like Lucy was. Plus Reed's show centered around a family with teenage children, who were prominently featured in each episode, unlike little Ricky who was kind of a bongo-playing prop in how he was used. I don't begrudge some Republicans, especially back then, who weren't like many of today's Republicans, so far away from Abraham Lincoln it's astounding. That's why when I see folks like Nicole Wallace or see Jennifer Rubin, who's a writer for the Washington Post, and always introduced as a Republican opinion writer, I'm cheered that at least some of these old-fashioned kind of Republicans are outraged by what's happening today. I have no idea of what kind of Republican Paul Petersen is, but I do like his work with former child stars, which has been documented on some tv magazine-type shows.

Lucy worked an awful lot and was quite well-known before she did ILL. She even called herself "queen of the B-movies", though she did have some A films like "Stage Door" and "Ziegfeld Follies" (at MGM she was known as "Technicolor Tessie" since she photographed so beautifully). There's also some very evident performances where she showed how funny she could be in films like "Miss Grant Takes Richmond" and "Fancy Pants". So while she wasn't really movie box-office, she was a reliable and skilled (comedic) actress, who trying a very outlandish character as Lucy Ricardo, finally had millions of people tuning in to see her escapades week after week and finally making her a big star.

I loved her few pre-ILL hardboiled broad roles!

"The Donna Reed Show is pleasant and cozy, but it never really tries to be funny."

Same thing sometimes with "Leave It To Beaver". The producers and writers sometimes would drop a funnier situation or line that was too obvious to make it seem more real. They didn't make Beaver or Wally out to be wisecracking kids like Gary Coleman, but more like real brothers. Same with Shelley Fabares' pretty but rather self-involved Mary and Paul Petersen's imperfect, sometimes inobedient Jeff on "The Donna Reed Show". Even Donna, who looked lovely, was not above getting soot in her eye or getting doused in the face with water at different times. But these sitcoms reflected more real-life kinds of situations than "I Love Lucy", and aimed a bit more for smiles rather than bellylaughs.

Lucy wasn't a clown. Or at least it didn't come naturally to her. Desi guided her into that characterization. Once he was out of the picture she starts phoning it in.

She did something similar to Lucy Ricardo in the radio show "My Favorite Wife" which was kind of the basis for "I Love Lucy" at least in terms of wisecracks and her vocal performance. Of course, tv's visual addition opened up the delights of seeing Lucy hawking Vitavitavegamin and getting progressively drunker and drunker, stomping grapes in Italy and working the assembly line disastrously. Kudos to Desi for recognizing Lucy's brilliance in these kinds of situations.

[quote]Cher, Susan Sarandon and Lessica Lange, among others, are now just a handful of years younger than Lucy was when she died.

Sigourney Weaver just turned 70. Hard to believe.

Ann Sothern looked good for her age. But then fat keeps your face.

It's amazing how far cosmetic surgery and dermatology have come. Everybody looks so much younger these days. Stars from previous eras really looked OLD by modern standards.

Donna Reed was a decade younger than Lucy but stilled look quite good when she was on Dallas. The very bright wigs didn't help. And a million DLers have pointed out how their young selves were puzzled by the contrast between the youthful and smiley Here's Lucy puppet and the closeups of real Lucy.

Of those old B&W pre 1965 TV shows the only ones that still make me laugh are "I Love Lucy", any scene with Don Knotts on the Andy Griffith Show, and some of the Jack Benny skits.

There are exchanges between George Burns and Gracie Allen that are still cute, And between Beaver and Wally and friends.

But just about anything else unwatchable.

Believe it or not, the first season (and only the first) of "My Three Sons" is charming. Look up an episode called "Countdown". Beautifully directed and acted.

Oh, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

How Andy Griffith has endured for so many years is incomprehensible. I find the show low class, ridiculous, and unwatchable. It was that even during its original run.

R196 is Dolores Gray and her Mom!

R196, I think you are in a distinct minority.

Really R196? I like it and I love Andy. The character that he created (or was created for him) was just such a decent man. He was kind beyond measure and seemed to look out and help everyone. Gentle and loving with his son. Always sweet to his girlfriends. BTW- I hated Helen Crump. I thought he should have married Joanna Moore(Tatum's mom). She was a nurse, had a lovely voice, very pretty and she seemed like she'd make a good match. Which reminds me -- I liked the way Andy sang and played the guitar.

Jesus, I guess I've invested a lot more in this show than I realized. Forgive the neuroses. Perhaps some tea and a biscuit....

Oh! My whole point was to simply say that I loved Andy but I hate him on that Matlock show. I find him to be a real dick.

Today the show would be called "I tolerate Lucy".

[quote]Today the show would be "I Love Desi."

If it did, the lead would have to be played by an Indian or a Pakistani.

Actually, the reason it was named I Love Lucy was so both Desi and Lucy would have title billing, since Desi is the "I" in ILL.

I also love the Andy Griffith show with Don Knotts. It pained me to see what a terrible character Don was made to play in "3's Company." Barney Fife was maybe the funniest 2nd banana in all of TV sitcom history. He never failed to make me laugh out loud at least once during an episode. I agree that Tatum's mother was the best possible GF for Andy on the show. Maybe she was in the grip of drugs even then and that was why she only did a few episodes.

R203 Really, I'd say it is a tossup between Don Knotts on the AGS and Art Carney on The Honeymooners as to the best male second banana in TV history. And, both of them won the Emmy award, while the star of the show didn't.

R203 Don as Mr. Furley will be what he is ultimately remembered & loved for.

More young people watch Three's Company (the biggest DVD sales of that time period after I Love Lucy & The Brady Bunch) than black & white shows like The Andy Griffith Show. I've only seen a handful of TAGS but all of the Mr. Furley performances many times over.

I think it's time for a thread on best second bananas.

We have Deb Messing now. Who needs a rotary when you have an iPhone?

The endless celebrity guest appearances are what most ruin TLS and HL. So many coulda-been-good episodes like Viv Moves Out from TLS which instead becomes about Lucy playing in a band for Roberta Sherwood.

never particularly loved her.

Don Knotts "Citizens Arrest"... absolutely brilliant comic acting.

Re: Don Knotts vs. Art Carney. IMHO Knotts was the better actor. Carney always seemed to be in on the joke and wanted us to know he was funny.

Knotts just WAS Barney Fife.

[quote]The endless celebrity guest appearances are what most ruin TLS and HL.

And so many of those celebrities get a "who the hell was that?" reaction from people today. They're totally irrelevant. One reason why TLS and HL have not aged as well as ILL.

[quote] And so many of those celebrities get a "who the hell was that?" reaction from people today. They're totally irrelevant.

They’re not irrelevant, it is just too many people are culturally illiterate.

WRONG! R212.

They are indeed irrelevant.

r212 they really are irrelevant to modern audiences. It's not cultural illiteracy for a person who was not around 50 years ago to have no idea who the hell Flip Wilson or Eva Gabor were.

The endless guest star stuff has made the show not as well remembered today.

No one who has ever shaped the culture can be deemed irrelevant. They can be considered forgotten but not irrelevant. Especially, considering that unlike entertainers of previous generations much of their work from tv, movies, and radio survives and is therefore assessable and waiting to be rediscovered.

I was born in 1983, and I know of every guest star. And, yes I consider it cultural illiteracy because I don’t feel you can appreciate current culture without understanding those who built it. We need better general history education in this country and we need 20th century cultural history to be taught as well.

R216 Well said!

If you don't know who John Wayne, William Holden, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Rivers are then you're culturally illiterate.

Not knowing who Roberta Sherwood or one of the Gabor sisters is different.

And God knows turning up and playing yourself on Here's Lucy is hardly contributing to culture.

I knew they did guest star episodes. It was kind of a rite of passage to appear with Lucy, but having Googles an episode guide now I'm still surprised at the extent to which the later seasons of Here's Lucy feature them.

Normally the plots were even thinner than usual -- they relied totally on the guest star -- and usually featured some improbable circumstance (e.g., 'my limo's broken down, Mrs Carter, I need you to give me a ride'). They never really had jokes either. You can't really with that kind of structure. Honestly, they have more in common with SNL cold opens (starstruck Lucy Carter and awkward star) than any skit on it.

Some of the stars were big. Others not so much.

It'd be like in fifty years time people not understanding why Lea Michele got a thirty second round of applause for walking into a launderette where Lucy happened to be adding way too much soap powder.

I stopped loving her when that fucking bitch threw her coffee at me.

It was cold.

r216 it's one thing not to know who Lucille Ball or Frank Sinatra were. It's quite another to not know who Flip Wilson or Eva Gabor were.

In fifty years' time, nobody who is not alive today will have any idea who Shawn Mendes or Billie Eilish were. That's the cycle of celebrities who are "of the moment."

R224 I don't know who those Shawn or BIllie are actually. There are too many tv stations and streaming stuff to keep up with it all.

I know who Geraldine Jones, Killer and Lisa Douglas were though.

R61 Lucy did in fact call Desi a loser in her interview with Baba Wawa.....

I don't agree - she was certainly bitter about his womanizing and the way things turned out - but he was NOT a loser.

I Love Lucy. The writer Madelyn did act out all the stunts they wrote just to make sure they were physically possible and sometimes she had to demonstrate them for Lucy - but nobody could have done some of that stuff the way Lucy did......sunburned modeling a tweed suit, riding an out of control lawn mower and then telling the story of the aftermath - and the same when the two cars got stuck together....

I Love Lucy. I think Lee Tannen's book I LOVED LUCY [he was a distant cousin of Gary Morton] really captures the way she lived in her last years. The story of her reaction to a young Marine's request that she call his dying mother when she and Lee were in Aspen one year.....is a telling anecdote.

[quote] one of the Gabor sisters is different

If you don't know who Eva Gabor is that means, you haven't watched one of the greatest and most surreal sitcoms ever to appear on television. Green Acres should be required viewing, it gets grouped with the rural CBS comedies of the 1960s, but it really was so much more. It was more surreal and out there than most any comedy before or since. For sheer surrealism it is up there with Monty Python. Especially if you watch it and Petticoat Junction back to back. They were in the same town and even shared characters, but they were completely different. It would have been like if they acted like The Munsters lived next door to Leave it to Beaver and appeared on eachother's show.

Great imagery, r227

I think the viewing public's love for Lucy truly ended with her last execrable tv series "Life With Lucy." Lucille Ball was a workaholic; she's been doing a weekly tv series for decades and despite her advanced age wanted to continue doing it. Of course she was still playing the same old Lucy character she'd always played, only now she was an old woman. A woman in her seventies being cute and girlish and zany and engaging in slapstick did NOT go over well. The show was excruciating to watch and of course spelled the end of Ball's tv career. It took the wind out of her sails; her focus in life didn't exist anymore. She went into a decline and died a few short years later. Not being in a tv series and calling the shots and being the boss basically killed her.

R229 Meanwhile, now we are fine with Betty White being zany and even doing slapstick.

Betty is not grasping at straws trying to keep her career going

I posted this earlier that my 4 nieces and nephews all under 13 love it. My sister and I, both children of the 80s watched I Love Lucy every summer morning for an hour from 9-10 on FOX5 NY and by the time summer vacation was over, you had seen the whole series. Finding the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour years later was like a goldmine for both of us. I don't know exactly when FOX 5 stopped broadcasting Lucy in that time slot, but it was on reliably, for a good decade. Those reruns brought countless new fans to the show. I know quite a bit of my sister's friends kids that still watch her. I think the show is a bit of an antidote to some of the crassness of modern television, they know kids will laugh at the slapstick of it all, and parents don't have to monitor the viewing of an almost 70-year-old show, much like my Mom felt. That I can quote lines to a 10 yr old and also make my 70 something-year-old mother laugh, I'd say is a pretty rare feat for any television show.

Green Acres?? The most relevant part of Green Acres was the catchy theme song, the dyke with the painter's cap, and Arnold the Pig. That was the talent!

"Meanwhile, now we are fine with Betty White being zany and even doing slapstick."

Betty does not do (and never did do) the type of physical comedy that was Lucille Ball's forte. And she never had anything approximating the Lucy persona; facial mugging, loony behavior, always scheming, always getting into insane situations. She never did that kind of broad comedy. She does comedy, but not like THAT.

[quote] It would have been like if they acted like The Munsters lived next door to Leave it to Beaver and appeared on eachother's show.

Excellent analogy, since "The Munsters" and "Beaver" were created and produced by the same people, just like "Petticoat" and "Acres" were both created and produced by Paul Henning.

R235 I knew that, it is why I choose the two. I was hoping someone else would notice. You get the Gold Star!

Nope. Green Acres is nowhere near ILL in stature. It’s understandable for someone to not know who Eva Gabor is.

[quote]The story of her reaction to a young Marine's request that she call his dying mother when she and Lee were in Aspen one year.....is a telling anecdote.

My goodness what a tease you are R226. Couldn't you give us some kind of a condensed version?

Lucy had very scrawny legs. It's really apparent during the part where she's sitting on the airplane.

R238 - sorry didn't know anyone would be that interested.

Lucy and Lee were vacationing in Aspen. A young marine left a message for Lucy at the desk asking to speak with her. Lucy was NOT anxious, but Lee encouraged her to.

It seems the young guy's mother was at home on her deathbed. The Marine told Lucy that his mother was a lifelong fan and loved Lucy and asked if she would call her and talk to her a moment. Lucy agreed, and the call was placed.

Once she started talking to her, Lucy opened up. The women discussed their grandchildren and their marriages, and life in general....for over an hour.

The next morning, they left for home. There was a message from the Marine, but Lee didn't open it until they were on the plane. Lucy just said read it me. The woman had died overnight. The Marine just told Lucy how much that call had meant and thanked her and wished her good luck.

Lee said that Lucy didn't say a word. She looked out the plane window all the way home - and now a then a tear would roll down her cheek.

It's really a good book and worth a read if you're a Lucy Fan....no whitewashing but a memorable portrait of her at the end of her life.

Nice to know there's a little bit of heart in the monster.

I think if you counted all the laughs and smiles by the hours that Lucy provided to the world, even if she could be demanding and have other real-life faults, she was hardly a monster. Same with Johnny Carson. Could we even quantify how many millions of laughs per minute over hours and hours and years and years of being on tv?

Sorry R242, No amount of laughs or painful experiences in life entitle you to become a monster in your day to day behavior.

Carson & Ball could be very cruel for all of the positives they had in life.

"Lucy In The Afternoon" by Jim Brochu is a nice look at her last years.

Thank you for your story R240. See? Now I thought it was about some wisecrack she made but it turns out to reveal a whole different side to Lucy and I think that's important in a thread like this.

Superb character actress Mary Wickes (she was the French ballet coach on the ILL episode and the nurse Dora in "Now, Voyager") told about going with Lucy to see Vivian Vance when Vivian was close to death. Mary said they had a sad but pleasant visit and Lucy cried all the way back home.

You're welcome R245 - and yes Jim Brochu's book is also a very interesting look at Lucy's last years.

I think it's interesting that men could get away with acting the way Lucy did on her own set of her own tv show - but when she acts the same way she gets a lot of criticism. It's not her fault she knew exactly what she was doing and she didn't have patience with those who did not.

Lucy got away with it. Men have gotten away with it. What's you're point. People in tv and movies have been complaining about the tyrants in charge for ages.

Well as Neely O'Hara said:

:"When a man won't do a lousy scene, that's integrity - when a woman won't do it, she's temperamental."

[quote]I think it's interesting that men could get away with acting the way Lucy did on her own set of her own tv show - but when she acts the same way she gets a lot of criticism.

That's BS.

But what's always clear whenever someone says something like this is that, rather than being angry that the man isn't criticized (not true), they're angry that the woman *is* being criticized.

But I'm not one to judge. This is DL -- and we all need our coffee-throwing bullies (like Lucy, whom I love).

Funny you should mention Mary Wickes, r246, I was watching super password today, and celebrity guest Patrick Wayne mentioned that he was appearing in Arsenic and Old Lace along with Alice Ghostley and Mary Wickes, at which point host Bert Convey was so delighted, , he said "now that's comedy gold"

“We” never loved her in the first place.

Mary Wickes and Kay Ballard were close friends with Lucy for many years. Republican Lucy didn't mind having dykes as friends.

Was Patrick Wayne gay? He Got real friendly with Gil Gerard during a battle of the network stars....

If it hadn't been for Lucille Ball, there would have been no Mission Impossible or Star Trek. The networks weren't interested and Lucy used her clout to force CBS and NBC respectively to give the shows a chance.

R255 That's true, and they both turned out to be groundbreaking and influential shows.

No evidence that she used her "clout". She had no history with NBC (which aired Star Trek) and Roddenberry thought she had no understanding of the show. Herb Solow, who oversaw production at Desilu had been an executive at NBC and CBS--that kind of knowledge was probably more valuable than anything Lucy could offer.

R257 She did, however, overrule the Desilu board at least twice about Star Trek. Without Lucy, the mogul, there would be no Star Trek.

Was Lucille Ball in the running for the role of Helen Lawson? She might have been perfect for it!

I unironically think she was perfect for all these films:

Gypsy

The Manchurian Candidate

Valley of the Dolls

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Mame

I am being totally serious and will defend -- and expand, if you like -- to the death.

She would have made Valley of the Dolls even funnier--just imagine her tone deaf rendition of that stupid tree song with plastic mobile.

She couldn't stopped mugging long enough to do Cukoo's Nest.

It would have been worth it just to see the powder room fight with Patty Duke tearing at that red beehive, revealing a bald head. Lucy hated Patty Duke in real life and would probably have strangled in her in this scene. Someone's head would have ended up n the shitter, as well as the wig.

Lots of hairy goodness in this picture. Patrick Wayne (John's son) is between Greg Evigan and Gil Gerard in the back row. Robert Conrad is the other guy in the pic, he's hoping for some surprise anal from Gil.

R263: and this is relevant to Lucille Ball why?

Three degrees of Lucille Ball:

Lucy was friends with Mary Wickes, who appeared in a play with Patrick Wayne.

Voila...!

I'll never know what exactly she saw in Mary Jane Croft and Gale Gordon.

Gordon was familiar--he went back to radio with her. Most of his works was as schtick-laden as hers----the slow burn was used over and over again on Our Miss Brooks, Dennis the Menace, etc.

Mary Jane was funny if only because of that voice--but it worked better when she was the comedy and someone else was the straight man---she did that to good effect on Ozzie & Harriet and The People's Choice with Jackie Cooper. Her husband, Elliott Lewis, was Lucy's producer on and off and someone Lucy probably had known back in radio where he'd been a utility actor.

Lucy liked the familiar---her lesson from Wildcat was that people wanted to see Lucy Ricardo, not Lucille Ball the actress and sadly that meant she expected the same bring crap from everyone around her. Her writers had been able to write things that were relatively contemporary and cliche-free for other people but she needed to stay in her silly, slapstick lane.

Which is precisely the reason she never progressed beyond the familiar. She could have been stunning in the Manchurian Candidate, if she had let the public in on her icy, stoic persona. But she was so protective of the Lucy franchise, that she would rarely if ever venture outside that territory.

With the exception of course of Mame. It's astonishing how so many entertainers as accomplished as Lucy can lose their objectivity and not envision the train wreck that can be wreaking upon themselves. Has Lucy had an acceptable singing voice, this part would still have been wrong for her. The main problem was that she came off too stiff upper lisp WASP conservative. Lee Remick might as well have done the role. She didn't have any of the bohemian qualities characteristic of Mame Dennis, and instead, tried to infuse an aging Lucy Ricardo to compensate. Perhaps, in the Lucy Ricardo era, it might have worked. Might have. Vivian Vance would have actually have made the better Mame even in 1974, and often quipped this very notion to friends. Viv loved the reaction the film got, btw.

[quote]The main problem was that she came off too stiff upper lisp WASP conservative.

I actually think the opposite. That's why I think she's so good in the role -- better than Russell, or Lansbury would've been. The scene where the Upsons tell her they want to buy the lot next door wouldn't have had enough contrast between Mame and them with Lansbury playing it. Ball brought a much needed grit to the role.

Lucy could never sing, but by the time of Mame her voice was so ravaged by cigarettes and booze she sounded like a croaking frog.

She wasn't dubbed and that wasn't her choice (she'd been dubbed before in both films and her own TV series) but I get the feeling that by 1974 dubbing was considered antiquated artifice. Her assessment that Mame shouldn't have had a Julie Andrews virginal soprano is correct.

I don't know why her voice is such a sticking point. Lansbury was no great shakes vocally and aside from If He Walked Into My Life the score only requires a character voice. For that song she probably could've been dubbed. But by a Lisa Kirk (who did Russell in Gypsy) or Margaret Whiting (Hayward in VOTD) type voice.

She would have sucked in Manchurian Candidate. She may have been bitchy in real life, but the role required something much more calculating and Lansbury was able to deliver. Lucy lacked the talent for subtlety.

For non-traditional casting someone like Donna Reed would have worked. She had a quality that was a bit detached and could be icy., and she knew how to play a mother!

I suspect Sinatra might've had a little sympathy with her typecasting. A decade prior to him offering TMC his casting in From Here To Eternity was considered shocking. But it worked and he won an Oscar and had a comeback as a serious mature star and respectable actor.

I actually don't like Lansbury in that role because she really, really isn't subtle. Like in the scene with the Chinese server and the scene with the reporters trying to get a number. She's so campy, OTT evil. Streep was better in that otherwise awful remake because her character seemed more like a real person.

I think Lucy's not bad in the last third of Mame where she's playing closer to her real age. A good voice double might have been Rose Marie who has that same gravel poured on a Baked Alaska voice that Lucy had at the time.

Yes, that's when she's at her best. It's also when Russell was at her first in the 1958 film. You kind of got the feeling she agreed with the Upsons. Ball seemed a little less respectable and high-faluting which worked.

Lansbury was the same age as Ball was when she did the film when she attempted that critically panned 1989 revival. Critics accused her of lacking the vigor she did in 1966. Too bad Gary Morton didn't talk her out of it.

Sorry, when Roz Russell was at her WORST! in the film.