Vivian Vance - why is she so popular?

Luff huh.

I've never heard of her outside of DL.

She was married four times...and her husbands were gay.

R3-Perhaps VV was a CARPET MUNCHER.

She only lives in infamy here on the Datalounge.

Some find her merely sufficient.

Have you a winning smile and a lovely bustline, OP?

She was likable, relatable, pretty, and funny.

Ethel May Potter, we never forgot 'er.

And as Tim Gunn tells it in the linked video, Vivian had strong ties to the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover...

There's no one as exactly relatable as Ethel Mertz was on ILL. We've all been Vivian Vance at one time or another.

I think we've all wanted to say what Ethel said to Lucy as she walking out of the dining room:

"You bet your sweet life that'll be all....."

She was an advocate for the mentally ill at a time when mental illness was still very much stigmatized. Not sure if that's why she's popular on DL, but it's why I always liked her.

Here is a story from her bio:

In the 1960s, she appeared on Candid Camera. She worked the counter at some dept store and customers would react when they realized who was ringing them out.

One younger guy came up with a nightgown. Viv asked him who it was for, and he started to cry and said his wife had been admitted to a mental hospital. Viv told them to cut the cameras and asked, "Do you think she'd like a visit from someone who's also struggled with mental illness, to show her there is hope?" That incident prompted her to start visiting mental wards and talk with patients.

R2 leads a sheltered life.

Here are some excerpts of an article she wrote for McCall's in 1955, when she was very much a public figure. The article went into details about her nervous breakdown and recovery. I think it took guts to publish this in the 1950s:

[quote]I have never told this story before. I have not wished to. The reasons aren't difficult to understand. They have nothing to do with vanity, or endangering my career, or even the possibility of relapse should I open an old wound. There simply seemed no reason to tell the story. My case, I felt, was as special as a clinical history of beri-beri, as isolated from common problems as dengue fever, and therefore of no conceivable general interest, let alone therapeutic value or assistance.

[quote]But today I think I know differently. I have been informed by authorities whose opinions I not only respect but revere that there are millions like me - or millions, more properly, in the gray-night world from which I have been led. And if this is so, and it must be so, I know them and they are my friends. Not because we have met, but because of the sympathetic bond between us. I know that their hands perspire in strange, unidentified fears, that their stomachs contract in nausea if the boss fails to smile at them, that they walk alone in queer, numbing depression wherever they may be, and that always they are afraid.

[quote]But I know something else, something possibly that they do not. I know they can be healed, as I was healed. I know they can be taken from the shadows of what is only half-life and be restored to happiness. I know they can if they only will.

[quote]So, if you are afflicted as I was you can face it, by forcing a showdown, by meeting it eye to eye for what it is. But perhaps you, like myself, can not do it alone. And if, like Vivian Vance, you can't reach quite far enough to touch God's fingers, then why not reach for those fingers that are within your grasp? I cannot believe He would consider this sacrilege. Surely God must love His healers.

[quote]She was an advocate for the mentally ill at a time when mental illness was still very much stigmatized. Not sure if that's why she's popular on DL

OH YES!

Lol. I knew that was coming r16

[quote]I don't want to look like her.

I don't think you could afford the operations, OP.

She was one of the greatest TV comic actresses. I'd rate her only second to Lucy. Well, actually I'd make it a tie.

Lucille Ball was not the number-one TV comic actress. Maybe in power but not talent.

R20 According to you.

This always makes me laugh...

A friend who was working with Vance on her autobiography said that she would absolutely NOT include anything that was negative about her.

The friend said Vivian's relationship was so toxic that they didn't speak once Viv left home. Her mother had always said that Viv would turn out to be a bad girl.....because only bad girls showed their legs. Viv said after she left home she hid her legs - under any man who would ask her.

The book was never published because Viv wouldn't approve anything that didn't put her in the best light. The manuscript was found in a closet in the San Francisco home of her last husband, John Dodds - found my his boyfriend. It was ghostwritten even more and published as "The Other Side of Ethel Mertz."

My friend was acknowledged - even though her name was spelled wrong.

"Viv's relationship with her mother......"

Correct, R21. And others share my opinion. I wouldn't put her in the top 5 but you do you.

"...found BY his boyfriend...."

JHC, I give up.

Frawley said that her pussy stunk!

Because Viv was a good ol' broad.

[quote]And others share my opinion.

Who exactly?

[quote]She was an advocate for the mentally ill at a time when mental illness was still very much stigmatized. Not sure if that's why she's popular on DL, but it's why I always liked her.

I didn’t know this, this makes me like her even more.

Vivian Vance was the reason Lucie Arnaz moved to NYC and encouraged her to focus on the theatre and do what she loved and hone her craft rather than get caught in endless rabbit hole of waiting for television to come calling.

IBDB

Lucie Arnaz married Dorian Lord’s ex.

IMDB

Ask Desi

She's so popular here because we're all sidekicks. It's about time we admitted it.

OP has apparently had sufficient.

G is also an advocate for those with mental illness, and she’s not beloved.

She could open a bottle of beer with her cooch.

She was so friendly and relatable on ILL.

Her delivery on the Friars' Roast of Lucille Ball alone made me love her, like when she said in a flat drawl:

[quote]I've known Lucille Ball – man and boy – for over twenty years.

How can anyone not love Vivian?

Ricky: How much would one dress cost at Don Loper's? Lucy: Oh well for a little nothing special dress.....a hundred dollars.... Fred: (goes into a coughing fit)......a hundred dollars for one dress?

ETHEL: (in her perfect line-reading) He almost choked to death because a hundred dollars is all I've spent on clothes since we've been married!

Like Follies and Vera's straws, Vivian is a shibboleth to gays of a certain age.

I think VV is a wonderful comic actress and a capable dramatic performer, plus she had a strong, versatile singing voice.

OP = William Frawley

She made good coffee.

Because she stood her ground against Bitch Ball and lived to tell the tale. Until she died of unrelated causes.

Vance and Frawley were the perfect casting as the support for Lucy and Desi on ILL. They brought a different kind of snarky energy that Gale Gordon and Bea Benederet would have brought if they had been available for those roles.

I don't think I Love Lucy would have become the lasting icon that it became if Viv and Bill Frawley hadn't been a part of it.

[quote] Have you a winning smile and a lovely bustline, OP?

The only thing that smile is winning is the Kentucky Derby!

Frawley used to fart around Vance constantly. And boy did his farts stink!

You keep out of this, Whirlaway!

Because Viv was a good ol' broad.

She was gorgeous and a great comedic talent.

I will proudly admit that I'm always the Ethel in my friendships. I'm not the star and I don't come up with the crazy schemes, but I'm more the willing to go along for the ride. That's why Ethel is one of my faves.