“Life With Lucy” final episode aired 35 years ago, yesterday, 11/15/86

Gordon agreed to do the show with the promise of a full season's pay for all 22 episodes regardless of whether the show was picked up. According to cast and crew members, the then 80-year-old Gordon never once flubbed a line on the set during the 13-episode duration. Ball was reportedly paid $100,000 an episode. Ball’s husband Gary Morton, carrying the title of executive producer, negotiated for $150,000 per episode. The pilot was created and shot, all without network interference or even test screenings. ABC and producers believed Life with Lucy would be a critical and ratings success that would run for many years, just as Ball's other shows had done.

Ball's character's surname, Barker, continued her tradition of using surnames containing the letters "ar" (as in Ricardo, Carmichael and Carter on Ball's previous sitcoms) in tribute to her ex-husband Desi Arnaz.

The show's theme song was performed by Eydie Gormé. Apparently, an alternative theme was written by Ball's daughter, Lucie Arnaz, with Cy Coleman. Fourteen episodes were written, thirteen filmed, but only eight aired. On the day of the last filmed (but unaired) episode, producer Aaron Spelling learned of the show's cancellation by ABC; he decided to tell Ball's husband Gary Morton, who decided not to reveal the news to her until after taping ended. The last episode to be aired, "Mother of the Bride", featured Audrey Meadows, who was offered to be cast as a regular to give the show a new direction and Ball's character a comic foil and partner, similar to the role previously played by Vivian Vance in Ball's previous series. (This was the only Ball sitcom in which Vance, who had died in 1979, never appeared.) Meadows turned down the offer.

Life with Lucy's premiere episode on September 20 made the Nielsen's Top 25 (#23 for the week) for its week; however, subsequent episodes dropped steadily in viewership; Life with Lucy went against NBC's The Facts of Life in the same Saturday night lead-off timeslot and never gained ground against it. It ranked only 73rd out of 79 shows for the season (the seventh-lowest-rated show on TV for the season), with a 9.0/16 rating/share. Since only 13 episodes were produced, it was not possible for the series to go into heavy rerun rotation like I Love Lucy. Nevertheless, it aired on Nick at Nite as part of a Lucille Ball-themed marathon in 1996. Episodes can also be found at the Paley Center for Media in New York City and Beverly Hills, California. Biographies of the actress reveal that she was reportedly devastated by the show's failure, and she never again attempted another series or feature film; her subsequent interviews and other TV appearances were infrequent. Ball's last public appearance was as a presenter on the 1989 Academy Awards telecast, in which she and fellow presenter Bob Hope were given a standing ovation. She died a month later, in April 1989. In a 1999 interview with the Archive of American Television, Aaron Spelling attributed the failure of the show to his decision to allow Ball to do the same type of shows she had done in the past. Spelling said that at her age the audience were more worried for her safety than laughing at her pratfalls. He took the blame for allowing her full creative control, because he said Ball had offered to do something different if he thought that was best, but he felt her ideas were more likely to succeed. Spelling said this experience had a lot to do with his rarely producing sitcoms.

In July 2002 TV Guide named Life with Lucy the 26th worst TV series of all time, stating that it was "without a doubt, the saddest entry in [its] list of bad TV shows of all time". In his book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, author David Hofstede ranked the series at No. 21 on the list.

Did you like it?

TL;DR - it sucked. Then she died.

I wasn't yet three years old but I remember my family watching her show.

Why was it so bad? Why didn’t Lucy’s fans turn up for this?

"Mame" was already a bridge too far for her fans....

Thé actors’ names are mostly unrecognizable, which makes me wonder how many actors ‘almost’ hit it right, but ended up in casting, production, or working at a real hardware store. That must be so awful.

[Quote]Why was it so bad? Why didn’t Lucy’s fans turn up for this?

Elderlady Lucy could no longer recreate the magic of her former comedic skills, and half of her fans were already dead.

Lucy broke the Golden Rule of Sit-Coms:

No Vance, no chance.

We had sufficient

Ironically, Gary didn't talk her out of it

My viewing was filled with worry rather than laughter. Elderly broads doing pratfalls is just not funny. All I could think about was if she was going to break a hip.

The young brown-skinned guy on the left doesn't look too bad - I'd watch it for him.

I watched seven of the episodes last week. One or two of them seemed to be trying modern ideas but it still reeked of The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy which mostly aren't very good either. She aged a lot between the end of I Love Lucy and the early color years of The Lucy Show. Jenny Miller who would play the nasty sunshine cadet on Golden Girls was her cloying granddaughter. Dena Dietrich guest starred as a woman who swiped a teddy bear just like Miller did on GG.

Lucy should have sung her own theme song, instead of outsourcing the job to Eydie Gorme.

Remember, I Love Lucy has never left syndication, it has aired continuously across the country. The Lucy Show was also very popular in syndication. Here's Lucy wasn't as popular in syndication and had been withdrawn in 1985, but that still meant that in most markets Lucy was competing with two much younger versions of herself, doing the same type of sitcom she was still trying to do.

The only good episode I've seen on youtube was the one with Audrey Meadows. The focus of the episode is on them and to an extent Gale Gordon. Lucy should've done an older Golden Girls type ensemble show. Say they lived in a retirement home, all the old tv stars could make guest appearances like Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, George Burns, etc... The main cast could've been her, Audrey, Gale, maybe Mary Jane. If Audrey didn't want to do a series I'd have settled for Harriett Nelson, Jayne Meadows, Barbara Billingsley, etc...

All her shows, but this one, were popular and did well. This was her first flop for a show post I Love Lucy.

John Ritter guest-starred as himself.

By 1986 the top sit-coms were shows like "The Cosby Show" and "Cheers"

"So I wasn't a Colored doctor and I didn't wisecrack to a bunch of drunk whores in a bar...so sue me!"

"I got to the keep the set furniture for my sunroom at home...so big deal!"

Three Golden Girls >>> One Red-Headed Girl

I recognized the boy, Philip Amelio, as the actor who played young Scott Chandler on “All My Children.” His mom, Cindy, died of AIDS and Stuart adopted him. Wonderful child actor.

Jenny Lewis not Jenny Miller. Also Ann Dusenberry who played Lucy’s daughter guest started in the golden girls as rose’s cunt roommate Stephanie.

This need a lovingly restored blu-ray release.

Carole Cook and her husband, who never speak I’ll of anyone, absolutely abhorred Gary. Actually, at the time, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who respected him.

He was a no-talent, controlling opportunist who expunged her entire group of friends

I have no idea what she saw in him, except that he was acceptable arm candy in their early dating days.

And I suspect, in her head, dumping him would yet bring up gossip along the lines of “another failed Lucy marriage” so as a creature of habit, she stuck it out.

The conveyor belt scene at the Chocolate Ex-Lax Factory was hilarious with a capital H.

Also the Golden Girls producers tried to get Lucy to do a guest starring role as Rose’s cousin from st. Olaf, but couldn’t close the deal.

R23 I thank you and so does John Wilkes Booth.

How does producer Gary get more money($150K/ep) than the star ($100K/ep)‽‽

When the "Golden Girls" debuted, and even still after this Lucy sitcom tanked in 1986, I frequently thought and wished in the back of my mind that Lucy would show up in a guest shot on GG, as well. It just seemed to make sense, with the proliferation and popularity of all these older talented characters and ladies portraying them, that the show would've been a natural venue for the revered Lucille to appear on. Too bad that never happened, she could've played someone very different than a re-tread of her "Lucy" character again.

The premise of that should should have been:

Show opens with Lucy Ricardo returning to her CT home from the funeral of her good friend Ethel Merz. In tow are her son, Rick, his wife, teen daughter, and preteen son. Rick is a successful director/producer in Hollywood. Rick convinces his mother to leave CT now that Aunt Ethel has died and he's worried she's all alone. She moves to their Bel Air mansion. While there, wife's father, Gale Gordon, comes to dinner. After shenanigans, Lucy is responsible for destroying his home, so wife invites her father to move into the mansion as well.

I Love Lucy worked best when it was the men v. women or Ricardos v Mertzes. This setup would have allowed for men v. women, Ricardos v.the wife's family, older generation v children (at 2 levels), as well as typical Lucy shenanigans where her antics drive the the zany conflict.

R29 that sounds like a drama.

They should make the son gay. Get with the times, Lucy!

Even the Brady Bunch flopped when they tried to do drama.

R27. He had a fragile ego (always being Mr. Lucille Ball) so Lucy made sure he was paid more.

Fuck that fucker.

Jenny Lewis remembers Lucille:

In life as in her songs, Lewis is a consummate storyteller, mindful of how tiny details make a great tale. In the car, for instance, she tells me about the time she played Lucille Ball’s granddaughter on the notoriously bad 1986 sitcom “Life With Lucy.” It was the last show Lucy ever starred in, and it was canceled before the first season even finished. The mood was blue, but a wrap party was still planned, and Lewis’ mother convinced Lucy to have the gathering at their little house in Van Nuys. “So Lucy rolled up with her two dogs,” Lewis remembers. “She walked in the front door, looked around, and said, ‘What a dump!’”

The Brady’s was a ridiculous show.

Philip Amelio, who played the young boy, died in 2005 from an internal infection.

Gale Gordon was simply unwatchable. He and Lucy always were especially awful together with their constant mugging and yelling their lines at each other made.

The final episode of Life With Lucy aired 35 years after the first episode of I Love Lucy aired (October 1951).

R35 The problem was they couldn't decide what they were. The shooting style was like Knot's Landing or thirtysomething, but then they had a laugh track. The only way that would've worked is if they went for all out soap parody like Soap.

r23 you're correct. Gary was just a total loser who was a hack Borscht Belt comic when Lucy met him. She inexplicably put him in a position where he could make important decisions for both her production company and her career, in spite of the fact that he had ZERO experience in production or management. It was ridiculous. The rest of the time he just wanted to play golf all day. Most of Lucy's friends and associates could barely tolerate him.

As you said, Lucy probably didn't want to admit to the failure of another marriage and just kept him around because of that. You have to remember she was from another era and divorce was "shameful."

Gary would have talked Lucy out of it - but he decided to allow it when he talked the producers into paying him more than her.

It's too bad Lucy didn't live long enough to be on The Nanny. They could've had her as a recurring special guest star a couple times a year, where she played a legendary Broadway diva. She would've been perfect on that show.

[quote]Lewis’ mother convinced Lucy to have the gathering at their little house in Van Nuys. “So Lucy rolled up with her two dogs,” Lewis remembers. “She walked in the front door, looked around, and said, ‘What a dump!’”

Lucy and Gale Gordon should have done "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" at the Van Nuys Dinner Theater.

Whoever came up with the idea of Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon running a hardware store should have been shot. The actors playing Lucy’s daughter and son-in-law were bland and boring. They should have come up with a different concept, and hired Audrey Meadows from the beginning and begged her to stay.

Gale Gordon was never funny, I don't know what Lucy saw in him.

Lucy should have been one of the Golden Girls, instead of Estelle Getty.

He had a huge dick, r45. She’d put a sack over his head and fuck him silly every time Desi plowed an extra.

[quote]Lucy should have been one of the Golden Girls, instead of Estelle Getty.

Lucy should have been on "Cagney and Lacey" to make Tyne Daly look more delicate and feminine

Lucie Arnaz didn't seem to have to much of a problem with Gary. Here she is talking about him and Desi's second wife.

[quote]because he said Ball had offered to do something different if he thought that was best

That's the first I've read that. So she *was* willing to do something different. That's nice to know.

Lucy has Complete Control - Everything - on Life With Lucy which was a mistake made by the network. Her supporting cast was bland and just not funny and Gale Gordon was his usual self. If the network had intervened the show may have lasted longer. Lucy gave it the old college try and still had that energy but the show seemed quite dated.

Gary was always the gentleman.

R52. Lucie knows where all the bodies are buried, and upsetting the decades-long Lucy/Gary narrative would not help the estate.

Was Gary a brother? Interesting pic at r52.

There’s a lot of nasty shit that went on behind the scenes of this show. Lucy personally escorted two women in the crew and a cast member to make sure they got abortions. She didn’t have time for their maternity leave “at [her] age.” She didn’t pay for the procedures.

She also made a lot of the Hispanic crew uncomfortable with her “knowing” wisecracks that she justified by referencing her ex-husband. Did she talk about dicks throughout her career or was this new?

Ann Dusenberry deserved to be a star.

Wow, Gary Morton negotiated a better payday for himself than his wife. He really was a grifter.

She just wanted to have a man around, r52. Someone to light her cigarette and not be flagrantly unfaithful.

Lucy wasn't naturally funny.

She owed much of the success of "I Love Lucy" to Desi and producer Jess Oppenheimer.

After Oppenheimer's successful lawsuit against Lucy and Desilu in the 1960s, Lucy was limited as to the elements of the ILL character she could continue to use.

If Lucy had only been willing to give Oppenheimer a fair share the profits and the credit he deserved, the lawsuit never would've happened.

Consequently "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy" had devolved into shows that relied heavily on weekly guest star appearances.

By the time the "Life with Lucy" series came along, it had literally been 20-30 years since Lucy had done any original TV sit-com work.

Ultimately, Lucy's greed led directly to the embarrassment that was "Life with Lucy".

I don't think she did Life With Lucy because of greed, r58.

She did Life With Lucy because she was bored. She sat around the house playing Backgammon, drinking and chain-smoking all day and was going stir-crazy.

A longtime employee of the Stanhope Hotel in New York said that Lucy wasn't necessarily the most difficult celebrity guest they had - though she was no picnic.

At the Stanhope, they remembered Lucy primarily for the copious amounts of cigarettes and alcohol she ordered up to her suite.

Lucy loved her booze and smokes.

the class

The last good sitcom Lucy did was her special "Lucy Calls the President." It was better than Here's Lucy, especially the later seasons. And, was a subtle update of her formula. The character was allowed to mature nd become more contemporary. And, even though she was surrounded by many Lucy staples, including the final Lucy and VV performance, Lucy and all of them seemed more grounded than she had since the first seasons of The Lucy Show.

When I watched that special I was like, why didn't she make a series out of this.

I mostly remember her being a grouchy drunk on game shows like Password.

[quote] Too bad that never happened, she could've played someone very different than a re-tread of her "Lucy" character again.

That's the thing - that's all Lucy ever really knew how to do.

I Love Lucy, Here’s Lucy, The Lucy Show, Life With Lucy, Oh God It’s Lucy Again…

This was not your father's zany redhead.

I remember watching "Life with Lucy" when it premiered and thinking how bad it was but still hung in for another couple of episodes trying to give it time to improve. Unfortunately, it did not.

As I recall, "LWL" led into the equally boring "Ellen Burstyn Show," which also got canceled very quickly.

The show failed because audiences couldn't see her.

They had a pound of Vaseline on the lens and she still looked ancient.

R55 about as much “star quality” as Mary Cadorette.

Damn she had a lot of shows! I love how Gale Gordon calls her "Young lady" on The Lucy Show when she was over 50! Always makes me laugh.

Yes, "young lady" was always good for a laugh. She was post-menopausal, had a whiskey and cigarette truck driver voice and they were basically shooting her through gauze by that point, but she was still a "young lady."

She kept throwing cups of coffee at cast and crew demanding, "IS THAT HOT ENOUGH FOR YA??" It didn't do much for the morale of the show.

It was ghastly. I think I watched the first episode and the John Ritter episode. It was your usual Lucy Show style...really loud and played to the rafters. Felt dated and dull.

But, she couldn't have done anything fresh and contemporary. She liked things HER way and she abhored "dirty" humor. All the sex jokes on Golden Girls would have done her in.

Lucy werkin the 80s

Is that child Jenny Lewis?

Very vomit inducing photo there R77 .

Who are these dumbasses saying of the QUEEN of comedy “She was naturally funny.., she was an actress, not a comedienne.” You guys shouldn’t talk.

I liked Gale Gordon in 'The Burbs'.

[quote] "Ironically, Gary didn't talk her out of it"

How could he, R10? Despite what he stood to gain, he was too busy talking the television audience out of watching. Apparently, it worked. That Gary Morton sure was a persuasive guy!

She *wasn’t naturally funny.

South Pasadena!

Not our kind of people.

Nice pic r77.

Lucy and Gary in the backseat of the limo on the ride home:

Gary: "So, what did you think?"

Lucy: "I think that Tom Selleck fellow is a fag." **lights cigarette**

R83 I have read that should could be funny but sometimes really mean. One favorite gag she would pull at dinner parties, when one guest returned to the table from a visit to the rest room, Lucy would turn to another guest and say ‘now I dare you to say that TO HER FACE!’

It’s a pretty good jab because it instantly puts the two guests into deep opposition, and catches one of them like a deer in headlights, funnier still if the person seated at the table hasn’t actually said anything critical of the guest out of earshot.

Jenny Lewis has had a fascinating career and should write a memoir. She started at as a very successful child actress before becoming a party girl in the 90’s and then having her greatest success as an indie rock It Girl with her solo work and her best work with Rilo Kiley. I bet she has more than a few good stories to tell.

Every time i see that annoying Jenny Lewis I think of Golden Girls and Troop Beverly Hills.

I like the way the article at R63 describes Lucy's eyes without make-up - reptilian

R75 is right. Lucy only wanted to do "family entertainment" and the sex jokes on Golden Girls were not her speed. Maybe she could have guest starred, but she never could have done a more contemporary show than her Lucy shtick on a regular basis. Carol Burnett, Valerie Harper and Mary Tyler Moore never repeated their early success, even when they tried clone shows of what made them famous. And Valerie Harper blew her chance with "Valerie" by demanding too much money. Lucy with three successful shows was actually an exception.

R90 I'd say MTM is different. Whereas the MTM show made her a huge star she was already a star from The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was the unknown who while surrounded by veteran stars still managed to shine. And, then she reinvented herself on tv with the MTM show. So MTM had two very popular classic shows.

Lucy, however, is an exception. I can't think of another star who headlined three different top ten tv shows. Andy Griffith tried several but only had two long running classic hits, the same was true for Dick Van Dyke, Carroll O'Conner, Bea Arthur. I guess the only one who would match her would be the reviled Bill Cosby, (ISpy, Cosby Show, Cosby). But even then Cosby, DVD, Carroll O'Conner and Andy Griffith had their shows across genres. Lucy did it all as thirty min live in front of a studio audience sitcoms.

Also, I agree with you about Lucy's series. But, if you check out the specials she did in the 1970s she didn't seem to be averse to more mature contemporary themes and situations.

I wanted to like it. But everybody was always yelling lines and the audience seemed to love it.

But the worst thing of all to me was how awful Gale Gordon looked.....he was enormous and his exasperation schtick was even more annoying than it had been on The Lucy Show & Here's Lucy!

A reviewer at the time time said the show should be renamed "I'm Afraid for Lucy" because of the geriatric stars being forced to perform pratfalls and other physical comedy. That summed it up nicely.

Ball was very hurt that this show was deemed a failure. She wasn’t used to that when it came to television.

The month before she died, she appeared with Bob Hope on the Oscars. They received a long standing ovation. She clearly appreciated it and it was nice to know she left this world knowing how much other actors admired her.

They should've dug up Viv's corpse and just let it sit at the kitchen table all season. Lucy could've come in and ask questions and for advice.

I was a teenager when this was on and only watched a couple episodes. I remember it was a big deal at the time that Lucy was returning to TV but there also seemed to be a lot of schadenfreude that the show was so disastrous and flopped so hard. It seemed weird to me since I thought Lucy was universally beloved.

She was r96. That doesn’t mean people are gonna watch her shitty show

They should’ve made a sitcom out of stone pillow.

True, r96, but there’s a difference between not watching and gleefully watching her comeback fail. I guess there was a train wreck aspect like with Cop Rock and the movie Cats where people wanted to talk about how terrible it was. Probably a generational divide as well.

[quote] Lucy only wanted to do "family entertainment" and the sex jokes on Golden Girls were not her speed.

So why did she host a retrospective celebration of one of the smuttiest sitcoms that ever aired, "Three's Company?"

r90 Carol was an early success on "The Garry Moore Show," and then went on to her own show.

r91 In addition to "Diagnosis: Murder" and his first sitcom, DVD also had "The New Dick Van Dyke Show," which ran for a respectable three seasons.

Michael Landon had "Bonanza," "Little House," and "Highway to Heaven."

[quote]And Valerie Harper blew her chance with "Valerie" by demanding too much money.

Jason Bateman also became the breakout star of the show and the scripts were being centered around him.

Note: Don't cast a hot guy as your son on a sitcom because he'll quickly get all the attention.

R101 Yep, I forgot about ML. I wouldn't consider The New DVD Show to have been a success. The first season it was ranked 18th, and then went down to 55th and 41st. It ran for three years because CBS was so excited to get him back they signed him to a three year contract.

Bill Cosby also had The Bill Cosby Show, but I wouldn't consider it in the same league as I spy, The Cosby Show, or Cosby.

Bill Cosby also had that show where he drugged the drinks of young women and then fucked them while they were unconscious. Didn't it run for something like 40 years?

Mmmmmm. I liked that one, R104.

The sad - pathetic, really - about that Lucy/Bob Hope clip from the Oscars is that they are introducing "Tomorrow's Oscar Winners," 19 kids who didn't have one eighth of the star quality of the old pros. Only Christian Slater and Patrick Dempsey (who knew he danced?) could be said to have had much in the way of a major career, and Savion Glover in a different way. Who picked those kids? Was this the notorious Alan Carr year? That would explain a lot.

According to Ricki...

Whoever cast Ann Dusenberry and Larry Anderson should have been drummed out of Hollywood. I know they had thankless parts, but OMG their horribleness was so extreme, it stood out amid the train wreck this show was.

Waaaaaaaa!!!!!

I don't blame Lucy for being a bitch backstage. She got a gander at the talentless dreck being passed off as the stars of tomorrow, and had to be appalled. By the time of the actual number in the show, the notorious Snow White opening had already bombed and everyone knew this was the floppingest Oscars ever. No wonder Lucy wasn't happy to be there.

i think that although Dusenbury was 41 years younger than Lucy and could have been her daughter, at this point in time Lucy looked and sounded 20 years older than her actual age, it was too jarring to believe them as mother and daughter

Hell, it was hard to believe Kim (Lucie Arnaz) as her daughter on Here's Lucy, and she was...!

R94 Lucy was a great old broad still flashing her gorgeous gams at 77 and only a few weeks from death. R107 Ricki was probably jealous then and now that Lucy, an old woman, looked better that night than she ever has.

Lucy is one of the reasons I've never understood people thinking beautiful women can't be funny.

If only Lucy could have played in a true ensemble cast later in her career, dare I say something like Golden Girls.

It's funnier to see Lucy do slapstick than Imogene, r112. A pie in the face is funnier when it's a beautiful woman's face.

R114 One of the reasons Joan Davis never had the success of Lucy.

Joan wasn't as funny and didn't have an appealing personality.

If the Oppenheimer lawsuit limited what she could do, there was the problem of her wanting to be in her own limited comfort zone and keeping around all the same people, like the sound guy who was going deaf. She also didn't let her character age. Celebrity stuff was just her being lazy---she had gotten away with it during the Hollywood ILL story arc, and as others have said, it was a way to fill the whole of having no other strong characters, unless you count Gale Gordon and his old schtick.

Has anyone actually found out what the settlement to the Oppenheimer lawsuit was? It didn't go to court and was settled. Obviously, Lucille was allowed to still play characters named Lucy. There comes a point where it is difficult to say how much of the Lucy character was created by the writer and how much by the actress.

[quote]I don't blame Lucy for being a bitch backstage. She got a gander at the talentless dreck being passed off as the stars of tomorrow

Was Savion Glover one of them? If so, he absolutely doesn't belong in the "talentless" category. He's without question one of the best dancer/choreographers that has ever worked in the theater (winning a Tony in 1996 for his work on "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk").

Pre-Lucy Ricardo...

And...

Both of which is evidence that the Lucy character wasn't the sole creation of Jess O. Lucille Ball had natural comedic talents that shaped the character. Lucy was a comic actress not a comic. She needed a script, but once she got it she added layers to what was written on the page.

Can anyone tell me if these two Lucille Ball movies are worth watching: "A Girl, a Guy and a Gob" and "The Affairs of Annabel"? I recorded both off of TCM recently but was wondering if they're worth the time (never heard of either and only recorded them because she's in them and I haven't seen much of her early work pre-"I Love Lucy").

R100 a little off subject but I so much prefer retrospectives like that (also: Raymond, Cheers) then just doing some end of season clip show where the writers try to make some bad excuses for a plot to hang flashbacks on.

She liked the slapstick aspect of the show (more prominent in the Furley years) to answer your question. And she absolutely loved John Ritter.

Best Foot Forward, if only for Nancy Walker.

1936 two-reeler

R126 She appeared in a lot of shorts at RKO. I'm surprised they, or whomever held the rights, didn't take those shorts and syndicate some sort of Lucy package for the stations that didn't have CBS.

Lucy and Maureen O’Hara fighting.

Shut up...

Yes, r119, which is why Glover was included as one of the three genuine talents who went on to a career (along with Patrick Dempsey & Christian Slater).

I was 12 when Life With Lucy aired and all I remember was really wanting to have sex with Larry Anderson.

She made some shorts for Columbia (not many, she had short-term contracts) and always in supporting roles. The ones with The Three Stooges get rerun all the time. RKO shorts were either infotainment (academy award stuff, travelogues) or series with people like Leon Errol. She probably wasn't the star in any of these.

R123 Annabel more than GGG, but if you're a Lucy fan they both have things to enjoy.

R115 you are SO right. I would watch "I Married Joan - The Joan Davis Show - starring Joan Davis, America's Queen of Comedy" when I was a sprig of a lad and wonder who they thought they were kidding!

Homely woman.....and her mugging was almost unwatchable. I remember two episodes I thought were funny: One with a moose head and the other had her with her arm stuck in a mannequin leg and she was walking around with three legs - visually the funniest thing ever in the series.

I have a memory of seeing Lucille Ball on an awards show in the 1980s and she showed off her legs and danced on stage. But apparently this wasn't for the 1989 Oscars ... maybe my memory is bad.

They should have paired Lucy with Redd Foxx in a sitcom.

r135 "Red and Redd?" Or "Redd and Redder?"

[quote]They should have paired Lucy with Redd Foxx in a sitcom.

"What? Me and the Colored guy who does the Blue Comedy up in Harlem?"

"I'd rather work with Vivian's corpse."

Lucy was invited to consider playing Diane Chambers' mother on an episode of Cheers; the role eventually went to Glynis Johns because Lucy thought people didn't want to see her do anything other than "madcap slapstick redhead Lucy."

Dumb move on her part. I think it would have been good for her, and I wonder how she would have been in the role.

R135 I can hear it now.

Red: I could stick your face in some dough and make gorilla cookies.

Lucy: Wahhhh

God, even the theme credit sequence was horribly dated by 1986 - it looks like a parody of a sitcom credit sequence and Lucy looks like a refugee from Barnum & Bailey.

The poster upthread who said Lucy should have embraced her age and done a sitcom set in the show-biz assisted living center in Woodland Hills is correct. She could have justified her presence there by escaping a domineering son or daughter-in-law, and had a revolving door of old celebrities cracking wise and putting on shows.

But Lucy refused to grow with the times or to wake up to the fact that Lucy Ricardo was 30 years in the past. There was a children's book once called "Lucy Didn't Listen" and I think it applies here.

On Shirl's special...

Lucy was offered the part in The Manchurian Candidate that went to Angela Lansbury, but turned it down because she didn't think the public would accept her as anything but the "Lucy" character. She should've taken that part because she would've been great in it. It was perfect for the bitter, hard as nails personality she actually was in real life.

I would have liked to see her play it as Lucy, r142.

Jenny wasn’t a ‘very’ popular child actress. She did ok. Enough to work a lot and get noticed, have a few fans from when she did ‘The Wiz’ or whatever. One of her last things was ‘Foxfire’ with Angelina Jolie and Jenny was hardly the star, was actually awkwardly a has-been at 18 or whatever she was at that point. She quit soon after and emerged with her music in a few years. What’s weird is she was actually good, effortlessly hip, and earned that acclaim and fan base. First with Rilo Kiley and many years now solo.

I still think of what she might have gone on to if she had taken Frank Sinatra's advice and played Mrs. Iselin in the original THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.....

This was just before The Lucy Show started - she might have had a much more interesting post-Lucy Ricardo career.

These people are a reminder to accept your age and to grow make choices accordingly. Unfortunately too many artists think they can keep looking and performing as someone 20-30 years older than their actual age and pull it off.

[quote]These people are a reminder to accept your age and to grow make choices accordingly. Unfortunately too many artists think they can keep looking and performing as someone 20-30 years older than their actual age and pull it off.

Oh hi!

[quote]These people are a reminder to accept your age and to grow make choices accordingly. Unfortunately too many artists think they can keep looking and performing as someone 20-30 years older than their actual age and pull it off.

Hey there!

[quote] So why did she host a retrospective celebration of one of the smuttiest sitcoms that ever aired, "Three's Company?"

I think she got criticism for doing that. Lucille Ball, the comedy legend, hosting a retrospective of..."Three's Company?" The show with Suzanne Somers' jiggling breasts and all the sex jokes? It's not like it was "All In The Family", which had a retrospective that was hosted by Henry Fonda. TC was lowbrow trash. She later said that she only did it was because she had admiration for the "comedic talent" of John Ritter. But it was still a dumb thing to do.

When Valley of the Dolls was announced as becoming a film, Lucy was briefly mentioned for the Helen Lawson role.

Lucy would actually have been perfect as Helen Lawson.

Oh that poor girl, r148. She's turned into late-stage Ginger Rogers.

She would have, r151. She definitely would have let Patty have it!

^r151

Bette Davis wanted the Helen Lawson part. That would have been interesting.

[quote]I remember watching "Life with Lucy" when it premiered and thinking how bad it was but still hung in for another couple of episodes trying to give it time to improve. Unfortunately, it did not.

I watched it too and couldn't believe how awful it was. But it got a huge amount of hype leading up to the premiere on account of Aaron Spelling producing and her old production team returning.

"Leave My Son Alone, he's 17!"

Wrap party video

[quote]I Love Lucy, Here’s Lucy, The Lucy Show, Life With Lucy, Oh God It’s Lucy Again…

Gang Way for Lucy!

Lucille Ball & Redd Foxx star in CBS's 'Seeing Red,' a new comedy series all about the pains of growing older in an ever-changing world!

Also starring Didi Conn, Alfonso Ribiero, Mabel King, and Ann Dusenberry.

Red Buttons, Redd Foxx and Lucille Ball in Red, Redd and Redder. Co-starring Helen Reddy as the retirement home general manager.

And Red Skelton.

And the Redgraves.

With Eddie Redmayne as the Beaver.

And Marge "Cool Whip" Redmond

And Brigitte Nielsen as Lucy and Redd's wacky sword-wielding neighbor, Red Sonja.

You want caliente? I'll give you caliente...

[quote]And Brigitte Nielsen as Lucy and Redd's wacky sword-wielding neighbor, Red Sonja.

And then it all comes to a screeching halt.

I never watched Life With Lucy.

Commercials for it blitzed every ABC show for months beforehand. The clips I saw in those commercials did NOT look funny. I really had no interest in watching the whole show.

Thanks, R133.

The Dark Corner has aired a lot recently.

The Big Street

Live, Laugh, Lucy

Lucy plays an entitled anti vax anti mask Trump-loving Karen. Endless hijinks.

Lucy looked bad on Life With Lucy. Very old and decrepit.

R148 OMG those caps (veneers?) on his front teeth. No, no. He has that same issue Ricky Nelson had, extreme offset upper front teeth. Not an easy fix, if fixable at all, but at least get some better fakes.

Tom has always had major dental issues. In the recent Showtime "Gossip" doc, a reporter for one of the NY papers said he was having dinner with Tom in some fancy NYC restaurant and Tom's front teeth fell out and landed on the table.

She got no criticism for doing it r149 and she did it because she was a fan of the show and the producers offered her a guest appearance and she declined but was open to hosting the retrospective of the show.

I love this description of the author's [R63] first impression of Lucy when she arrived to teach the Master Class:

Her hair was pink. Pink like a clown. Pink like the inside of a flamingo’s hairbrush. I have never to this day seen any color hair like that. But what was truly shocking to witness was the fact that Lucille Ball was crying. She was wiping tears from her eyes; then she applied lipstick on a mouth that was painted like a kidney bean. Her lipstick was over-painted on her very thin lips, giving the impression of having been placed there with a stencil.

Lucy's make-up artist, first Max Factor and later Hal King, used the old-school technique of painting Lucy's features like painting them on a doll's face.

In those days before fillers and injectables, they consistently painted exaggerated lips over her actual thin lips - very strange to see in real life.

Another quote from R63:

I spied her taking out a jar of Vaseline from her purse, opening it, and taking a dab of the stuff to rub all over her teeth. She did this quickly, patting her eyes again with a Kleenex. Then Lucille Ball got out of the car. She was taller than I expected; she was wearing an orange Polyester pantsuit that flared at the foot. It was all shocking. I had imagined her in black and white and with false eyelashes. Her blue eyes, entirely void of make up, gave her face a strange, reptilian look.

As an MGM contract player, Lucy had her eyebrows shaved off by the MGM make-up department, as they did with every female under contract.

With Lucy, and others like Debbie Reynolds, her eyebrows stopped growing back after years of being shaved off.

If she wore the large sunglasses without any eye make-up, as she often did when not working, I'm sure her eyes did look strange indeed....

In her later years Lucy didn't go out much. She was obsessed with Backgammon and spent most days at home playing it with anyone who came over to her house.

A favorite pastime of the Steeles...

Why did she do "Life With Lucy?" She wanted to keep working. She'd been the star of a tv sitcom for decades. She was a workaholic and had a need to be in charge. That's why she did it.

Why did it flop? She was too old to play a zany, cutesy character like "Lucy." She was just too OLD. In Stefan Kanfer's bio "Ball of Fire" he says:

"Gale Gordon proved to be the show's only asset. Lucy had trouble memorizing lines and depended heavily on cue cards. These completely threw off her comic timing. Moreover, no makeup could disguise the fact that she was more than threescore and ten, and her physical bits caused anxiety rather than amusement. The first episode pulled well; ratings went precipitously downhill from there. As Steve Allen saw it "Lucy's comedy did not age well, meaning the things she did weren't as funny get got into her late sixties and seventies. She couldn't handle the physicality or pull of being so cutesy."

Another critic said "She gamely attempted her old style of slapstick but her impeccable timing had fled. "Worse, what used to be cute and girlish in in a younger woman, and in a male chauvinist era, turned out to be embarrassing in a senior citizen. Her new impossible dream of agelessness only saddened audiences with its imitations of mortality."

After the show failed she was forced into retirement and she did NOT like it: "She regarded her enforced retirement as a living death; her only hobbies were games like Scrabble and backgammon."

r182 I LOVE Joan's living room!

If she'd really been a workaholic she would have had more visibility between Here's Lucy and Life with Lucy. She probably got tired of "retirement". She had been depending on cue cards for years, the real problem was probably the diminishment of attention that people get from age and, in her case, she hadn't been doing theater, voice work or other things that would have kept her "instrument" in shape.

Zip, dear?

[quote]I never watched Life With Lucy. Commercials for it blitzed every ABC show for months beforehand. The clips I saw in those commercials did NOT look funny.

I recall an article in the summer of 1986 (TV Guide maybe?) that talked about how there was all this soap spilling out of the doors of the soundstage where "Life with Lucy" was filming. They said people saw it and thought, "Well, Lucy's back," or something like that. Too bad it did not live up to expectations.

Lucy/Joan Death Match

R149 she didn’t get criticism at all and actually it was a smart move on her part. She introduced herself to a younger audience (she should have done that more often) and the show gained respectability being “endorsed” by Lucy.

[quote]If she'd really been a workaholic she would have had more visibility between Here's Lucy and Life with Lucy. She probably got tired of "retirement".

Poor Lucy, too bad she could have found a man...

And made him happy, as I did with Mr. Steele.

[quote]I LOVE Joan's living room!

Bless you!

They should've had the equally ancient Bette Davis on Life With Lucy as a guest star. That would've been a train wreck you couldn't look away from.

Found a pic of her with Stanwyck...

I had a friend at the time who was a writer on another ABC sitcom; they called the show Life-Support Lucy.

And, of course...

R193 - They both have over painted lips, penciled in eyebrows and wigs; but Lucy’s are all much better.

She also has upholstery fringe eyelashes compared to Stanwyck, r196.

I always get the 'The Lucy Show' and 'Here's Lucy' confused. Whenever I watch a few minutes of a rerun they seem like the same shows. At least 'Life with Lucy' stands out.

Here's Lucy was basically The Lucy Show after Desilu was sold to Paramount. Lucy wanted to retain ownership of her show. They tweaked the format and added her kids, but it was the same endlessly recycled schtick.

[quote]Also Ann Dusenberry who played Lucy’s daughter guest started in the golden girls as rose’s cunt roommate Stephanie.

Completely made up. Rosanna Huffman played Stephanie and she's over 15 years older than Ann Dusenberry.

R198 The Lucy Show, itself, is basically two shows. The first seasons with Viv and the kids in Connecticut is basically a completely different show than the Lucy and Mr Mooney in Hollywood years. Here’s Lucy seems like a mixture of the two Lucy Show formats. While it has been the least popular of her three big shows I actually love Here’s Lucy and would argue she did allow the Lucy character to age some with it, she had children that were clearly no longer children and they spent a large part of a season with her in a cast after Ball had a skiing accident. And afterwards it was clear they were more careful with her. The problem with Life With Lucy was they basically didn’t take into account that a decade or so had passed and so the character needed to age more. I’m not saying she couldn’t still do physical comedy gags, the writers and directors just needed to be more clever in devising gags that befit an older person, ones that are funny but not particularly dangerous looking.

On right now... the Italian cut

Best thing about Here's Lucy was the fact they included Desi Arnaz, Jr.

He's dreamy.

I also prefer Here's Lucy, it seems less frantic.

But that's not saying much...

[quote]I also prefer Here's Lucy, it seems less frantic.

It may have been less frantic, but it's even LOUDER than "The Lucy Show." The older they got, the more Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon seemed to YELL every line. Perhaps they had hearing loss from all those years of yelling at each other.

They paved the way for my 70s shows: Pump up the volume!

This should probably be a separate thread but is Wayne Newton MTF? His appearance on Here's Lucy looks like it could be MichFest: The Early Years

R207 He is one of those strange people who seems to have skipped puberty. Then at some point in adulthood he all of a sudden looked adult.

Is he still popular with the blue rinse set or are they (the blue rinse set) all dead. I guess he could retire with all the money he made when they were alive.

R209 They still pull him out the crypt for events, like when Caesar's Palace opened up after the lockdown. Now he has become just a Vegas legend, really one of the last links to classic Vegas. One of those things everyone wants to see in Vegas, like the Statue of Liberty in NYC.

r207 As the caption on the video shows, that is from "The Lucy Show," not "Here's Lucy." THIS is Wayne Newton on "Here's Lucy." The title of the episode is "Lucy Sells Craig to Wayne Newton." Well, then.

R147 I was just thinking about her, too, in the earlier parts of this thread.

The parallels are kind of eerie. Her unwillingness to let anyone see her as anything else but the cool, perpetually hip trendsetter is taking her to the same place Lucy's unwillingness to be anyone else but, quote, "Lucy", unquote eventually took her.

When you watch that it's weird that she would be dead less than three years later.

I always liked The Lucy Show better than the others. I watched it in the mornings along with cartoons as a tot in the 70s. It was so dumb and fun it seemed to be geared toward children.

I think of him more as a part of "joke Vegas" along with jumpsuit Elvis, the last days of Liberace, and Jim Nabors crooning to old ladies. The Rat Pack was in decline and the hotels were getting bigger and gaudier.

Lucy should’ve done the Miss Angie Dickinson part in dressed to kill.

First of all, Ricki Lake is a C U next Tuesday. She had been in one movie and she’s upset that Lucille Ball didn’t pay attention to her backstage. I’ve been around Ricki. I’ve seen her treat people awful. So there’s that.

Secondly why wasn’t Aaron Spelling watching this like a hawk? This falls on him. If he developed it, why did he let it fall apart? Get better writers. I know Lucy wanted Madelyn Pugh and Bob Davis. Make them consultants. They had no business being head writers. They hadn’t wrote anything funny since the late 50’s

In many respects, Spelling was the junior partner here, although he probably made the deal with ABC. He had never produced a sitcom. Lucy was offered some of the writers who had done MASH, probably via him or maybe his producing partner Douglas Cramer (who did know something about comedy). She didn't want them. Some of her past writers like Bob Weiskopf and Bon Schiller had written more contemporary material for shows in the 60s and 70s, but who knows what her relationship was with them.

[quote]They hadn’t wrote anything funny since the late 50’s

Oh, Dear.

[quote]Secondly why wasn’t Aaron Spelling watching this like a hawk? This falls on him. If he developed it, why did he let it fall apart?

Aaron Spelling is guilty of a lot of things.

But LWL has Lucille Ball's fingerprints all over it.

R216 They were EPs and occasional writers on Alice. So they had experience writing more contemporary hit shows. What would have worked with them best would have probably been to have the other younger writers in the room write a solid script and then those two could have "Lucyfied" it, by adding something classically Lucy but not having that be the focus of the whole script.

The episode with Audrey Meadows was very much a Lucy/Viv type episode from The Lucy Show or Here's Lucy. You can just tell that is what the writers were channeling and that Viv would've played that role if she had been alive. But, even though it sounds like it should be a retread, it is actually probably the strongest episode of Life With Lucy. And, having Ball, Gordon and Meadows on the episode just truly exposes how bad the rest of the cast was. Gale isn't as OTT in that episode and the three of them were clearly miles better than the younger cast. She needed a veteran cast of her contemporaries.

Anyway, I'm happy she's coming back to CBS next season with a new show.

R221 I've often thought, they could take the recordings of the old My Favorite Husband radio show, cut out the music and commercials and animate it in the classic I Love Lucy stick figure style and have a new show.

R222; Weren't the first few seasons of ILL basically what you described.

Some stories were adapted, but few directly word for word. And, the chemistry between Lucy, Bea Benaderet, Richard Denning and Gale Gordon(once he finally took over the role), gives it a different feel.

I think they should use all the old radio shows that way, to reintroduce legends like George and Gracie, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, etc... to newer audiences. I would start by using Christmas episodes to make specials, see how they do and then do more if it is popular.

And Bea is certainly a familiar voice in animation.

R225 Thanks for reminding me, when we were discussing people with more than one successful show, it should be mentioned that Bea spent the fifties as Gracie's sidekick, and then in the 1960s she was the female sidekick on The Flintstones, played a recurring role on The Beverly Hillbillies, which led to being the star of her own classic sitcom, Petticoat Junction. The only two unsuccessful things she did on tv was the one-season continuation The George Burns Show(without Gracie) and the one season Peter Loves Mary.

[quote] Anyway, I'm happy she's coming back to CBS next season

No one has mentioned Gang Way for Lucy!

[quote]No one has mentioned Gang Way for Lucy!

OMG, I hope Sinbad doesn't have the Covid!

His scenes with Lucy are my favorite!

If written well, I actually think a Redd Foxx/Lucille Ball sitcom would've been a great idea. Talk about an unlikely combo.

Yes, Lucy should have pursued guest spots on popular sitcoms of the 1980s. I suspect she would have wanted to be seen as the same age as Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose on the Golden Girls (as if!) ... but she would have been ideal as a resident of Shady Pines and Sophia's nemesis. Lucy never wanted to be cast as a scary but bitch even in a comedy because she thought it was against type. But it would have made her shtick fresh and helped people see she could do new things.

She was trapped in her Lucy persona.

[quote]Lucy never wanted to be cast as a scary but bitch even in a comedy because she thought it was against type.

Which was actually kind of bizarre given that she was an actor and most actors want more than anything to be cast against stereotype. I guess she was the exception to the rule.

I always thought she even seemed too old for the role in Yours, Mine, Ours.

^^Wasn't she playing a woman who was still of childbearing age in that movie? By that time Lucy's uterus was a dried-up husk, marinating in vodka and nicotine.

It should have been set in an upscale retirement home, with Lucy the kooky one who gets them into trouble all the time.

So basically, "Stage Door" in the (then) present day.

She should have done a nude grape stomping scene in "Caligula". Same. . .but different.

Probably already mentioned but it’s weird that they tried to present Lucy’s character as a health nut when she clearly smoked like a chimney and looked like she’d never jogged a day in her life.

She looked like the Cryptkeeper in a red wig and makeup.

The Cryptkeeper had a gentler voice.

Growing up she didn’t seem odd because a lot of elderly women in the 70s/80s had chain smoked and/or were drinkers so they had that skinny/wrinkly look with the raspy voice.

On Merv.

💔💔💔💔

Yeah, R238, I can imagine them having oxygen waiting just off-set.

R229 I wasn't joking about the Lucy/Redd team-up. I think it could have been really funny.

I think Redd was too blue for Lucille, r245, but they probably would have played well together.

Yeah, I agree. Plus, she loved to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and he loved to improvise.

[quote]It should have been set in an upscale retirement home, with Lucy the kooky one who gets them into trouble all the time.

It didn't work for us.

Life With Lucy aired in the same time slot that Red Foxx had tried and failed in the previous spring. It was a misfire that tried to soften Foxx too much and had a weak supporting cast, except maybe Sinbad. Both Ball and Foxx were performers that needed a strong supporting cast of vets. Some people can carry a show on their own, but both of them needed someone to bounce off of. I think Lucy stuck with Gale, because to her he was a man who knew how to work with her and because he was a man, she wasn't really replacing Viv. That is the only reason I can think of to explain why Mary Jane, especially after Ozzie & Harriet ended, wasn't ever fully upgraded to Viv status. Lucy just couldn't replace Viv, even after she had died and she came back with Life With Lucy. Foxx, likewise just couldn't make magic without Lawanda Page, Whitman Mayo, or the others. Until, they paired him with an acceptable vet like Della Reece for The Royal Family, sadly he died early into the run.

R248 It wasn't a bad show, but often felt rushed and uneven. FOX really doesn't seem to be able to do traditional three camera studio audience sitcoms anymore, they just don't seem to fit on there. Even the last season of Last Man Standing, didn't seem as good as when it aired on ABC, even though it was always a 20th Century Fox production. Which is surprising because they had several classic ones in the 1990s. I think if The Cool Kids had aired on CBS it would've ran for several years.

R151 Oh no, imagine Lucy in the bathroom wig snatching scene. The slapstick mugging! Although the hostility toward Patty Duke would have been amazing to see.

[quote] Which was actually kind of bizarre given that she was an actor and most actors want more than anything to be cast against stereotype. I guess she was the exception to the rule.

Actually, I don't think it was that odd on her part. Lucy had been in Hollywood since the thirties and had played many different roles in comedies as well as dramas. She had bounced around various studios, and had a respectable career as reliable performer, but she had never become a "star," until I Love Lucy on tv. After all those years, she lucked upon a format that was perfect for her and made her one of the biggest and most beloved stars in the entire world. It isn't surprising she would be fine being stereotyped as Lucy, from that point on. Plus, she had continued to experiment some with her Lucille Ball Specials and Stone Pillow. For a weekly show, she wanted to provide the public with what she was known for.

R157 That was literally the headline on every other movie magazine cover in the late 60s. Accompanied by a composite photo of Lucy glaring at Desi Jr and Patty at some Hollywood event..

Aaron spelling had a bit part on one of the I Love Lucy episodes, I forget which.

“Here’s Lucy” felt a bit groovier because of the kids. I forget, did Dino, Desi, and Billy ever play on the show?

R254 It also felt more grounded because they gave her and Gale a believable familial relationship. He was her dead husband's brother and therefore her children's uncle. The relationship on Life With Lucy, in-laws of the younger couple and co-owners of a business, sets them up to be much too adversarial. Plus at their age they should've been retired. Some of the best Gale Gordon episodes of Here's Lucy was the ones where he and Lucy were untied against the kids or united in their desire to help or protect them, not the ones where they are fighting.

Which series had the episode where Lucy gets Liz Taylor's ring stuck on her cock?

I mean finger.

Here's Lucy

Where they obviously edited in some other close-up footage of the ring rather than film it live.

It was weird to make Lucy a "health nut" on this series. Everybody knew she smoked like a freight train, and she totally looked and sounded like a long-time chain smoker.

R259 By that point Ball no longer owned Desilu, Here's Lucy was a Lucille Ball Production. She discussed in interviews how expensive the insurance was on that episode. I imagine if the insurance people were like it will cheaper if you do it like that, she was like okay!

[quote] Lucy should have been one of the Golden Girls, instead of Estelle Getty.

Lucy flat out told a reporter that she would NEVER do a show like the Golden Girls. She even complained that the Golden Girls was nothing but "bathroom humor". Lucy's own words.

R262 Funny how when Liz comes out, the audience simply claps heartily, a few whistles. Back then people did not go WOOOOOOOO, which is all they do these days. When did WOOOOOO start?

Lucille was from a different generation - she had different ideas of morality.

She could be a ruthless bitch in business and a horrible bully on the sets of her show.

She could drink like an behave like a mean alcoholic in her private life.

But she was adamantly opposed to discussing sex and the other realities of life on TV.

Does anyone else remember her being on game shows? I didn’t know she was probably drunk because I was a kid, just I do remember her being really pissy and mean.

In her later years Lucy was quite bitter and mean. Not a pleasant person to be around. Same with Bette Davis.

I remember sex coming up on Here's Lucy a few times but it was handled very carefully.

The Here's Lucy episode where Lucy ended up pregnant after getting raped by Mr. Mooney and decided to have an abortion was groundbreaking.

You *don't* buzz a legend...

Carol Channing referencing A Nightmare on Elm Street is about the gayest thing we're going to experience this holiday season.

Lucy was by some reports an early 20th century version of a call girl, back in her modeling days. Who knows what she had been willing to do or what she experienced as a consequence. Regardless, she was very straight laced with her kids when they were "coming of age". It worked with Lucie but not Desi.

[quote] Lucy was by some reports an early 20th century version of a call girl, back in her modeling days. Who knows what she had been willing to do or what she experienced as a consequence.

The story she tells about Ginger Rogers' mother suggests she went through something as a young woman.

[quote]Regardless, she was very straight laced with her kids when they were "coming of age".

STRAIT-laced. STRAIT-jacket.

R249 I will always be grateful to the Redd Foxx show for giving Raymond J. Johnson, Jr.

But you doesn't has to call me JOHNSON!

Is there any possibility of a reboot?

R276 Well an "Afterlife with Lucy" would probably be a hoot and a half.

Can you tell when Lucy made the move from her own real hair to full time wig? Was it in 1960? Her hairstyle did not change much after she started The Lucy Show.

Lucy started wearing the wigs in 1962 with the start of "The Lucy Show"

Lucy had a tendency to develop keloid scarring and wasn't a good candidate for plastic surgery, because of this condition.

So for the remainder of her career, she would have her loose skin pulled tight by tape and clips - and then she hid it all under the wigs (that were blended with her own hair, at least early on).

As you can imagine, this was incredibly painful and caused Lucy to have blinding headaches on the days of shooting.

I don’t know if it’s true, but I remember reading a story about Madeline Kahn seeing Lucy during a MAME rehearsal when one of the clips on Lucy’s face had come loose. Half of Lucy’s face was sagging and the other half was pulled taut.

Without the wiring, she probably looked like any old dame who'd smoked too many cigs and drank too much cheap bourbon. I had an aunt like that.

As a young gayling in the 70s watching her later sitcoms in su=yndication, Lucy just seemed like a mean old lady to me, and she did seem too old to play the mother of small children and even the mother of teenagers. She looked like a grandmother to me as a kid. Never understood her appeal until I watched some ILL reruns as an adult. Still, it seems like she was a major bitch all along.

[quote]she did seem too old to play the mother of small children and even the mother of teenagers.

Well, on Here's Lucy, she was playing the mother to teenagers played by her own children.

She might have been 57 in real life when Here's Lucy started in 1968, but both her co-stars were her real life teenage children.

Yet she LOOKED way too old

The "Here's Lucy" Lucy looks old to us now, but back then she actually looked pretty good for being in her 50s. Many people the same age looked even OLDER than that, if you can believe it.

Today we're so used to seeing celebrities who look youthful no matter what their ages are because cosmetic surgery and dermatology have advanced so much. Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman are both around the same age Lucy was on Here's Lucy but they look 20 years younger.

Shoulda been called "Life for Lucy" where she played the Queen Bee at a woman's prison. Think The Golden Girls crossed with Cell Block H.

Lucy would've been the Big Boss Bitch of the cellblock, raping Mary Wickes with the end of a broom handle.

Lucy wouldn't be talked out of the extended nude scenes in the prison showers shot in front of a live audience.

I think Lucille Ball was in her forties when she had her children. So she was an old mother.

[quote]she was an old mother

You're telling me, r289.

If Lucy were in her 50s today she’d probably have long sexay hair and look like Frances Fisher (who I guess played Lucy?).

Frances Fisher is 70 or very close to it.

I hope the Nicole Kidman Lucy movie ends with the entire 3rd act devoted to her final triumphant return to television.

She was a beauty...

Just saying, today Lucy wouldn't have that matronly style. She'd probably look like a Real Housewife.

If you want to know what a Lucy, of today, would like in her sixties, just look at Reba.

Lucy named this episode as her favorite on an episode of Merv.

I listened to that podcast of Lucy's old interview show. The one with Dean Martin was wonderful, real warmth between them.

They were great together.

As she was with old ski nose.

Lucy talks to...Babs

I listened to about five episodes of that podcast, the conversations were truly delightful. Men and women had rich, low, non-nasal voices....people spoke in complete sentences, with sincerity....nobody cursed. It was wundaful!

[quote]Men and women had rich, low, non-nasal voices.

Because they all smoked and drank like motherfuckers.

Lucille shows off a lot of leg in this reboot.

That reminds me, Danny Thomas also had one last series during this season. But, his was syndicated and aired one season of 25 shows. The two of them should've teamed up. They could've done a show about an older couple who find love and marry, and then get on eachother's nerves. It was clear they liked working together and Danny Thomas was ethnic enough it would've felt more similar to I love Lucy than anything she had done in years. In fact they could've done a reverse set up, where they are the newlywed older couple and their neighbors are a younger settled in couple. Gale could've still had a role as the building's land lord or something.

That reminds me, Danny Thomas used to jerk off under a glass coffee table while a hooker took a shit on it.

I think that's what his plaque at St. Jude reads, R305.

[quote]They could've done a show about an older couple who find love and marry, and then get on eachother's nerves.

And then at the end of every episode Lucy would take a shit on a glass coffee table while Danny jerked off underneath it. They could've called the show Make Boom For Danny.

^ That would've been a great name for Lucy's reboot:

"Lucy Goes Boom-Boom"

Thomas' usual character was as tiresome as Lucy's by that point. OTOH, they could have been cancelled within 1 3 weeks together.

Uncle Tonoose (based on Danny's real uncle) was always the most watchable thing on Thomas' show. Hans Conreid was under appreciated at putting over schlock sitcom writing.

One thing nobody has mentioned that probably helps explain her reluctance to change her persona is her experience in the Broadway musical Wildcat. After the last of the hour long Lucy-Desi Comedy Hours, Ball really wanted a change and to do something different. She accepted the lead in a big Cy Coleman musical Wildcat, about a woman looking to strike it big in the nascent oil industry at turn of the last century. The part hadn't been written with her in mind (the character was originally in her 20s) which interested her. The big hit song was Hey, Look Me over. She worked hard and gave it her all in rehearsals and early previews.

But the show wasn't working out of town. Everyone -- the producers, the creatives, Ball herself -- all realized what the problem was though it wasn't much discussed. The audiences were there see "Lucy" live onstage and Lucy wasn't there. There was a lot of money and Ball's reputation at stake, including several hundred thousand Desilu dollars Ball had invested, so Ball did what had to be done and slowly started working Lucy into the character. The first time she inserted a spider into her performance, she brought down the house. The more she did her old shtick, the more audiences loved it. By the time the show reached New York, it was LUCY in Wildcat, not Lucille Ball in Wildcat. It got decent reviews and audiences were eating it up.

The show was selling out but Ball hadn't taken into account her age and all those years of drinking and smoking. She she couldn't handle 8 shows a week of singing and dancing. At one point she collapsed onstage. Several times the producers shut the show down to give her a chance to recuperate but that was expensive. The show closed for good much earlier than it probably would have absent her health problems.

Since I learned something about the history of the show, I've always thought it's why Ball was reluctant to take chances thereafter and stuck to her old tried-and-true when she went back to TV. A cobbler should stick to his last.

I was going to include video from youtube of Ball and the cast doing Hey Look Me Over on the Sullivan show, but of course it's been removed.

Steel Schmear

[quote]I was going to include video from youtube of Ball and the cast doing Hey Look Me Over on the Sullivan show, but of course it's been removed.

It's still there...

Thanks, r313!

Given that older stars have no trouble doing 8 shows a week, she must have been a real physical mess doing this at barely age 50. They did have gyms and trainers in those days.

Lucy knew her brand and stayed in her lane and publicly embraced being typecast. She also embraced nepotism and old fashioned entertainment with a happy ending. She knew who she was and what worked for her. She went along with the breeze.

Tweet tweet tweet.

Name one over 50 star (who's not a singer or dancer and lacking in stage experience) that succeeded in an 8 show a week musical, r315.

Bette Davis had the same problem when she attempted stage work in her later career. All the years of drinking and smoking wore her out and she also couldn't do 8 shows a week.

She really did try to break out of her mold with Wildcat and it blew up in her face. I can understand her retreating back to what had always worked for her and staying with that. Remember that her emotional state too was said to be difficult after the divorce.

Yeah, but her endless recycling of schtick finally caught up with her with her last sitcom, while "Mame" proved that she couldn't anything else very well.

I started to say that her emotional state was fragile after the divorce but fragile isn't a word I can associate with her. Deeply upset, difficult, yes, but not fragile.

The reviews for LWL broke her. She cried like a baby. 👶 She told Joan Rivers that she could take critique but to be criticized for coming back at all really upset her.

Lucy should have played Chris McNeil in the Exorcist.

R323 Which is why I'm glad she made that Oscars appearance shortly before she died. I'm sure the warm applause let her know people still loved Lucy. I honestly hope that there is an afterlife, so that she could see the massive outpouring of grief at her death. Hers was the first celebrity death I remember. And, I remember grown men crying when they heard the news.

She brought so much laughter to so many and she really was the American success story. She grew up rather poor. They were bankrupt at one point. Her drama teachers told her she didn't have what it takes. She came to Hollywood worked her way up from Columbia, RKO, to MGM. But, wasn't a major success. So she pioneered TV, and became probably the most famous woman in the US if not the world. I remember reading there was some sort of poll done in the 60s or 70s that said the two living woman whose faces were instantly recognizable to the most people in the world was Lucy and Elizbeth II. She ended up owning the studio where she was once a contract player. She had three hit tv shows, and remains forever the Queen of Television. There has never been another that came close to having the impact on the medium that she did. And, when she died people felt real emotions about it.

It needs to be said… Mary!

With all caps, r326.

I remember when Life With Lucy was announced, they said Lucy's deal with ABC required them to run the show for an entire season before deciding on anything.

I wonder what happened?

[quote]I wonder what happened?

The show happened. It was dire.

It was just finding its way. They should have given it a chance considering her legendary status and history. Shows can be retooled.

They did end it too soon, because the Audrey Meadows episode was really the best but was the last episode aired. If they could've signed her up as a regular things could've turned around.

Meadows didn't want to sign for the series. The idea that you could retool old tired schtick with an insistent star and a soundman who was deaf is delusional.

Here's Lucy promo

R332 People have said the executives largely kept Lucy in the dark about the problems with the show. Aaron Spelling or ABC, should've met with Lucy and been like, "look, we want this work, you want this to work, but we need to make changes." I think she would've responded better than people imagine. I've dealt with people who think they know everything and are surrounded by yes men, they respond to and respect it when someone actually tells them the truth, especially if it will save them from embarrassing themselves.

Lucille died of a broken heart. Literally. 💔

A lot old people want you to tell them what do do with things don’t understand and then tell you you’re wrong or what they want to do instead. Then when it goes wrong they blame you for not telling them to do what you told them to do in the first place.

r336 So do a lot of young people.

[quote]It was just finding its way.

Straight down the shitter.

In retrospect they should have just centered a half hour situational comedy around her STONE PILLOW character.

Co-starring Gale Gordon as the shelter janitor.

So, how many viewers were represented by a #73 ranking or whatever it was back in 1985? We have shows on now with less than a million viewers a week (several CW shows, for example) so, when there were just the three networks, how many people were watching Life with Lucy?

Who are these "People" R334? Are they voices in your head? Of course Spelling realized that Lucy was clueless by the time the show aired. He and the ABC execs probably knew that the first time they screened the first episode. Did they have any worthwhile ideas? Probably not---Spelling had never done a sitcom and network executives usually suggest cliches like having a wedding or a baby (Lucy was obviously too old for that and the show already had "adorable" kids).Did they think Lucy would listen? Of course not, she had insisted on Gale Gordon, a deaf sound man and her old writers. There have been postmortems of equally abysmal shows like "The Tammy Grimes Show" (which lasted 4 weeks) and "OK Crackerby" (a show with lots of talent involved like Abe Burrows that was horrible). Sometimes, the whole is simply less than the sum of its parts and there isn't much you can do.

She may have had a sad about this but if you watch her talk show experiences, she was bitter and had no trouble running down other people. She would complain about Columbia putting her in Three Stooges shorts, but it was work and she probably owed more of her schtick to them than to her pairngs with Katharine Hepburn or Henry Fonda.

Lucy had her day but came back to the party when she should have found something else to do. If she's a saint, she's a plaster one, at best.

When Spelling made the deal with Lucy, he gave her complete creative control. ABC had to know the show was a stinker as soon as the episodes were delivered to them. They didn't even bother airing the second episode they taped (the one where Lucy bought a guard goose for the hardware store).

[quote]Lucy bought a guard goose

Ahead of her time!

The sad thing was when the goose wouldn't do its job, Lucy dressed up as a lady goose to try to lure him into sentry duty.

Was she shot in soft focus?

^^Are you kidding?

R345 Remember those Barbara Walters specials where it looked like she and the actress she was interviewing were both shot like that. I remember watching one, as a child, and my grandfather kept fidgeting with the tv because he thought the picture was off.

DL won't let me directly link to a photo, but this page has some shots of Lucy in her jogging suit, and of course the camera lens was smeared with a barrel of Vaseline. Even the publicity photos for Life With Lucy were awful.

Awww...

^^Could that wig have looked any more obvious? Lucy and Bette Davis must've had the same wigmaker.

They had to cover the straps and that adds to their odd styling, r350.

Kellie Martin (from ER) auditioned to play the granddaughter, but got cast as her friend. She said Lucy was old, unfriendly, and she felt as if Lucy didn't want to do the show. (The link contains the podcast where she spoke about it).

Lucy was in her mid-70s but by modern standards she looked 90. When she did the pratfalls it was hard to watch because you were afraid she would break a hip or something. She just looked and sounded so fucking OLD.

Here's a good article

Alright bitches, you got me.

I just shelled out the $30 to order the DVDs from Amazon. I was only 10 when this aired so I want to watch it through eldergay eyes.

The DVD has commentary from nobody not even Lucy's friend Carole Cook who always shows up.

I've been watching the series on Youtube. I LOLed several times during the 9 episodes I've watched so far, but overall it's been pretty lame. Oddly, it's more watchable than the episodes of The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy I've seen.

There's a funny Golden Girls connection in one episode. Lucy accidentally sells her grandson's favorite teddy bear during a yard sale and later on the mean buyer, played by Dana Dietrich, won't give it back unless she's paid $500. I don't think I need to explain that connection on DL. ;)

Black may not crack but you gotta light white right!

Jayne Meadows I might have been able to take for a few episodes - but loud-mouthed bully Audrey Meadows was just too much for me......

If they wanted that kind of character, they could have just put Gale Gordon in drag.

I always found Jayne more insufferable. Audrey found a niche with Alice Kramden-like wives. I could see her as a second banana for Lucy who could occasionally best her.

R360 Plus it was nice because Lucy rarely acted with the other female tv stars of the 50s. I would have loved to have seen Lucy and Eve Arden, or some of the others. At one point they should've done an episode on one of her shows where Lucy gets jealous because Mary Jane has another friend she is spending all her time with then it is revealed the friend is Harriet Nelson. I would've loved if she had made an appearance with Gracie Allen before she died.

the series would have been better if Lucy had played a telekinetic android.

[quote]They could've called the show Make Boom For Danny.

Oh, so close, then the miss.

Who else has the Eydie Gorme theme song stuck in their head?

Gale Gordon was really something. I think he was 80 years at the time of LWL and he always knew his lines, always gave a good performance. When this show is talked about it's almost invariably said that he was the best thing about the abysmal "Life With Lucy."

Gordon was a schtick-laden as Lucy. Even more so, because he played the same character on shows with very different ensembles (Our Miss Brooks, Dennis the Menace). He definitely helped kill Dennis the Menace because he lacked the warmth of Joe Kearns (whom he replaced). But he does deserve some credit---he was older than Ball, but knew his lines and could turn a cartwheel. He (or his agent) also was smart enough to negotiate a season's salary regardless of whether the show lasted that long. He probably was smart enough to know this could be a turkey.

Whose bright idea was it to put decrepit Lucy in those god awful pastel jogging suits?

Jogging suits were a thing in the 80s. It's like fat women wearing stretch leggings today.

Maybe it was the setting. Hardware stores aren't funny.

Audrey Meadows was WONDERFUL in "That Touch of Mink." The scene where she slaps Gig Young through the Automat window is a classic.

It was Audrey Meadows who brought the heart to "The Honeymooners." Her put-downs of Ralph were hilarious, but there was more to her character than that.

R371 Yeah, but her mother was a BLABBERMOUTH.

The episode where Lucy thought she was pregnant was the only good episode of Life With Lucy.

[quote]Whose bright idea was it to put decrepit Lucy in those god awful pastel jogging suits?

Well, to be fair, LuLaRoe had been created yet.

Those jogging suits were a thing at the time.

Lucy should've only worn caftans in this show.

And Gale also should've worn caftans.

For all the talk about Lucy being too Lucy in this and relying on old schtick, even with Gale Gordon it just doesn't feel like Lucy and it isn't her age. People remember Lucy as feel good comedy, and it was, but there was always alittle bite to it. What made her interactions with Gale Gordon funny, at least at first, was not him yelling at her. It was the witty comebacks between them. There was no bite to this show. It felt like any standard 80's family sitcom which could've starred any number of classic sitcom actresses.

Lucy was offered the part of Diane Chamber's mum on Cheers but turned it down because she didn't want to stray too far away from her Lucy character. Glynis John's played the part.

Lucy Gets Stoned: Lucy sets Leonard up with her friend Leo (Van Johnson), much to Curtis' annoyance. When Lucy and Leonard accidentally eat Leo's pot brownies that help his arthritis, Curtis, Margo, Ted, and the grandkids have to get them home by evading the cops.

Angela Lansbury cameos as a woman who hits a screaming, flailing Margo with her car.

Speaking of Lansbury, Lucy should have done an episode of Murder She Wrote.

Her daughter did.

Their Bosom Buddies would have been swell, r381.

R379, Glynis Johns OWNED that role! I can't imagine Lucy doing it.. (And I also can't fathom why the CHEERS producers never had Johns back; there was so much potential in her dynamic with Diane).

Maybe they were against suffragettes?

[quote]Lucy was offered the part of Diane Chamber's mum on Cheers but turned it down because she didn't want to stray too far away from her Lucy character. Glynis John's played the part.

I'm having a stroke here.

>>Glynis John's played the part.

Shouldn't that be "Glynis' loo played the part."

Got my DVDs late yesterday so no chance to watch yet.

Maybe tonight.

Lucy is in kabuki makeup on the cover with Gale.

[quote]Lucy is in kabuki makeup

Not for the first time.

Speaking of last/later shows of comedy legends does anyone know where I can find episodes of the final "The Carol Burnett Show" that aired in 1991? Not, Carol and Company, they pop up on youtube, but the actual revival of her variety show that only lasted six episodes on CBS in the Fall of 91? The only clip I can find is their Star Trek parody.

There's a clip of Carol, Bernadette Peters and Tony Roberts doing a Sondheim medley from the 1991 series posted in the Theatre Gossip thread.

R391 Thanks, using that I found an entire episode, you just made my day!

Will the thread on this godawful show last longer than the actual show did?

I'm dying to see that unaired episode with Danny Thomas:

"Lucy Makes Boom-Boom for Danny"

Marlo Thomas has had all the prints destroyed and the internet scrubbed...

Some production/crew members have died or disappeared mysteriously...

The story was tapped out to me in Morse Code on a glass coffee table by an insider...

I broke down and bought the DVD set. I purchased years ago on Ebay - taped on VHS, so it was probably off air when it was originally shown. The after party linked above was included with the tapes.

A couple of those actors were really gaying it up at the party!

R177, Lucy’s hosting that retrospective was mentioned as a low point in multiple obituaries. Her manager and agent both sued her over it and she attributed her benzo addiction’s acceleration to her shame over it, specifically the low budget and bad scripts. She was fucking Ritter at the time but broke with him over it. It cost her years of time with her children, who didn’t care about Ritter but did hate that career choice bitterly, and told her so.

wow Lucy sounds like a real mess, R396.

Lucy never had a benzo addiction, she wasn't a pillhead. She was addicted to booze and unfiltered Pall Malls.

[quote]She was addicted to booze and unfiltered Pall Malls.

Lucy's brand was Chesterfield.

Ironically, Phillip Morris was the sponsor for I Love Lucy. There's an old story that Lucy and Desi hosted a party at their house that included some Phillip Morris officials. They changed out all the cigarettes in the living room and other rooms where the party was being held. However, a PM official needed to make a phone call and went to the bedroom where they had left their Chesterfields.

R399 now everything would be fine PM bought Chesterfield in 1999. I will say I don't smoke, but I love the new Chesterfield retro style packaging they are using since they reintroduced the brand a few years ago. I almost bought a pack just because I liked the packaging so much.

Chesterfield, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike are all still around, but they're all cheap budget brands now and the tobacco is shit. They're not premium brands like Camel and Marlboro still are.

Philip Morris was Bette Davis's preferred brand. Unfiltered, of course.

R401 R402

[quote] She was fucking Ritter at the time but broke with him over it.

Are you trying (and failing) to be funny? At the time of that Three's Company retrospective Ball would have been 72 and Ritter would have been 34. And they were "fucking?" You're nuts.

I wonder if Lucy and Tex Ritter ever crossed paths in Hollywood.

Maybe THELMA Ritter.

Tex Fritter? Never met em.

Trying and failing in a big way, R404.

[quote] You thought he was being serious?

With all the crazies who post on Datalounge I thought that might actually be a possibility.

Plugging Stone Pillow

R410 Stone Pillow doesn't deserve all the scorn it receives. It wasn't great but it was still better than 90% of tv-movies, much like her old B films were not the greatest but better than most.

At least Lucy didn't film Riding on the Bus with my Sister.

Gale Gordon was a handsome young man.

[quote]Gale Gordon was a handsome young man.

By the time he was on "Our Miss Brooks" in the early '50s, Gale Gordon already looked like a dumpy middle-aged man.

Why did Lucy join herself to his hip anyways?

[quote]Why did Lucy join herself to [Gale Gordon's] hip anyways?

Lucy was loyal. Gordon was pliant and easy after enduring the turmoil of her break-up with the Cuban.

My favorite Gale line was from The Lucy Show, or Here's Lucy, I forget. Lucy is whining to her boss Gale about being replaced at the office by a computer, or something similar.

Lucy: I'm just as good as any computer. I'm practically a type-writer already!

Gale: YOOOOOUUUUUU ARE AN EGGGGGG-BEATERRRRRR!!!

Did Lucy ever fuck Gale?

No but she sucked his dick

R417 In the Joan Crawford episode, Lucy and Viv visit Mr. Mooney at his home. Upon their entrance, Mooney exclaims, "Good Heavens, it's the Smothers Mothers." Not very funny on paper, but for some reason it's very funny on the show.

I got my DVD set on Tuesday. I've watched about 5 episodes. It's not quite as awful as I remembered. The supporting cast is bad and Lucy looks so OLD.

The writing is what kills the show. They don't rely on just one slapstick retread from her other three series.....they use at least two and sometimes THREE in one episode.

Reminds me of a Here's Lucy episode when Lucy and Kim were dressed as giant pickles and walked onto the set unable to bend their knees.....and then a few minutes later did a complete dance routine, bent knees and all.....and then later ate pickles using Lucy's patented faces to suggest they were too sour.... and THEN Lucy got dragged off the set in a stretcher after doing her patented bandaged up and splinted routine.....ALL IN ONE EPISODE.

[quote]Gale: YOOOOOUUUUUU ARE AN EGGGGGG-BEATERRRRRR!!!

I guess you had to be there.