I Love Lucy is a ViacomCBS black & white television sitcom franchise created by Desilu Productions that originally aired on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes spanning six seasons. The show starred Lucille Ball, her then real-life husband Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. It followed the life of Lucy Ricardo (Ball), a young middle-class housewife in New York City, who often concocted plans with her best friends Ethel and Fred Mertz (Vance and Frawley) to appear alongside her bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo (Arnaz) in his nightclub, trying numerous schemes to mingle with, or be a part of show business. After the series ended in 1957, a modified version continued for three more seasons with 13 one-hour specials; it ran from 1957 to 1960. It was first known as The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show and later in reruns as The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour.
I Love Lucy became the most-watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons, and it was the first to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings. As of 2011, episodes of the show have been syndicated in dozens of languages across the world and remain popular with an American audience of 40 million each year. A colorized version of its Christmas episode attracted more than 8 million viewers when CBS aired it in prime time in 2013, 62 years after the show premiered; CBS has aired two to three colorized episodes each year since then, once at Christmas and again in the spring.
The show, which was the first scripted television program to be shot on 35mm film in front of a studio audience, by cinematographer Karl Freund, won five Emmy Awards and received numerous nominations and honors. It was the first show to feature an ensemble cast. It is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms in history. In 2012, it was voted the 'Best TV Show of All Time' in a survey conducted by ABC News and People magazine.
Premise[]
Originally set in an apartment building in New York City, I Love Lucy centers on Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) and her singer/bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz), along with their best friends and landlords Fred Mertz (William Frawley) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance). During the second season, Lucy and Ricky have a son named Ricky Ricardo Jr. ("Little Ricky"), whose birth was timed to coincide with Ball's real-life birth of her son Desi Arnaz Jr.
Lucy is naïve and ambitious, with an undeserved zeal for stardom and a knack for getting herself and her husband into trouble whenever she yearns to make it in show business. The Ricardos' best friends, Fred and Ethel, are former vaudevillians. The Mertz's history in entertainment only strengthens Lucy's resolve to prove herself as a performer. She sometimes feels left out granted her limited industry involvement relative to Ricky, Fred, and Ethel. Unfortunately, she has few marketable performance skills. She does not seem to be able to carry a tune or play anything other than off-key renditions of songs such as "Glow Worm" on the saxophone, and many of her performances devolve into disaster. However, to say she is completely without talent would be untrue, as on occasion, she is shown to be a good dancer and a competent singer. She is also at least twice offered contracts by television or film companies—first in "The Audition" when she replaces an injured clown in Ricky's act, and later in "Lucy and the Dummy" when she dances in Hollywood for a studio benefit using a rubber Ricky dummy as her dancing partner.
The show provided Ball ample opportunity to display her considerable skill at clowning and physical comedy. Character development was not a major focus of early sitcoms, so little was offered about her life before the show. A few episodes mentioned that she was born in Jamestown, New York (Lucille Ball's real-life home town), later corrected to West Jamestown, that she graduated from Jamestown High School, that her maiden name was "McGillicuddy" (indicating a Scottish or Irish ethnicity at least on her father's side, though she once mentioned her grandmother was Swedish; there are sizable Irish and Swedish communities in Jamestown), and that she met Ricky on a boat cruise with her friend from an agency she once worked for. Her family was absent, other than occasional appearances by her scatter-brained mother (Kathryn Card), who could never get Ricky's name right. Lucy also exhibited many traits that were standard for female comedians at the time, including being secretive about her age and true hair color, and being careless with money, along with being somewhat materialistic, insisting on buying new dresses and hats for every occasion and telling old friends that she and Ricky were wealthy. She was also depicted as a devoted housewife, adept cook, and attentive mother. As part of Lucy's role was to care for her husband, she stayed at home and took care of the household chores while her husband Ricky went to work. During the post war era Lucy took jobs outside of the home but in these jobs she was portrayed as being inept outside of her usual domestic duties.
Lucy's husband, Ricky Ricardo, is an up-and-coming Cuban American singer and bandleader with an excitable personality. His patience is frequently tested by his wife's antics trying to get into showbiz, and exorbitant spending on clothes or furniture. When exasperated, he often reverts to speaking rapidly in Spanish. As with Lucy, not much is revealed about his past or family. Ricky's mother (played by actress Mary Emery) appears in two episodes; in another Lucy mentions that he has five brothers. Ricky also mentions that he had been "practically raised" by his uncle Alberto (who was seen during a family visit to Cuba), and that he had attended the University of Havana.
An extended flashback segment in the 1957 episode "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana" of The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show filled in numerous details of how Lucy and Ricky met and how Ricky came to the United States. The story, at least insofar as related to newspaper columnist Hedda Hopper, is that the couple met in Havana when Lucy and the Mertzes vacationed there in 1940. Despite his being a university graduate, proficient in English, Ricky is portrayed as a driver of a horse-drawn cab who waits for fares at a pier where tourists arrive by ship. Ricky is hired to serve as one of Lucy's tour guides and the two fall in love. Having coincidentally also met popular singer Rudy Vallée on the cruise ship, Lucy arranges an audition for Ricky who is hired to be in Vallée's orchestra, thus allowing him to emigrate to the United States on the very ship on which Lucy and the Mertzes were returning. Lucy later states that Ricky played for Vallée only one night before being traded to Xavier Cugat's orchestra.
The extended flashback segment "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana" and the story of how Lucy and Ricky met is inconsistent with Season 4, Episode 18 titled, "Don Juan and the Starlets" (1955). In that episode, Lucy mistakenly believes that Ricky stayed out all night after his publicity agent, Ross Elliott, sent him to a movie premiere accompanied by young starlets who were appearing in his movie. As a comeback in the ensuing argument, Lucy bemoans that she made a mistake fifteen years before when Marion Strong asked her if she would like to go on a blind date with a Cuban drummer and she said "yes".
Lucy is usually found with her best friend Ethel. A former model from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Ethel tries to relive her glory days in vaudeville. Ricky is more inclined to include Ethel in performances at his nightclub because, unlike Lucy, she can actually sing and dance rather well.
Ethel's husband Fred served in World War I, and lived through the Great Depression. He is very stingy with money and is an irascible, no-nonsense type. However, he also shows that he can be a soft touch, especially when it comes to Little Ricky, to whom Fred is both godfather and honorary "uncle". Fred can also sing and dance and often performs duets with Ethel.
The Manhattan building they all lived in before their move to Westport, Connecticut, was addressed at a fictional 623 East 68th Street, at first in apartment 4A, then moving to the larger apartment 3B (subsequently re-designated 3D; the Mertzes’ apartment is then numbered 3B), on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In actuality, the addresses go up only to the 500s before the street terminates at the East River.
Film[]
- Main article: I Love Lucy: The Movie
An American comedy film that is a spin-off of the sitcom I Love Lucy. Except for one test screening in Bakersfield, California, the film was never theatrically released and was shelved.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz co-star. Some scenes were directed by Edward Sedgwick, the final film work of his long Hollywood career. Sedgwick died in March 1953. So yeah it's basically the series' very first feature film based on the tv show of the same name.
After I Love Lucy[]
- Main articles: The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life with Lucy.
Hour-long format[]
After the conclusion of the sixth season of I Love Lucy, the Arnazes decided to cut down on the number of episodes that were filmed. Instead, they extended I Love Lucy to 60 minutes, with a guest star each episode. They renamed the show The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, also known as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Thirteen hour-long episodes aired from 1957 to 1960. The main cast, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley and Little Ricky/Richard Keith (birth name Keith Thibodeaux) were all in the show. The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour is available on DVD, released as I Love Lucy: The Final Seasons 7, 8, & 9. On March 2, 1960, Arnaz's birthday, the day after the last hour-long episode was filmed, Ball filed for divorce from Arnaz. It made their kiss at the end of the final episode, "Lucy Meets the Moustache", which aired April 1, all the more significant, as the world already knew that their marriage was over, and also lent extra meaning to the use of the song "That's All" (performed by guest star Edie Adams) in the episode.
Vivian Vance and William Frawley[]
As previously mentioned, Vance and Frawley were offered a chance to take their characters to their own spin-off series. Frawley was willing, but Vance refused to ever work with Frawley again since the two did not get along. Frawley did appear once more with Lucille Ball — in an episode of The Lucy Show in 1965, which did not include Vance (who by then had ceased to be a regular on that show). However, this was his last screen appearance with his longtime friend. He died in Hollywood on March 3, 1966, of a heart attack at age 79.
Lucille Ball's subsequent network shows[]
In 1962, Ball began a six-year run with The Lucy Show, followed immediately in 1968 by six more years on a third sitcom, Here's Lucy, ending her regular appearances on CBS in 1974. Both The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy included Vance as recurring characters named Viv (Vivian Bagley Bunson on The Lucy Show and Vivian Jones on Here's Lucy), so named because she was tired of being recognized on the street and addressed as "Ethel". Vance was a regular during the first three seasons of The Lucy Show but continued to make guest appearances through the years on The Lucy Show, and on Here's Lucy. In 1977, Vance and Ball were reunited one last time in the CBS special, Lucy Calls the President, which co-starred Gale Gordon (whom Ball had known for very many years by 1977 and who had appeared as a regular on her television shows since 1963; becoming even more prominent once Vance left The Lucy Show in 1965.)
In 1986, Ball tried another sitcom, Life with Lucy. The series debuted on ABC to solid ratings, landing in Nielsen's Top 25 for the week. Its ratings quickly declined, however, and resulted in a cancellation after eight episodes.
Longevity, critical acclaim and other honors[]
In 1989, the never-seen pilot episode was discovered and revealed in a CBS television special, hosted by Lucie Arnaz, becoming the highest rated program of the season.
In 2012, Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote retrospectively:
I Love Lucy […] is one of the two foundational texts of American TV comedy, along with The Honeymooners. The series is legitimately the most influential in TV history, pioneering so many innovations and normalizing so many others that it would be easy to write an appreciation of simply, say, the show’s accidental invention of the TV rerun.
I Love Lucy continues to be held in high esteem by television critics, and remains perennially popular. For instance, it was one of the first American programs seen on British television — which became more open to commerce with the September 1955 launch of ITV, a commercial network that aired the series; in 1982, the launch of a second terrestrial TV station devoted to advertising funded broadcasting (Channel 4) saw the show introduced to a new generation of fans in the UK, with the Channel 4 network repeating the program several times between 1983 and 1994. As of January 2015, meanwhile, it remains the longest-running program to air continuously in the Los Angeles area, almost 60 years after production ended. However, the series is currently aired on KTTV on weekends and now KCOP on weekdays because both stations are a duopoly. Ironically, KTTV was the original CBS affiliated station in Los Angeles until 1951, just before "I Love Lucy" premiered on KNXT Channel 2 (now KCBS-TV) when CBS bought that station the same year. In the US, reruns have aired nationally on TBS (1980s–1990s), Nick at Nite (1994–2001) and TV Land (2001–2008) in addition to local channels. TV Land ended its run of the series by giving viewers the opportunity to vote on the show's top 25 greatest episodes on December 31, 2008 through the network's website. This is particularly notable because, unlike some shows to which a cable channel is given exclusive rights to maximize ratings, Lucy has been consistently — and successfully — broadcast on multiple channels simultaneously. Hallmark Channel is now the home for I Love Lucy in the United States, with the show having moved to the network on January 2, 2009, while the national version of Weigel Broadcasting's MeTV digital subchannel network has carried the program since its debut in December 15, 2010, depending on the market (in markets where another station holds the rights, The Lucy Show is substituted). The show is seen on Fox Classics in Australia.
In addition to Primetime Emmy Awards and nominations, I Love Lucy's many honors include the following:
- The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York is a museum memorializing Lucy and I Love Lucy, including replicas of the NYC apartment set (located in the Desilu Playhouse facility in the Rapaport Center).
- In 1990, I Love Lucy became the first television show to be inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.
- In 1997, the episodes "Lucy Does a TV Commercial" and "Lucy's Italian Movie" were respectively ranked No. 2 and No. 18 on TV Guide's list of the 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
- In 1999, Entertainment Weekly ranked the birth of Little Ricky as the fifth greatest moment in television history.
- In 2002, TV Guide ranked I Love Lucy No. 2 on its list of the 50 greatest shows, behind Seinfeld and ahead of The Honeymooners (According to TV Guide columnist Matt Roush, there was a "passionate" internal debate about whether I Love Lucy should have been first instead of Seinfeld. He stated that this was the main source of controversy in putting together the list.)
- In 2007, Time magazine placed the show on its unranked list of the 100 best television shows.
- In 2012, I Love Lucy was ranked the Best TV Comedy and the Best TV Show in Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time.
- In 2013, TV Guide ranked I Love Lucy as the third greatest show of all time.
- A 2015 The Hollywood Reporter survey of 2,800 actors, producers, directors, and other industry people named I Love Lucy as their #8 favorite show.
Documentary and dramatizations[]
On April 28, 1990, CBS aired a television movie titled I Love Lucy: The Very First Show hosted by Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, with commentary that showed the original unaired pilot episode of I Love Lucy that was produced by Ball and Desi Arnaz themselves and found after 40 years. The movie was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award as an "Outstanding Informational Special".
On February 10, 1991, CBS aired a television movie titled Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter, about the lives of Ball and Desi Arnaz. The movie recreated a number of scenes from classic I Love Lucy episodes, including "Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her" and "Lucy Does a TV Commercial". Frances Fisher starred as Ball and Maurice Benard as Desi Arnaz.
On May 4, 2003, CBS aired a television movie titled Lucy, portraying the life of Ball and recreating a number of scenes from classic I Love Lucy episodes, including "Lucy Does a TV Commercial", "Lucy Is Enceinte", and "Job Switching". Near the end of the movie, a selection of TV Guide covers is seen in a hallway, showing I Love Lucy franchises on their covers. Also included is close-up of a New York Post article about the birth of Little Ricky. Rachel York starred as Ball and Danny Pino as Desi Arnaz.
In October 2011, the stage play I Love Lucy Live on Stage premiered to sold-out houses at the Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles. Staged and directed by Rick Sparks, the show featured the performance of two I Love Lucy episodes – "The Benefit" and "Lucy Has Her Eyes Examined", presented to the theatre audience as though they were attending a filming at the Desilu Playhouse in the 1950s. In 2012, the show began a national tour which lasted until 2015.
In July 2018, I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, a behind-the-scenes comedy about I Love Lucy by Gregg Oppenheimer (son of series creator Jess Oppenheimer), had its world premiere in a Los Angeles production by L.A. Theatre Works. Recorded before a live audience at the James Bridges Theater, UCLA, the production aired on public radio and was released on Audio CD and as a downloadable mp3 in September of that year. The performance starred Sarah Drew as Ball, Oscar Nuñez as Desi Arnaz, and Seamus Dever as Oppenheimer. A version by Jarvis & Ayres Productions was aired in August 2020 on BBC Radio 4.
In the spring of 2020 NBC's sitcom Will & Grace paid tribute to I Love Lucy with a special episode titled "We Love Lucy". During the episode Lucy & Ricky Ricardo and Ethel & Fred Mertz appear in dream sequences based on scenes from the 1951 CBS series. Lucie Arnaz made a cameo in the episode in the role originated in the "Job Switching" episode by actress Elvia Allman as the Factory Foreperson.
External Links[]
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Lucy
