We Love Lucy!

Who doesn’t love Lucy?  Apparently she is very loved by many of us.  In a recent poll of well over 1 million people done cooperatively by People Magazine and the television news show 20/20, I Love Lucy was ranked as the #1 favorite TV show!
Who would have thought that a story line about an American girl from Jamestown who married a Cuban band leader would become the favorite show of all time?  Certainly the network executives and studio heads had their doubts.  Lucy and Desi had a hard time pitching the idea because the powers that be thought it so unlikely to be a hit.  Still Lucy and Desi had enough confidence in what they were doing that they convinced a CBS executive, Harry Ackerman, to take a chance on them.  He was able to sell the show to their first sponsor, the Philip Morris Company.  The studio insisted that the show be shot in New York but with the impending birth of their first child and the desire to stay based in California the couple offered to take a$1000 a week pay cut to shoot the show their way.  Because staying in Hollywood meant that they would have to produce the show themselves, Desi who was an astute businessman, formed the new studio Desilu and demanded that they have majority ownership of the show in exchange for the pay cut and producing it themselves.

Next came casting the parts of Fred and Ethel Mertz.  Sixty-four-year-old Bill Frawley, a seasoned vaudevillian and movie character actor with nearly 100 film credits to his name, was a long shot to play Fred Mertz and only came into consideration after he telephoned Lucy personally to ask if there was a role for him on her new show. Lucy, who had only briefly known Frawley from her days at RKO, suggested him to both Desi and CBS. The network balked at the idea of Frawley, fearing that his excessive drinking — which was well known in Hollywood — would interfere with his doing a live show.   Desi nonetheless liked Frawley and lobbied hard for him to have the role, even to the point of having the writers re-tailor the role of Fred Mertz to be a less financially successful and more curmudgeonly character to fit Frawley’s persona. CBS relented only after Desi contractually bound Frawley to complete sobriety during the production of the show, and reportedly told the veteran actor that if he ever appeared on-set more than once in an intoxicated state he would be fired.   Not once during I Love Lucy’s nine seasons did Frawley’s drinking ever interfere with his performance, and over time, Desi became one of Frawley’s few close friends.

Casting the Ethel Mertz character was also some work. Vivian Vance became a consideration on the recommendation of Lucy director, Marc Daniels. Daniels had worked with Vance in New York on Broadway in the early 1940s. Vance had already been a successful stage star performing on Broadway for nearly 20 years in a variety of plays and in addition, after relocating to Hollywood in the late 1940s, had two film roles to her credit. Nonetheless, by 1951, she was still a relatively unknown actress in Hollywood. Vance was performing in a revival of the play The Voice of the Turtle in La Jolla, California.  Desi went to see her in the play and hired her on the spot. Vance was reluctant about giving up her film and stage work for a television show, yet was convinced by Marc Daniels that it would be a big break in her career. Lucy, however, had many misgivings about hiring Vance, who was around the same age as she, and far more attractive than the concept of Ethel as an older, somewhat homely woman. Ball was also a believer in the Hollywood adage at the time that there should be only one pretty woman on the set and Lucy, being the star of the show, was it. Desi, however, was impressed by Vance’s work and hired her. The decision was then made to dress Vance in frumpier clothing to tone down her attractiveness. Lucy and Vivian’s relationship during the series’ early beginnings was lukewarm, to say the least. Eventually realizing that Vance was no threat and was very professional, Lucy began to warm to her. In 1954, Vance would become the first actress to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Vance and Lucy would develop a lifelong close friendship. *

Like so many success stories, Lucy and Desi believed in themselves and the vision they had for what their show could be.  Even Lucy and Desi could not have known back then just how popular they would become.

Today I Love Lucy runs in 77 countries in 22 different languages everyday! Why has it been the overwhelming success it has become?  Because it isn’t just about an American girl married to a Cuban band leader.  It is about marriage and friendship and love and laughter and the hopes and dreams that all of us have in one form or another.  As Lucy and Desi’s son Desi Jr. put it so eloquently when asked why he thought the show had endured so long, “There is something in them that is in all of us.”  Yes that is why we all Love Lucy!  In their own way Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel were all pointing us to having lives of more love, more joy and much, much more abundant living.

aka…Ethel and Lucy 🙂

* Historical info on the Mertzs’ modified from Wikipedia