In honor of the fact that March is Women’s History Month, I thought in today’s blog we would acknowledge the history-making, groundbreaking career of a woman who made audiences laugh at a time when that ability was typically reserved for men. She was in entertainment for 61 years, and while she was known for portraying, on television, the role of a scheming redheaded wife of a conga drum player, in real life she was a not only a devoted wife and mother—and close friend to many other Hollywood talent—she was a force of nature in a very difficult business. She is none other than Lucille Ball!
Lucille Ball first knew that she wanted to be in show business as a twelve-year-old, when she performed in the chorus line of a stage show produced by the Shriner’s organization that her stepfather worked for. While she fell in love with being applauded, as a 17-year-old, she was deemed “too shy” by the professors of the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts and had no chance of succeeding whatsoever in the entertainment industry while her fellow classmate, Bette Davis, received utter praise. Despite this, Ball refused to give up on her dream, and she headed for Hollywood, auditioning for and booking an uncredited appearance in the 1933 film Roman Scandals.
The Great Depression was still going on in Hollywood when she arrived, so work wasn’t exactly easy to find. Although she booked small roles in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films like Top Hat (1935) and Chatterbox (1936) the money she was paid wasn’t enough to make ends meet. Not only was she suffering from the impact of the depression, but Studio Head Samuel Goldwyn was quoted as having said: “Funny women don’t sell tickets. Beautiful women do.” The complicated thing about Lucille Ball was that she was beautiful, but also had an exceptional talent for physical comedy. Studio heads didn’t understand or even appreciate it, but movie audiences did, and she later earned the nickname “Queen of the B pictures.”
Lucy was cast alongside Richard Carlson and Ann Miller in a film called Too Many Girls (1940). The film also featured a young Cuban bandleader/conga-drum player named Desiderio”Desi” Arnaz who was making his debut as an actor. They fell deeply in love with each other and eloped after a 6-month courtship. Eight years later, Ball was cast in My Favorite Husband, a radio comedy series for CBS Radio in which she would portray a rather eccentric wife named Liz Cooper, opposite Richard Denning as her husband. The show was a hit, and CBS later talked to her about re-adapting the series for television. (TV was just being created at the time and was outdoing the popularity of radio.) Ball agreed, but she requested the network cast her real-life husband in the role of her television husband, as their performing schedules hadn’t allowed them to see a great deal of each other. The network was reluctant, knowing she was great deal more popular then him, but they ultimately relented, and together Ball and Arnaz formed Desilu Productions, which would produced the television show that was ultimately renamed I Love Lucy (1951-1957) for six hilarious seasons.
There were a great deal of laughs on the show, but there were touching—and groundbreaking—memories as well. When Lucille Ball became pregnant with their second child, their son Desi Arnaz Jr., she feared the show would have to be cancelled (their daughter, Lucie Arnaz, had been born six weeks before the show went on air.) “I Love Lucy,” producer Jess Oppenheimer suggested writing the pregnancy into the show. CBS execs were very opposed to this idea, but they gave in and the “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” episode was a huge hit when it aired on January 19th, 1953, which was the same day Desi Arnaz Jr. was born. and this made her the first leading lady of television—in reality and story—to have a baby on television.
While producing the show, Ball was also a ground-breaker. The show made use of the 3-camera technique or the “Multiple-camera setup,” a process that had been invented for film and was first used on the Russian feature Defense of Sevastopol in 1911. Desilu however, made it more unique using 35 millimeter formant rather than 16 millimeter format.
After “I Love Lucy,” Ball and Arnaz were paired together again in The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960), a continuation “I Love Lucy,” which consisted of 13 episodes that ran for an hour rather than 30 minutes. Their marriage sadly ended in divorce in May 1961. After they divorced, Lucy bought out Arnaz’s share of Desilu productions to run the company herself. It was a small, but impactful decision.
As the very first female head of a television studio, Lucy gave the “green-light” to Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969) and the original Mission: Impossible (1966-1973) but she also continued to perform, starring in The Lucy Show (1962-1968) and Here’s Lucy (1968-1974), both of which were co-produced by her second husband Gary Morton. It was around this time that she became a frequent collaborator/mentor to friend Carol Burnett, guest starring numerous times on The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978).
In addition, Lucy had the idea of “re-running” episodes of television shows. While other studio exec’s were saying “you can’t expect TV stations to run episodes a second time,” Lucy said “not only are they going to do it, I’m going to make them pay me for a privilege!” Thus, the idea of syndication was born, making many television actors/producers/directors very wealthy in the process.
Lucille Ball was the very first female television studio head, the very first woman to become a mother on television, and the very first to be “in charge” of the laughs the audience gave. She passed away on April 26th, 1989 at the age of 77. She was an incredibly performer and left legacy in entertainment that wouldn’t be forgotten in a million years.
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