Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Lucille Ball got a name drop in our
Speaker 1: Dorothy Arsner episode, so our episode on Lucille Ball is
Speaker 1: today's Saturday classic. This episode, which I had no memory
Speaker 1: of until re listening to it just now, also talks
Speaker 1: a bit more about the movie Dance, Girl Dance, which
Speaker 1: is the film that Arsner directed. This was a sponsored
Speaker 1: episode when it first came out for CNN's documentary mini
Speaker 1: series The History of Comedy. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: available to stream anymore, but there are clips of it
Speaker 1: on the CNN website. At the beginning of this episode,
Speaker 1: we also kind of muse over the fact that it
Speaker 1: was our nine hundredth episode, and we talk about how
Speaker 1: maybe we should figure out when our thousandth episode is
Speaker 1: going to be and do something special. We did do that.
Speaker 1: We had some sort of casual events online and on
Speaker 1: our social media, and we also did a two part
Speaker 1: episode on Satakos Sasaki's one thousandth Cranes. Those two parters
Speaker 1: came out February twenty six and twenty eight, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. So we
Speaker 1: have a couple of housekeeping notes we do first, in
Speaker 1: the interest of full disclosure, this episode is sponsored by CNN.
Speaker 1: They have a new mini series coming up called The
Speaker 1: History of Comedy, and they approached us and asked if
Speaker 1: we would like to do an episode that might tie
Speaker 1: into that. I love comedy and comedy history, and I
Speaker 1: already had many people on my list. We were like,
Speaker 1: here is a giganto list of things that we have
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about for a long time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is a very easy kind of fit, and it
Speaker 1: made perfect sense. This is probably an episode that would
Speaker 1: have happened regardless, but in this case it is sponsored
Speaker 1: by CNN. We are going to talk about the grand
Speaker 1: Dame of American comedy, Lucille Ball. She, you know, was
Speaker 1: incredibly famous. She worked in modeling, radio, and film, but
Speaker 1: of course really made her mark in television and her
Speaker 1: work really set the standard for the TV sitcom going forward.
Speaker 1: We also have a little bit of a milestone on
Speaker 1: this one. Hmmm. It's the nine hundredth episode of this show. Yes,
Speaker 1: we haven't been on all of those episodes, not remotely,
Speaker 1: and a very very few of them, very tiny few
Speaker 1: from way back in the archive are reruns. But nine
Speaker 1: hundred is a lot. There's a lot of episodes. It
Speaker 1: makes me realize that, you know, in less than a year,
Speaker 1: we will be at a thousand and we should plot something.
Speaker 1: I know now I've put that into the universe, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel stupid when we're in the studio and
Speaker 1: I go, oh, crap, this is the thousandth one, isn't it,
Speaker 1: And I haven't planned anything. Oh, we're gonna I put
Speaker 1: it in the universe so I won't forget. Maybe after
Speaker 1: we record, I should do a little math figure out
Speaker 1: exactly when that's happening. It'll be about a year from
Speaker 1: now minus a week, right ish? Uh huh? So do
Speaker 1: you want to just hop into Lucille Ball's story? Yes,
Speaker 1: because I love her me too. Luciale Desiree Ball was
Speaker 1: the first child of Henry Durrell Ball, who went by
Speaker 1: Had and Desiree Huntball. When she was born on August
Speaker 1: sixth of nineteen eleven. Her family was not wealthy, and
Speaker 1: had who was an electrician, moved them from place to
Speaker 1: place looking for work. When Lucy was still a small child.
Speaker 1: He found a position in Michigan working for Michigan Bell
Speaker 1: Company as alignman, but the stability that the job offered
Speaker 1: the family was really short lived and completely undermined when
Speaker 1: Had died of typhoid fever in February nineteen fifteen. This
Speaker 1: undoubtedly jarring event was recalled by Lucille later in life
Speaker 1: as her first memory, and when she talked about it
Speaker 1: or wrote about it, she would literally go into great
Speaker 1: detail about like the things that were on the wall
Speaker 1: and a bird that was that she saw at the time,
Speaker 1: like she remembers that moment so clearly, or remembered, I
Speaker 1: should say. And in addition to the loss of Had,
Speaker 1: Lucille's mother, Desiree, was also dealing with the fact that
Speaker 1: she was pregnant with the couple's second child, and she
Speaker 1: was facing a really uncertain financial future, and she decided
Speaker 1: to move back to Jamestown, New York, which was where
Speaker 1: the Balls had been living when Lucille was born. After
Speaker 1: the birth of Lucille's brother, Fred, Desiree started working in
Speaker 1: a factory to try to make ends meet. She also
Speaker 1: met and started dating a man named Ed Peterson. Peterson
Speaker 1: and Desiree got married, but once again, what seemed like
Speaker 1: a situation that might offer the family some stability instead
Speaker 1: ended up causing deeper fractures in the family. So ed
Speaker 1: Uh did not want to be burdened with children, and
Speaker 1: so he and Desiree moved to Detroit without Lucille and Fred,
Speaker 1: and the children didn't even get to stay together. Fred
Speaker 1: moved in with his maternal grandparents, and Lucille moved in
Speaker 1: with Ed Peterson's parents, who were basically strangers to her,
Speaker 1: and the Petersons were very, very poor, and they were
Speaker 1: really pretty strict with their new step granddaughter. After several
Speaker 1: years of this arrangement, desire and Ed moved back to
Speaker 1: Jamestown once again, so the children had their mother back,
Speaker 1: and Lucille really always wanted to be in show business.
Speaker 1: I saw one thing, I think it's part of the
Speaker 1: package of her Kennedy Center honors, which are going to
Speaker 1: talk about later, that said that every springtime she tried
Speaker 1: to walk from their house to Broadway, and of course
Speaker 1: didn't make it. But at the age of fifteen, she
Speaker 1: left high school and she started drama school in New
Speaker 1: York City at the John Murray Anderson Robert Milton dramatic
Speaker 1: school after begging her mother to consent to let her
Speaker 1: do this. But though it's hard to imagine the ledg
Speaker 1: dary redhead, which is not her natural color, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that as well, struggling to stand out, she
Speaker 1: really did not farewell at drama school. She was a
Speaker 1: little too nervous and really struggled to make a name
Speaker 1: for herself. Later, she would describe this time of her
Speaker 1: life saying, quote, all I learned in drama school was
Speaker 1: how to be frightened. The school even wrote to Desiree
Speaker 1: to let her know that her daughter was really way
Speaker 1: too shy for the stage. As a point of trivia,
Speaker 1: Betty Davis was at school the same time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Lucille Ball was definitely in awe of her. So you
Speaker 1: can imagine if you're already a little uncertain and then
Speaker 1: you have Betty Davis, who was by all accounts of powerhouse,
Speaker 1: you kind of probably don't feel like making a really
Speaker 1: big move to try to stand out. But while Lucille
Speaker 1: did leave drama school, she chose to stay in New
Speaker 1: York and she adopted a new stage name, which was
Speaker 1: Diane Belmont, and less than a year after her failed
Speaker 1: start at drama school, he was booking modeling jobs. She
Speaker 1: modeled clothing for the Vienna Borne designer Hattie Carnegie, who
Speaker 1: I would love to also do an episode on at
Speaker 1: some point, and later Chesterfield Cigarettes booked her for modeling gigs,
Speaker 1: including rather large scale campaigns, which got the attention of
Speaker 1: Hollywood producers. So after a few years working as a
Speaker 1: model in New York, she decided to make her way
Speaker 1: to Hollywood to transition into acting. She also changed her
Speaker 1: hair from its natural chestnut brown to blonde, just as
Speaker 1: she had managed with her modeling career. After leaving drama school,
Speaker 1: Bob began to book acting gigs rather quickly, although many
Speaker 1: of them in her early career were uncredited starring. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three she worked at times as a Goldwyn Girl,
Speaker 1: and this was a stock group of young women who
Speaker 1: danced and entertained to appear in and promote new films
Speaker 1: for Samuel Goldwyn. So in thirty three that movie was
Speaker 1: Roman Scandals, which is a picture with a plot about
Speaker 1: a young man from Westroom, Oklahoma, dreaming that he was
Speaker 1: in ancient Rome, and the Goldwyn Girls in this particular
Speaker 1: film were featured as Roman slave girls. Other uncredited work
Speaker 1: included appearing as a showgirl in the nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: Moulin Rouge, as a nurse and Carnival in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: and as an extra and the slapstick version of The
Speaker 1: Three Musketeers starring the comedy team The Ritz Brothers, and
Speaker 1: Lucy continued to take small parts. She had a reputation
Speaker 1: for never saying no because she knew she had to
Speaker 1: make ends meet, and she finally got a more substantial
Speaker 1: part in nineteen thirty seven's Stage Door, which was a
Speaker 1: story about a group of aspiring actresses living together in
Speaker 1: a boarding house. Also featured in that cast were Catherine
Speaker 1: Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, a couple of you know people
Speaker 1: no one's heard of. No, they're not famous at all.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty, Lucio played the role of Bubbles, third
Speaker 1: build after Maureen O'Hara and Lewis Hayward in a picture
Speaker 1: called Dance, Girl Dance. While the movie is far from
Speaker 1: her most famous work, it did have a significant impact
Speaker 1: on her life. The movie's story centered around a troop
Speaker 1: of dancers, and while Judy, played by marine O'Hara, longed
Speaker 1: to become a ballerina Bubble's act was burlesque. The two
Speaker 1: were also rivals in love, and the two actresses enjoyed
Speaker 1: playing up their competitive but friendly relationship. Yeah when it
Speaker 1: came time to film a fight scene between the two characters,
Speaker 1: the production actually allowed an audience to attend, and they
Speaker 1: charged admission, but they donated that money to charity, and
Speaker 1: after the fight was over, the ladies went to the
Speaker 1: studio commissary together for lunch because they really were friends,
Speaker 1: and it was there that Lucy met Desiderio Alberto Arnez
Speaker 1: Desi Arnez, and she would later say of their meeting,
Speaker 1: it wasn't love at first sight. It took a full
Speaker 1: five minutes. The actress and the Cuban band leader appeared
Speaker 1: together in Ball's next movie, Too Many Girls, and their
Speaker 1: time working together on the picture sped their courtship along.
Speaker 1: Those who were close to Lucy advised her to stay
Speaker 1: away from Desi. Those pieces of advice were completely pointless. Arnez,
Speaker 1: who was just twenty three at the time, had a
Speaker 1: reputation for dating a string of ladies, But Daisy and
Speaker 1: Lucy fell in love and got married within a year.
Speaker 1: Their wedding was on November thirtieth, nineteen forty, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't long after the marriage in nineteen forty two that
Speaker 1: Lucille Ball dyed her hair. The signature read that she
Speaker 1: would be known for the rest of her life, having
Speaker 1: done so at the suggestion of movie studio MGM for
Speaker 1: her role in Duberry Was a Lady. The shade, however,
Speaker 1: would shift and not from that original read, but to
Speaker 1: a more apricot tone, though not for several years before
Speaker 1: we get to the next big step in Lucy's career
Speaker 1: went to pause for a word from a fantastic sponsor.
Speaker 1: While Lucille Ball had been relatively successful in film, she
Speaker 1: felt that her career wasn't really reaching the level that
Speaker 1: she wanted. Her starring roles were mostly in B films
Speaker 1: rather than big budget films, and so she expanded her
Speaker 1: work into radio as well. She quickly landed a role
Speaker 1: in the comedy My Favorite Husband, and it was that
Speaker 1: work that led to CBS offering to develop a series
Speaker 1: along the same lines with her. That seemed like great news,
Speaker 1: but things did not go well in negotiations. Lucy wanted
Speaker 1: to develop a show with Desi starring alongside her, and
Speaker 1: CBS was not interested in him, in part because of
Speaker 1: his accent, and the talks quickly ended. But the couple's
Speaker 1: desire to create a husband wife show together eventually developed
Speaker 1: by the two of them into the form of a
Speaker 1: vaudeville act, and as they toured this stage show, they
Speaker 1: garnered a lot of attention. It was actually a huge hit.
Speaker 1: People found it so charming that the two of them
Speaker 1: were singing and dancing together, and they were very funny,
Speaker 1: and it was so huge a hit that CBS wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to them again, and this time because they
Speaker 1: had this reputation built around them, and the two of
Speaker 1: them as a pair working together, Lucy and DESI were
Speaker 1: in a position to make some demand and have those
Speaker 1: demands meant. As I Love Lucy was in development, the
Speaker 1: pair decided they did not want to shoot the show
Speaker 1: in New York, in a move that separated them from
Speaker 1: most other TV shows in this still pretty young medium,
Speaker 1: They opted to set up production in Hollywood. They also
Speaker 1: wanted to shoot on film, despite protests from CBS that
Speaker 1: kinescope would be a lot more cost effective, but they
Speaker 1: really wanted film, and they decided that they would sacrifice
Speaker 1: some of their pay to get it, and so they
Speaker 1: renegotiated their deal, and they also made sure that they
Speaker 1: would retain rights of ownership of the project, and they
Speaker 1: formed Desilu Productions as the umbrella company for it. Everything
Speaker 1: changed for Lucille Ball and her husband in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: They had their first child, Lucy, in July of that year,
Speaker 1: and then I Love Lucy debuted on October fifteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. The show became a national success in this
Speaker 1: mix of comedy and examination of common social issues really
Speaker 1: struck a good note with the viewing audience. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: blew my mind when I realized that she had her
Speaker 1: kid while they were in development for a major TV
Speaker 1: show like that just seems like a lot to be juggling.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was just months from the time she
Speaker 1: had the baby to when they went into full production schedule.
Speaker 1: And Lucy was based on anything you could ever possibly
Speaker 1: read or hear about her from her colleagues. Absolutely relentless
Speaker 1: in her pursuit of creating the most perfect possible production.
Speaker 1: Her standards were incredibly high, and she would rehearse even
Speaker 1: the most casual lines of the show until she felt
Speaker 1: that they were the absolute best they could be. She
Speaker 1: took comedy very, very seriously, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where people always think a lot of the show
Speaker 1: was ad libbed, but she really rehearsed almost everything to
Speaker 1: the point that it was just perfect and you could
Speaker 1: not tell that she was not in the moment. Well.
Speaker 1: And another mark that it paid off is that when
Speaker 1: you say to someone, oh, we're working on a show
Speaker 1: about Lucy ol Ball, often the things that come spilling
Speaker 1: out of their mouth are all kinds of lines from
Speaker 1: this TV show from literally more than half of a
Speaker 1: century ago. Yeah. I mean it's been it's been on
Speaker 1: in syndication forever, but it's people still watch it and laugh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the thing that I watched. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I would watch in the in the morning
Speaker 1: while I was getting awake and ready to go to school,
Speaker 1: like my mom would be making me breakfast. It would
Speaker 1: be on syndicated in the time slot before the morning news,
Speaker 1: either that or the Indie Griffith Show. Because this was
Speaker 1: North Carolina, you gotta have some expectations. I've probably seen
Speaker 1: every episode of it. Anyway. I Love Lucy ran for
Speaker 1: six years and led all shows in the US ratings
Speaker 1: for four of them. It would be broadcast in seventy
Speaker 1: eight countries. When the show aired an episode in which
Speaker 1: Lucy gave birth to little Ricky in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: which aired on the same day Desi Ernz Junior was
Speaker 1: born or An in real life, thanks to a scheduled
Speaker 1: cesarean section, it set ratings records, surpassing audience numbers for
Speaker 1: the Eisenhower inauguration. Yeah, it's the first instance where an
Speaker 1: actress's real life pregnancy was part of their fictional story.
Speaker 1: And while it seemed natural to write their real life
Speaker 1: pregnancy into the show and their sponsor and this seems
Speaker 1: odd now of course, through the Modern Lens cigarette company
Speaker 1: Philip Morris was behind the idea. The decision to do
Speaker 1: so really ran into some hurdles at CBS. The network
Speaker 1: was first deeply uneasy about the idea of showing a
Speaker 1: pregnant woman on TV. They thought people might find it
Speaker 1: vulgar or distasteful. Those CBS eventually did go along with
Speaker 1: the plan, and they consulted various experts and felt like, no,
Speaker 1: this would be okay. They did forbid the use of
Speaker 1: the word pregnant on the show, so they could never
Speaker 1: say Lucy was pregnant and they would say she was
Speaker 1: expecting instead, And there were also titters about how Dosy
Speaker 1: pronounced the word yeah, and they had to name it
Speaker 1: Lucy is Pregnant, but they used the French word for pregnant,
Speaker 1: so that even though the titles never appeared on the show.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite episodes if you've never seen it.
Speaker 1: The whole episode centers around Lucy trying to tell Ricky
Speaker 1: that she is pregnant, and he's kind of dense and
Speaker 1: not catching her hints for wrong time. I love it,
Speaker 1: and everybody knows. Fred and Ethel both know, like the
Speaker 1: whole everyone connected to them already has it figured out,
Speaker 1: but he just is not getting the message. And she
Speaker 1: does this. I don't even want to give it away
Speaker 1: because it's so sweet. The way that she eventually tells
Speaker 1: him in the end is through his own song. He
Speaker 1: just doesn't know it's happening to him initially, and it's lovely,
Speaker 1: making me tear up a little bit me too. I
Speaker 1: love it so much. During the run of the sitcom,
Speaker 1: Lucy's hair also hit the shade that would become her
Speaker 1: trademark for the rest of her career. According to hairstylist
Speaker 1: Irma Cousley, who worked on numerous Dazil productions, quote, Lucy's
Speaker 1: hair was a golden Apricot color and she used a
Speaker 1: Hannah rense to achieve it. She met a very wealthy
Speaker 1: sheik who had heard about her problem in getting the
Speaker 1: right coloring. He said that he would send her a
Speaker 1: lifetime supply of Hannah, which he did. We kept it
Speaker 1: in my garage, locked away in a safe. Yeah, you'll
Speaker 1: sometimes hear that sort of told as a slightly different
Speaker 1: story where her hair color formula was secret and was
Speaker 1: kept in a safe. But according to her stylists, no,
Speaker 1: it was just the boxes or the whatever format, the
Speaker 1: tubes or whatever that the Hannah was in. The other
Speaker 1: significant event of their lives while I Love Lucy was
Speaker 1: running was a scandal around Lucille's political history. The White
Speaker 1: House Unamerican Activities Committee investigated Ball due to the fact
Speaker 1: that in nineteen thirty six she had registered as a
Speaker 1: member of the Communist Party and sworn testimony before the committee.
Speaker 1: Lucille Ball testified that she had registered with the party
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six at the request of her grandfather,
Speaker 1: Fred Hunt, and then it was nothing more than a
Speaker 1: gesture to please the elderly patriot. Her mother and brother
Speaker 1: had apparently done the same thing. Yeah, there was also
Speaker 1: there were also stories that she had hosted some parties
Speaker 1: at her home, some get togethers for people interested in communism,
Speaker 1: but she claimed she did not realize that that's what
Speaker 1: they were doing. She thought they were just like friends
Speaker 1: getting together. And when she was asked by a member
Speaker 1: of the press if she thought the matter would damage
Speaker 1: her career, Lucy responded, I have more faith in the
Speaker 1: American people than that. I think any time you give
Speaker 1: the American people the truth, they're with you. And in
Speaker 1: her case, she was right. Her fans sent cards and
Speaker 1: telegrams of support, and she and Dezi told the press
Speaker 1: that they were in fact happy to have the whole
Speaker 1: thing out in the open. I Love Lucy ended in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, but Lucy and Dezi continued at the
Speaker 1: Helm of Dezi Lee Productions. The Untouchables and Star Trek
Speaker 1: were produced there, but while they were having commercial success,
Speaker 1: their marriage didn't thrive, and they divorced in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: There had long been rumors of infidelity and rocky times
Speaker 1: between the two of them, but even after they called
Speaker 1: their marriage quits. They remained friends and colleagues. They also
Speaker 1: made some movies together in addition to the TV show Yeah,
Speaker 1: when she switched to TV. When they switched to TV,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as though she stopped doing movies altogether. She
Speaker 1: did them on and off throughout her career when good
Speaker 1: projects came up, and she also did theater, which is
Speaker 1: how she met her second husband. She remarried Gary Morton
Speaker 1: not long after her split from Desi. She had at
Speaker 1: the time been in New York to star in the
Speaker 1: Broadway show Wildcat, which ran at the Alvin Theater, and
Speaker 1: that was when she met the comedian and they were
Speaker 1: married on November nineteenth of nineteen sixty one, so just
Speaker 1: a little more than a year after the divorce. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, Lucille Ballt bought out Desi Arnezza's interest
Speaker 1: in Desi Leap Productions. After running the company for six years,
Speaker 1: she sold it in nineteen sixty seven for seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 1: The person company Gulf Western, which also owned Paramount Pictures,
Speaker 1: renamed the studio Paramount Television. Lucy founded a new production
Speaker 1: company smaller and scale than Desilu, called Lucille Ball Productions.
Speaker 1: While she was done with running her big production company,
Speaker 1: Lucy certainly wasn't done with comedy. That's why she started
Speaker 1: her second, smaller production company. She starred in two series
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. The Lucy Show ran on CBS
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty two to nineteen sixty eight, and it
Speaker 1: featured lucial Ball as a widow living with her divorced
Speaker 1: best friend and the two women's children. Vivian Vance, who
Speaker 1: had played ethel on I Love Lucy, as well as
Speaker 1: several writers from I Love Lucy, also joined the production.
Speaker 1: After The Lucy Show ran for sixty years, Lucille moved
Speaker 1: on to another sitcom titled Here's Lucy in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: She was once again playing a widow, but this time
Speaker 1: her two sitcom children were played by her actual children,
Speaker 1: Lucy and Desi Junior. Here's Lucy continued until nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: Lucy's last two projects were in nineteen eighty five and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. So in eighty five she took a
Speaker 1: role that was a significant depart from the comedy that
Speaker 1: had really made her career. She started in a TV
Speaker 1: movie which was titled Stone Pillow, in which she played
Speaker 1: a homeless woman. And after that, while she got good
Speaker 1: reviews for her work on that, it wasn't a particularly
Speaker 1: successful film, and she once again moved into sitcoms because
Speaker 1: that is really what people wanted of her. So she
Speaker 1: worked with CBS one more time and she premiered Life
Speaker 1: with Lucy in nineteen eighty six, but unlike her previous
Speaker 1: three sitcoms, it was a flop. It only lasted for
Speaker 1: eight episodes. In April nineteen eighty nine, she underwent an
Speaker 1: eight hour open heart surgery at Cedar sign A Medical
Speaker 1: Center after experiencing chest pains and being diagnosed with an
Speaker 1: aortic aneurism. After the procedure, she initially appeared to be
Speaker 1: recovering well, but then she experienced another aortic rapture which
Speaker 1: claimed her life. She died on April twenty sixth of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. And next up, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: a little little bit about Lucy's legacy. But before we do,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and here again
Speaker 1: from a fantastic sponsor. So over the course of her career,
Speaker 1: Lucille Ball was honored with many awards. We could never
Speaker 1: list them all, but we will talk about some of them.
Speaker 1: For one thing. She won four Emmy Awards, Best Comedian
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two, Best Actress in a Continuing Performance
Speaker 1: for I Love Lucy in nineteen fifty five, an Outstanding
Speaker 1: Continuing Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in
Speaker 1: a Comedy Series, which is a mouthful of a category
Speaker 1: for The Lucy Show. In both nineteen sixty seven and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, she was given two different stars on
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for her work in
Speaker 1: film and the other for her work in television. And
Speaker 1: while Here's Lucy was on the air, Ball received the
Speaker 1: International Radio and Television Society's Gold Medal in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: that made her the first woman to be honored with
Speaker 1: that award. In nineteen seventy eight, she was honored with
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Foreign Press Association cecilby de Mill Award. Lucy
Speaker 1: was honored by the Kennedy Center on December seventh, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. It was a bittersweet event because Desi had
Speaker 1: died just five days before. During the ceremony, actor Robert Stack,
Speaker 1: who had starred in the Desilu show, The Untouchables read
Speaker 1: remark that Desi had written I Love Lucy had just
Speaker 1: one mission to make people laugh. Lucy gave it a
Speaker 1: rare quality. She can perform the wildest, even the messiest,
Speaker 1: physical comedy without losing her feminine appeal. The New York
Speaker 1: Times asked me to divide the credit for its success
Speaker 1: between the writers, directors, and the cast. I told them
Speaker 1: give Lucy ninety percent of the credit. Divide the other
Speaker 1: ten percent among the rest of us. Desi concluded Lucy
Speaker 1: was the show. Viv Fred and I were just props
Speaker 1: Sam good props, but props. Nevertheless, ps I Love Lucy
Speaker 1: was an just the title. After her death in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and one, Newsweek named her the
Speaker 1: top female entertainer of the twentieth century. If that were
Speaker 1: not for Lucy Elleball's incredibly skilled and dedicated comedic work
Speaker 1: on I Love Lucy, we might never have had other
Speaker 1: women led comedy shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Speaker 1: and Laverne and Shirley. The many shows that make me
Speaker 1: ask why are we still talking about whether women are funny?
Speaker 1: But her influence goes a lot deeper than that. She
Speaker 1: really spearheaded this style of comedy, as we said at
Speaker 1: the top of the show, that developed into the sitcom,
Speaker 1: and that's a format that continues to be a TV
Speaker 1: standard today. I Love Lucy was also the first show
Speaker 1: to use three cameras in production, rather than just one
Speaker 1: stationary camera, and that was a major innovation at the time.
Speaker 1: As the head of Desilu Productions, Lucy became the first
Speaker 1: woman to run a major Hollywood studio, so she was
Speaker 1: not only a trailblazer as a funny woman, but also
Speaker 1: as an executive and a savvy businesswoman. She was employed
Speaker 1: in Hollywood for more than fifty years continuously, something that
Speaker 1: not many people can boast. She once said that she
Speaker 1: wasn't funny, she was brave, and while she had started
Speaker 1: her career as a model and was in fact a
Speaker 1: great beauty, she set herself apart through her willingness to
Speaker 1: do crazy stunts and look foolish. Being pretty, it seems,
Speaker 1: was not as important to her as being funny. She
Speaker 1: was willing to do broad physical comedy at a time
Speaker 1: that it was still considered the territory only of men,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, she opened up the door for
Speaker 1: women who came after her. Also during her Kennedy Center
Speaker 1: Honors presentation, Robert Stack said, quote, it will always be
Speaker 1: remembered that you established a place in television for women.
Speaker 1: And to bring up kind of an interesting source. According
Speaker 1: to Arnold Schwarzenegger, writing in his autobiography, Lucy once gave
Speaker 1: him the following advice about working in Hollywood, although I
Speaker 1: think it is pretty good advice for almost anything in life.
Speaker 1: Quote when they say no, you hear yes, someone says
Speaker 1: we can't do this movie, hug them and say thank
Speaker 1: you for believing in me. I love that so much,
Speaker 1: and I can so hear her saying it fantastic. I
Speaker 1: know it's very subtle, but I'm a lucial ballfan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the long, long trailer. It is both the
Speaker 1: movie starring Lucille Ball and Dozy Arnett and they might
Speaker 1: be giant song called everything Right Is Wrong Again. I
Speaker 1: really love de Berry was a lady, and I will
Speaker 1: say this, I have one beef with the I Love
Speaker 1: Lucy show. Oh yeah, it's so specific and nerdy and
Speaker 1: dorky and weird to dressmakers. There was an episode where
Speaker 1: she was trying to make her own dress, huh, and
Speaker 1: she The gag was that she accidentally she had it
Speaker 1: laid out on the floor, and that she accidentally cut
Speaker 1: out the carpet along with the fabric, which one, if
Speaker 1: you've ever cut out fabric, you know that would be
Speaker 1: hard to do. But two, when they lifted it up,
Speaker 1: it was for sight gag appeal, but it looked like
Speaker 1: the outline of address. It didn't actually look like a
Speaker 1: piece of address pattern. And I remember as a kid
Speaker 1: seeing that and being like, that's not how you make
Speaker 1: a dress. So that was my pedantic moment as a
Speaker 1: childish seamstress, both a child seamstress and a childish seamstress
Speaker 1: later in life. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note,
Speaker 1: our email addresses History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.