The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from 1962 to 1968. It was Lucille Ball's follow-up to I Love Lucy. A significant change in cast and premise for the fourth season divides the program into two distinct eras; aside from Ball, only Gale Gordon, who joined the program for its second season, remained. For the first three seasons, Vivian Vance was the co-star.
The earliest scripts were titled The Lucille Ball Show; but, when that title was rejected by CBS, producers thought of calling the show This Is Lucy or The New Adventures of Lucy, before deciding on the title The Lucy Show. Ball won consecutive Emmy Awards as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the series' final two seasons, 1966–67 and 1967–68.
Creation
In 1960, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz divorced, and the final episode of The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour aired. Later that year, Ball moved to New York to try the Broadway stage in an unsuccessful musical, Wildcat. During the show's run, Ball was plagued by illness and fatigue and in early 1961, the show closed when she collapsed on stage from total exhaustion. Later that year, she married for the second time, to comedian Gary Morton.Ball returned to television in the spring of 1962, when she teamed with Henry Fonda in The Good Years, a TV special on CBS. She adamantly refused to return to weekly television, as she was convinced she could never top the success of I Love Lucy.
At that time, Desilu Productions was struggling. In the spring of 1961, four of the studio's situation comedies were cancelled: The Ann Sothern Show; Angel, a sitcom starring Marshall Thompson and French actress Annie Farge; Harrigan and Son, starring Pat O'Brien and Roger Perry; and Guestward, Ho!, starring Joanne Dru and Mark Miller. In the spring of 1962, after a two-year run, the comedy series Pete and Gladys was canceled. It starred Harry Morgan and Cara Williams in the title roles. At that time, the red-headed Williams, who had been promoted as the next Lucille Ball, had just received an Emmy nomination as Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on the show. That left Desilu with only one hit series, The Untouchables.
Arnaz, as president of Desilu, offered Ball an opportunity to return to television in a weekly sitcom. At that time, CBS executives were somewhat dubious as to whether Ball could carry a show without Arnaz, and whether she could follow such a landmark series as I Love Lucy. It was "never intended for this program to go beyond a single season." This arrangement was "meant to be a stop-gap measure for the beleaguered studio" and that through the sale of this series, Desilu was able to "force the CBS network to invest in and air other upcoming Desilu products." It was a strategy that Ball would use in the future to take control of The Lucy Shows renewal from CBS. With Arnaz's encouragement and persuasion, Ball agreed to do the show, provided that it would be shown on Monday nights, and that she would be reunited with Vivian Vance and her writers from I Love Lucy. CBS agreed to a full season of episodes without a pilot, and The Lucy Show premiered on Monday, October 1, 1962, at 8:30 p.m.
Premise
The original premise of the series was that widow Lucy Carmichael lives in the fictional town of Danfield, New York with her teenage daughter Chris and younger son Jerry, with her divorced friend Vivian "Viv" Bagley and Bagley's young son Sherman as tenants. Early episodes included their next-door neighbor, Harry Connors. Lucy's late husband left her a substantial trust fund, managed by a local banker ; Lucy would frequently try to persuade the bank to let her raid the fund for various purchases or harebrained projects. Lucy also took on various jobs to boost her finances. Lucy, Viv, and Chris all dated regularly, yielding additional fodder for plots; in early episodes, Viv had a regular boyfriend, Eddie Collins.In 1965, the show was extensively retooled for its fourth season. Lucy moves to Los Angeles to be closer to Chris, who was attending college in California, and enrolls Jerry in a military boarding school there. Viv, now remarried as Vivian Bunson, remains in Danfield with Sherman, but visits Lucy a few times; Lucy's new best friend is Mary Jane Lewis. Lucy finds that Mr. Mooney has been transferred to the Los Angeles branch of the bank, and she eventually becomes his employee there. The new setting provided ample opportunity for celebrities to appear as themselves, often becoming entangled in Lucy's zany schemes. References to Lucy's children and her trust fund were eventually dropped, and this remained the show's premise through the sixth and final season.
Production
The show began with Lucille Ball as Lucy Carmichael, a widow with two children, Chris and Jerry, living in the fictional town of Danfield, New York, sharing her home with divorced friend Vivian Bagley and her son, Sherman. In order to get Vance to commit to the series, Arnaz acquiesced to her demands for an increase in salary, co-star billing, a more attractive wardrobe - though it remained somewhat dowdy - and, finally, that her character's name be Vivian. After doing I Love Lucy, she was still being referred to as Ethel Mertz by people on the street, much to her annoyance.Although the book on which the show was based, Irene Kampen's Life Without George, centered on two divorcées living together in the same house raising their children, it was decided early on that the Lucy Carmichael character should instead be a widow. The consensus was that fans would be offended by a Lucy who was divorced, despite the fact that this was a new character and Ball herself was divorced. The character of Vivian Bagley became the first divorced woman on primetime television.
In the show's original format, Lucy had been left with a substantial trust fund by her late husband, which was managed during the first season by local banker Mr. Barnsdahl. Comedian Dick Martin, working solo from his longtime partner Dan Rowan, was cast in ten episodes as Lucy's next-door neighbor and frequent boyfriend, Harry Connors, during the show's first season. Character actor Don Briggs was also featured in six episodes as Viv's beau, Eddie Collins, and Tom Lowell, a young actor seen on various primetime television shows, appeared in three installments as Chris Carmichael's boyfriend, Alan Harper. The first season of The Lucy Show fully utilized the talents of Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Martin, Bob Schiller, and Bob Weiskopf in creating its thirty episodes, with Desi Arnaz as executive producer for fifteen of those shows. At the end of its first season, The Lucy Show received highly positive reviews from the critics and ranked #5 in the Nielsen seasonal ratings. Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award as Best Actress in a Series, but lost to Shirley Booth for the NBC comedy hit Hazel. On the strength of its high ratings, the series was renewed for a second year, but a number of significant changes were made.
At the beginning of the 1962-63 season, Desi Arnaz resigned as head of Desilu and as the executive producer of The Lucy Show. Ball took over as president of the studio and Elliott Lewis replaced Arnaz as executive producer of Ball's series. Dick Martin, Don Briggs, Tom Lowell, and Charles Lane left the show. The characters of Harry Connors and Alan Harper were never mentioned again. Briggs would make one more appearance as Eddie Collins in the episode "Lucy Goes Duck Hunting". The Barnsdahl character was replaced by Theodore J. Mooney, played by Gale Gordon, who would remain with the series for the remainder of its run, surviving another format change. In the episode "Lucy Gets Locked in the Vault", Gordon's character is introduced when Lucy discovers that Mr. Barnsdahl has been transferred to another bank and that the management of her trust fund has been taken over by a new banker. The name "Theodore J. Mooney" had been used earlier by the actor George Cisar, who was cast as a police sergeant on thirty-one episodes of Gordon's other CBS sitcom, Dennis the Menace.
Gordon had worked with Ball as far back as 1938 on the CBS radio program The Wonder Show and later worked with her on another radio show, My Favorite Husband. When CBS retooled My Favorite Husband for television as I Love Lucy, Gordon was offered the role of Fred Mertz, but he was already committed to the radio series Our Miss Brooks so William Frawley was cast in the part. In 1952, Gordon guest starred on the first season of I Love Lucy as Ricky Ricardo's boss at the Tropicana, Alvin Littlefield. Six years later, Gordon became a regular on the short-lived NBC-TV sitcom Sally which starred actress Joan Caulfield. In the late fall of 1958, Gordon guest-starred as a judge in the hour-long The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour episode "Lucy Makes Room for Danny". From 1960 to 1962, he had recurring roles on two CBS-TV sitcoms - The Danny Thomas Show and Pete and Gladys. Gordon was to have joined The Lucy Show at its premiere in the fall of 1962, but he was still contractually obligated to Dennis the Menace, in which he had replaced Joseph Kearns, who had unexpectedly died earlier in the year. It was later revealed that Ball had grown unhappy with Charles Lane because of his difficulty remembering his lines in front of the studio audience and was eager to have Gordon join the cast. Lane then became a semi-regular on the CBS-TV sitcom Petticoat Junction as Homer Bedloe.
During the first two seasons, a few guest stars were brought in for some episodes such as Broadway superstar Ethel Merman, actor-comedian Wally Cox, singer Roberta Sherwood, and golf pros Jimmy Demaret and Bo Wininger. Character actor-comedian Hans Conried, who was a semi-regular on The Danny Thomas Show playing Uncle Tonoose, appeared on two episodes of The Lucy Show in 1963 playing Dr. Gitterman, a voice teacher. At this time, Ball also used many other well-known character actors in featured parts such as Carole Cook, Mary Wickes, Roscoe Karns, John McGiver, William Schallert, John Carradine, Robert Alda, Majel Barrett, Karen Norris, Dorothy Konrad, Lou Krugman, Stafford Repp, Ellen Corby, Philip Carey, Carl Benton Reid, Lyle Talbot, Leon Ames, Jackie Coogan, Kathleen Freeman, Keith Andes, William Windom, Vito Scotti. Robert Rockwell, Frank Aletter, Reta Shaw, Murvyn Vye, Hazel Pierce, J. Pat O'Malley, Roland Winters, Sandra Gould, Cesare Danova, Bobs Watson, Nancy Kulp, future Academy Award-winning actor Jack Albertson, and the so-called "Queen of the Hollywood Extras" Bess Flowers. In addition, young performers like Don Grady, Tina Cole, Barry Livingston, Eddie Applegate, Stephen Talbot, Lee Aaker, Eddie Hodges, and future Academy Award-nominee Michael J. Pollard and Ball's two children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr., made appearances on the program. In the second season, Ball's second husband Gary Morton made his acting debut on The Lucy Show.
At the end of the second season, a disagreement erupted between Ball and head writers Bob Carroll, Jr., and Madelyn Martin regarding a particular script which Ball found to be inferior. As a result, Carroll, Martin, Weiskopf and Schiller left the series.
In early 1964, the show was in threat of getting canceled when Lucille Ball attempted to retire from CBS to spend her time as president of Desilu Productions, but she changed her mind and signed a new three-year agreement with the network.
In the fall of 1964, though CBS began to broadcast sporting events and cartoons in color, they still refused to broadcast The Lucy Show in color even though the series had been filmed in color since the start of the second season, 1963-1964. Through that year ownership of color TV sets grew, and several other manufacturers began making color equipment and color TV sets.
At the beginning of the 1964-65 season, The Lucy Show went through a significant staff change. Elliott Lewis left the series and was replaced as executive producer by Jack Donohue, who served as producer and director. With the absence of Carroll, Martin, Weiskopf, and Schiller, Ball hired veteran comedy writer Milt Josefsberg, who had written for Jack Benny, as script consultant. Under Josefsberg's supervision there were no permanent writers for the series and different writers were employed each week. Ball persuaded Weiskopf and Schiller to return and write four installments.
There were further changes to the series. Vivian Vance reduced the number of episodes in which she appeared in that season to spend more time on the East Coast with her husband, literary editor John Dodds. Ann Sothern, whom Ball considered to be "the best comedian in the business, bar none" and a personal friend, made a number of appearances during 1964 and 1965 as the "Countess Framboise" to fill Vance's absence. The Countess, who had been widowed by the death of her husband, "who left her his noble title and all of his noble debts," was always trying to get money to pay off her debts. She also did battle with Mr. Mooney and, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, she addressed him as "Mr. Money," which he found mildly annoying, even as he gently attempted to correct her. Because it was known that Vance would be leaving the series, Sothern was proposed as the new co-star, but she declined. Sothern reportedly wanted to share top billing with Ball, who flatly refused to consider the notion. Sothern made three more guest appearances during the following season.
In the spring of 1965, Vance was growing tired of commuting weekly between her home on the East Coast and Los Angeles. To continue appearing on the show, Vance wanted more creative control with the opportunity to produce and direct episodes and to receive better pay. Agents and studio executives misinformed Ball regarding Vance's desires, believing that she wanted to be Ball's equal. It was decided not to meet Vance's requests, leaving both Ball and Vance feeling betrayed by the other. As a result, Vance decided to leave the series. Ball would later regret not giving Vance what she requested. Without Vance on the show, Ball seriously considered ending the series, feeling she could not continue without her.
Even though Candy Moore, Jimmy Garrett, and Ralph Hart were still contracted to the series, they were used minimally during the third year. For example, in the episode "Lucy and the Old Mansion", which was the final Season 3 installment, filmed in January 1965, Moore, Garrett, and Hart appear in the opening scene, have a few lines of dialogue, then exit. It is the last time in which all of the three children are seen, and they were subsequently written out in Season 4. Dropping Candy Moore, in fact, was Ball's decision. Because Moore was popular with teenagers and the subject of dozens of articles in youth-oriented magazines at the time, her departure was originally nixed by CBS but finally accepted when Ball threatened to "retire".
The third season included such guest stars as Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, and Arthur Godfrey.