Lucille "Lucy" Esmeralda McGillicuddy Ricardo
The Ricardos in the Alps on their European vacation, 1956.
First appearance	The Lost I Love Lucy Pilot (1951)
Last appearance	Lucy Meets The Mustache (1960)
Portrayed by	Lucille Ball
Information
Nickname(s)	Bird Legs,[1] Droopy Drawers, Lucita, Cousin Lucy
Aliases	Lucille McGillicuddy
Gender	Female
Occupation	Housewife, Mother, Club Officer,[2] Committee Officer,[3] Chicken Farmer,[4] Girl Friday[5]
Title	Chairman, Treasurer and Co-President of The Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League;[2] Chairman of the Yankee Doodle Day Celebration[3]
Family	Mrs. McGillicuddy (mother)
Spouse(s)	Ricky Ricardo married 1940
Significant other(s)	Ethel Mertz (best friend/landlady/chicken farm partner), Fred Mertz (best friend/landlord/chicken farm partner/Ricky's European tour band manager), Tom Henderson (ex-boyfriend),[6] Carolyn Appleby (friend), Marion Strong (friend), Dr. Peterson (childhood doctor), Mrs. Trumbull (neighbor), Bruce & Betty Ramsey (neighbors), Ernie Ford (friend)
Children	Ricky Ricardo Jr. (son) Born 1953
Nationality	American

Lucille "Lucy" Esmeralda McGillicuddy Ricardo is a fictional character from the American television series I Love Lucy, played by Lucille Ball. She is known for her red hair and for always getting into trouble. Her full name is given in the episodes "The Marriage License," "Fred and Ethel Fight," and "The Passports." Her birthdate is fully revealed in "The Passports" as August 6, 1921 (exactly ten years younger than Ball herself); however in the 1953 episode "Lucy Tells The Truth" in which Lucy is forced to go a day without lying she states her age as 33, making her born in 1920. She also is forced to acknowledge her correct weight as 129 lbs.

Fictional character biography[link]

Early life[link]

Much like Lucille Ball herself, Lucy McGillicuddy was born and raised in Jamestown West, New York to an American family of Scottish descent.^[7] Her parents were never referred to by name, and only her mother is seen over the course of the series (during which Mrs. McGillicuddy is portrayed by Kathryn Card). As a child she was babysat by Helen Erickson, who gave her the nickname "Droopy Drawers" because of her baggy bloomers. She was also bitten on the ear by Fred Bigalow's cat. Her childhood doctor was named Dr. Peterson. In grammar school, she played a petunia in a recital. When she was in high school, she was involved in the drama program where she studied with Miss Hanna and played Juliet Capulet in "Romeo and Juliet." She was also known as "Bird Legs" and as a child. In one episode, she talks about fishing in nearby Chautauqua Lake (a real lake near Celoron, New York and Jamestown, New York). She also played the saxophone in high school (as did the real Lucy), though every song she played sounded like "Glow-Worm." Lucy also knows how to play the ukulele. She is seen playing a ukulele in episodes "Ricky Loses His Voice", "Don Juan Gets Shelved", and "Little Ricky Gets Stage Fright". A reference to Lucille's attendance at a junior college is made in the episode "Fan Magazine Interview" (1954), although which one was never stated (Jamestown Community College, the nearest junior college to Lucy's hometown, did not exist until 1950).

Marriage[link]

When she was 22, Lucy was set up on a blind date by her friend Marion Strong. Her blind date turned out to be a Cuban conga drummer, Ricky Ricardo. The two fell in love and eventually got married at the Byram River Beagle Club in Connecticut. An alternate scenario given to guest star Hedda Hopper in the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour episode "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana," with Lucy and friend Susie McNamara (Ann Sothern), is that Lucy met Ricky while vacationing in Cuba in 1940.

In the early 1940s, Lucy and Ricky moved into an old reconverted brownstone apartment at 623 East 68th Street in New York City (references made during the series date the move to 1940 or 1943). The apartment rented for $105 per month. Their landlords (soon to be best friends) were Fred and Ethel Mertz.

Lucy and Ethel quickly became best friends, even though Ethel was many years older than Lucy. Upon moving to the city, Ricky ended up getting a job headlining the Club Tropicana where they were held over indefinitely. To Lucy, Ricky's career and days seemed so much more exciting than her days of cooking and cleaning. She desperately wanted to be a star and constantly tried to get into Ricky's act. Ricky wanted his wife to stay home and complete her homemaking duties. However, in spite of Ricky's reluctance and usual refusal to give her a part, Lucy usually found a way into the show.

Birth of Little Ricky[link]

In 1952, after going to the doctor complaining of feeling "dauncey" (a word her grandmother made up; Lucy's definition of feeling "dauncey" is when you're not really sick but just feel lousy) and gaining weight, she learns that she is pregnant. It was actually Ethel that first suggests to Lucy she may be expecting, even before Lucy head out to the doctor. She is very excited to tell her husband the exciting news. The Mertzes learn the news first and are sworn to secrecy. When she was younger, Lucy had envisioned how she would tell her husband that they were going to have a baby. She decides to tell Ricky when he comes home from lunch that afternoon. However, with repeated interruptions from the telephone and the Mertzes, she is unable. She tries to tell him down at his club during rehearsals, but is uncomfortable telling him such a personal thing in front of his band, so she runs out crying. Finally, that evening, while Ricky is performing, Lucy pens a note and passes it to the maître d'. He gives the note to Ricky. Ricky reads the note which basically alludes to a wife needing to tell her husband that they were having a baby through one of his songs. Ricky, unaware that the "husband" mentioned in the note is him, wants to bring the expectant couple up on stage to congratulate them. He goes from couple to couple trying to find them. Ricky notices Lucy in the audience, and it occurs to him that Lucy may be the one who is expecting. Lucy nods yes, and Ricky is overcome with emotion. They fight happy tears and sing "We're Having a Baby."

During her pregnancy, Lucy experienced the normal pregnancy woes. She became depressed when everyone seemed to focus their attention on the impending child and not on Lucy. She couldn't decide on a name for the child and was nervous that she wasn't going to be a good mother. However, she wanted the best for her child and enrolled herself, Ricky and the Mertzes in English lessons to make sure that her child learned how to speak properly. Finally, she took up sculpting so that she and Ricky could enrich their child's life with art and music, respectively.

Lucy's show business aspirations never waned however. She managed to break into Ricky's barbershop quartet number by firing the man who had the part she wanted.

Finally, on January 19, 1953 (the same day she had her real-life son and actor Desi Arnaz, Jr.), while husband Ricky was performing a voodoo act at his nightclub, Lucy gave birth to Ricky Ricardo Jr. The Mertzes were named Little Ricky's godparents. Little Ricky grew on a season-by-season basis and by the sixth season (1957) he had started school and learned to play the drums and speak fluently.

Hollywood[link]

In 1954, Lucy's husband was given a role in an upcoming MGM film based on the life of Don Juan. Lucy and the Mertzes followed Ricky on his journey to Hollywood stardom. While in Hollywood, Lucy met many famous celebrities, including William Holden, Hedda Hopper, Rock Hudson, Cornel Wilde, Harpo Marx, Richard Widmark, Van Johnson and John Wayne. She reported having spotted 99 celebrities while in Hollywood and finally procured an even 100 when she met Wilde. Lucy was incredibly starstruck and saved anything that had even come in contact with a celebrity such as a can that was smashed by Cary Grant's left rear wheel. However, she didn't merely hob nob with celebrities, she also got a few chances to break into show business herself.

Ricky got her a small role in a film as a showgirl. Lucy's role required her to wear a large headdress and she also got a death scene. However, the headdress proved cumbersome and her part was downgraded. She eventually ended up as a showgirl who is already dead on a stretcher when the scene begins. Lucy's second foray into show business was when she replaced Van Johnson's sick redheaded partner in his act at the hotel. She wanted to impress her friend Carolyn Appleby and successfully coaxed Johnson into giving her the job through flattery. She does an excellent job and impresses the crowd. Finally, she has her third shot at stardom when she appears with a Ricky Ricardo dummy at a luncheon for movie executives. Ricky was asked to perform, but he declined in favor of a fishing trip he had planned. Lucy accepted on his behalf and schemed to build the dummy and then pretend that he's ill and she finishes the show herself. Her plan doesn't go as well as she had hoped, but she's still a smash success and is offered a contract. She declines however, when she realizes that it would take her away from her husband and son.

Europe[link]

Very soon after returning home from Hollywood, Ricky's band was given a chance to tour around Europe. Lucy and the Mertzes were again given the opportunity to tag along on the trip and get a once in a lifetime opportunity. They sailed on a cruise ship across the Atlantic where Lucy won a ping pong trophy. She also managed to get stuck in a porthole.

After landing in England, Lucy got the chance to perform for and meet Queen Elizabeth. She also participated in a fox hunt and got to stay at a real English estate. In Paris, she met Charles Boyer and was temporarily detained in a French jail after having inadvertently trying to use counterfeit money. Also, she stomped on grapes in Turo, a wine making town in Italy, and wrestled (and was nearly drowned by) her professional grape-stomping partner in a grape vat.

Moving to Connecticut[link]

In 1956, Lucy and her husband Ricky decided to move to Connecticut. This happened after a trip there and Lucy falling in love with the area. Before they moved in, though, she tried to get out of the deal. Soon they decided to raise chickens. Their best friends, Fred Mertz and Ethel Mertz, moved into their guest house (Fred was raised on a farm). After this was unsuccessful, they decided to shut their business down. Lucy and Ricky also have made close friends while in Connecticut, Betty Ramsey and Ralph Ramsey (the Ricardos' next door neighbors).

[edit] After I Love Lucy

After I Love Lucy concluded, Lucille Ball played Lucy Ricardo-inspired characters on her following sitcoms The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy, although in both of those shows, the Lucy character was portrayed as either a widow or a divorcée, reflecting Ball's real-life divorce from Desi Arnaz. In the mid-1960s, she was involved in a lawsuit against Jess Oppenheimer, the co-creator of I Love Lucy, over the similarities shared between the separate Lucy characters. The dispute was later settled out of court.

Other television series sought to copy the Lucy Ricardo theme. Even Janis Paige in her short-lived Desilu-produced CBS sitcom It's Always Jan wore her hair like Lucy. Cara Williams followed the Lucy Ricardo format in Pete and Gladys. which lasted only two seasons on CBS.

References[link]

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). After the series ended in 1957, however, a modified version continued for three more seasons with 13 one-hour specials, running from 1957 to 1960, known first as The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show and later in reruns as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

I Love Lucy was the most watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons, and was the first to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings (an accomplishment later matched by The Andy Griffith Show and Seinfeld). I Love Lucy is still syndicated in dozens of languages across the world.

The show was the first scripted television program to be shot on 35 mm film in front of a studio audience, and won five Emmy Awards and received numerous nominations. In 2002, it ranked second on TV Guide's list of television's greatest shows, behind Seinfeld and ahead of The Honeymooners.^[1] In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME."^[2] I Love Lucy remains hugely popular today; more than 60 years after its debut, it is still seen by 40 million Americans each year.^[3]

Premise[link]

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 delivery of her son Desi Arnaz Jr.^[4]

Lucy is naive and ambitious, with an undeserved zeal for stardom and a knack for getting herself and her husband into trouble whenever Lucy yearns to make it in show business. The Ricardo's best friends, Fred and Ethel, are former vaudevillians and this only strengthens Lucy's resolve to prove herself as a performer. 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" or "Sweet Sue" 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.

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 ethnicity, though she once mentioned her grandmother was Swedish), and that she met Ricky on a blind date. Her family was absent, other than occasional appearances by her bird-brained mother (Kathryn Card), who could never get Ricky's name right. Lucy also exhibited many stereotypical female traits that were standard for comedy at the time, including being secretive about her age and true hair color, and being careless with money. She was also depicted as a devoted housewife and attentive mother.

Lucy and Ricky are mountain climbing in the Alps during their 1956 European vacation.

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. 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 Havana University.

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 and 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 immigrate to the United States on the very ship on which Lucy and the Mertzes were returning. Lucy later states Ricky played for Vallée only one night before being traded to Xavier Cugat's orchestra.

Lucy is usually found with her sidekick and best friend Ethel Mertz. 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.

Ethel's husband Fred served in World War I, and lived through the Great Depression. He is very stingy with money and an irascible no-nonsense type. However, he also shows that he can be a soft touch, especially when it comes to Little Ricky. 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, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The addresses only go up to the 500s before the street terminates at the East River.

Cast[link]

Cast members from left, standing: William Frawley, Desi Arnaz, seated: Vivian Vance and Lucille Ball.

Mike (left) and Joe Mayer both played Little Ricky as a toddler.

• Lucille Ball as Lucille Esmeralda "Lucy" McGillicuddy Ricardo
• Desi Arnaz as Enrique Alberto "Ricky" Ricardo
• Vivian Vance as Ethel Mae Roberta Louise Potter Mertz
• William Frawley as Frederick "Fred" Hobart Mertz
• Keith Thibodeaux as Enrique Alberto Ricardo IV ("Little Ricky")
• Kathryn Card as Mrs. McGillicuddy — Lucy's mother
• Mary Jane Croft as Lucy's socialite school chum Cynthia Harcourt, Evelyn Bigsby (Return from Europe) later as Connecticut neighbor Betty Ramsey
• Jerry Hausner as himself
• Bob Jellison as Bobby
• Doris Singleton as Carolyn Appleby
• Shirley Mitchell as Marion Strong
• Elizabeth Patterson as Mrs. Matilda Trumbull
• Micheal and Joseph Mayer as Ricky Ricardo, Jr. as a Toddler
• Richard and Ronald Lee Simmons as Ricky Ricardo, Jr. as an infant
• Charles Lane as various characters
• Dick Reeves as various characters
• Barbara Pepper as various characters
• Bob Smith as various characters
• Frank Nelson as various characters and as Ralph Ramsey

Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet, supporting cast members on My Favorite Husband, were originally approached for the roles of Fred and Ethel, but neither could accept owing to previous commitments. Gordon did appear as a guest star in three episodes, playing Ricky's boss, Mr. Littlefield, in two episodes, and later in an hour-long episode as a civil court judge. Gordon was a veteran from the classic radio days in which he perfected the role of the exasperated character, as in Fibber McGee and Molly and Our Miss Brooks. He would go on to co-star with Ball in all of her post–I Love Lucy series ("the Lucy show", "Here's Lucy" and "Life with Lucy"). Benaderet was a guest star in one episode as elderly Miss Lewis, a neighbor of the Ricardos.

Barbara Pepper (later featured as Doris Ziffel in the series Green Acres) was also considered to play Ethel, but Pepper had been drinking very heavily after the death of her husband, Craig W. Reynolds. Her friendship with Ball dated back to the film Roman Scandals, in which both appeared as Goldwyn Girls. She did, however, turn up regularly in bit parts.^{[citation needed]}

Many of the characters' names were after family members or close friends of Lucille Ball's; for example, Marion Strong was one of her best friends and roommate for a time in New York. Lillian Appleby was a teacher of Lucy's when she was in an amateur production on the stage. Pauline Lopus was a childhood friend, Fred was also her brother and grandfather's name. Lucy and Desi had a business manager by the name of Mr. Andrew Hickox, and in the first episode of season 4, called the "The Business Manager" Lucy and Ricky hire a man named Mr. Hickox.

Primary production team[link]

• Directors: Marc Daniels (33 episodes, 1951–53); William Asher (101 episodes, 1952–57); James V. Kern (39 episodes, 1955–57)
• Producers: Jess Oppenheimer (153 episodes, 1951–56); Desi Arnaz (exec. producer - 124 episodes, 1952–56; producer - 26 episodes, 1956–57)
• Writers: Madelyn Pugh Davis, Bob Carroll, Jr. (All Seasons including Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Jess Oppenheimer (Seasons 1–5), Bob Schiller, Bob Weiskopf (Seasons 5–6 and Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour)
• Original Music: Wilbur Hatch (33 episodes, 1951–54); Eliot Daniel (135 episodes, 1952–57); Marco Rizo (1951–1957)
• Cinematography: Karl Freund (149 episodes, 1951–56)
• Costume design: Elois Jenssen (57 episodes, 1953–55)
• Editors: Dann Cahn, Bud Molin

Background and development[link]

Lucille Ball had come to Hollywood in 1933, when, after a successful stint as a New York model, she was chosen by Sam Goldwyn to be one of sixteen Goldwyn Girls to co-star in the picture Roman Scandals with film star Eddie Cantor. Enthusiastic and hard-working Ball had been able to secure film work briefly at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio and Columbia Pictures and then eventually at RKO Radio Pictures. It was at RKO that Ball received steady film work, first as an extra and bit player, eventually working her way up to co-starring roles in feature films and starring roles in second rate B pictures, collectively earning the nickname "Queen of the B's". During her run at the RKO, Ball gained the reputation for doing physical comedy and stunts that most other actresses avoided, keeping her steadily employed. In 1940, Lucy met Desi Arnaz, a Cuban bandleader who had just come off a successful run in the 1939–40 Broadway show Too Many Girls. RKO had bought the film rights to the show and cast Ball as Arnaz's love interest in the picture. The duo began a whirlwind courtship leading to their elopement to Connecticut in November 1940. Despite being madly in love, however, their careers kept them separated, with Lucy's film work keeping her anchored in Hollywood, while Desi's nightclub engagements with his orchestra kept him on the road.

Despite steadily working in pictures, Lucy's movie career never advanced to the level of a headlining feature-film actress; nevertheless she remained popular with movie audiences. After receiving critical acclaim for her starring role in the 1942 Damon Runyon film The Big Street (with Henry Fonda), Ball came to the attention of MGM, which bought out her contract. It was at MGM that Ball, who had been a blonde, dyed her hair red to complement the Technicolor features that MGM had planned to use her in. MGM used Ball in a variety of films, but it was her work with funny man Red Skelton in the 1942 film DuBarry Was a Lady that brought Ball's physical comedy into the forefront, earning her the reputation as "that crazy redhead"^{[says who?]}. Nonetheless, Ball's striking beauty was in sharp contrast to physical antics she did in her films; thus, MGM tried to use her in an array of different film genres that did little to highlight her skills. Being difficult to cast, MGM chose not to renew her contract when it expired in 1946.

Ball began working as a free-lancer in films and began to explore other venues. Before and during World War II, Lucy had made several notable and successful guest appearances on several radio programs; among them Jack Haley's radio show and bandleader Kay Kaiser's radio program. These appearances brought Lucy to the attention of CBS, which in 1948 enlisted Ball to star in one of two new half-hour situational comedies in development, Our Miss Brooks and My Favorite Husband. Choosing the latter, Lucy portrayed Liz Cugat (later anglicized to Cooper), the frustrated and scheming housewife of a Minneapolis banker, played originally by actor Lee Bowman in the series pilot, and later by actor Richard Denning. Based on the novel Mr. and Mrs. Cugat by Isabel Scott Rorick, My Favorite Husband was produced by Jess Oppenheimer, written by Oppenheimer, plus scribes Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr.. Premiering on July 23, 1948 and sponsored by General Foods, Husband became a hit for CBS. During the run of the radio program Lucy appeared in two feature films with Bob Hope, Sorrowful Jones in 1949, and Fancy Pants in 1950. Both films were box office and critical successes, further cementing Ball's reputation as a top notch first-rate comedienne. They also showed her continuing popularity with audiences, enticing CBS to further use her skills.

In 1950, CBS asked Ball to take My Favorite Husband to television with co-star Richard Denning. She, however, saw a television show as a great opportunity to work with Desi as it would keep them both in Hollywood, and perhaps save their shaky marriage. Lucy insisted that Desi play her husband, much to the dismay of CBS. which was reluctant because Arnaz was Cuban. Network executives believed that audiences would not believe the marriage between an all-American girl and a Latin man. To prove CBS wrong, the couple developed a vaudeville act, written by Caroll and Pugh, that they took on the road with Arnaz's orchestra. The act was a hit and convinced CBS executive Harry Ackerman that a Ball-Arnaz pairing would be a worthwhile venture. At the same time, rival networks NBC, ABC, and DuMont were showing interest in a Ball-Arnaz series, which Ackerman used to convince CBS to sign the duo. A pilot was ordered and kinescoped in Hollywood in March 1951, which coincided with Lucy's first pregnancy, and the ending of Husband, which aired its last radio show on March 31, 1951. Ball and Arnaz used the same radio team of Oppenheimer, Pugh, and Carroll to create the television series that was named I Love Lucy. After showing the pilot to several advertising agencies, at first with not much luck, CBS was able to sell the series to the Milton Biow agency, which was able to convince one of their clients, cigarette giant Philip Morris, to sponsor the show.

Production

During the spring and summer of 1951, I Love Lucy moved into production. Oppenheimer, Pugh, and Davis began fine-tuning the premise of the show and writing the series' first scripts. The trio had the good graces of having a backlog of storylines from My Favorite Husband to adapt for use on television. In addition, the series' ensemble cast and crew were assembled. Desi Arnaz retained his orchestra, which was used in the series musical numbers and to score the show's background and transitional music. Arnaz's childhood friend Marco Rizo arranged the music and played the piano for the show, while Wilbur Hatch was used to conduct the orchestra. Two problems arose, however, after Philip Morris signed on to sponsor the show, that would ultimately change the fate of I Love Lucy.

With John Wayne in an episode.

Lucy and Desi had originally decided that the series would air on a biweekly basis much like The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. Philip Morris, however, was insistent that the show air weekly, thus diminishing the possibility of Lucy continuing her film career alongside a television show. Another problem lay in the fact that Philip Morris wanted the series to originate from New York rather than Hollywood. At the time, most television shows were produced from New York with live broadcasts of the show airing for eastern and Midwest audiences. West coast viewers were only able to view live programs through low-quality kinescopes, which derived their images by using a 35 mm or 16 mm film camera to record the show off a closed-circuit television monitor. As videotape had not yet been developed, (and would not be until the mid-fifties), kinescopes were the only practical, and affordable, means to allow a live show to reach television markets on the west coast. Complicating matters was that kinescopes were not available for immediate re-broadcast as in 1951 no coast-to-coast cable system was yet in service. Shows had to be sent to Hollywood, which delayed their airings for west coast audiences by nearly a week. The process operated in the reverse for the few programs that originated live in Hollywood, such as Burns and Allen and The Ed Wynn Show, thus making blurry kinescopes of these shows the only available print for eastern audiences. Most sponsors, including Philip Morris, found this to be undesirable as most of the television audience lived east of the Mississippi at the time. Owing to the impending birth of their first child, both Lucy and Desi insisted on staying in Hollywood and producing the show on film, something a few Hollywood-based series had begun doing. Both CBS and Philip Morris initially balked at the idea, because of the higher cost that filming the show would incur, yet acquiesced only after the pair offered to take a one-thousand-dollar a week pay cut in order to cover the additional expense. In exchange, Lucy and Desi demanded, and were given, the majority ownership in the I Love Lucy films. Putting the show on film, however, would require that Lucy and Desi become responsible for producing the series themselves. Union agreements at the time stipulated that any production filmed in a studio use film studio employees. CBS staff were television and radio employees and thus fell under different union agreements. Thus, Arnaz reorganized the company he created to manage his orchestra bookings and used it as the corporation that would produce the I Love Lucy shows. Named after their ranch in Chatsworth, California, the company was named Desilu.

Though some television series were already being filmed in Hollywood, most used the single-camera format familiar from movies, with a laugh track added to comedies to simulate audience response. Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer decided, however, that Lucy needed to work in front of an audience to create the kind of comic energy she had displayed on radio. The idea of a film studio that could accommodate an audience was a new one for the time, as fire laws made it difficult to allow an audience in a studio. Arnaz and Oppenheimer were lucky enough to find the financially struggling General Service Studios located on Las Palmas Avenue in Hollywood. Studio owner Jimmy Nasser was eager to accommodate the Desilu company and allowed them, with financial backing of CBS, to renovate two of his studios so that they could accommodate an audience and be in compliance with local fire laws.

Cinematographer Karl Freund in 1915

Another component to filming the show came when it was decided to use three 35 mm film cameras to simultaneously film the show. The idea had been pioneered by Ralph Edwards on the game show Truth or Consequences, and had subsequently been used on Amos 'n' Andy as a way to save money, though Amos n' Andy did not use an audience. Edwards's assistant Al Simon was hired by Desilu to help perfect the new technique for the series. The process lent itself to the Lucy production as it eliminated the problem of requiring an audience to view and react to a scene three or four times in order for all necessary shots to be filmed. Multiple cameras would also allow scenes to be performed in sequence, as a play would be, which was unusual at the time for filmed series. Retakes were rare and dialogue mistakes were often played off for the sake of continuity. Lucy and Desi enlisted the services of Karl Freund, an Academy Award-winning cinematographer of such films as Metropolis (1927), Dracula (1931), and The Good Earth (1937), as well as director of The Mummy (1932), to be the series cinematographer. Although at first Freund did not want anything to do with television, it was the personal plea of both Lucy and Desi that convinced Freund to take the job. Freund was instrumental in developing a way to uniformly light the set so that each of the three cameras would pick up the same quality of image.

As mentioned, audience reactions were live, thus creating a far more authentic laugh than the "canned laughter" used on most filmed sitcoms of the time. Regular audience members were sometimes heard from episode to episode, and Arnaz's distinctive laugh could be heard in the background during scenes in which he did not perform.

I Love Lucy's pioneering use of three cameras led to it becoming the standard technique for the production of most sitcoms filmed in front of an audience, though single-camera remained the technique of choice for sitcoms that did not use audiences. The process resulted in a much sharper quality of show in contrast to blurry kinescopes. This led to an unexpected benefit for Desilu during the series's second season when it was discovered that Lucy was pregnant. Not being able to fulfill the show's 39-episode commitment, both Desi and Jess Oppenheimer decided to rebroadcast popular episodes of the series's first season to help give Lucy the necessary rest she needed after she gave birth, effectively allowing fewer episodes to be filmed that season. Unexpectedly the rebroadcasts proved to be ratings winners, effectively giving birth to the rerun, which would later lead to the profitable development of the rerun syndication market.

Desilu Productions, jointly owned by Ball and Arnaz, would gradually expand to produce and lease studio space for many other shows. For seasons 1 and 2 (1951–1953), Desilu rented space and filmed I Love Lucy at General Service Studios, which eventually became known as Hollywood Center Studios. In 1953, it leased the Motion Picture Center at 846 Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood, and renamed it Desilu Studios to shoot seasons 3–6 (1953–1957) of I Love Lucy. After 1956, it became known as Desilu-Cahuenga Studios to avoid confusion with other acquired Desilu locations. In an effort to keep up with the studio's growth, and need for additional sound stages, Desi and Lucy purchased RKO Radio Pictures from General Tire in 1957 for over six million dollars, effectively owning the studio where they had started as contract players. Desilu acquired RKO's two studios located on Gower Street in Hollywood, and in Culver City, along with the Culver City back lot nicknamed "Forty Acres". The sale was achieved by the duo selling their ownership of the once thought worthless I Love Lucy films back to CBS for over four million dollars. In 1962, two years after their marriage dissolved, Lucy bought out Desi's shares of Desilu, becoming the studio's sole owner. She eventually sold off Desilu in 1968 to Gulf and Western, owners of Paramount Studios. After the sale, Desilu-Cahuenga became a private production company and is now known as Ren-Mar Studios. The RKO-Desilu Studio on Gower Street is now owned by Paramount while the Culver City studio has become the independently owned Culver Studios. The "Forty Acres" backlot was sold off by Gulf and Western in 1976 and redeveloped in the 1980s into an industrial tract.^[5]

The Mertzes[link]

As with My Favorite Husband, Lucy writers decided that the Ricardos needed an older couple to play off of. While doing Husband, veteran character actors Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet had played Rudolph and Iris Atterbury, an older, more financially stable couple as Mr. Atterbury was George Cooper's (Lucy's radio husband's) boss. Ball had initially wanted both actors to reprise their roles on television, however, both were unavailable at the time the show went into production as Benaderet was already playing Blanche Morton on Burns and Allen, and Gordon was under contract by CBS to play Mr. Conklin on the radio and television versions of Our Miss Brooks.

William Frawley in 1951

Casting the Mertzes, as they were now called (the surname taken from a doctor Lucy scribe Madelyn Pugh knew as a child in Indianapolis), proved to be a challenge. Ball had initially wanted character actor James Gleason, with whom she appeared in Columbia Pictures 1949 movie Miss Grant Takes Richmond, to play Fred Mertz. However, Gleason wanted nearly $3,500 per episode to play the role, a price that was far too steep. 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 Ball personally to ask if there was a role for him on her new show. Ball, who had only briefly known Frawley from her days at RKO, suggested him to both Arnaz and CBS. CBS 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. Arnaz nonetheless liked Frawley and lobbied hard for him to have the role, even to the point of having Lucy scribes re-tailor the role of Fred Mertz to be a less financially successful and more curmudgeonly (in contrast to Gale Gordon's Mr. Atterbury) character to fit Frawley's persona. CBS relented only after Arnaz 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 Lucy's nine seasons did Frawley's drinking ever interfere with his performance, and over time Arnaz became one of Frawley's few close friends.

Vivian Vance in 1948

Casting the Ethel Mertz character was also some work. One choice was actress Barbara Pepper, who was a close friend of Lucy's. The two had a long history together, as Pepper had been of the Goldwyn Girls who came to Hollywood with Lucy in 1933. Pepper was favored by Lucy herself, however, CBS refused on the grounds that Pepper suffered from a drinking problem that was far more severe than Frawley's. Nonetheless Pepper did appear in several bit parts during the run of the show. 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 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. Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer 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 Daniels that it would be a big break in her career. Ball, 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 Ball, being the star of the show, was it. Arnaz, 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. Ball and Vance's relationship during the series' early beginnings were lukewarm to say the most. When Ball found out that Vance objected to the use of the word "crazy" in the show for comical purposes, as Vance felt it was inappropriate, Ball began to use the word more during tapings, even saying it during times when it was not written in the script. Eventually realizing that Vance was no threat and was very professional, Ball began to warm to her. In 1954, Vance would become the first actress to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Vance and Ball would develop a lifelong close friendship. Ball would go on to ask Vance to co-star in Ball's new series The Lucy Show after the end of I Love Lucy.

Vance and Frawley's off-screen relationship was less successful. In spite of this, they were always professional and exhibited exceptional chemistry while performing on the show. In fact, their acrimonious personal relationship may have helped their onscreen marriage be that much funnier. Frawley derisively described Vance's appearance as "a sack of shit."^[6] It was reported that Vance, who was 23 years younger than Frawley, was not really keen on the idea that her character Ethel was married to a man that was old enough to be her father. Vance also complained Frawley's song-and-dance skills were not what they once were. Frawley and Vance would have an adversarial relationship during the entire run of the show.^[5]

In 1957, I Love Lucy was re-tailored into an hour-long show originally titled The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show that was to be part of an anthology series called the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. The hour-long Lucy-Desi show was to alternate on a monthly basis with other hour long Playhouse shows. The new series put a much heavier emphasis on big name guest stars as being part of the plot and although the Mertz characters continued into the new series, their roles became somewhat diminished. Although a lighter workload was welcomed by Frawley, Vance came to somewhat resent the change. In an effort to please Vance, whom he had much respect for, Arnaz proposed doing a spin-off from I Love Lucy called The Mertzes to star Vivian Vance and William Frawley. Seeing a lucrative opportunity and the chance to star in his own show, Frawley was enthused. Vance, however, declined for a number of reasons, the biggest factor being that she felt she and Frawley could barely work together on the ensemble show they were doing at the time, so it would be much less likely the two could work together on their own series. Vance also felt that the Mertz characters would not be as successful without the Ricardos to play off of, and despite being her biggest success, she was becoming interested in doing more glamorous roles instead of playing Ethel. In fact, during the thirteen episode run of the Lucy-Desi hour-long shows, Vance was given a lot more latitude to look more attractive as Ethel Mertz, something she had been denied during the run of the I Love Lucy episodes. Frawley's resentment of Vance intensified after she declined to do the spin-off show and the two rarely talked to each other outside of their characters dialogue with one another.

Years later, when Vance was on The Lucy Show and Frawley was on My Three Sons, Frawley would often bribe the eponymous sons to play practical jokes on Vance when she was rehearsing, as the two shows filmed on neighboring soundstages. It was recalled that, in 1966, when she learned of Frawley's death, Vance shouted, "Champagne for everyone!" ^[5]

Pregnancy and Little Ricky[link]

Just before filming the show, Lucy and Desi learned that Lucy was once again pregnant (after multiple miscarriages earlier in their marriage) with their first child, Lucie Arnaz. They actually filmed the original pilot while Lucy was "showing", but did not include any references to the pregnancy in the episode. This was because CBS thought that talk of pregnancy might be in bad taste and because an ad agency told Desi not to show a pregnant woman.^[7]

Later, during the second season, Lucy was pregnant again with second child Desi Arnaz, Jr., and this time the pregnancy was incorporated into the series' storyline. Despite popular belief, Lucy's pregnancy was not television's first on-screen pregnancy. That distinction belongs to Mary Kay on the late 1940s sitcom Mary Kay and Johnny.

Superman episode

CBS would not allow I Love Lucy to use the word "pregnant", so "expecting" was used instead.^[8] The episode "Lucy Is Enceinte" first aired on December 8, 1952 ("enceinte" being French for "expecting" or "pregnant"). One week later, on December 15, 1952, the episode titled "Pregnant Women Are Unpredictable" was aired (although the show never displayed episode titles on the air). The episode in which Lucy gives birth, "Lucy Goes to the Hospital", first aired on January 19, 1953. To increase the publicity of this episode, the original air date was chosen to coincide with Lucille Ball's real-life delivery of Desi, Jr. by Caesarean section.^[4] "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" was watched by more people than any other television program up to that time, with 71.7% of all American television sets tuned in, topping the 67.7 rating for Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration coverage the following morning.

Unlike some programs that advance the age of a newborn over a short period of time, I Love Lucy allowed the Little Ricky character to grow up in real time. America saw Little Ricky as an infant in the 1952–53 season, a toddler from 1953 to 1956, and finally a young school-age boy from 1956 to 1960. However, five actors played the role, two sets of twins and later Keith Thibodeaux. (In the Superman episode, Little Ricky is mentioned as 5 years old but it had only been 4 years since the birth-of-Little-Ricky episode.)

Jess Oppenheimer stated in his autobiography that deciding the sex of the Ricardo child was initially problematic. Lucy scribes initially wanted the Ricardos to have a boy, feeling that a boy would allow for more comical plot lines. Still unconvinced, Oppenheimer asked Desi what he wanted: Desi replied that he wanted a boy because this might be his only chance to have a son with Lucy. From then on, no matter what the sex of Lucille Ball's real baby was, Lucy Ricardo would have a boy.

Opening[link]

The opening familiar to most viewers, featuring the credits superimposed over a "heart on satin" image, was created specifically for the 1959–67 CBS daytime network rebroadcasts, and subsequent syndication. As originally broadcast, the episodes opened with animated matchstick figures of Arnaz and Ball making reference to whoever the particular episode's sponsor was. These sequences were created by the animation team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who declined screen credit because they were technically under exclusive contract to MGM at the time.

The original sponsor was cigarette maker Philip Morris, so the program opened with a cartoon of Lucy and Ricky climbing down a pack of Philip Morris cigarettes. In the early episodes, Lucy and Ricky, as well as Ethel and Fred on occasion, were shown smoking Philip Morris cigarettes. Lucy even went so far as to parody Johnny Roventini's image as the Philip Morris "bellhop" in the May 5, 1952, episode, "Lucy Does a TV Commercial". Since the original sponsor references were no longer appropriate when the shows went into syndication, a new opening was needed, which resulted in the classic "heart on satin" opening. Other sponsors, whose products appeared during the original openings, were Procter & Gamble for Cheer and Lilt Home Permanent (1954–57), General Foods for Sanka (1955–57), Ford Motor Company (1957–58), and Westinghouse company (1958–60).

The original openings, with the sponsor names edited out, were revived on TV Land showings, with a TV Land logo superimposed to obscure the original sponsor's logo. However, this has led some people to believe that the restored introduction was created specifically for TV Land as an example of kitsch.

The animated openings, along with the middle commercial introductory animations, are included, fully restored, in the DVDs.

Show merchandise[link]

Ball and Arnaz authorized various types of I Love Lucy merchandise. Beginning in November 1952, I Love Lucy dolls were sold. Adult-size I Love Lucy pajamas and a bedroom set were also produced; all of these items appeared on the show.

Radio[link]

There was some thought about creating an I Love Lucy radio show to run in conjuncture with the television series as was being done at the time with the CBS hit show Our Miss Brooks. On February 27, 1952, a sample I Love Lucy radio show was produced, but it never aired. This was a pilot episode, created by editing the soundtrack of the television episode "Breaking the Lease", with added Arnaz narration. It included commercials for Philip Morris, which sponsored the television series. While it never aired on radio at the time in the 1950s (Philip Morris eventually sponsored a radio edition of My Little Margie instead), copies of this radio pilot episode have been circulating among "old time radio" collectors for years, and this radio pilot episode has aired in more recent decades on numerous local radio stations that air some "old time radio" programming.

Comic book and comic strip[link]

Dell Comics published 35 issues of an I Love Lucy comic book between 1954 and 1962 including two try-out Four Color issues (#535 and #559).^[9] King Features syndicated a comic strip (credited to "Bob Lawrence" but actually written by Lawrence Nadel and drawn by Bob Oksner) from 1952 to 1955.^[10][11] Eternity Comics in the early 1990s issued comic books that reprinted the strip and Dell comic book series.

Episodes[link]

Most episodes take place in the Ricardos' modest brownstone apartment at 623 East 68th Street (40°45′51″N 73°57′17″W / 40.764226°N 73.954747°W / 40.764226; -73.954747) or at the downtown "Tropicana" nightclub where Ricky is employed, though other parts of the city are sometimes used. Later episodes take the Ricardos and the Mertzes to Hollywood for Ricky to shoot a movie, and to Europe, when Ricky and his band tour the continent. There is also a trip to Miami Beach for the two couples, with a side trip to Ricky's homeland of Cuba. Eventually, like millions of other Americans in the late 1950s, the friends move to the suburbs, in this case, to Westport, Connecticut.

Some especially memorable episodes:

• "Lucy Does a TV Commercial": Lucy is hired to act as the "Vitameatavegamin girl" in a television commercial, to promote a health tonic that contains healthy amounts of vitamins, meat, vegetables, minerals — and a less-than-healthy dose of 23% alcohol. Lucy becomes progressively drunker throughout rehearsal, but gamely keeps on pitching the product, eventually leading to a completely flubbed live performance for "this stuff." In October 2005, fans voted this episode as their favorite, during a 60th anniversary I Love Lucy television special. TV Guide and Nick at Nite ranked it the second greatest television episode of all time, after the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust". (original air date May 5, 1952)
• "Job Switching": Lucy and Ethel get jobs packaging candy that is delivered on a conveyor belt. The work seems easy enough when they are shown what to do by their supervisor, but then the pace picks up and the women soon fall further and further behind. In desperation, they resort to comical means to try to keep up. The skit, a variation of an old vaudeville routine, has been parodied numerous times. (original air date Sept 15, 1952)
• "Lucy and Superman": Lucy tries to get George Reeves, star of the 1950s Adventures of Superman television series, to appear at little Ricky's birthday party. When she fails, she dresses up as Superman herself, only to have Reeves turn up in costume at the last minute and rescue her after she traps herself on the ledge of her apartment. As Superman brings Lucy back to the window of her apartment, Ricky is furious, and at one point yells, "...In all of the fifteen years we've been married..." Then Superman says, "You mean to tell me that you've been married to her for fifteen years?" Ricky answers, "Yeah, fifteen years." Superman replies, "And they call me superman!" Reeves stays in the character of Superman throughout the episode. (original air date Jan 14, 1957)
• "L.A. At Last!": Lucy, Fred, and Ethel have lunch at The Brown Derby, a restaurant frequented by Hollywood film stars. A nervous Lucy accidentally causes a waiter to heave a pie in William Holden's face. Later at the hotel, Ricky has a surprise for her. He has brought one of her favorite actors to meet her — none other than William Holden. Fearing that the actor will recognize her, she puts on a disguise that includes a putty nose, which catches on fire when she lights a cigarette. This episode was reportedly Lucille Ball's favorite episode. (original air date Feb 7, 1955)
• "Harpo Marx": While living in Hollywood, Lucy is visited by Carolyn Appleby, a friend who is under the impression that Lucy knows numerous celebrities. After Lucy and Ethel get Carolyn's glasses away from her, Lucy pretends to be various stars. Meanwhile, Ricky and Fred invite Harpo Marx to the Ricardos' apartment. When he shows up, Lucy is disguised as him; seeing the real Harpo, she hides in a kitchen doorway. Harpo is perplexed when he sees what he thinks is his reflection, forcing Lucy to mimic his every move to avoid detection. This was a tribute to Harpo and Groucho's famous mirror scene in the Marx Brothers comedy classic, Duck Soup.^[12] (original air date May 9, 1955)
• "Lucy's Italian Movie": In this episode, Lucy spontaneously decides to visit a local Italian winery. She is completely taken aback when she arrives at the winery, is mistaken for one of the workers—a wine stomper—and ends up in a gigantic grape vat where she has the fight of her life. She literally "gets some local color!" (original air date April 16, 1956)
• "Lucy Does the Tango": The Ricardos' and the Mertzes' chicken business is not doing very well. Lucy and Ethel come up with a scheme to fool the boys into thinking the hens are laying lots of eggs by smuggling some, hidden underneath their clothes, into the henhouse. On one such trip, Ricky insists that he and Lucy rehearse their tango number for a local benefit. Unbeknown to Ricky, Lucy's blouse is filled with chicken eggs. The climax of this scene provoked the longest laugh from a studio audience in television history.^{[citation needed]} (original air date Mar 11, 1957)
• "The Black Wig": Lucy thinks Ricky is not paying enough attention to her and might be tempted to see other women. Lucy's hairdresser, Eve McVeagh, fixes her up in an Italian style black wig. Lucy uses this opportunity to pretend to be someone else that can tempt Ricky. Ricky, of course, recognizes her in this poor attempt at a disguise but acts as if he believes she really is another woman and asks her on a date. The joke is on Lucy, and her plan does not work out the way she wants. (original air date April,19 1954)

Feature films[link]

Arnaz and Ball capitalized on the series' popularity by starring in Vincente Minnelli's 1954 film The Long, Long Trailer as Tracy and Nicky Collini, two characters very similar to Lucy and Ricky. Also during this time, Desilu produced a feature film version of the show in 1953, consisting of three first-season episodes edited together: "The Benefit", "Breaking the Lease" and "The Ballet". New scenes featuring the cast were filmed and put between the episodes to tie them into one cohesive story. MGM, however, demanded the I Love Lucy movie be shelved because they felt it would diminish interest in The Long, Long Trailer. Although I Love Lucy was never theatrically released and had been forgotten, it has since been found and has been released on the bonus disc in the Complete Series collection.

In 1956 Lucy and Desi starred in the feature film Forever, Darling with James Mason.

[edit] After Lucy and legacy

After the conclusion of the sixth season of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Desi 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 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, Desi's birthday, 1960, the day after the last hour-long episode was filmed, Lucille Ball filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz. It made that playful, yet passionate kiss at the end of the final episode, which aired April 1, "Lucy Meets the Moustache", all the more poignant, as the world already knew that this storied Hollywood marriage was all but over, and also lent extra meaning to the use of the song "That's All" in that episode.

As 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.

In 1962, Ball began a six-year run with The Lucy Show, followed immediately in 1968 by six more years on yet another sitcom, Here's Lucy, finally ending her long run as a CBS sitcom star in 1974. Both The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy are notable for having 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,^[13] which co-starred Gale Gordon.

In 1986, Ball tried another sitcom, Life with Lucy. The series aired on ABC for eight episodes before being canceled owing to low ratings. However, the show debuted to very high ratings, landing in Nielsen's Top 20 for that week.

I Love Lucy has remained perennially popular. For instance, it was one of the first programs made in the USA seen on British television, which became more open to commerce with the launch of ITV, a commercial network that aired the series, in September 1955. As of July 2007, it remains the longest-running program to air continuously in the Los Angeles area, almost 50 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, of which KTTV had given up the CBS affiliation several months before I Love Lucy premiered.^{[citation needed]} 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 of all-time on December 31, 2008 on 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, having moved to the network on January 2, 2009, while the national version of Weigel Broadcasting's Me-TV 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.

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).^[14]

"Weird Al" Yankovic's debut album features a song called "Ricky" (a parody of Toni Basil's "Mickey"), detailing the plot of I Love Lucy.

An episode of That '70s Show has a segment with Donna and Fez as Lucy and Ricky, and Red and Kitty as Fred and Ethel.

Theme song[link]

The title music was written as an instrumental. Lyrics, sung by Desi Arnaz, were written for the episode "Lucy's Last Birthday":^[15]

I love Lucy and she loves me.
We're as happy as two can be.
Sometimes we quarrel but then, ha-ha-ha...
How we love making up again.

Lucy kisses like no one can.
She's my missus and I'm her man,
And life is heaven you see,
'Cause I love Lucy, Yes I love Lucy, and Lucy loves me!

The song was covered by Michael Franks on the 1993 album Dragonfly Summer. In the 1970s, the Wilton Place Street Band had a top-40 hit with a disco version of the theme, Disco Lucy.

Broadcast History[link]

I Love Lucy aired Monday at 9:00-9:30 PM on CBS its entire run.

Nielsen ratings[link]

I Love Lucy ranked highly in the Nielsen ratings throughout its entire run.

NOTE: The highest average rating for the series is in bold text.

The episode "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" first aired on Monday, January 19, 1953. It garnered a record 71.7 rating, meaning 71.7% of all television households at the time were tuned in to view the program. To this day, that record is surpassed only by Elvis Presley's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 (82.6% rating). I Love Lucy does, however, have the highest average rating for a TV show for any season.

Primetime Emmy Awards and Nominations[link]

1952

• Best Comedy Show - Nominated (Winner: The Red Skelton Hour)

1953

• Best Situation Comedy - Won
• Best Comedienne: Lucille Ball - Won

1954

• Best Female Star of a Regular Series: Lucille Ball - Nominated (Winner: Eve Arden for Our Miss Brooks)
• Best Series Supporting Actor: William Frawley - Nominated (Winner: Art Carney for The Jackie Gleason Show)
• Best Series Supporting Actress: Vivian Vance - Won
• Best Situation Comedy - Won

1955

• Best Actress Starring in a Regular Series: Lucille Ball - Nominated (Winner: Loretta Young for The Loretta Young Show)
• Best Situation Comedy Series - Nominated (Winner: The Danny Thomas Show)
• Best Supporting Actor in a Regular Series: William Frawley - Nominated (Winner: Art Carney for The Jackie Gleason Show)
• Best Supporting Actress in a Regular Series: Vivian Vance - Nominated (Winner: Audrey Meadows for The Jackie Gleason Show)
• Best Written Comedy Material: Jess Oppenheimer, Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis - Nominated (Winners: James B. Allardice, Jack Douglas, Hal Kanter and Harry Winkler for The George Gobel Show)

1956

• Best Actor in a Supporting Role: William Frawley - Nominated (Winner: Art Carney for The Honeymooners)
• Best Actress - Continuing Performance: Lucille Ball - Won
• Best Comedy Writing: Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Davis, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf for "L.A. at Last" - Nominated (Winners: Nat Hiken, Barry E. Blitzer, Arnold M. Auerbach, Harvey Orkin, Vin Bogert, Arnie Rosen, Coleman Jacoby, Tony Webster and Terry Ryan for The Phil Silvers Show: "You'll Never Get Rich")

1957

• Best Continuing Performance by a Comedienne in a Series: Lucille Ball - Nominated (Winner: Nanette Fabray for Caesar's Hour)
• Best Supporting Performance by an Actor: William Frawley - Nominated (Winner: Carl Reiner for Caesar's Hour)
• Best Supporting Performance by an Actress: Vivian Vance - Nominated (Winner: Pat Carroll for Caesar's Hour)

1958

• Best Continuing Performance (Female) in a Series by a Comedienne, Singer, Hostess, Dancer, M.C., Announcer, Narrator, Panelist, or any Person who Essentially Plays Herself: Lucille Ball - Nominated (Winner: Dinah Shore for The Dinah Shore Show)
• Best Continuing Supporting Performance by an Actor in a Dramatic or Comedy Series: William Frawley - Nominated (Winner: Carl Reiner for Caesar's Hour)
• Best Continuing Supporting Performance by an Actress in a Dramatic or Comedy Series: Vivian Vance - Nominated (Winner: Ann B. Davis for The Bob Cummings Show)

Honors[link]

• In 1997, the episodes "Lucy Does a TV Commercial" and "Lucy's Italian Movie" were respectively ranked #2 and #18 on their list of the 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.^[16]
• In 1999, Entertainment Weekly ranked the birth of Little Ricky as the fifth greatest moment in television history.^[17]
• In 2002, TV Guide ranked I Love Lucy #2 on its list of the 50 greatest shows, behind Seinfeld and ahead of The Honeymooners^[1] (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.^[18])
• In 2007, Time magazine placed the show on its unranked list of the 100 best television shows.^[2]

DVD releases[link]

Beginning in the Summer of 2001, Columbia House Television began releasing I Love Lucy on DVD in chronological order. They began that summer with the pilot and the first three episodes on a single DVD. Every six weeks, another volume of four episodes would be released on DVD in chronological order. During the summer of 2002, each DVD would contain between five and seven episodes on a single DVD. They continued to release the series very slowly and would not even begin to release any season 2 episodes until the middle of 2002. By the spring of 2003, the third season on DVD began to be released with about six episodes released every six weeks to mail order subscribers. All these DVDs have the same identical features as the DVDs eventually released in the season box sets in retail.

By the fall of 2003, season four episodes began to be offered by mail. By the spring of 2004 season five DVDs with about six episodes each began to be released gradually. Columbia House ended the distribution of these mail order DVDs in the Winter of 2005. They began releasing complete season sets in the Summer of 2004 every few months. They stated that Columbia House Subscribers would get these episodes through mail before releasing any box sets with the same episodes. They finally ended gradual subscriptions in 2005, several months before season 5 became available in retail. Columbia House then began to make season box sets available instead of these single volumes.

CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) has released all six seasons of I Love Lucy on DVD in Region 1, as well as all 13 episodes of The Lucy and Desi Comedy Hour (as I Love Lucy: The Final Seasons – 7, 8, & 9). Bonus features include rare on-set color footage and the "Desilu/Westinghouse" promotional film, as well as deleted scenes, original openings and interstitials (before they were altered or replaced for syndication) and on-air flubs. These DVDs offered identical features and identical content to the mail order single sets formerly available until 2005.

Other releases[link]

• "I Love Lucy – Season 1" (9 separate discs labeled "Volumes", first volume released July 2, 2002, final volume released September 23, 2003)
• "I Love Lucy – Season 1" (9 Volumes in box set, released September 23, 2003)
• "I Love Lucy – 50th Anniversary Special" (1 disc, released October 1, 2002)
• "I Love Lucy: The Movie and Other Great Rarities" (1 disc, released April 27, 2010) ^[19] (Also included as a bonus disc in the complete series set.)
• "The Best of I Love Lucy" (2 discs: 14 episodes, released in June 2011 in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the series and Lucille Ball's 100th birthday; sold exclusively through Target.)^[20]

The DVD releases feature the syndicated heart opening, and offer the original broadcast openings as bonus features. Season 6 allows viewers to choose whether to watch the episodes with the original opening or the syndicated opening. The TV Land openings are not on these DVDs.

Initially, the first season was offered in volumes, with four episodes per disc. After the success of releasing seasons 2, 3, and 4 in slimpacks, the first season was re-released as a seven disc set, requiring new discs to be mastered and printed to include more episodes per disc so there would be fewer discs in the set. The individual volume discs for the first season are still in print, but are rare for lack of shelf space and because the slimpacks are more popular.

Episodes feature English closed-captioning, but only Spanish subtitles.

In Australia, The first three season were finally released in Region 4 on August 3, 2010 by CBS, distributed by Paramount. Season 1 includes 'The Pilot and all 35 Season 1' episodes in a 7 disc set. Season 2 includes 'all 31 Season 2' episodes in a 5 disc set. Season 3 includes 'All 31 Season 3' episodes in a 5 disc set. Season 2 and 3 are in a slimline pack. All three seasons have been 'Magnificently Restored and Digitally Remastered'. All episodes appear in order of their original air dates and it states that some episodes may be edited from their original network versions. I Love Lucy still shows on television but there are no new shows.

See also[link]

Character actors favored by Lucille Ball who often played different supporting roles on I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show and/or Here's Lucy:

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: I Love Lucy

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: I Love Lucy

• I Love Lucy at the Internet Movie Database
• I Love Lucy at AllRovi
• I Love Lucy's 50th Anniversary Special at the Internet Movie Database
• Encyclopedia of Television
• Archive of American Television Video Interview with I Love Lucy writers Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr.
• Discussion of colorizing "Lucy Goes to Scotland" episode at tvshowsondvd.com, 9 Dec. 2007
• I Love Lucy at Hallmark Channel
• I Love Lucy at TVLand.com
• I Love Lucy Google doodle

Lucille Ball
Pin-up photo from Yank, the Army Weekly
Born	Lucille Désirée Ball (1911-08-06)August 6, 1911 Jamestown, New York
Died	April 26, 1989(1989-04-26) (aged 77)[1] Los Angeles, California
Cause of death	dissecting aortic aneurysm
Other names	Lucille Ball Morton[2]
Occupation	Actress, comedian, model, film executive
Years active	1932-1986
Spouse	Desi Arnaz (m.1940-1960; divorced) Gary Morton (m.1961-1989; her death)

Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers,^[3] especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu, which produced many successful and popular television series.^[4]

Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times, and won four times.^[5] In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award.^[6] She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979,^[7] the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986^[8] and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.^[9]

In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name Diane Belmont. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then-husband, Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo, Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz and William Frawley as Fred Mertz. The Mertzes were the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. Then, some minor adjustments were made to the program's format – the time of the show was lengthened from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first show lasted 75 mins), some new characters were added, the storyline was altered, and the show was renamed The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which ran for three seasons (1957–1960) and 13 episodes. Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show, which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1968 (156 Episodes), and Here's Lucy from 1968 to 1974 (144 episodes). Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life with Lucy – which failed after 8 episodes aired, although 13 were produced.

Ball met and eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940. On July 17, 1951, at almost 40 years old, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz.^[10] A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.^[11] Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.

On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm at age 77.^[12] At the time of her death, she had been married to her second husband and business partner, standup comedian Gary Morton, for more than twenty-seven years.^[13]

Early life[link]

Ball was born to Henry Durrell Ball (September 16, 1886 – February 19, 1915) and Desiree "DeDe" Evelyn Hunt (September 21, 1892 – July 20, 1977) in Jamestown, New York. Although Lucy was born in Jamestown, New York, she sometimes claimed that she was born in Butte, Montana.^[14] At age 3, her family moved to Anaconda, Montana and then to Wyandotte, Michigan.^{[citation needed]} Her family was Baptist; her father was of Scottish descent, and his mother was Mary Ball.^[15] Her mother was of French, Irish and English descent.^[16] Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies, including Edmund Rice, an early immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony.^[17][18]

Her father, a telephone lineman for Bell Telephone Company was frequently transferred because of his occupation, and within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved many times, from Jamestown to Anaconda, and then to Trenton.^[19] While DeDe Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915.^[20] Ball recalled little from the day her father died, only fleeting memories of a picture falling and a bird getting trapped in the house. From that day forward, she suffered from Ornithophobia.^{[21][page needed]}

After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred Henry Ball (July 17, 1915 – February 5, 2007) were raised by her mother and grandparents in Celoron, New York a summer resort village on Lake Chautauqua just west of Jamestown.^[22] Her grandfather, Fred Hunt, was an eccentric who also enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.^{[citation needed]} Four years after the death of her father, Ball’s mother DeDe remarried. While her step-father, Edward Peterson, and mother went to look for work in another city, Ball was left in the care of her step-father’s parents. Ball’s new guardians were a puritanical Swedish couple who were so opposed to frivolity that they banished all mirrors from the house except for one over the bathroom sink. When the young Ball was caught admiring herself in it she was severely chastised for being vain.^[23] This period of time affected Ball so deeply that in later life she claimed that it lasted seven or eight years, but in reality, it was probably less than one.^[24] One good thing did come out of DeDe's new marriage. Edward was a Shriner. When his organization needed female entertainers for the chorus line of their next show, he encouraged his twelve-year-old stepdaughter to audition.^[25] While Ball was onstage she began to realize that if one was seeking praise and recognition this was a brilliant way to receive it. Her appetite for recognition had thus been awakened at an early age.^[26] In 1927 her family suffered misfortune when their house and furnishings were taken away in a legal judgement after a neighborhood boy was accidentally shot and paralyzed by someone target-shooting in their yard, under Ball's grandfather's supervision. The family then moved into a small apartment in Jamestown.^[27]

Teenage years and early career[link]

In 1925 Ball, then only 14, started dating Johnny DeVita, a local hood who was 21. DeDe was unhappy with the relationship, but was unable to influence her daughter to end the relationship. She expected the romance to burn out in a few weeks but that didn't happen. After about a year, DeDe tried to separate them by using Lucille's desire to be in show business. Despite the family's meager finances, she arranged for Lucille to go to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City^[28][29] where Bette Davis was a fellow student. Ball later said about that time in her life "All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened."^[30]

Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1928, among her other jobs she landed work as a fashion model for Hattie Carnegie.^[31] Her career was thriving when she became ill, either with rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis or some other unknown illness and was unable to work for two years.^[32] She moved back to New York City in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and supported herself by again working for Carnegie^[33] and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. As Diane Belmont she started getting some chorus work on Broadway^[34] but the work wasn't lasting. Ball was hired – but then quickly fired – by theatre impresario Earl Carroll from his Vanities, by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of Rio Rita,^[35] and was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones.^{[citation needed]}

Hollywood[link]

Publicity photo for the Lux Radio Theatre, 1951

After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn Girls in Roman Scandals (1933) she permanently moved to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Roberta (1935) and briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat (1935), as well as a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936),^[36] another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant maternal cousin of Ball's. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door (1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn. In 1936 she also landed the role she hoped would lead her to Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack play Hey Diddle Diddle, a comedy set in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey on January 21, 1937 with Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of three roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead." The play received good reviews, but there were problems, chiefly with its star, Conway Tearle, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to replace him, but the producer, Anne Nichols, said the fault lay with the character and insisted that the part needed to be reshaped and rewritten. The two were unable to agree on a solution. The play was scheduled to open on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre, but closed after one week in Washington, D.C. when Tearle suddenly became gravely ill.^[37] Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those films.^[38]

She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's" – a title previously held by Fay Wray – starring in a number of B-movies, such as 1939's Five Came Back. Like many budding starlets Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In 1937 she appeared as a regular on The Phil Baker Show. When that completed its run in 1938, Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show, starring future Wizard of Oz tin man Jack Haley. It was here that she began her fifty year professional relationship with Gale Gordon, who served as the show's announcer. The Wonder Show only lasted one season, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.^[39]

A studio publicity portrait of Ball for Lover Come Back (1946)

In 1940, Ball met Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls. When they met again on the second day, the two connected immediately and eloped the same year. Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army in 1942. He ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. That same year, Ball appeared opposite Henry Fonda in The Big Street, in which she plays a paralyzed nightclub singer and Fonda portrays a busboy who idolizes her. The following year Ball appeared in DuBarry Was a Lady, a film for which the natural brunette first had her hair dyed the flaming red that would be her screen trademark.

Ball filed for a divorce in 1944. Shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory decree of divorce, however, she reconciled with Arnaz.^[40] Ball and Arnaz were only six years apart in age but apparently believed that it was less socially acceptable for an older woman to marry a younger man, and hence split the difference in their ages, both claiming a 1914 birth date until this was disproved.^[41]

In 1946, Ball starred in Lover Come Back.^[42]

[edit] I Love Lucy and Desilu

A scene from "Lucy Goes to Scotland", 1956

In 1948, Ball was cast as Liz Cugat (later "Cooper"), a wacky wife, in My Favorite Husband, a radio program for CBS Radio. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it for television. She agreed, but insisted on working with Arnaz. CBS executives were reluctant, thinking the public would not accept an All-American redhead and a Cuban as a couple. CBS was initially not impressed with the pilot episode produced by the couple's Desilu Productions company, so the couple toured the road in a vaudeville act with Lucy as the zany housewife wanting to get in Arnaz's show. The tour was a smash, and CBS put I Love Lucy on their lineup.^[43] The I Love Lucy show was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had become badly strained, in part by the fact that each had a hectic performing schedule which often kept them apart.

Along the way, she created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts." Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu, the company that she and Arnaz formed. After their divorce, Ball bought out Arnaz's share of the studio, and she proceeded to function as a very active studio head.^[44] Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today such as filming before a live studio audience with a number of cameras, and distinct sets adjacent to each other.^[45] During this time Ball taught a thirty-two week comedy workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. Ball was quoted as saying, "You cannot teach someone comedy; either they have it or they don't."^[46]

When the show premiered, most shows were aired live from New York City studios to Eastern and Central Time Zone audiences, and captured by kinescope for broadcast later to the West Coast. The kinescope picture was inferior to film, and as a result the West Coast broadcasts were inferior to those seen elsewhere in the country. Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but the time zone logistics made that broadcast norm impossible. Prime time in L.A. was too late at night on the East Coast to air a major network series, meaning the majority of the TV audience would be seeing not only the inferior picture of kinescopes but seeing them at least a day later.^[47]

Sponsor Philip Morris did not want to show day-old kinescopes to the major markets on the East Coast, yet neither did they want to pay for the extra cost that filming, processing and editing would require, pressuring Ball and Arnaz to relocate to New York City. Ball and Arnaz offered to take a pay cut to finance filming, on the condition that their company, Desilu, would retain the rights to that film once it was aired. CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after initial broadcast, not realizing they were giving away a valuable and durable asset. Desilu made many millions of dollars on I Love Lucy rebroadcasts through syndication and became a textbook example of how a show can be profitable in second-run syndication. In television's infancy, the concept of the rerun hadn't yet formed, and many in the industry wondered who would want to see a program a second time.^[48] In fact, while other celebrated shows of the period exist only in incomplete sets of kinescopes mostly too degraded to show to subsequent generations of television viewers, I Love Lucy has virtually never gone out of syndication since it began, seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world over the past half century. The success of Ball and Arnaz's gamble was instrumental in drawing television production from New York to Hollywood for the next several decades.^[49]

Desilu hired legendary German cameraman Karl Freund as their director of photography. Freund had worked for F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, shot part of Metropolis (1927) as well as the original Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi, and had directed a number of Hollywood films himself, including The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff. Freund used a three-camera setup, which became the standard way of filming situation comedies.^[50] Shooting long shots, medium shots, and close-ups on a comedy in front of a live audience demanded discipline, technique, and close choreography. Among other non-standard techniques used in filming the show, cans of paint (in shades ranging from white to medium gray) were kept on set to "paint out" inappropriate shadows and disguise lighting flaws.^[45][51] Freund also pioneered "flat lighting," in which everything is brightly lit to eliminate shadows and the need for endless relighting.

I Love Lucy dominated the weekly TV ratings in the United States for most of its run. (There was an attempt to adapt the show for radio; the cast and writers adapted the memorable "Breaking the Lease" episode—in which the Ricardos and Mertzes fall out over an argument, the Ricardos threaten to move, but they're stuck in a firm lease—for a radio audition disc that never aired but has survived.)^[52] In the scene where Lucy and Ricky are practicing the tango in the episode "Lucy Does The Tango," the longest recorded studio audience laugh in the history of the show was produced. It was so long, in fact, that the sound editor had to cut that particular part of the soundtrack in half.^[53] The strenuous rehearsals and demands of Desilu studio kept the Arnazes too busy to comprehend the show's success. During the show's production breaks they starred together in feature films: Vincente Minnelli's The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Alexander Hall's Forever, Darling (1956).

Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Our Miss Brooks (starring Ball's 1937 Stage Door co-star Eve Arden), The Untouchables, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible. Many other shows, particularly My Three Sons in its first seven of twelve seasons, Sheldon Leonard-produced series like Make Room for Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and I Spy, were filmed at Desilu Studios and bear its logo. Desilu was eventually sold and merged into Paramount Pictures in 1967.

Testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities[link]

When Ball registered to vote in 1936, she listed her party affiliation as Communist.^[54] (She was registered as a Communist in 1938 as well.)^[55] In order to sponsor the Communist Party's 1936 candidate for the California State Assembly's 57th District, Ball signed a certificate stating "I am registered as affiliated with the Communist Party."^[56] The same year, she was appointed to the State Central Committee of the Communist Party of California, according to records of the California Secretary of State. In 1937, Hollywood writer Rena Vale, a self-identified former Communist, attended a Communist Party new members' class at Ball's home, according to Vale's testimony before the United States House of Representatives' Special Committee on Un-American Activities, on July 22, 1940.^[57] Two years later, Vale reaffirmed this testimony in a sworn deposition:

...within a few days after my third application to join the Communist Party was made, I received a notice to attend a meeting on North Ogden Drive, Hollywood; although it was a typed, unsigned note, merely requesting my presence at the address at 8 o'clock in the evening on a given day, I knew it was the long-awaited notice to attend Communist Party new members classes... on arrival at this address I found several others present; an elderly man informed us that we were the guests of the screen actress, Lucille Ball, and showed us various pictures, books and other objects to establish that fact, and stated she was glad to loan her home for a Communist Party new members class...^[58]

In a 1944 British Pathe newsreel, titled Fund Raising For Roosevelt, Ball was featured prominently among several stage and film stars at a fund-raising event in support of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign for re-election.^[59] She also stated that in the 1952 US Presidential Election, she voted for Republican Dwight Eisenhower.^[60]

On September 4, 1953, Ball met privately with HUAC investigator William A. Wheeler in Hollywood and gave him sealed testimony. She stated that she had registered to vote as a Communist "or intended to vote the Communist Party ticket" in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence.^[61] She stated she "at no time intended to vote as a Communist."

Ball stated she has never been a member of the Communist Party "to her knowledge";... did not know whether or not any meetings were ever held at her home at 1344 North Ogden Drive; stated... [that if she had been appointed] as a delegate to the State Central Committee of the Communist Party of California in 1936 it was done without her knowledge or consent; [and stated that she] did not recall signing the document sponsoring EMIL FREED for the Communist Party nomination to the office of member of the assembly for the 57th District...
A review of the subject's file reflects no activity that would warrant her inclusion on the Security Index.^[62]

J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, named "Lucy and Dezi" [sic] among his "favorites of the entertainment world."^[63] Immediately before the filming of episode 68 ("The Girls Go Into Business") of I Love Lucy, Arnaz, instead of his usual audience warm-up, told the audience about Lucy and her grandfather. Arnaz quipped: "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate."^{[citation needed]} Then, he presented his wife and she received a standing ovation from the audience.^{[64][not in citation given]}

Children and divorce[link]

Lucille Ball, with her husband Desi Arnaz in 1953.

On July 17, 1951, one month before her fortieth birthday and after "several"^[10] miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz.^[10] A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.^[11] When he was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings hit, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the show. (Ball's necessary and planned cesarean section in real life was scheduled for the same date that her television character gave birth.)^[11] There were several challenges from CBS, insisting that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air. After approval from several religious figures^[65] the network allowed the pregnancy storyline, but insisted that the word "expecting" be used instead of "pregnant." (Arnaz garnered laughs when he deliberately mispronounced it as "'spectin'").^[66] The episode's official title was "Lucy Is Enceinte," borrowing the French word for pregnant;^[19] however, episode titles never appeared on the show. The birth made the first cover of TV Guide in January 1953.^[67]

Ball was outspoken against the relationship that Desi Jr. had with Liza Minnelli. Talking about Liza Minnelli dating her son, she was quoted as saying, "I miss Liza, but you cannot domesticate Liza."^[68] Her close friends in the business included Ginger Rogers, Vivian Vance, Mary Wickes and Carole Cook.

In October 1956, Ball, Vivian Vance, Desi Arnaz, and William Frawley all appeared on a Bob Hope special on NBC, including a spoof of I Love Lucy, the only time all four stars were together on a color telecast.

By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz; his increased drinking further compounded matters.^{[citation needed]} On May 4, 1960, just two months after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, the couple divorced. Until his death in 1986, however, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke very fondly of each other.^{[citation needed]} Her real-life divorce indirectly found its way into her later television series, as she was always cast as an unmarried woman.^[69][70]

The following year, Ball did a musical on Broadway, Wildcat, co-starring Paula Stewart. That marked the beginning of a thirty-year friendship between Lucy and Paula Stewart, who introduced her to second husband Gary Morton, a Borscht Belt stand-up comic who was thirteen years her junior.^[13] According to Ball, Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy due to his hectic work schedule.^[71] Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer. Morton also played occasional bit parts on Ball's various series.^[72]

Later career[link]

The 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat ended its run early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show.^[73] The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over," which she performed with Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show. She made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), and the musical Mame (1974), and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show (1962–68), which costarred Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy (1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball appeared on the Dick Cavett show in 1974 and spoke of her history and life with Arnaz. She revealed how she felt about other actors and actresses as well as her love for Arnaz. She continued by telling Cavett that the success to her life was, "getting rid of what was wrong and replacing it with what is right," talking about her divorce from Arnaz and marriage to Morton.

Ball also revealed in this interview that the strangest thing to ever happen to her was after she had some dental work completed and having lead fillings in her teeth, she started hearing radio stations in her head. She explained coming home one night from the studio and as she passed one area, she heard what she thought was morse code or a "tapping." She stated that "as I backed up it got stronger. The next morning, I reported it to the authorities and upon investigation, they found a Japanese radio transmitter that had been buried and was actively transmitting codes back to the Japanese."^[74][75] The extraordinary theory that dental fillings could pick up radio signals would ultimately be tested and debunked on the TV show Mythbusters nearly thirty years later.

Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate. Director/producer John Frankenheimer, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury in a mother role in All Fall Down and insisted on having her for the part.^[76]

Ball at her last public appearance at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989, four weeks before her death

During the mid-1980s, she attempted to resurrect her television career. In 1982, Ball hosted a two-part Three's Company retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show.^[77] A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, received mixed reviews. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy, costarring her longtime foil Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and prolific producer/former actor Aaron Spelling was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC.^[78] The failure of this series was said to have sent Ball into a serious depression, and other than a few miscellaneous awards show appearances, she was absent from the public eye for the last several years of her life. Her last public appearance, just one month before her death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards telecast in which she and fellow presenter, Bob Hope, were given a standing ovation.

Death[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011)

On April 18, 1989, Ball was at her home in Beverly Hills when she complained of chest pains. An ambulance was called and she was rushed to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She was diagnosed with dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent heart surgery for nearly eight hours, receiving an aorta from a 27 year old male donor. The surgery was successful, and Ball began recovering very quickly , even walking around her room with little assistance. On April 26, shortly after dawn, Ball awoke with severe back pains. Her aorta had ruptured in a second location and Ball quickly lost consciousness. All attempts to revive her proved unsuccessful, and she died at approximately 05:47 PST. She was 77 years old. Her ashes were initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, but in 2002 her children moved her remains to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York, where Ball's parents, brother, and grandparents are buried.^[79]

Legacy and posthumous recognition[link]

Ball's signature.

Ball received many prestigious awards throughout her career including some received posthumously such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush on July 6, 1989,^[80] and The Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award.^[81]

There is a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatre was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor.^[82] Ball was among Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century.^[83]

On August 6, 2001, which would have been her ninetieth birthday, the United States Postal Service honored her with a commemorative postage stamp as part of its Legends of Hollywood series.^[84] Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide more than any other person; she appeared on thirty-nine covers, including the very first cover in 1953, with her baby son Desi Arnaz, Jr.^[85] TV Guide voted Lucille Ball as the Greatest TV Star of All Time and later it commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of I Love Lucy with eight collector covers celebrating memorable scenes from the show and in another instance they named I Love Lucy the second best television program in American history, after Seinfeld.^[86] Because of her liberated mindset and approval of the women's movement, Ball was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.^[87]

She was awarded the Legacy of Laughter award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards in 2007,^[88] I Love Lucy was named the Greatest TV Series by Hall of Fame Magazine,^{[citation needed]} and TV Guide voted her greatest TV star of all time^[32] In November of that year, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the 50 Greatest TV Icons, after Johnny Carson. In a poll done by the public, however, they chose her as the greatest icon.^[89]

On August 6, 2011, which would have been her hundredth birthday, Google honored Ball with an interactive doodle on their homepage. This doodle displayed six classic moments from the I Love Lucy sitcom.^[90] On the same day a total of 915 Ball look-alikes converged on Jamestown, New York to celebrate the birthday and set a new world record for such a gathering.^[91]

On February 8, 1960, she was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to motion pictures, and one at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard for television.^[92]

Filmography and television work[link]

References[link]

Citations – books

Web pages

Further reading[link]

• Lucille Ball FAQ: Everything Left to Know About America's Favorite Redhead by James Sheridan and Barry Monush (2011) ISBN 978-1-61774-082-4
• The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball: Interpreting the Icon by Michael Karol (2005) ISBN 0-595-37951-6
• Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia by Michael Karol (2004) ISBN 0-595-29761-7
• Lucy in Print by Michael Karol (2003) ISBN 0-595-29321-2
• Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy by Madelyn Pugh Davis with Bob Carroll Jr. (2005) ISBN 978-1-57860-247-6
• I Love Lucy: The Complete Picture History of the Most Popular TV Show Ever by Michael McClay (1995) ISBN 0-446-51750-X (hardcover)
• Young, Jordan R. (1999) The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio & TV's Golden Age. Beverly Hills: Past Times Publishing ISBN 0-940410-37-0 (interview with Bob Schiller)

External links[link]

	United States portal
	Biography portal
	Television portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lucille Ball

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lucille Ball

• Official website
• Lucille Ball at the Internet Broadway Database
• Lucille Ball at the Internet Movie Database
• Lucille Ball at AllRovi

• Lucille Ball at TV Guide
• Lucille Ball at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
• Flint, Peter B. "Lucille Ball, Spirited Doyenne Of TV Comedies, Dies at 77." The New York Times. April 27, 1989.
• Lucille Ball & several other actors participate on Orson Welles Radio Almanac 1944; recordings
• Celebrating Lucille Ball at 100: Unpublished Photos – slideshow by LIFE.com
• Lucille Ball Google doodle

Glenn Beck
Beck speaking at the Values Voter Summit in 2011
Born	Glenn Edward Lee Beck[1] (1964-02-10) February 10, 1964 (age 48) Everett, Washington, U.S.
Residence	Fort Worth, Texas[2]
Nationality	American
Education	Sehome High School
Occupation	Radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host
Home town	Mount Vernon, Washington, U.S.
Salary	US$32 million (2009–10)[3][4]
Net worth	US$65 million (2011)
Religion	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)[5][6][7][8]
Spouse	Claire (1983–1994) Tania (m. 1999); 4 children total
Awards	Defender of Israel Award, Zionist Organization of America 2011[9]
Website
Glenn Beck's Official Website

Glenn Edward Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. He formerly hosted the Glenn Beck television program, which ran from January 2006 to October 2008 on HLN and from January 2009 to June 2011 on the Fox News Channel. Beck has authored six New York Times–bestselling books.^[3] Beck is the founder and CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, a multimedia production company through which he produces content for radio, television, publishing, the stage, and the Internet. It was announced on April 6, 2011, that Beck would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox News later in the year but would team with Fox to "produce a slate of projects for FOX News Channel and FOX News' digital properties".^[10] Beck's last daily show on the network was June 30, 2011.^[11] In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter named Beck on its Digital Power Fifty list.^[12]

Beck's supporters praise him as a constitutional stalwart defending traditional American values,^[13] while his critics contend he promotes conspiracy theories and employs incendiary rhetoric for ratings.^[14]

Personal life[link]

Early years[link]

Glenn Edward Lee Beck was born in Everett, Washington, to William and Mary Beck, who lived in Mountlake Terrace, Washington at the time of their son's birth.^[15] The family later moved to Mount Vernon, Washington,^[16] where they owned and operated City Bakery in the downtown area.^[17] He is descended from German immigrants who came to the United States in the 19th century.^[18] Beck was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Mount Vernon.

Glenn and his older sister moved with their mother to Sumner, Washington, attending a Jesuit school^[19] in Puyallup. On May 15, 1979, while out on a small boat with a male companion, Beck's mother drowned just west of Tacoma, Washington, in the Puget Sound. The man who had taken her out in the boat also drowned. A Tacoma police report stated that Mary Beck "appeared to be a classic drowning victim", but a Coast Guard investigator speculated that she could have intentionally jumped overboard.^[19] Beck has described his mother's death as a suicide in interviews during television and radio broadcasts.^[19][20]

After their mother's death, Beck and his older sister moved to their father's home in Bellingham, Washington,^[21] where Beck graduated from Sehome High School in June 1982.^[22] Beck also regularly vacationed with his maternal grandparents, Ed and Clara Janssen, in Iowa.^[23] In the aftermath of his mother's death and subsequent suicide of his stepbrother, Beck has said he used "Dr. Jack Daniel's" to cope. At 18, following his high school graduation, Beck relocated to Provo, Utah, and worked at radio station KAYK. Feeling he "didn't fit in", Beck left Utah after six months,^[24] taking a job at Washington D.C.'s WPGC in February 1983.^[21]

Adulthood[link]

While working at WPGC, Beck met his first wife, Claire.^[26] In 1983, the couple married and had two daughters, Mary and Hannah. Mary developed cerebral palsy as a result of a series of strokes at birth in 1988.^[26] The couple divorced in 1994 amid Beck's struggles with substance abuse. A recovering alcoholic and drug addict,^[27] Beck has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.^[28][29]

By 1994, Beck was suicidal, and imagined shooting himself to the music of Kurt Cobain.^[28] He credits Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) with helping him achieve sobriety. He said he stopped drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis in November 1994, the same month he attended his first AA meeting.^[28] Beck later said that he had gotten high every day for the previous 15 years, since the age of 16.^[21]

In 1996, while working for a New Haven area radio station, Beck took a theology class at Yale University, with a written recommendation from Senator Joe Lieberman, a Yale alumnus who was a fan of Beck's show at the time.^[30] Beck enrolled in an "Early Christology" course, but soon withdrew, marking the extent of his post-secondary education.^[28][31]

Beck then began a "spiritual quest" in which he "sought out answers in churches and bookstores".^[28] As he later recounted in his books and stage performances, Beck's first attempt at self-education involved six wide-ranging authors, comprising what Beck jokingly calls "the library of a serial killer": Alan Dershowitz, Pope John Paul II, Adolf Hitler, Billy Graham, Carl Sagan, and Friedrich Nietzsche.^[28][30] During this time, Beck's Mormon friend and former radio partner Pat Gray argued in favor of the "comprehensive worldview" offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an offer that Beck rejected until a few years later.^[28]

In 1999, Beck married his second wife, Tania.^[28] After they went looking for a faith on a church tour together, they^[28] joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in October 1999, partly at the urging of his daughter Mary.^[32][33] Beck was baptized by his old friend, and current-day co-worker Pat Gray.^[28] Beck and his current wife have had two children together, Raphe (who is adopted) and Cheyenne. Until April 2011, the couple live in New Canaan, Connecticut, with the four children.^[34][35]

Beck announced in July 2010 that he had been diagnosed with macular dystrophy, saying "A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor because of my eyes, I can't focus my eyes. He did all kinds of tests and he said, 'you have macular dystrophy ... you could go blind in the next year. Or, you might not.'" The disorder can make it difficult to read, drive or recognize faces.^[36]

In July 2011, Beck leased a house in the Fort Worth suburb of Westlake, Texas.^[2]

Career[link]

In 2002 Beck created the media platform Mercury Radio Arts^[30][37] as the umbrella over various broadcast, publishing, Internet, and live show entities.

Radio[link]

In 1983 he moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, to work at radio station KZFM.^[26] In mid-1985, Beck was hired away from KZFM to be the lead DJ for the morning-drive radio broadcast by WRKA in Louisville, Kentucky.^[26] His four-hour weekday show was called Captain Beck and the A-Team.^[38] Beck had a reputation as a "young up-and-comer". The show was not political and included the usual off-color antics of the genre: juvenile jokes, pranks, and impersonations.^[30] The show slipped to third in the market and Beck left abruptly in 1987 amid a dispute with WRKA management.^{[citation needed]}

Months later, Beck was hired by Phoenix Top-40 station KOY-FM, then known as Y-95. Beck was partnered with Arizona native Tim Hattrick to co-host a local "morning zoo" program.^[28] During his time at Y-95, Beck cultivated a rivalry with local pop radio station KZZP and that station's morning host Bruce Kelly. Through practical jokes and publicity stunts, Beck drew criticism from the staff at Y-95 when the rivalry culminated in Beck telephoning Kelly's wife on-the-air, mocking her recent miscarriage.^[26] In 1989, Beck resigned from Y-95 to accept a job in Houston at KRBE, known as Power 104. Beck was subsequently fired in 1990 due to poor ratings.^[26]

Beck then moved on to Baltimore, Maryland and the city's leading Top-40 station, WBSB, known as B104. There, he partnered with Pat Gray, a morning DJ. During his tenure at B104, Beck was arrested and jailed for speeding in his DeLorean.^[28] According to a former associate, Beck was "completely out of it" when a station manager went to bail him out.^[28] When Gray, then Beck were fired, the two men spent six months in Baltimore, planning their next move. In early 1992, Beck and Gray both moved to WKCI-FM (KC101), a Top-40 radio station in Hamden, Connecticut.^[28] In 1995, WKCI apologized after Beck and Gray mocked a Chinese-American caller on air who felt offended by a comedy segment by playing a gong sound effect and having executive producer Alf Gagineau mock a Chinese accent. That incident led to protests by activist groups.^[39] When Gray left the show to move to Salt Lake City, Beck continued with co-host Vinnie Penn. At the end of 1998, Beck was informed that his contract would not be renewed at the end of 1999.^[28]

The Glenn Beck Program first aired in 2000 on WFLA (AM) in Tampa, Florida, and took their afternoon time slot from eighteenth to first place within a year.^[40][41] In January 2002, Premiere Radio Networks launched the show nationwide on 47 stations. The show then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, broadcasting from new flagship station WPHT. On November 5, 2007, The New York Times reported that Premiere Radio Networks was extending Beck's contract. By May 2008, it had reached over 280 terrestrial stations as well as XM Satellite. It was ranked 4th in the nation with over six and a half million listeners.^[42] Glenn Beck is number three in the ratings behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.^[43]

Television[link]

In January 2006, CNN's Headline News announced that Beck would host a nightly news-commentary show in their new prime-time block Headline Prime. The show, simply called Glenn Beck, aired weeknights. CNN Headline News described the show as "an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring his often amusing perspective".^[44] At the end of his tenure at CNN-HLN, Beck had the second largest audience behind Nancy Grace.^[45] In 2008, Beck won the Marconi Radio Award for Network Syndicated Personality of the Year.^[46]

In October 2008, it was announced that Beck would join the Fox News Channel, leaving CNN Headline News.^[47] After moving to the Fox News Channel, Beck hosted Glenn Beck, beginning in January 2009, as well as a weekend version.^[48] One of his first guests was Alaska Governor Sarah Palin^[49] He also has a regular segment every Friday on the Fox News Channel program The O'Reilly Factor titled "At Your Beck and Call".^[50] As of September 2009^[update] Beck's program drew more viewers than all three of the competing time-slot shows combined on CNN, MSNBC and HLN.^[51][52]

His show's high ratings have not come without controversy.^[47] The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported that Beck's use of "distorted or inflammatory rhetoric" has complicated the channel's and their journalist's efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization.^[47] Television analyst Andrew Tyndall echoed these sentiments, saying that Beck's incendiary style had created "a real crossroads for Fox News", stating "they're right on the cusp of losing their image as a news organization."^[47]

In April 2011, Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Beck's production company, announced that Beck would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox News in 2011.^[53] His last day at Fox was later announced as June 30.^[54][55] FNC and Beck announced that he would be teaming with Fox to produce a slate of projects for Fox News and its digital properties.^[10] Fox News head Roger Ailes later referenced Beck's entrepreneurialism and political movement activism, saying, "His [Beck's] goals were different from our goals ... I need people focused on a daily television show."^[56] Beck hosted his last daily show on Fox on June 30, 2011, where he recounted the accomplishments of the show and said, "This show has become a movement. It's not a TV show, and that's why it doesn’t belong on television anymore. It belongs in your homes. It belongs in your neighborhoods."^[11] In response to critics who said he was fired, Beck pointed out that his final show was airing live.^[11] Immediately after the show he did an interview on his new GBTV internet channel.^[11]

GBTV[link]

Glenn Beck's Fox News one-hour show ended June 30, 2011,^[57] and a new two-hour show began streaming his subscription-based internet TV network, GBTV, on September 12, 2011.^[58][59] Using a subscription model, it was estimated Beck is on track to generate $27 million in his first year of operation.^[60] This was later upgraded to $40 million by the Wall Street Journal when subscriptions topped 300,000. ^[61]

Books[link]

Beck has reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List in four separate categories as of 2010^[update]: Hardcover Non-Fiction,^[63][64] Paperback Non-Fiction,^[63] Hardcover Fiction,^[65] and Children's Picture Books.^[66]

Non-fiction

• The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland. Simon and Schuster. 2003. ISBN 978-0-7434-9696-4. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743496965. ^[67]
• An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems. Simon and Schuster. 2007. ISBN 978-1-4391-6857-8. 
• America's March to Socialism: Why We're One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades. 2008. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743598547.  (Audiobook)
• An Unlikely Mormon: The Conversion Story of Glenn Beck, Deseret Book 2008 (Audiobook). ISBN 978-1-59038-944-7^[68]
• America's March to Socialism: Why We're One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades, Simon & Schuster Audio 2009 (Audio CD). ISBN 978-0-7435-9854-5
• Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Simon & Schuster 2009. ISBN 978-1-4391-6857-8^[69][70][71]
• Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, Simon & Schuster 2009. ISBN 978-1-4165-9501-4
• Idiots Unplugged, Simon & Schuster 2010 (Audio CD). ISBN 1-4423-3396-0
• Idiots Unplugged, 2010 (Audiobook)^[72]
• Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth, and Treasure, Simon & Schuster 2010. ISBN 1-4423-3457-6.^[73]
• The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life, Keith Ablow, co-author; Threshold Editions, 2011; ISBN 978-1-4516-2551-6.
• The Original Argument: The Federalists' Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century, with Joshua Charles; Threshold Editions, 2011; ISBN 978-1-4516-5061-7.
• Being George Washington: The Indispensable Man, As You've Never Seen Him. Simon and Schuster. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4516-5931-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=WCHGmGTdnk8C&dq. 
• Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say. Simon and Schuster. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4516-9347-8. http://books.simonandschuster.com/Coward/Glenn-Beck/9781451693478. 

Fiction

• The Christmas Sweater, Simon & Schuster 2008. ISBN 978-1-4165-9485-7
• The Overton Window. Threshold Editions. June 2010. ISBN 978-1-4391-8430-1. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439184305. ^[74][75]
• Beck, Glenn; Baart, Nicole (2011). The Snow Angel. Threshold Editions. ISBN 978-1-4391-8720-3. 

Children's

• The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book, Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing 2009. ISBN 978-1-4169-9543-2
• Beck, Glenn; Schoebinger, Chris; Dorman, Brandon (illustrator) (2011). The Snow Angel. Aladdin Books. ISBN 978-1-4424-4448-5. 

Beck also authorized a comic book:

• Political Power: Glenn Beck, by Jerome Maida, Mark Sparacio (illus.); Bluewater Productions, 2011; ISN B004VGB4FO^[76]

Stage shows and speeches[link]

Since 2005, Beck has toured American cities twice a year, presenting a one-man stage show. His stage productions are a mix of stand-up comedy and inspirational speaking. In a critique of his live act, Salon Magazine's Steve Almond describes Beck as a "wildly imaginative performer, a man who weds the operatic impulses of the demagogue to the grim mutterings of the conspiracy theorist".^[77] A show from the Beck `08 Unelectable Tour was shown in around 350 movie theaters around the country.^[78]

In Beck's hometown of Mt. Vernon, Washington, supporters and detractors hold handmade signs on the day Beck was honored by the mayor.

The finale of 2009's Common Sense Comedy Tour was simulcast in over 440 theaters.^[79] The events have drawn 200,000 fans in recent years.^[80]

In March 2003, Beck ran a series of rallies, which he called Glenn Beck's Rally for America, in support of troops deployed for the upcoming Iraq War. On July 4, 2007, Beck served as host of the 2007 Toyota Tundra "Stadium of Fire" in Provo, Utah. The annual event at LaVell Edwards Stadium on the Brigham Young University campus is presented by America's Freedom Foundation.^[81] In May 2008, Beck gave the keynote speech at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky.^[82]

In late August 2009, the mayor of Beck's hometown, Mount Vernon, Washington, announced that he would award Beck the Key to the City, designating September 26, 2009, as "Glenn Beck Day". Due to local opposition, the city council voted unanimously to disassociate itself from the award.^[83] The key presentation ceremony sold-out the 850 seat McIntyre Hall and an estimated 800 detractors and supporters demonstrated outside the building. Earlier that day, approximately 7,000 people attended the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's "Take the Field with Glenn Beck" at Seattle's Safeco Field.^[84]

In December 2009, Beck produced a one-night special film titled "The Christmas Sweater: A Return to Redemption".^[85] In January and February 2010, Beck teamed with fellow Fox News host Bill O'Reilly to tour several cities in a live stage show called "The Bold and Fresh Tour 2010". The January 29 show was recorded and broadcast to movie theaters throughout the country.^[86]

Philanthropy[link]

In 2011, Beck founded the non-profit organization Mercury One, designed to sustain itself through its entreneurship and without grants or donations.^[87] In early 2011, Beck began work toward developing a clothing line to be sold to benefit the charity and October 2011, Mercury One began selling the minuscule, upscale clothing line labeled 1791 exclusively at its website 1791.com. The line's maiden offering was manufactured by American Mojo of Lowell, Massachusetts.^[88]

Projects and rallies[link]

9-12 Project and Tea Party protests[link]

In March 2009 Beck put together a campaign, the 9-12 Project, that is named for nine principles and twelve values that he says embody the spirit of the American people on the day after the September 11 attacks.^[89] The Colorado 9-12 Project hosted a "Patriot Camp" for kids in grades 1–5, featuring programs on "our Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and the values and principles that are the cornerstones of our nation".

Restoring Honor rally[link]

The Restoring Honor rally was promoted by Beck and held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 2010. The rally — which purported to embrace religious faith and patriotism — was co-sponsored by the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, promoted by FreedomWorks, and supported by the Tea Party movement.^[90]

[edit] America's First Christmas

In December 2010, Beck went to Wilmington, Ohio, a town devastated by the late-2000s recession, to host live events to encourage his fans to go to the town to boost the local economy in a project called "America's First Christmas".^[91] He hosted an event and his radio and television shows from the local theater.^[92]

2011 international tour[link]

Beck headlined his "Restoring Courage" events in Jerusalem, Israel, in August 2011 in a campaign Beck said was designed to encourage people worldwide "to stand with the Jewish people".^[93][94] After Jerusalem, Beck visited Cape Town, South Africa, and was scheduled to visit Venezuela.^[95]

Political views[link]

Beck has described himself as a conservative with libertarian leanings.^[96] Among his core values Beck lists personal responsibility, private charity, the right to life, freedom of religion, limited government, and family as the cornerstone of society.^[97] Beck believes in low national debt, and has said "A conservative believes that debt creates unhealthy relationships. Everyone, from the government on down, should live within their means and strive for financial independence."^[98] He supports individual gun ownership rights and is against gun control legislation.^[99]

In an O'Reilly Factor interview in August 2010, when Beck was asked if he "believe(s) that gay marriage is a threat to [this] country in any way", he stated, "No I don't…I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: 'If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket what difference is it to me?'"^[100]

Beck believes that there is a lack of evidence that human activity is the main cause of global warming.^[101] He holds that there is a legitimate case that global warming has, at least in part, been caused by mankind, and has tried to do his part by buying a home with a "green" design.^[102] He also views the American Clean Energy and Security Act as a form of wealth redistribution, and has promoted a petition rejecting the Kyoto Protocol.^[103]