How Lucy and Desi changed the TV landscape

July 8, 2020 3:50 PM

"CBS wasn’t sure the country was ready for an interracial television sitcom about a fiery American redhead and a Cuban fellow. To quell the studio's concerns, Ball and Arnaz formed their own company and became their own bosses, producing the I Love Lucy show on their own and selling it to CBS." Screen Prism goes on to note that the couple's refusal to shoot inferior quality kinescope (The Jerry Lewis Show 1960 Color Videotape and B&W Kinescope Comparison), set them up to invent the rerun when Lucy was pregnant (Terrence Moss blog). Desilu Productions (Wikipedia) went on to become the the second biggest independent TV production companies of the time. The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (Wikipedia) lead to The Untouchables [intro], and set up The Twilight Zone with the episode "The Time Element." Also, Lucille Ball is the reason we have 'Star Trek' (Business Insider), another Desilu production.
posted by filthy light thief (24 comments total)

With all due respect.
posted by lkc at 5:12 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Interesting. As a kid occasionally watching (and more often avoiding) their shows in the late '80s, I did not appreciate their significance. I haven't really thought about them since. Thanks.
posted by eotvos at 5:41 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

And more: Radio 360, American Icons: I Love Lucy "I Love Lucy defined the rules of TV comedy. ... Here is when American TV became American TV."
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 5:53 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Traveling USO performers, performative UFO travelers -- what's the difference ?
posted by y2karl at 6:07 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

this is awesome. thanks for posting

(just emerged from my rabbithole of learning about kinescopes to say that. i didn't even really know what kinescopes were before this post. i love this shit.)
posted by capnsue at 6:10 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was going to write something about Desilu having pioneered the use to two cameras for sitcoms but (thanks, google) it turns out what they pioneered was using 35mm and not 16mm film plus having a live audience.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:21 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was just telling a younger friend of mine about how Desilu made Star Trek.... nice timing filthy light thief!
posted by valkane at 7:38 PM on July 8, 2020

Allegedly, the fact that TV censors didn't want to show Lucy and Ricky sharing a bed is the reason my immigrant grandparents slept in two separate twin beds separated by a nightstand for 60 years. They saw it on the show and assumed it was what all normal Americans did, so by golly they were gonna be normal Americans.
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:44 PM on July 8, 2020 [38 favorites]

If you haven't clicked and read through Lucy's Wikipedia page, do so. It's an amazing read. This is my fav bit involving Carol Burnett:

In 1959, Ball became a friend and mentor to Carol Burnett. She guested on Burnett's highly successful CBS-TV special Carol + 2 and the younger performer reciprocated by appearing on The Lucy Show. It was rumored that Ball offered Burnett a chance to star on her own sitcom, but in truth Burnett was offered (and declined) "Here's Agnes" by CBS executives. She instead chose to create her own variety show due to a stipulation that was on an existing contract she had with CBS.[56] The two women remained close friends until Ball's death in 1989. Ball sent flowers every year on Burnett's birthday. When Burnett awoke on the day of her 56th birthday in 1989, she discovered via the morning news that Lucille Ball had died. Later that afternoon, flowers arrived at Burnett's house with a note reading, "Happy Birthday, Kid. Love, Lucy."[57]

Lucy was a force and a trail blazer. So much respect for her.
posted by Fizz at 8:03 PM on July 8, 2020 [25 favorites]

They astonishingly never did any professional work together! Not that I can discover. I find that baffling, but maybe also somehow comforting. Someone can have a mentor, but not have that mentor enter their own professional space. I appreciate that, as I consider it.
posted by hippybear at 9:04 PM on July 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

This article from a 1952 issue of American Cinematographer will probably be of interest:

If there is a revolution imminent in the production methods of motion picture making in Hollywood, it probably is taking place these days on Stage 2 of General Service Studios, where Desilu Productions, Inc. is turning out 22 minutes of TV program film in 60 minutes of actual shooting time.
...
From the point of picture quality, technical men rate the show one of the best of all filmed TV shows. Credit for this is due to Karl Freund, ASC, who is directing the photography.

With the steady rise in popularity of the show, the photographic methods employed by Freund and his camera crews are creating widespread interest among producers of motion pictures—both major and television. Production executives from nearly every Hollywood studio have “scouted" the show during filming and have lauded Freund for his achievements.

The article has a really detailed description of a typical week's production of an episode, too:

Although each weekly show goes before the cameras at 8 o’clock Friday evenings, and is photographed entirely the same evening, the preceding four days are employed by the company in rehearsals, pre-production planning and script revision. The camera crews have but two schedules in the five-day period — on Thursday and Friday.

The director, actors, and writers gather on the stage for a reading of the script on Monday and Tuesday; late Tuesday afternoon the first of the rehearsals are held. By Wednesday afternoon, the company is ready to run through the show for Freund. This usually takes place at 4:30. No cameras are on the set at this time, nor are any members of the camera crews present. During this rehearsal, Freund studies the players in their movements about the sets, takes note of how and where they enter and exit, and plans his camera operations and lighting accordingly.

The article goes on to describe the rest of a typical week. There's also information about the lighting methodology, as well as the rationale for shooting on three cameras simultaneously (versus just using one, as a conventional motion picture production would).

Freund was already a renowned cinematographer (THE GOLEM, THE LAST LAUGH, VARIETY, METROPOLIS, DRACULA) with decades of experience by the time the "I Love Lucy" challenge came around. (His first-person account of how the filming process worked may be of interest, too.)
posted by orthicon halo at 9:06 PM on July 8, 2020 [25 favorites]

according to a scene in the cher show( there's the line "this actually happened), lucy helped her when cher's marriage to sonny was breaking up.
posted by brujita at 2:48 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Jeez, OH, I never knew about Freund and he's a fascinating character. Cinematographer for Metropolis, director of the original Mummy and uncredited co-director on Dracula, pioneer of the multicam sitcom format... This guy should be a lot more famous!

That American Cinematographer article is written in such an old-timey style I can almost hear the mid-Atlantic accent.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:38 AM on July 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

My great-uncle Bernie was a VP at Desilu; I only met him once, but we talked about Desilu and he clearly loved his time there, and working with Lucy. (He was apparently the only member of the Board of Directors to vote with Lucy against cancelling Star Trek; I like to think the two of them had a good laugh about that later on.)
posted by Stacey at 5:12 AM on July 9, 2020 [10 favorites]

Ball and Arnaz

I'm glad they called it 'Desilu'. They could have called it 'Baz'.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 5:13 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Ball — who actually believed the series was about traveling USO performers —

This is the start of a great screwball comedy.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 5:15 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Fun fact: their daughter, Lucie, went to the same high school as Meghan Markle.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:19 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Lucille Ball is in the top five of my "if you could have dinner / talk to any person, living or dead..." list. Preferably a very long dinner, because she must have so many good stories even beyond what we know about. Carol Burnett is in the top ten, such a warm and funny human.

I'd love to see a movie or mini-series about Carol and Lucy's relationship.
posted by jzb at 7:27 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

When did they start calling it an interracial television sitcom? I honestly don't recall hearing this although I have no doubt people have called it that.
posted by tommasz at 11:46 AM on July 9, 2020

Lucy first made me laugh. Lucy. If there was a emperess of entertainment, she was it.
she was also on the unfriendly list for H.U.A.C. but she was in good company, Bette Davis, Mrs. James Gleason, Chaplin, Rita Hayworth, Lena Horne, Edward G. Robinson...the government came full force at Hollywood and beyond. Somewhere I read Lucy said Hoover can go f&;$™ himself.
posted by clavdivs at 12:29 PM on July 9, 2020

I've often heard it repeated that Luci and Desi were the first television married couple to appear in the same bed, and that this was permitted only because they were legally married in real life.

Now Snopes say it was 1947's Mary Kay and Johnny which would have had a limited reach, and that for most of ILL, Desi and Lucy were in separate beds.

I remember asking my parents some confused question about Dick van Dyke's "sister" in his eponymous TV show. It turned out that the separate beds equated in my mind to "sibling", and when they explained it to me I couldn't understand as a child why a married couple sharing a bed would be at all shocking to viewers of any sort.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:47 AM on July 10, 2020

Star Trek. Wow. Was there anything Lucy couldn't do?
posted by james33 at 6:38 AM on July 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Dip candy.
posted by Etrigan at 7:07 AM on July 10, 2020 [7 favorites]

A bit of a derail, but the Guardian reviewed a book a couple of years ago that presented a very different perspective on the origin and decline of the "separate beds" cultural phenomenon (i.e. it was a thing that actual couples did, rather than just something inflicted on TV couples by prudish censors):

... for almost a century between the 1850s and 1950s, separate beds were seen as a healthier, more modern option for couples than the double, with Victorian doctors warning that sharing a bed would allow the weaker sleeper to drain the vitality of the stronger.

Delving through marriage guidance and medical advice books, furniture catalogues and novels, Lancaster University professor Hilary Hinds found that twin beds were initially adopted in the late 19th century as a health precaution.

In her new book, A Cultural History of Twin Beds, Hinds details how doctors warned of the dire consequences of bed-sharing. In 1861, doctor, minister and health campaigner William Whitty Hall’s book Sleep: Or the Hygiene of the Night, advised that each sleeper “should have a single bed in a large, clean, light room, so as to pass all the hours of sleep in a pure fresh air, and that those who fail in this, will in the end fail in health and strength of limb and brain, and will die while yet their days are not all told”.
...
By the 1920s, twin beds were seen as a fashionable, modern choice. “Separate beds for every sleeper are as necessary as are separate dishes for every eater,” wrote Dr Edwin Bowers in his 1919 volume, Sleeping for Health. “They promote comfort, cleanliness, and the natural delicacy that exists among human beings.”

Published by Bloomsbury Collections and funded by the Wellcome Trust, Hinds’s book lays out how, by the 1930s, twin beds were commonplace in middle-class households. But by the 1940s, writes Hinds, “they can occasion an unmistakable curl of the lip” and are “no longer the preserve of the health-conscious forward-thinking middle classes”.

(I'm surprised nobody FPPed this back then, actually!)
posted by orthicon halo at 9:36 AM on July 10, 2020 [5 favorites]