KSAV Talking Television
In April 2008, I was interviewed by Dave White, then host of
KSAV's Talking Television. To hear the two one-hour interviews,
go to www.talkingtelevision.org; click on the Archives button;
then, click on Lucille Ball, Parts 1 and Part 2 (dated April 22 and
April 29). My interviews begin about a half hour into each
show. I was honored to be on the program and, yes, I had a "Ball."
[TV addicts can still catch White on Dave White Presents, alternate
Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. on KSAV.]
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WHAT'S NEW IN THE LUCYVERSE?
She's New York State's best-known export: Lucille Ball, generally acknowledged as the greatest female slapstick comedienne of our time. If you can't get enough news about the wacky redhead, her co-stars, and her life, here's where you'll find it. Dig in and enjoy!
07.17.10
Some Auction Items returned to Lucy's Daughter
Heritage Auction Galleries held an auction on July 17 that made news in the Lucyverse and beyond: former golf pro Susie McAllister, the widow of Lucy’s second husband, Gary Morton, auctioned off belongings that Morton had left with her — including love letters to Morton from Lucy, and awards bestowed on Ball — that were reportedly left to Lucy’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, in Ball’s will. Arnaz objected to them being sold, according to an Associated Press item published July 16.
The article, datelined Los Angeles, noted, “A judge ruled to block the sale, but imposed … a $250,000 bond that Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill would have to pay to get a restraining order issued.” Her attorney, Ronald Palmieri, said the amount was too high and couldn’t be met. “‘We won on a legal basis, and the judge took it away from us on an economic basis,’ Palmieri said. ‘That is very sad,’” the AP reported.
On the day of the auction, Heritage reached a deal with Arnaz, noted an article published online July 19 by WENN, a celebrity site: “A California auction house selling Lucille Ball memorabilia has reached a deal to return the late acting legend’s lifetime achievement awards to her daughter. Auction bosses stepped in, and agreed on Saturday [July 17] to return the awards to Luckinbill, but the other items remained in the sale.” Those other items included Lucy's 1984 Rolls Royce and her personal address book.
07.08.10
This week's TV Guide magazine had a special feature headlined "Best. Covers. Ever!" (their punctuation, not mine), based on a TV Guide/People's Choice poll. Since Lucy has graced the cover of the magazine more times than any other person, it makes sense that she figured in this "best of" roundup. The first national edition of TV Guide, with Lucy and baby Desi Jr. on the cover (left in pic) was voted Favorite 1950s Cover, and there was a special category called Favorite Lucille Ball cover, for which voters picked the 1957 issue that celebrated TV's first 10 years (right in pic) — coincidentally, one of my favorite covers (and pictures) of Lucy. I have a (very) slight bone to pick with the editors of TV Guide, however. They wrote that Lucy was on 26 covers, but according to my count — which admittedly, includes a handful of the pre-national TV Guides, and counts Lucy's eight appearances in one week in 2001 (to celebrate I Love Lucy's 50th Anniversary) as eight, not one, as TV Guide does — the number of Lucy TV Guide covers is in the low 50s.
06.30.10
06.11.10
05.28.10 Gary Coleman Dies; Helped Lucy “Move to NBC”
Child star Gary Coleman died today at the age of 42. Though he’ll always be remembered for the sitcom Different Strokes, Lucy fans will recall Coleman guest-starred in what I’ve always felt was an ill-conceived move on Lucy’s part: the 90-minute 1980 special Lucy Moves to NBC (see pic at left). Perhaps Ball was bored and thought switching networks, after more than 30 years on CBS radio and television, might reinvigorate her career. She was wrong. The special, though it had a ton of guest stars including Coleman, was forced, and she ended up returning to CBS for her final TV performance of any note: The Stone Pillow, in which she got decent ratings and reviews for the last time in her career. Coleman played an NBC network programming VP in the special, and aside from filmed congratulations from such NBC stalwarts as Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, the “plot” revolved around Lucy and “assistant” Gale Gordon producing a variety show pilot starring Donald O’Connor (a pal of Lucy’s) and Gloria DeHaven. Neither the pilot nor Lucy’s “career” on NBC took off. Within a year, she was on ABC performing in her final series, Life with Lucy, about which the less said, the better. In any case, Coleman was cute during his cameo, which came during the height of his popularity on Strokes (the show lasted six more years, through 1986).
05.26.10
05.21.10 The website TV Series Finale (“Devoted to TV show endings, reunions and revivals) has been asking Web surfers to vote for “The Best Sitcom in TV History.” From a selection of 200 shows, the site paired the list to 58, and then had five rounds of eliminations. As TSF reported, “In round three, things got really tough, as we pitted legendary shows against one another — I Love Lucy vs. The Honeymooners; The Dick Van Dyke Show vs. The Andy Griffith Show; M*A*S*H vs. All in the Family; The Cosby Show vs. Cheers; Seinfeld vs. Friends; and Everybody Loves Raymond vs. The Big Bang Theory. Any of them could easily have come out as the big winner…. In the end, I Love Lucy won over The Andy Griffith Show, and Seinfeld beat Everybody Loves Raymond. Cheers and M*A*S*H were so close that we moved them both to the final round…. And then, in the final round, it came down to just five challengers — Cheers, Friends, I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H, and Seinfeld. After more than 27,000 tournament votes, we have our winners.” They are: Friends (29% of the vote), I Love Lucy (25%), Seinfeld (24%) M*A*S*H (16%), and Cheers (6%). Considering that I Love Lucy is almost 60 years old), its second-place showing is mighty impressive.
04.29.10 Dorothy Provine Dies 
One of my favorite starlets of the late 1950s-1960s has died. Dorothy Provine, perhaps best known for her performance in the classic comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which she played Milton Berle's wife and Ethel Merman's daughter (she's pictured with them at right), passed away at the age of 75. I loved her in the fabulous (and unclassifiable!) series called The Roaring 20's, an Untouchables-inspired show that ran from 1960-'62; she played flapper Pinky Pinkham. But I also remember well her cameo as a saloon singer in The Great Race, which co-starred Vivian Vance in one of her rare big-screen appearances. Provine's rendering of the comic gem "He Shouldn't-A, Hadn't-A, Oughtn't-A Swang on Me!", penned by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini, was priceless. Though she and Vance had no scenes together, they added much of the atmosphere and spirit that made Race so enjoyable and funny. DP also did a ton of TV guest shots (her last was on Police Woman in 1976) and such other movie gems as Good Neighbor Sam, with Jack Lemmon, and That Darn Cat, with Hayley Mills and Dean Jones. Provine retired in the seventies after marrying director Robert Day. I will miss her.
04.21.10 SPOTLIGHT: LUCY & CAROL
This pic (right), from Carol Burnett's new memoir This Time Together, shows Burnett and Lucy doing one of their most famous duets, "Chutzpah," from the January 1967 special Carol + 2 (Zero Mostel also guest-starred). In one chapter, she mentions Lucy's reputation for being tough on-set. "There were times," Burnett writes, "when she'd say things to someone on the crew or one of the writers that could've been considered blunt, to say the least, but she was always right.... She called it the way she saw it. If she didn't like something, she let you know. And if she did like something, she was as complimentary as could be. That's why the crew and staff loved her. She was honest, and none of the criticism was ever personal." Don't expect any nasty gossip from Burnett...just the same warm, cozy, funny, matter-of-fact personality that we've loved ever since her variety show began in 1967. The book, available now, is a treasure.
04.07.10 THE I LOVE LUCY MOVIE
I've seen reports that The I Love Lucy movie will be released on DVD April 27 (see photo of box cover, left). It was originally released in 2007 as part of the I Love Lucy Complete Series boxed set, but for those who owned the individual seasons of the series, or for whom the price of the set was prohibitive, this is great news. The boxed set's "extras" disc, which featured the movie, a colorized version of the "Lucy Goes to Scotland" episode, and other gems will be released on its own, as "I Love Lucy: The Movie....And Other Great Rarities." As anyone who's read my book Lucy A to Z already knows, the movie was made in the mid-1950s to capitalize on the success of I Love Lucy, but after one screening (in a Bakersfield, Calif., theater) MGM execs Dore Schary and Pandro Berman asked the Arnazes to shelve the pic in favor of a Technicolor movie Lucy and Desi had just finished: The Long, Long Trailer (1954). The Arnazes very nicely complied, and their little movie, actually three series episodes tied together with new footage, was promptly forgotten. Until I Love Lucy's film editor, the estimable Dann Cahn, spent five years searching for it and eventually came up with gold. He reintroduced it to the public at a Lucy Festival held by the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, N.Y. (Lucy's home town), in 2005. As I wrote in my book after an interview with Cahn, "even insiders like original I Love Lucy writers Bob Carroll and Madelyn Pugh thought [the movie] might not exist. [Cahn] finally found the print in a Paramount Studios vault, listed as a Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse production. (Ball sold Desilu to Paramount in 1967.)" Now everyone can enjoy an interesting experiment. When I saw the movie, I was most struck by the fact that the Lucy episodes held up well on the big screen. Sure, it's interesting to see footage of Arnaz introducing the cast, which he traditionally did, and the new footage shot for it has historical significance, but I don't think any would ever call it a "great" movie. Still, for Lucy fans, it's a must-have. I've always wondered how well the movie might have done if released in theaters at the time. We'll never know, but maybe the DVD sales can give us a hint.
03.22.10 FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE LUCY?!
Back in 1978 when almost anything still seemed possible, Muhammad Ali had not yet retired; the heavyweight champ and the film Rocky (1976) had made the sport of boxing more popular than ever. But what would happen if the strongest earthling (Ali) met the strongest alien who lived on our planet, Superman? DC Comics took the idea and ran with it in a unique oversize (they called it treasury-sized) special issue: Superman vs. Muhammad Ali: The Fight to Save Earth from Star-Warriors. It sold for $2.50 and was 72 pages, depicting the man from Krypton teaming up with Ali to battle an alien invasion of Earth. Dennis O'Neil wrote the original story, and it was adapted by Neal Adams, who also did the pencils for the special cover (which spread across the back cover and the cover itself; see picture). Dick Giordano (figures) and Terry Austin (backgrounds) did the inking. Yours truly, a Superman comic collector since the early 1960s, bought a copy when it was released. But this was also one of those rare occasions when two of my favorite interests collided: the cover featured drawings of all the top celebrities (political and otherwise, fictional and fact) of the day watching a bout between Ali and Supes, including a certain redhead we all love. There's Lucy, right beside Batman's right ear at bottom center of the front cover (I've enlarged Lucy at the center of the pic so you can get a better look). Though I kept the cover to pin up in various apartments, I got rid of the rest of the book. But it appears we'll all have a chance to pick it up again. According to comicbookresources.com, DC will reprint the classic cover this fall in two versions: one that presents the original comic as it was first published, except in hardcover this time, plus a new hardcover edition featuring a new Adams cover and additional sketch material dating back to the original book's publication. Though there's no word on whether Lucy and the other 1978 celebs will appear on the new cover, I'll keep you posted once I purchase it. (And this time, I'll keep the whole book!)
02.14.10 KISS, KISS 
Today is of my favorite made-up holidays ... Valentine's Day, of course. It's a day when couples feel obligated to give cards (thanks, Hallmark!), feed their loved one chocolate(s) of some kind or give them flowers, and in general act more romantic than they do the rest of the year. In an effort to save you-all some calories, I'm offering a virtual Hollywood air-kiss, courtesy of my favorite fictional couple: Lucy and Ricky Ricardo (a.k.a. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). This billboard lit up Times Square in New York circa 1997 as part of Apple Computer's "Think Different" campaign. This is part of the ad copy for one of the print ads: "Here's to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." Lucy and Desi did think different. They thought the public was ready for a switch from baggy-pants vaudeville comedy on TV to situation-related comedy. They filmed their show live in front of an audience, thus creating the rerun. Desi and Oscar-winning cinematographer Karl Freund came up with a unique three-camera shooting technique, to get all the good angles while shooting, and rigged a special editing console (dubbed "the three-headed monster") to go with it, both of which revolutionized the sitcom and is still used today. While Lucy and Desi themselves thought very differently about certain things, they came together on loving each other, working together, and creating a masterpiece that is still analyzed, and most important, enjoyed, today, almost 60 years later: I love Lucy. My niece Jennifer shot this picture for me because she knew I'd get a kick out of it. And I did. So this year, on VD, as I like to call it, give your loved ones a kiss, and show them some tenderness, but don't feel bad if you forgot the chocolates. It's better for their waistlines, anyway (unless we're talking 70%-plus cacao).
02.01.10 SPOTLIGHT: TOP COMEDIENNES
TV Squad recently picked the best comedic actresses (on TV, of course) of the past decade. The article started off with this: Since Lucille Ball, television has been a bastion of funny ladies, and the '00s were no exception. Like Lucy, many of the women on this list played second fiddle to no one. And those that weren't the stars of their own shows managed to steal the scene anyway the moment they got in front of the camera. So far, so good. Any list of TV's comedic actresses has to start (and maybe end) with Lucy. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was #1 on the list, and rightfully so. In The New Adventures of Old Christine, she gives, as TV Squad points out, one of the great comedic performances on TV in recent memory, and she's great at both sarcasm and slapstick.
The rest of the list basically left me cold, for a variety of reasons. Christine Chenowith made it for Pushing Daisies, and though I love her, I would call her more of a comedic actress than a comedienne. Ditto Mary Louise Parker of Weeds. Kristin Wiig, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler, all Saturday Night Live vets, made the list. I know they're supposed to be cunningly funny, but they just don't do it for me. Megan Mullally (Will & Grace) and Jane Kaczmareck (Malcolm in the Middle) are more in line with Lucy's legacy, though Mullally was way more verbal in her humor. The very underappreciated Kaczmareck scored in both line delivery and slapstick on her show. Still, the only other current actress (besides Louis-Dreyfus) who could make a run for Lucy's crown, in my humble opinion, was left off the list: Debra Messing, also of Will & Grace. But that's why these lists are so great -- they provoke thought and conversation.
01.26.10 
From the estate of Vivian Vance, which was left by her late husband, John Dodds, to Dodds' good friend Serge Matt, comes this photo of Viv (left) emoting onstage in one of her biggest Broadway hits, the musical Let's Face It, which also stared Eve Arden, Danny Kaye and Edith Meiser. Arden knew Lucy from the movies, where they often played similar roles, and Meiser was a stage actress who eventually guest-starred on I Love Lucy (one degree of separation from Viv might have helped her land the role). This photo is part of an archive, courtesy Matt, that was recently posted at sfgate.com featuring more than 100 rare photos and news clippings of Vance. There is also news of Vance's legendarily unpublished memoirs, an excerpt of which you also can find at sfgate.com, under the blog "The Collective Mind." According to the blog, Matt is trying to find a publisher for Vance's memoirs, the manuscript of which has been in his possession since Dodds' death in 1989. Here's hoping he finds one, I've been waiting to read them ever since I saw an excerpt in the National Enquirer in the 1980s.
01.04.10
The happiest of new year to all of you...and may 2010 be filled with laughter, joy, good health and peace. I try to share unusual and little-seen publicity photos of Lucille Ball when I get them, and I figured this one (right) was appropriate for a New Year's wish: Lucy as the New Year's baby, so to speak, in a ruffled, baby-doll dress and matching bonnet, clutching a teddy bear and a huge lollipop, the latter, of course, for a sweet year. This is what I call a "treading water" year for Lucy fans; next year marks the 100th anniversary of her birth, and also the 60th anniversary of the debut of her groundbreaking sitcom, I Love Lucy. So look for some special celebrating and treats all over this site as we get ready to honor 160 years of laughter!
12.09.09
SPOTLIGHT: It didn't get much more glamorous than the star-studded premiere of 1954's A Star Is Born, Judy Garland's comeback vehicle. I lucked out and caught a half-hour kinescope of the festivities at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles on Turner Classic Movies. Anyone who was anyone in Hollywood and show-biz at the time was there, including Dean Martin, Joan Crawford, Virginia Mayo, Peggy Lee, Ray Bolger (Judy's Wizard of Oz co-star), Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Shelley Winters, Elizabeth Taylor (with then-hubby Mike Todd), Jack Carson, Van Heflin, Jack Palance, Dorothy Lamour, William Bendix, and on and on and on...oh, yes...and, of course, TV's top couple at the time, Lucy and Desi (left). I shot these pics directly from the TV screen with my iPhone, one of the reasons I adore having it. You probably haven't seen these before...so enjoy!
11.16.09 
SPOTLIGHT: "Serious" is not something we usually think of when we think of our wacky redhead, but it took a lot of effort to come up with the weekly clowning that resulted in Lucy's classic television series, and we know that Ball took her work very seriously, especially later in life. In one of her last TV appearances, on a special honoring her friend Bob Hope's birthday, she sang and danced in a production number that proclaimed, "Comedy is a serious business." True to that credo, Lucy rehearsed like a maniac, and this photo (right) is a rare picture of her between takes, taking a breather while smoking (an ironic turn of phrase if there ever was one). There's little doubt, though, that right after this photo was taken, it was "back to work," and Ball was clowning for the cameras, doing what she did best: making us laugh.
(For older Lucy "What's News" items from 2009 and 2008, see the Lucy Archives page.)GIVE THE GIFT OF LUCY
That handsome chap you see at the left is...well, okay, it's me, hobnobbing with Lucy, Desi and Viv at the 1954 Emmys. Okay, not really, but...it's what I would have done had I been there. And when you can't be there, the spirit of Lucy is alive and well in the four books I've written about her and her cohorts in laughter (well, if I can't be shamelesly promoting myself on my own site, where can I ??) Pick up one or more of my books, especially the fourth edition of Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia as well as The ABC Movie of the Week Companion, The TV Tidbits Classic Television Book of Lists, Lucy in Print, The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball, and The Lucille Ball Quiz Book by clicking here to order them online (at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Cathy's Closet) or at your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore via special order.
You can catch Lucy's monthly TV schedule at TVNow.
