Michael Karol's Place in the Lucyverse

New York-based writer and editor Michael Karol has always loved Lucy. He watched I Love Lucy as a child growing up in New Jersey, where the show was rerun in the morning (never mind what he wasn't doing in school — he can't remember)...with a trusted babysitter, laughing out loud and becoming entranced by the antics of Lucy and Ethel. Following this, when he discovered Lucy and Vivian Vance were doing a new TV show, he forced the family to watch it on their only TV. Well, his mother may have held a grudge — years later, walking into his New York apartment, she noted dryly, "You have more pictures of Lucy here than you do of me" — but let's face it, there were many other programs less worthy than The Lucy Show he might have watched. How did Michael morph from obsessed fan into highly regarded celebrity author, whose footprints are in cement and waiting for the construction of the new Lucy-Desi Museum to be installed?

As Michael grew up, the special fondness he held for Lucy and Viv (and various other Sitcom Queens, truth be told) only grew. When he graduated from BU with a Masters in Communications, he felt it was only prudent that he communicate, and began a quarter-century-plus career in publishing as a journalist and editor. Michael has written about everything from area rugs to pop music, from counterfeiting to colorization, but his favorite subjects are show-business-related, especially classic TV and golden age movies. Several years ago, Michael finally landed his dream job: as Copy Chief at Soap Opera Weekly, he is mandated to watch TV during work hours.

While languishing in a previous job, circa 1999, Michael began writing a biography of Lucille Ball, based on everything he'd read and known. Once it got to be more than 10,000 words, he realized it might make a good book. He hit on an A to Z encyclopedic format because it denoted research and depth.

Thus began several years of intensive research during which Michael pored over the huge files at the New York Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and watched rare videos at the Museum of Television and Radio. He even, during this period, got over his fear of the vastness of the New York Public Library and found it was quite user-friendly. That's where he found a Dewey Decimal card on the long-forgotten I Love Lucy play, an interesting artifact from the days when almost any successful property was tried out in other media. Trolling through Lucy's reviews at the Lincoln Center library brought him to a Broadway play, also long forgotten—Nobody Loves an Albatross—in which one of the lead characters was apparently based on Lucille Ball, written by a former (and somewhat disgruntled) Desilu employee. Michael was able to interview one of the show's co-stars, Marie Wallace. This led to a script in the rare manuscript section by humorist Max Shulman (Dobie Gillis), who wrote a draft of an Albatross script for MGM.

Did anyone still alive even know a script for Albatross, only a modestly successful show, was written? And discarded? Or even that Albatross itself was a minor hit circa 1963? Michael was doubtful, since mostly no one appeared to even remember the show itself. The Lucy character, much more slick and con-artist than in the play, runs a studio and has her own sitcom, and Shulman's script shows one scene being shot of the character and her sitcom friend, described as a "Vivian Vance" type, baking cream puffs and ruining the kitchen when everything explodes. Sound familiar? It was unearthing this kind of arcane yet priceless Lucy information that struck Michael as being most valuable and interesting to other fans.

Over the past 20 years, Michael has interviewed many celebrities, including such Lucille Ball associates as I Love Lucy film editor Dann Cahn, her personal secretary Wanda Clark, and Lucy's surviving co-stars Doris Singleton (Carolyn Appleby) and Jane Connell (her Mame Gooch). Michael's other celebrity interviews make an eclectic list that includes soap diva Susan Lucci; Broadway actress Marie Wallace; actor Jason-Shane Scott; blues legend Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson; songbird Phyllis Hyman; disco godfather Peter Brown; original Willy Wonka child star Denise Nickerson; sitcom star, recording artist and movie star Gale Storm; David The Fly Hedison; and behind-the-scenes movers and shakers like Wonderfalls creator Bryan Fuller and House MD’s executive producer David Shore.

Michael's first Lucy book, Lucy A to Z: the Lucille Ball Encyclopedia included hundreds of long-forgotten facts and anecdotes, unearthed by his research and interviews. The book proved so successful (Lucie Arnaz wrote Michael that it was a "godsend" in helping her prepare for the I Love Lucy 50th Anniversary TV special) that Michael produced two further editions. The Third Edition, which is currently available, is roughly three times the size of the first one. Those books were followed by Lucy in Print (a look at how the press dealt with Lucy and her TV co-stars), The Lucille Ball Quiz Book and his latest, published in 2006, The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball: Interpreting the Icon.

[Michael does occasionally tackle subjects other than Lucymania, such as his current, best-selling book, The ABC Movie of the Week Companion, and the vampire novel Kiss Me, Kill Me, for which a prequel, called Sleeps Well With Others, was published in October 2006.]

Michael has been an invited guest at various nostalgia conventions — including several Lucy Fests held in her hometown of Jamestown, N.Y. and sponsored by The Lucy-Desi Museum — and the Big Apple Con comic and nostalgia conventions, where he has served on author panels, provided unique insights and trivia as the "celebrity guest" on bus tours of Jamestown, and hosted I Love Lucy trivia events. He's also appeared on a half-dozen radio shows, including WCBS-FM New York, at the time the biggest "oldies"/nostalgia station in the country. In April 2008 he was featured twice on the Internet radio station KSAV's popular show, "Talking Television." He's been quoted and reviewed in various national magazines, from niche market publications like Classic Images to mass-market magazines like the Star. He’s also been quoted and referenced in other books about Lucy (like Stefan Kanfer's 2003 Ball of Fire) and comedy (Lawrence Epstein's 2004 Mixed Nuts: America's Love Affair with Comedy Teams). He will be featured in an upcoming documentary about the Lucille Ball fan phenomenon.

Michael keeps a bottle of Vitameatavegamin and a ring of garlic next to his computer for good health and inspiration.

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Text Copyright 2008 by Michael Karol; do not use without written permission.