I Love Lucy: The Untold Story (4 page)

The unique comic chemistry between Lucy and Gale was apparent immediately. I decided to cast him as George’s boss, Mr. Atterbury. 

As Mr. Atterbury’s wife, Iris, I cast Bea Benaderet, the wonderful comedy actress who would later become the voice of Betty Rubble on
The Flintstones
and star in the television series
Petticoat Junction.
The Iris Atterbury character opened up whole new directions for the character of Liz Cooper—she finally had a real confederate to include in her wild schemes, particularly whenever the battle was “wives vs. husbands.”

•   •   •

Photo caption (next page):

To celebrate our signing with General Foods, we threw a party at the studio, complete with a cake topped by boxes of Jell-O.

Photo caption (next page):

Bea Benaderet and Gale Gordon clown it up during a run-through of
My Favorite Husband.

When General Foods bought the program, the sponsor made it clear that it wanted Lucy to be its spokesperson on the show, doing a Jell-O commercial at the end of each episode.

Lucy hated this. She just wasn’t comfortable facing an open mike as herseld. Ask her to play a role—she was happy. Ask her to be Lucille Ball and she immediately became self-conscious and ill at ease.
After watching her suffer through this for several weeks, I decided to write the “sell words” as Mother Goose rhymes, with Lucy doing all the parts: Goldilocks, the Three Bears, Jack and Jill, Little Miss Muffet, the Spider, and so forth. Not only did Lucy relax, she also discovered she had a real flair for comic voices. When we did “Little Miss Muffet,” Lucy, as the Spider, contorted her face into a teeth-baring grimace and came out with a high-pitched, nasal “spider” sound that had the audience howling. And that quickly became a Lucy trademark—her embarrassed reaction whenever she found herself in hot water.

Even with all of the changes in the show, I still had a
problem—Lucy was relatively stiff working in front of an audience. She just didn’t have the wildly antic quality that I was looking for. I had been trying for some time to get her to loosen up and act out the jokes and reactions, to dramatize what was going on, instead of just standing there waiting to read the next line when the laugh subsided.
I knew how effective this could be from watching Jack Benny do his radio program. Jack would lay his hand against his cheek, open his eyes wide, and look out at the studio audience, slowly changing his point of view, like a comic lighthouse. And as long as he looked, they laughed.

And I remember telling Lucy, “Let go. Act it out. Take your time.” But she was simply afraid to try. So one day, at rehearsal, I handed Lucy a couple of Jack Benny tickets.

She looked at me blankly. She said, “What are these for?”

“I want you to go to school,” I told her.

Well, it did the trick. When Lucy came into the studio for the next rehearsal, I could see she was excited. “Oh my God, Jess,” she gushed, “I didn’t realize!”

She just couldn’t wait to get started trying out the new, emancipated attitude she had discovered. On that week’s show Lucy really hammed it up, playing it much broader than she ever had before. She coupled this with her newfound freedom of movement, and there were times I thought we’d have to catch her with a butterfly net to get her back to the microphone. The audience roared their approval, and Lucy loved it. So did I.

Although the radio show was doing well, Bob and Madelyn and I were always under criticism from CBS. We just weren’t writing what was then considered the “in” kind of radio comedy show, where you have a series
of comedy characters, each of whom comes in, does his own shtick, and then exits. Instead, we did whole stories—we did
situation
comedy. And they kept telling us this would never fly. But we persisted, and eventually the popularity of the program just became too much for them to argue with.

•   •   •

Photo caption (next page):

I tried to get Lucy and Dick Denning to loosen up and act out the jokes and reactions—to dramatize what was going on, instead of just standing there waiting to read the next line when the laugh subsided.

A
S
L
UCY BEGAN
to loosen up at the microphone, her highly visual antics garnered more and more attention. The
Hollywood Reporter
commented, “It’s too bad that her funny grimaces and gestures are not visible over the radio.”
One magazine feature spread had a picture of Lucy and Richard Denning at the microphone. The caption read,“It could be television—Lucille and Richard Denning look like an awfully cute couple as they go through their chores as ‘Liz’ and ‘George’ on
My Favorite Husband
.”

Lucy wanted to make the move to television, all right—but
not
with Richard Denning. For years, she had been trying to promote the career of her husband, Desi. She was unhappy because they were separated so much of the time; while she was here in Hollywood, he was always on the road with his band. And that put a strain on their marriage, which was rocky enough even when they were in the same city. So when Harry Ackerman approached Lucy about transferring the radio series to TV, she tried to sell him on using Desi as her costar.

Harry wasn’t thrilled with the idea of using Desi on television. He was afraid that viewers wouldn’t be able to understand him. But Lucy insisted that it was either Desi or no TV show.
Hubbell Robinson, another CBS bigwig, nixed the idea completely, claiming that nobody would believe that an all-American redhead like Lucy was married to someone like Desi. Lucy had a good answer for that one—“What do you mean, nobody’ll believe it? We
are
married!” But CBS remained unconvinced. Finally, Lucy told the
network, “If I can’t do a show with him, I’m going to travel with him.”
And in March 1950, she and Desi formed Desilu Productions and made plans for their own vaudeville tour during our summer hiatus, to prove that the public would accept them as a team.

Bob and Madelyn wrote some sketches for Lucy and Desi’s act.
Desi got his old fishing buddy, the famous clown “Pepito,” to come up with some clown routines for Lucy to do. Pepito also built a Rube Goldberg–type cello for Lucy, equipped with all sorts of hidden gags. And by May, Lucy and Desi were booked into a string of vaudeville houses, opening in Chicago.

Well, the vaudeville tour was a roaring success.
Variety
called opening night in Chicago “one of the best bills to play house in recent months.... If the red-headed gal wants to slide on her tummy for five or six shows a day past the initial five-week booking for this package, her agency...should have no trouble lining up dates.”

Armed with those good notices, Lucy’s agent Don Sharpe and I took another run at convincing CBS to do a TV audition program (that’s called a “pilot” nowadays) featuring Lucy and Desi. The answer from the network was still no.
But their success as a vaudeville team was enough to pique the interest of the admen at Young and Rubicam, whose client, General Foods, was Lucy’s radio sponsor. One of them convinced Lucy and Desi not to wait for CBS to change
its mind. “Produce your
own
audition program!” he told them. “That way you can sell it to the highest bidder.” Unfortunately, it would also mean that neither I nor Bob and Madelyn could work on the project, because we had exclusive contracts with CBS.

But Lucy and Desi took adman’s advice. They spent a lot of their own money commissioning one independent script after another, but they were unhappy with all of them.
One of the scripts had them playing themselves—the successful bandleader, Desi Arnaz, and his successful movie star wife, Lucille Ball. The story was about how
Life
magazine ruined their plans for a quiet celebration of their wedding anniversary. Although it wasn’t what Lucy and Desi wanted, it did manage to spark some interest at a rival network—NBC.

The prospect of losing Lucy to NBC was enough to get CBS’s
attention. Harry Ackerman put Desi under contract to keep Lucy and Desi together in Hollywood while a TV deal could be worked out.
CBS had planned an unsponsored Sunday afternoon radio quiz show called
Earn Your Vacation
.
Harry, just promoted to executive in charge of production for CBS radio and television, put Desi in as emcee, replacing a relatively unknown young comic. His name was Johnny Carson. Harry changed the title to
Your Tropical Trip,
and made the giveaways vacations in the Caribbean area. At the close of one of our shows, Lucy made a point of plugging Desi’s new program:

MUSIC.
(
My Favorite Husband Theme.
)

LEMOND. You have been listening to
My Favorite Husband,
starring Lucille Ball with Richard Denning. Tonight’s transcribed program was produced and directed by Jess Oppenheimer, who wrote the script with Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr. Original music was composed by Marlin Skiles and conducted by Wilbur Hatch. Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury were played by Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet. Mr. and Mrs. Abbott were played by Alan Reed and Shirley Mitchell. Be sure to watch for Lucille Ball as a would-be cosmetic dealer in her latest picture,
The Fuller Brush Girl—

LUCY. (
Interrupting.
)Pardon me Bob. And be sure folks, to listen to CBS tomorrow, January 21st, 3:30 Eastern Standard Time, when Desi Arnaz starts his swell new radio program. Watch for the Desi Arnaz show.

Now it was Lucy’s turn to play hard to get. Armed with NBC’s overtures, she imposed her own conditions on CBS.
Lucy’s agent told Harry Ackerman that Lucy would make a deal with the network only if I would be her producer and head writer. She also insisted that the show be produced in Hollywood and air only once every two weeks, so that she could continue her film career.
And Desilu Productions must have a 50 percent interest in the show.

Harry Ackerman came to see me. After describing the terms he had tentatively worked out with Don Sharpe, including my own involvement, he asked me if I would be willing to write and produce Lucy’s TV show
for CBS. I pointed out to him that under my contract I was to get a substantial percentage of any new radio or television show that I created for the network. Harry offered me 20 percent. I accepted.