I Love Lucy

Widely regarded as the most beloved and best series of all time, I Love Lucy pioneered television in the 1950s and inspired a slew of fans and imitators for decades to come. It spent four of its six prime-time seasons in the ratings top spot, never finishing lower than third. Debuting in 1951, the show followed New York housewife, Lucy Ricardo (played by Lucille Ball), and her heavily-accented (many jokes came as a result of his mispronounced words) Cuban American bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo (played by Ball’s real-life husband, Desi Arnaz). They lived in a New York apartment building owned by landlords and the Ricardos’ best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz (played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance, who was the first winner of the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy). Throughout the show’s run, Ricky went from nightclub performer to owner to movie star. Most of the episodes featured Lucy’s schemes to land herself in Ricky’s productions on stage and screen. Her tenacity, apparent lack of humility, and downright nuttiness led to countless crazy plots which often yielded embarrassing, hilarious, and frustrating-yet-happily-ending situations. During the show, the Ricardos and Mertzes traveled to Hollywood, Florida, Cuba, and Europe. During the episodes set in Hollywood, a host of big-name stars appeared as themselves on the show, including John Wayne, William Holden, Rock Hudson, and Harpo Marx, among others. Even after returning from a successful trip to Hollywood to film Ricky’s picture, the Ricardo’s retained their humble mindset and didn’t move out of the Mertz’s apartment building until the final season, when they moved to Connecticut to raise their son, Little Ricky (naturally, the Mertzes followed). The episode in which Little Ricky was “born” was the most-watched show at the time. Sadly, shooting was sometimes marred by the mutual dislike between Frawley and Vance. Vance believed that Frawley, at more than 20 years her senior, was too old to play her husband. Meanwhile, Vance was pressured to maintain a certain weight so as to always be plumper than Lucy. The show was the first to utilize multiple 35mm cameras in front of a studio audience, and was produced by Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer (Get Smart). Its early seasons were sponsored by Phillip Morris, resulting in various scenes featuring the characters smoking the company’s cigarettes. Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll, Jr. were the writers and the show’s directors were Marc Daniels, William Asher (Bewitched), and James V. Kern.

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