Retro Bio: Forever Lucy: The Life of Lucille Ball
star in a TV version of the show -- they thought an American woman married to a Latino wasn't America's idea of the typical couple. And movie stars who turned to TV were considered has-beens. Lucy and Desi took matters into their own hands, forming Desilu Productions and starring in their own vaudeville act. A few years later they approached CBS with the premise for I Love Lucy, but CBS refused to pay for the pilot. Desi fought the network's idea to have the show performed live -- he wanted it filmed so he could spend more time with his family. Out of Desi's need to control the production, he pioneered TV production as we know it today, and many of those techniques, such as the three-camera filming process, are still used today. Lucy and Desi also won complete ownership in the show.
The authors devote much ink to the House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation of Lucy's alleged ties to the Communist Party. As she claimed, her late grandfather was a socialist and to please him, she registered as a Communist in 1936. At the time of the investigation, Lucy was a big star, and it was fodder for headlines and Hollywood gossip columns. Some of her testimony is transcribed in the book.
After the fifth season of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Desi convinced CBS to air a monthly hour-long version. The more successful they became the more time they spent away from each other. After they divorced in 1960, Lucy starred on Broadway in the musical comedy flop Wildcat. Lucy and Desi both remarried, she to comedian Gary Morton, and he to socialite Edith Mach Hirsch, a longtime friend of theirs.
Desi continued to produce shows for Desilu, among them The Untouchables. He tired of the long hours and sold Lucy the studio. Most of the time she owned it, she had trouble selling pilots to other TV shows except her next series The Lucy Show, which kept the studio afloat. Desilu finally sold two series: Mission Impossible and Star Trek in 1966 before Gulf and Western bought Desilu a year later.
Lucy next starred in Here's Lucy with her children Lucie and Desi Jr. Most of the rest of the book follows her childrens' struggles while growing up in the spotlight and Lucy's difficulties raising them. In the years before her death in 1989 from a ruptured aorta after open-heart surgery she had made occasional appearances on TV specials and starred in another (failed) series, Life with Lucy.
Forever Lucy sticks to facts, refreshingly free from much of the psychological analysis prevalent in some biographies. But Morella and Epstein didn't poke too far behind
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