We ALL Love Lucy
I Love Lucy was produced on television for the first time half a century ago. It was a programme that pioneered a technique we now take for granted. It was filmed with multiple cameras, using film rather than videotape technology, in front of a live audience.
Lucille Ball was a failed showgirl (at least to start with), until she came to fame as the wasp-waisted Chesterfield cigarette girl in the early 30s. That work took her to Hollywood, and the first of 60 films made in the 30s and 40s. 1947 found Lucille working on radio on a show called My Favourite Husband in which she was the zany wife of a bank manager. When CBS wanted to transfer the show to the fledgling television network, Lucy persuaded them she could be the zany wife of a Cuban bandleader, namely Desi Arnaz, to whom she was, of course, married in real life.
In the show’s six year life (yes, only six years in the original format) it was never lower than third in the Neilsen ratings – an enviable record. Because the show had been shot on film, it could be re-broadcast again, and again, and again… and it was. And still is.
Lucille and Desi divorced in 1960, and she eventually bought out his half of the Desilu studio, which now owned the old RKO Studios lot in Hollywood. She went on to make The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy, which between them ran pretty much uninterrupted from 1968 to 1974.
In 1967, she sold Desilu to Gulf and Western, the giant corporation behind Paramount pictures, for $17 million – $10 million of which went to her. It’s interesting to think of the money Paramount has earned from the Desilu’s two other franchises - Star Trek and Mission Impossible. Paramount has done pretty well out of both of those.
When Lucille Ball died in 1989 – just a few years after a failed attempt at recreating the magic of the Lucy shows with Life With Lucy - her shows were still in syndication in an astonishing 80 countries.
