From the early 1950s through the mid-1970s Lucille Ball was the Queen of television. Beginning with I Love Lucy (1951-57) and continuing with The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-60), The Lucy Show (1962-68), and finally Here’s Lucy (1968-74) she had the best track record of any star in making a hit television show. In this article we will look at the last of these series to entertain audiences, Here’s Lucy.
Lucille Ball and Ginger Rogers on the set of “Here’s Lucy” (1971).
Origin of the Series
In 1968, Lucille Ball sold her production company, Desilu Productions, to American conglomerate Gulf + Western for $17 million dollars. Ball had bought out her ex-husband, Desi Arnaz, in 1962. She had been running the company by herself for the previous six years. When the sale was complete Gulf + Western rebranded Desilu Productions as Paramount Television.
Ball’s current series, The Lucy Show, was still a big hit at the time of the sale, finishing in second place in the Nielsen ratings. However, she decided she didn’t want to star in a show she didn’t own. Ball also wanted to co-star in a series with her two teenage children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. Hence Here’s Lucywas born.
Ball had created a new production company at this time, Lucille Ball Productions, which co-produced the series with Paramount Television. Years later, Paramount Television sold its stake in the series back to Ball.
Lucie Arnaz, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz Jr. on the set of “Here’s Lucy” (1968).
Ball worked with Milt Josefsberg and Bob O’Brien to hone the concept of the series. The two men were adamant that the show should break new ground. They didn’t want it to be too much of a retread of Ball’s previous series. Because of this, the concept would partially focus on current events. This included civil rights and the sexual revolution, as seen through the lens of the generation gap between a mother and her children.
Casting
Ball also wanted the series to showcase her real children, Lucie and Desi Arnaz Jr. They were given input into their characters’ dialogue so as to be realistic for teenagers of the day. Further, they were allowed to choose their characters’ names (Kim and Craig) respectively. Originally, Ball intended to use Doris Singleton as a series regular. However, that idea was dropped once her children were cast and the premise of the series focused on a widow raising her teenage children.
Longtime Ball collaborator Gale Gordon also joined the cast. Gordon essentially reprised his role of Lucy’s boss Mr. Mooney from The Lucy Show but with a new name, Harry Carter. He also had a closer connection to Lucy, as her brother-in-law. Lucy chose the last name “Carter” for the family to keep with the tradition established in her other shows of incorporating “ar” (Ricardo in I Love Lucy and Carmichael in The Lucy Show). This was inspired by her last name when married to Desi Arnaz.
Gale Gordon, Vivian Vance, and Lucille Ball on the set of “Here’s Lucy” (1968).
Other actresses who sometimes appeared on Here’s Lucy and were longtime co-stars and friends of Ball’s were Mary Jane Croft and Vivian Vance. Croft became a series regular in the second season. Vance appeared only six times as she had moved to Stanford, Connecticut with her publisher husband John Dodds.
Guest Stars
Here’s Lucy featured many guest stars during its run. Among them were Carol Burnett, Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny, Ginger Rogers, Flip Wilson, Ann-Margret, and Wally Cox. Most of these guest stars were Ball’s friends (Benny actually lived next door to Ball on Roxbury Drive). However, some of the show’s guest stars were anything but friends with Ball.
One such instance of the latter was Richard Burton. He appeared on the show with his wife Elizabeth Taylor in 1970. The friction between Ball and Burton was immediate.
Richard Burton, Lucille Ball, and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of “Here’s Lucy” (1970).
“(Lucille Ball) is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humor. I am coldly sarcastic to her to the point of outright contempt, but she hears only what she wants to hear. She is a tired old woman and lives entirely on that weekly show…Nineteen solid years of double-takes and pratfalls and desperate upstaging and cutting out other people’s laughs if she can, nervously watching the ‘ratings’ as she does so…I loathe her…Milady Ball can thank her lucky stars that I am not drinking. There is a chance that if I had, I might have killed her!”
– Richard Burton
Success and Failure
When Desi Jr. decided to leave Here’s Lucy after the show’s third season the series was slightly revamped with Lucie’s character Kim picking up the slack from her brother’s departure. This exposure would leave CBS to propose a spin-off for Lucie featuring her character Kim moving out of Lucy’s house and moving into an apartment. In fact, the last episode of the fourth season served as a “back door pilot” for the series. A pilot for The Lucie Arnaz Show was shot but it was not picked up for series.
Lucille Ball in the Here’s Lucy episode “Lucy’s Safari.” The gorilla suit used in this episode was also featured in the Star Trek episode “A Private Little War.”
During the fifth season of Here’s Lucy, Ball suffered an injury, breaking her leg while skiing. This injury was written into the show since the comedy legend was confined to a wheelchair. While injured, Ball was still given small gags she could perform in her current state. The other major change due to the injury was that Lucy and Harry’s relationship became less adversarial and more familial.
For its first four seasons Here’s Lucy never placed worse than tenth in the Nielsen ratings. When the series dropped to fifteenth the following year Ball decided it was time to wrap up the series as this was the first time one of her shows was not in the top ten in ratings. As a result of this, Ball decided to end the series.
Ball decided to break with the show’s standard format of shooting in front of a studio audience for the “final” episode. After filming was completed, CBS President Fred Silverman pleaded with Ball to bring the show back for a final season to which she agreed.
Lucille Ball and Mike Connors as the character Mannix in an episode of “Here’s Lucy” (1971).
The final season of Here’s Lucy ended with the show slotting in the twenty-ninth spot in the Nielsen ratings. The show was the last of the “Golden Age” of television star-led series to appear on CBS. The network had moved on to more provocative and modern comedy shows such as All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Bob Newhart Show.
Legacy
Here’s Lucy is the least well-known of the successful series starring Lucille Ball and has fallen largely into obscurity. This has little to do with the quality of the series. Rather, it’s more directly related to the fact that I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show were already successful in syndication for decades. Subsequently, Here’s Lucy was not offered in syndication until 1981.
This impacted the popularity and long-term success of the series as it was not as familiar to audiences. By the mid-1980s the show vanished from the airwaves and was essentially forgotten until recently, when it was picked up by streaming services such as Roku, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video where a new audience was given the opportunity to discover it for the first time.
Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett on the set of “Here’s Lucy” (1970).
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