Ball of Fire (22 page)

As
I Love Lucy
proceeded to the top of the rating charts, certain rules and restrictions came into play. When Desi expressed discomfort with a scene it was usually changed, not because he was the boss but because, as Oppenheimer observed, “if he didn’t like a piece of material he was simply incapable of performing it.” There was, for example, a story line involving a surprise visit from an IRS auditor. The script called for Lucy to answer his questions truthfully—thereby revealing that her husband had fudged on some income tax deductions. Ricky was then called upon to do some fancy explaining, and ultimately to pay a fine for his lapses. Desi flatly refused to let the program go on as written. He granted that the premise was amusing; in his view, however, Ricky Ricardo would never attempt to cheat the U.S. government. “A short but lively discussion ensued,” Oppenheimer recalled, “but there was no changing Desi’s mind. In a matter of hours we came up with an entirely new second act in which Lucy’s fibs unwittingly land her a job as a knife thrower’s assistant (and target).”

As Lucy and Desi sculpted their personae, Vivian Vance and William Frawley also gave their characters dimension and personality. The fact that the actors disliked each other worked to the show’s advantage. Fred and Ethel Mertz seemed to be an old married couple who could neither take nor leave their situation, and the tension between them became a risible battle of the sexes. Ethel was only too glad to live vicariously through Lucy’s schemes to get around Ricky. And Fred radiated gratification every time he could foil their plans. Yet, in the rules of the show, the curmudgeon was intensely loyal: his back went up anytime an outsider criticized Ethel or Lucy—that was
his
job, and his alone.

What viewers saw on the screen was not very different from what the performers dealt with on the set. Upon presentation of the script, Frawley would take home only the pages marked FRED, in order to memorize his lines. “So sometimes,” Desi recollected, “we would get to a joke and he would say to me, ‘This is not funny.’

“ ‘What do you mean?’ I’d ask. ‘It’s not funny? You haven’t read the five other pages where we have been building up to your entrance.’

“ ‘What are you talking about?’

“ ‘You’re just reading what you are supposed to say and we’ve been building up for you to come in and say, “Hello, Ethel,” and get a big laugh.’

“ ‘You think “Hello, Ethel” is funny?’

“ ‘No, “Hello, Ethel” is not funny, but we’ve been building up this situation in which Ethel is inside a costume, representing the last half of a horse, and as you come in the door, she is bending down and facing away from you. All you can see is the last half of this horse—the horse’s ass is all you can see—and you say, “Hello, Ethel,” and
that
is funny.’

“ ‘Oh, yes, that
is
funny!’ ”

And yet Frawley continued to exhibit some unpredictable virtues. No matter how much he drank at night, he always showed up clear-eyed and sober. Not once was Desi forced to cover for him. Furthermore, the actor’s years on the stage gave him an uncanny ability to ad-lib. Backstage, a list of
Lucy
performers was pinned to the wall, and next to each name a gold star appeared every time he or she came up with a funny, unrehearsed line. Frawley’s line of stars far exceeded anyone else’s.

Vance provided a striking contrast to her onscreen partner. After the first few months, according to Maury Thompson, the actress established herself as an instinctive editor. “She was like a story detector, and wasn’t shy about bringing up points that didn’t seem right to her. Around this time, Lucille began to take notice that most often Vivian was right. Lucille realized she had in Vivian a lot more than she thought, and she began to trust Viv’s comedic instincts.” By year’s end,
I Love Lucy
had defined its personalities and solidified its comic style. New viewers dropped by each week, stayed for a half hour of laughter, and marked future Mondays at 9 p.m. as Lucy Time.

In the spring of 1952 CBS learned just how popular the program had become. For the first time in the history of television, a regularly scheduled TV program was being welcomed into 10 million homes. Lucille Ball was now outpulling Arthur Godfrey; in three months she had become Miss Monday Night. The American Research Bureau pointed out that
I Love Lucy
was more than simply the top-rated TV show in the nation. Because an average of 2.9 viewers watched each television set, each episode actually was seen by 30,740,000 individuals—nearly a fifth of the U.S. population. Partisans of Milton Berle pointed out that water use went down during his show because so few people used the toilet; Lucy fans claimed that she owned the new title of Queen of the John. (That battle was never truly settled.)

In the fall, Democratic strategists, thinking to tap into the show’s popularity, preempted five minutes of
I Love Lucy
for their candidate, Adlai Stevenson. They realized their gaffe when thousands of outraged viewers wrote and phoned the network: how dare this
politician
take up valuable Ricardo time? In Chicago, Marshall Field’s department store bowed to the latest trend. A sign on the front door read: WE LOVE LUCY TOO, SO FROM NOW ON WE WILL BE OPEN THURSDAY NIGHTS. Lucy was nominated for an Emmy Award in her first season, an unusual accolade, to be followed by an even more unusual one. When she lost out to Red Skelton, the comedian told the onlookers: “You gave this to the wrong redhead. I don’t deserve this. It should go to Lucille Ball.”

There was a good deal of truth behind his ostentatious modesty. In the first run of thirty-five episodes, Lucy had shown the world a rare versatility. Not since Carole Lombard had there been a glamorous woman so willing to make a fool of herself in pursuit of laughter. Lucy’s routines included capering like a circus clown, mocking Ricky as a Cuban singer, getting flung around as an Apache dancer, and pretending to be a ballet star and getting a leg tangled in the barre. Not once did she keep herself glamorous at the cost of the comedy. For one bit she wore a goatee and then found that the makeup glue was impossible to remove, for another she locked herself in a meat freezer, and she capped the season off with the classic Vitameatavegamin commercial. In recognition,
Time
put her on its cover. Inside, the magazine raved about her show: “This is the sort of cheerful rowdiness that has been rare since the days of the silent movies’ Keystone comedies. Lucille submits enthusiastically to being hit by pies; falls over furniture; gets locked in home freezers; is chased by knife-wielding fanatics. Tricked out as a ballerina or a Hindu maharani or a toothless hillbilly, she takes her assorted lumps and pratfalls with unflagging zest and good humor.”

Led by Lucy, Desi honed his skills in timing and setting up gags. And, in response, the writers tried to elevate Ricky Ricardo from bandleader to nightclub manager in order to give him more comic moments. Among the most memorable—and one that could not have been played by anyone else in 1950s television—was “Lucy Hires an English Tutor.” Distressed that Ricky’s accent will hold them back, Lucy tries to teach her husband the fine points of English, demonstrating the difference between words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently, “rough,” “through” and “cough,” for instance. He pronounces them “row,” “thruff,” and “coo.” When his errors are pointed out, Desi condemns Lucy’s native tongue as “a crazy language,” whereas Spanish makes complete sense. Lucy’s solution: she will hire a tutor for Ricky. The instructor, Mr. Livermore (farceur Hans Conried), turns out to be a haughty and humorless pedant whose attempts to improve Ricky’s English result in spectacular failure—in the end, the teacher, infected by Ricky’s approach to communication, starts speaking with Cuban intonations and chanting the lyrics to “Babalu.” Lucy surrenders: “It was a battle of the accents, and Mr. Livermore lost.”

Pleasing as this interlude was, it departed from the show’s mainstream comedy. To keep
I Love Lucy
consistent, Desi had to play second banana in almost every episode, setting up his wife’s jokes and physical shtick. In the second season Lucy began to hear echoes of the 1940s, when they were the Bandleader and the Movie Star and nearly divorced. With that time in mind, she told any journalist who would listen that her husband was the real power of Desilu. Desi read the interviews, and persuaded himself that she was right. One morning he walked into Jess Oppenheimer’s office and asked for a new credit: “What I really want to do is produce, but I need to build a reputation as a producer. How would you feel about letting me take ‘executive producer’ on the show?”

His question opened a new a clash of egos. Oppenheimer also sought to be recognized as a producer and had no intention of relinquishing his hard-won title. “I had made it clear at the outset,” he later remarked, “that if I was going to be the producer, I would have to have ultimate control of all of the show’s creative elements. My contract spelled that out.” He suggested that Desi take the title of “executive in charge of production” or “coproducer.” Desi refused. A period of bad feeling began and both men agreed to discuss the matter in a few weeks, after they had had time to consider alternatives.

Production resumed without further incident—until March 2, 1952, when the cast celebrated Desi’s thirty-fifth birthday. By then Oppenheimer was exhausted with the preparation of so many shows produced under deadline. The notion of having Desi take over some of his duties exerted more appeal than it had when the subject was first broached. Sensing his vulnerability, the Arnazes double-teamed him. First Lucy privately asked him to let Desi have executive producer credit “as a personal favor in order to keep the peace” in their marriage. Then Desi assured him that the credit would have no effect whatsoever on the real producer’s authority. Oppenheimer acceded to their wishes.

When the official ratings came in
I Love Lucy
was indeed the top television show in America, with some 23 million people tuning in every week. In honor of the occasion, Desi presented Oppenheimer with a trophy engraved “Jess Oppenheimer:
The Man Behind the Ball.
4–18–52
#1 Nielsen.
” “It was a nice gesture by Desi,” the producer noted gratefully. “I decided that I probably had been wrong to be so concerned about letting him have the executive producer credit.”

That was on a Friday. The following Monday, Oppenheimer received an upsetting call from the Biow advertising agency. A column in the
Hollywood Reporter
was read aloud to him. It burbled about the new girl on the block, scattering credit for
I Love Lucy
like chocolates before a crowd of children. Don Sharpe was praised, as was Harry Ackerman “for never once throwing cold water on Desi’s starry-eyed idea of not only filming the show but filming it before a live audience.” Jess Oppenheimer and Karl Freund also received accolades. But the highest praise was reserved for Desi: “The crazy Cuban whom Oppenheimer insists has been the real producer all along and who in two weeks reluctantly starts taking screen credit as executive producer.”

Livid, Oppenheimer presented himself in Desi’s office, with the offending reportage in hand. “How can you quote me like that?” he demanded.

Desi replied blandly: “It’s like I told you, amigo. I need to build a rep as a producer.”

Shouts and recriminations followed; they led nowhere. Oppenheimer observed that “there was nothing I could do about the publicity without seriously damaging both the series and Lucy’s precarious marriage. And I would never do anything to hurt Lucy or the show. I was stuck, and Desi and I both knew it.” It was not a bad scene in which to be mired; the money was flowing in faster than anyone could count it. But the real producer never really forgave the usurper; years later he resentfully mentioned “Desi’s habit of taking credit for other people’s accomplishments.” And sometime afterward, perhaps out of guilt, Desi corrected a story in
Cosmopolitan.
“Lucy’s antics can’t be underrated,” the article maintained. “But no show is better than its producer, and Desi Arnaz is the producer.” Desi sent a letter to the editor, begging to differ. “Actually I am executive producer. Jess Oppenheimer is the producer and also head writer, which means he does most of the work.” All very well, but after that self-promotion in the
Hollywood Reporter
nothing was quite the same between the two men. Not that it mattered. The Arnazes were hardly a match made in heaven, and Vance and Frawley intensely disliked each other. As the Cuban proverb had it, the dogs yapped, the pageant traveled on.

Assistants on the I Love Lucy set were quick to flash cue cards reading APPLAUSE. CHEERS. LAUGHTER. Only the first two were needed. Audiences came
in
laughing. They had waited patiently for a chance to see the show performed live before their very eyes, and everything said onstage rendered them helpless with mirth. Gratifying as this was, the writers, performers, and production crew had little time to enjoy their accomplishment. Hardly had they finished shooting one show when preparations for the next one began. Tuesdays were devoted to the script, as cast and writers sat at a long table going over the story line and the gags. Because
I Love Lucy
was perceived as family fare, plots had to be tasteful and credible. When some routine was deemed unacceptable, Pugh, Carroll, and Oppenheimer went back to work and began again under severe deadline pressure, often, though not always, emerging with something funnier than before. On Wednesdays an informal on-set rehearsal took place, with actors expected to know their lines. The breaks were short, with the principals sitting back in director’s chairs. One chair was marked “Desi Arnaz, Pres.,” another “Lucille Ball, Vice Pres.,” the third “Vivian Vance, Girl Actress,” and the last “William Frawley, Boy Actor.” No one appeared in costume for these occasions, and there were times when Lucy and Vivian made a point of dressing down. On a blazing summer day the two lounged in shorts and halters, while Desi and Bill lay on the floor in trousers and undershirts. At that unpropitious moment, a tour guide brought in a group of ladies. The visitors were greeted by an astonished quartet. “They were all be-ribboned, be-hatted, and be-orchided,” Vance remembered. “Some of them even had gloves on. When the guide said, ‘This is the
I Love Lucy
company,’ you should have seen the unbelieving expressions on their faces. They’re still probably talking about how awful we looked, and I don’t blame them.” Once the drop-ins had disappeared, work resumed in earnest and continued until the heat overtook them all.