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00:00The Golden Age of Television.
00:09I Love Lucy didn't just change American television, it invented American television.
00:13Back when one screen brought everyone together.
00:16Watching television was a family event.
00:19The shows that shaped us.
00:21The Brady Bunch was part of the American soul.
00:25It's timeless.
00:26The familiar faces.
00:27Ralph Cramden was loved.
00:29On the Honeymooners.
00:30Pow, right there, kiss him!
00:32He was a presence.
00:33The unforgettable moments.
00:35Dynasty captured the essence of what the 1980s were about in America.
00:39These are their stories.
00:40Cheers is the pinnacle of how great the sitcom can be.
00:43This is TV We Love.
00:50It's 1951, and Truman is president.
00:54Working together, we hope we can prevent another world war.
00:58As the Korean War drags on, and the Cold War ramps up, at home, America's economy is booming.
01:07All About Eve wins Best Picture.
01:09Fasten your seatbelts.
01:11It's going to be a bumpy night.
01:13And American television is in its early days.
01:16Wow.
01:17Howdy dody, kids!
01:18That is, until a fearless redhead bursts onto our TV screens.
01:23Lucy!
01:24I'm home!
01:25I love Lucy didn't just change American television, it invented American television.
01:31Lucy, will you mind telling me what's going on?
01:34I Love Lucy is the classic.
01:37It created the roadmap for all that was to come.
01:40Very few shows have held up in the history of American television, like, I Love Lucy.
01:45Americans had never seen something like Lucy Ricardo before.
01:51The thing that viewers remember most about I Love Lucy is Lucio Ball's sheer genius as a physical comedian.
01:57She was so bold.
01:59She was a master.
02:05Chick, chick, the outside of your face.
02:07It's the first interracial marriage on TV, which I think is kind of the big one, right?
02:12What did he say?
02:13What's the matter with the way I talk?
02:15I've learned to listen with an accent.
02:18If you can only use one television show.
02:21Lucy Ricardo!
02:23To kind of represent all of American television, I think it might have to be I Love Lucy.
02:32In the late 1940s, CBS approached Lucio Ball about doing a network radio show, a sitcom, called My Favorite Husband.
02:39When I married Liz, she couldn't cook, she couldn't sew, she couldn't clean.
02:43But later, she overcame this lack of domesticity in a most ingenious manner.
02:47I got a maid.
02:48The show was about a kind of zany housewife, and it became a big hit.
02:55It was extremely popular.
02:57CBS approaches her and says, we want to make a television version of My Favorite Husband.
03:04CBS was really looking to claim this new industry.
03:08Television at that point hadn't existed.
03:10So it was this huge gamble.
03:13Lucille Ball was enough of a name that they thought, okay, she can translate to TV, because we've seen her movies.
03:20We know her.
03:22Lucy took CBS's very generous offer and said, that's super great.
03:28I won't do it without my husband.
03:31And CBS was like, why are you making demands on us?
03:35She says, I'm not doing it without Desi.
03:37They said, well, we're not doing it with Desi.
03:39The problem was that CBS didn't want him to be her husband at all, because they thought the
03:43American public would never buy the idea of this thick-accented Cuban married to an all-American girl.
03:49Oh, my God, it feels really bad to say.
03:52CBS didn't want Desi because they just didn't think that anyone would want to watch a show
03:57with a mixed-race marriage.
03:58It was a racist decision.
04:00I think it was unbelievably ballsy of Lucille Ball to do that, especially a woman at that time advocating for
04:10an interracial marriage. It would have been unheard of.
04:13She risks the entertainment deal of a lifetime. A woman who is an actress having her own idea
04:21and asserting herself with the heads of CBS risking her own success.
04:28There is no comparable today for just how powerful CBS was in 1950.
04:33It really speaks to what a bold and brave woman she was.
04:38And I cannot believe that Lucy just said, okay, well then bye, and walked out of that room.
04:43I think that it just shows the tremendous moxie that she had.
04:48I think if it would have been for Lucy, I would have stopped trying a long time ago,
04:52because I was always the guy that didn't fit.
04:56When she did my favorite husband on the radio, they said that I wasn't the type to play the part.
05:01Being a refugee coming from Cuba, Desi has an amazing life story.
05:07His family lost everything in the revolution of 1933.
05:10After the Batista revolution, he and others in his family end up penniless in Miami.
05:16My first job in this country was cleaning bird cages. It's very true.
05:21We came to this country and we didn't have a scent.
05:26He reinvented himself as a self-taught musician.
05:28And had this amazing musical talent.
05:31And he was so handsome. And then got scouted to Hollywood and played the Latin lover.
05:40When Desi Arnaz meets Lucille Ball at RKO, they were starring together in a movie called Too Many Girls.
05:47Lucy was playing like the second banana character and Desi was one of the, you know, the handsome guys.
05:52That was kind of his job was to just be hot.
05:59Lucy started out trying to be a serious actress. She moved to LA. She was a Goldwyn girl and a Ziegfeld girl.
06:06And she'd been a steadily working actress, but she'd never broken through into an A-list star.
06:13As a B-movie actress, people noticed she was funny. That did happen and she got some wisecracking roles.
06:17But nothing that would at all give hints to what she could do.
06:21Desi was completely smitten. And they fell in love. Married in the early 40s. I think they were
06:31absolutely a true love story. But it was very, very difficult the way their careers operated.
06:37He was leading his band and was constantly on the road. They famously often only saw each other at
06:42dawn or dusk as he was heading off to the nightclub and she was coming home from the studio.
06:46Lucy, you said that one of the reasons why I Love Lucy started was to keep
06:50you and Desi together. It was to have a family and live a pretty long life.
06:55You cannot have a baby over the telephone, long distance. I found that out.
07:00In the face of all this reluctance, it was really Desi who came up with an idea to sell the show.
07:05Lucy O'Ball and Desi Arnaz take the show on the road vaudeville style,
07:10performing to American audiences and proving that they would embrace them as a couple.
07:14They performed at a theater in New York. It was sold out pretty much every night.
07:19Indeed, this show was a boffo hit. Critics all over the country loved it. Audiences flocked to
07:25see it. And ultimately, CBS had to agree, well, maybe this would work.
07:32Well, it doesn't matter. You'll never be a success on television anyway.
07:36So, CBS greenlit something called a test film.
07:40What do you mean I want to be a success on television?
07:43You don't have a pretty girl in your act.
07:45She was funnier than all the people he knew. So, Ricky had to let her sort of be involved,
07:51but also she was a pain in the neck because he had a business to run.
07:56It was very much like their vaudeville act in which Lucy would clown around.
08:00Yes, give us a tune. And you got yourself a job. All right. Go to it.
08:04Like, ah!
08:07She'd flop on the stage like a barking seal.
08:15The pilot is weird. I won't lie.
08:19She was 40 years old when she started playing that role on TV.
08:25Even in today's time, that's considered a little bit older to be the lead of a TV show.
08:31Honestly, if you'd seen the pilot, you wouldn't have greenlit it either.
08:33What's interesting about the failed pilot, it needs to be reworked. And so it's like all of this work
08:41to retool their whole lives to do this show might not even happen.
08:45What do we do now?
08:47In those days, most television programs were sponsored by a single advertiser.
09:02And so they had to find a sponsor that would pay to put the show on the air.
09:06They probably thought, what company is going to sponsor a show with a mixed-race marriage in it?
09:13Which is gross, but I'm just reporting.
09:15Their major sponsor ended up being Philip Morris.
09:21Oh, Desi, you're so good to me.
09:24Well, honey, you deserve the best.
09:26When Philip Morris stepped up, that really took it off the shelf.
09:30And Desi had all of these really advanced tech demands.
09:34Videotape hadn't been invented yet. There was no way to preserve
09:37a television signal, which was this flickering image that went out live over the airwaves.
09:42Pretty much every television broadcast before that is lost to time. And Desi was the one who said,
09:47let's do it on film.
09:48When Desi said, well, why don't we film it? CBS said that will cost more. And if you do that,
09:54you're going to have to take a pay cut. And Desi had one condition. He said,
09:57I want to own the negatives. I want to own the film.
09:59CBS laughs about this in the negotiation and says to Desi, who's going to want to watch him after
10:05the air? CBS couldn't really get its head around the notion that television programs were going to
10:10be shown more than once. So it turned out to be an unbelievable deal.
10:13They say, we want to produce the show ourselves and sell it to you, which flips the entertainment
10:19business model on its head. It could be re-shown. So the rerun was born. And if it could be re-shown,
10:27it could be re-sold. So ultimately the syndication market was born. In a very real way, Desi's
10:32innovations also helped draw the center of television production from the east coast to the west coast,
10:37and made Los Angeles into the center of television production that it remains today.
10:41Sitcoms were not shot as multi-cams. No one really had expertise in how to light the set.
10:49Lucille Ball kind of needed the pressure of performing it like a play. That doesn't work
10:55without Carl Freund. Desi hired Carl Freund, the Academy Award-winning cinematographer.
11:00Figuring out how to light the entire set so that there were no shadows, so all of the cameras could
11:06pick up the movement at the same time. In comedy, if you can capture
11:11both the action and the reaction with multiple cameras running at once, then you completely
11:15capture the spontaneity. Then the trick was how to get an audience onto a motion picture soundstage,
11:20which was basically a working factory floor, with all kinds of fire hazards and dangerous cables,
11:26and it had never been done. Lucille Ball always said that she was dead without an audience.
11:31Lucille Ball, as Desi wisely knew, performed better in front of people. There was pushback,
11:37how are we going to do that? Do we fit people in here? It was Desi who figured out that they could
11:42get about 300 people into a soundstage. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Desi Arnaz.
11:51As you know, this is film, and that's why you see all these cameras down here,
11:56because it's just like making a movie, see? The mother of my children, ladies and gentlemen.
12:01He plays Lucy. Lucille Ball.
12:07Then the audience is there, and you're in front of the audience, and it's so quick and fast.
12:15Finally, the show went on the air in October of 1951, and it was more or less an overnight
12:21sensation. The first episode of I Love Lucy that premieres, the girls want to go to a nightclub.
12:26Well, look, Lucy, Monday's Fred's anniversary, and he wants to go to the fights.
12:30Yeah, well, Monday's Ethel's anniversary, too, and she wants to go to a nightclub.
12:34The fact that they found Vivian Vance and William Frawley, and they were as great as they were.
12:39I mean, Vivian had been a stage actress who knew that she could go toe-to-toe with Lucy,
12:44and that they both had the best comic timing ever. William Frawley was often a heavy in movies.
12:51Did we know he could be lovable as Fred? They're great at musical comedy,
12:55too. Did we know that? Lucy and Desi now had two amazing counterparts. That is a gift.
13:12I love Desi Arnaz. I loved his accent when I was a little kid.
13:15When Ricky Ricardo would, like, get angry and rattle off a really fast rant in Spanish.
13:21He's in show business, and she wants to get into it. He wants to keep her out of it and keep her at home
13:32as a happy housewife, and she is constantly scheming and dreaming of ways to get into the act.
13:37They've already hired another girl to do the commercial, and they won't be needing you after all.
13:43Goodbye.
13:45Now you stand right over here.
13:46Yes, sir.
13:47Now let's try it once, and remember, be bright and vivacious.
13:50Yes, sir.
13:50All right.
13:51Vitamina vegemin.
13:53Vitamina vegemin.
13:54Vita vita med...
13:55Vita...
13:56Vitamedigen.
13:58Vita vita ve...
13:59I'm not even gonna be able to say it.
14:00Vitamina vegemin.
14:02It's so tasty, too.
14:09Vitamina vegemin.
14:10If you watch that sequence, you cannot believe she did that in one take, which she did.
14:20This is Lucille Ball at her best.
14:23Just like candy.
14:24Vitamina vegemin.
14:27Oh, my God.
14:28That was so...
14:29Oh.
14:34That's the funniest drunk performance ever on television.
14:37Alcohol, 23%.
14:39She's doing a commercial.
14:43She's slowly, slowly, slowly getting drunker.
14:45Well, I'm your Vitamina piggybacker.
14:48What do you think of that girl?
14:51Do you pop out at parties?
14:57Are you unpopular?
15:01The slow rise of it is just brilliant.
15:04That is a lesson in comedy timing.
15:20It changes television.
15:22The show was already doing really, really well.
15:25But Vitamina vegemin put it over the top.
15:28It's right after World War II.
15:41And all of a sudden, there's a boom in everything.
15:43And so, TV could boom along with it.
15:46Soon enough, I Love Lucy became the number one show on television.
15:49That writing crew said, we are here, and now we're going to be here.
15:54We've got them on the hook, and now let's reel them in.
15:56Season two premieres with the chocolate factory.
15:59Job switching is what the episode is actually called.
16:02Who do you think does the housework?
16:04And who do you think cooks all the meals?
16:06Yeah.
16:06Oh, anybody can cook and do the housework.
16:09Ha! I'd just like to see you two try it for a week.
16:11So they decide to switch roles in the house.
16:14And the men stay home.
16:16The girls go and get jobs at a chocolate factory.
16:19Ricardo, I'm going to put you to work chocolate dipping.
16:21You say you've had experience.
16:23They used to call me the Big Dipper.
16:26The seized candy chocolate maker did not even know what I Love Lucy was.
16:30Hey, this is fun.
16:33They kind of had this history of bringing in, like,
16:35real professionals who had no acting experience.
16:37What do you do when your nose itches?
16:39That's why it was so funny, because these people were genuinely trying to do
16:43what they were doing up against this complete clown.
16:49Ricky and Fred say that we'll make dinner.
16:51What do you know about rice?
16:52Well, I had a throne at me on one of the darkest days of my life.
16:55He decides to make a pound of rice per person.
16:59Hey, Ricky, watch this!
17:01Oh, no!
17:03Don't die!
17:05Hurry up, Fred!
17:06Well, they hadn't rehearsed it with the real rice.
17:08Desi accidentally falls.
17:12And he can hear the audience in real time with this explosive laugh.
17:15So he arranges to fall by accident on purpose two more times before the scene ends.
17:20He's a ham.
17:25All he had to do was be committed, and he was.
17:28If one piece of candy gets past you and into the packing room unwrapped, you're fired.
17:33Yes, ma'am.
17:34Let her roll!
17:36In the last five minutes, Lucy and Ethel get put on a conveyor belt.
17:40Well, this is easier.
17:42Yeah, we can handle it, okay?
17:44We've all been underwater at work.
17:47We've all felt like we can't keep up, and it accesses something in us.
17:52The first time I watched Lucy in the Chocolate Factory, I just couldn't believe what I was saying.
18:06It was just brilliant.
18:07That, I think, is the standard by which every other sitcom has come from.
18:12Having an A story, having a B story, having running gags.
18:15You're doing splendidly.
18:16Speed it up a little!
18:18When more than a million American households vote on the funniest scene in television,
18:24the conveyor belt was voted the funniest scene in television history.
18:32Audiences were, like, salivating for this show.
18:36They were captivated.
18:38You couldn't go anywhere without seeing Lucy and Desi on a magazine cover.
18:43Everything is going very well.
18:45Better than anyone might have even been able to dream.
18:47The sponsors are happy.
18:49The network's happy.
18:49The audience is happy.
18:51Lucy and Desi are happy.
18:53Stores are changing their hours of operation around the airing of I Love Lucy on Monday nights.
19:00And then Lucy gets pregnant.
19:02Lucy!
19:03Is that you, sweetie pie?
19:06And this is personally great news for them, because they'd so much wanted children.
19:09But CBS and Philip Morris go nuts.
19:12It suddenly becomes, what does that mean for the show?
19:16Are we going to pause the show at its highest?
19:20Do we stop?
19:21Do we rework it?
19:23You can't have this pregnant woman on the air.
19:25What are you going to do?
19:26Can you shoot around her?
19:27And Desi's like, no way.
19:28Because when Lucy gets pregnant, she really balloons.
19:30CBS and Philip Morris did not want Lucy Ricardo to be pregnant.
19:34Philip Morris essentially said, you know, in no uncertain terms, we're not moving forward with this show.
19:41If there's going to be a Ricardo baby, that's not going to work for us.
19:43She can't be pregnant on TV.
19:46They said to themselves, Lucille Ball is pregnant.
19:49Why can't Lucy Ricardo be pregnant?
19:51Lucy and Ricky could have a baby.
19:53Okay, take it from real life.
19:54Their number one sponsor is a cigarette company.
19:58You know, what does that look like?
20:00Do we just pause for a year?
20:03The studio heads were freaking out.
20:05The sponsors were freaking out.
20:08So finally, Desi goes over the heads of the brass to the chairman of Philip Morris,
20:13the sponsor, and says, you know, we've given you the number one show on television.
20:16We're now being told that we can't do this plot line.
20:19If you don't want that, then it's okay with us.
20:21But we'll then have to cease being responsible for giving you the number one show on television.
20:26And then a memo comes through from Philip Morris that says,
20:29don't F with the Cupid.
20:31Gee, I'm going to have to go on a diet.
20:33You know, I could hardly get into my dress this morning.
20:36Hey, Lucy, wait a minute.
20:39You don't suppose...
20:40That's not in the constitution that you can't say pregnant on TV.
20:44That was CBS's rule.
20:46I'm telling you, being an expectant father is pretty tough on a man.
20:49Yeah, I know, but you got to go along with it.
20:52You couldn't even say the word pregnant in those days.
20:55Right.
20:56They say I had to say expectant.
21:03It is so funny today to think that they weren't allowed to use the word pregnant.
21:09Then they're so brilliant, they make it into a joke with spectant.
21:13They worked it in.
21:14You don't suppose you're going to have a baby?
21:17Oh, of course not.
21:21Once she starts showing, they put her in very baggy shirts so that it's not too obvious.
21:26They had a minister, a priest, and a rabbi on set to make sure that nothing was offensive.
21:31It was incredibly taboo to portray a pregnant woman on television at that time.
21:37What did the doctor say?
21:39Ethel, we're going to have a baby.
21:43We are?
21:44We are?
21:52Famously then, Lucy became pregnant in real life with their son, Desi Jr.,
21:56which was very controversial because there had never really been a pregnant character on a television show.
22:00When she finds out she's going to have a baby, she needs to tell Ricky.
22:03She spends all day trying to find a quiet, private moment to tell him.
22:06She goes to the Tropicana.
22:08Ricky has passed a note that says, you know,
22:09my husband and I have just found out that we're going to have a blessed event.
22:13That's how they said it.
22:15Ricky reads the note and doesn't realize who it's from.
22:17He sees that Lucy's in the crowd and he kind of jokingly points at her like,
22:21oh, is it you?
22:21And she nods and he realizes that she's pregnant and that he's going to be a dad.
22:26Honey, no.
22:27Yes.
22:28Really?
22:29It's me!
22:30I'm going to be a father!
22:34He sings while they dance together and they're crying.
22:38They want to be parents so bad.
22:40We're having a baby.
22:43The emotion, that scene when they really cried, nothing can top that.
22:47Lucy was in her early 40s, which especially at the time was quite old to be having a child.
22:52I bet he's going to look just like you.
22:54Oh, I hope not.
22:56You can just see the fourth wall kind of goes away.
22:59I'll bet she'll speak with an accent like you.
23:02Lucy and Desi really break character.
23:05This is not just happening on screen.
23:06This is really happening to these two performers I adore.
23:08My baby and me.
23:16It's such a beautiful, truthful moment.
23:18Ricky, this is it.
23:32The whole episode is Lucy getting ready to go into labor at any minute.
23:36Desi's doing the best performance of his life as Ricky freaking out.
23:40There's a creative genius and an ambition to Desi Arnaz.
23:46And there's also some P.T. Barnum.
23:48Ricky has to go to the club and he gets into like some crazy makeup.
23:51Hello, Fred.
23:53It's here.
23:53Yippee!
23:55Then he runs to the hospital in the makeup still.
23:58Oh, thank heavens you're back.
24:00Fred, how's Lucy?
24:01Oh, she's great.
24:02But I'm a wreck.
24:03He isn't going to let the opportunity of the birth of the baby to America's sweetheart
24:12go by without it being a major splash.
24:16And it ends with little Ricky being presented to the world.
24:20This beautiful, super round-headed little baby.
24:23It's not a coincidence that the scheduled C-section of Lucille Ball's baby is on the same day that
24:36the episode airs.
24:38For them to arrange for her to actually have her own child on the day that the show airs,
24:45it's just so wonderful.
24:46But again, speaks to her business sense.
24:49She knew that would be a great publicity stunt.
24:51The news headline that goes around is,
24:54Lucy sticks to the script.
24:55It's a boy.
24:57The real life Desi Arnaz Jr. was born on the same day as little Ricky.
25:01And it was a sensation.
25:02It drew an audience that was larger than tuned in for
25:05Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration as president the next day.
25:08I mean, this is event television.
25:11The episode in which little Ricky is born, to this day,
25:14holds the Nielsen share ratings record for most households with televisions
25:18tuned into the same thing at the same time.
25:21A record that is most likely never going to be broken.
25:25Nobody does that today.
25:27That's more than the Super Bowl.
25:29That's more than anything that we could even imagine today.
25:33In Chicago, at quarter past the hour, halfway through the show, the water pressure in the
25:39municipal water system suddenly plunged because everybody was flushing the toilet at the same time
25:43in the first commercial break.
25:45It's just, it's unheard of.
25:46Lucy and Desi are really the first major celebrity power couple in television.
25:55People feel invested in them as human beings.
25:59They feel let into their lives.
26:01That's really the genius behind the show is it's very parasocial.
26:05A lot of celebrities now really recreate.
26:08I mean, Taylor Swift is like, you know, the expert of this, right?
26:11Her name is Lucy, both on and off camera.
26:14It's fairly meta.
26:15It almost makes the sitcom even more believable.
26:18Desi Jr. experiences a lifetime of being confused with little Ricky from the show.
26:27Hi, Barney.
26:28Hi, Barney.
26:31They took me in as their own child and introduced me to their children,
26:37Lucy Jr. and Desi Jr., who I became really good friends with as a kid and we grew up together.
26:44You better get out of that outfit, dear.
26:45You know, we want a surprise daddy and he's going to be home any old dear.
26:49There was always that dynamic of people getting us mixed up.
26:55I think in Desi's mind, it was very hard.
26:59He wanted to do what I did.
27:02After the pregnancy episodes, they are riding high.
27:04The show, it just feels untouchable.
27:07They are at the top of the world.
27:09It is my pleasure to present the Television Academy's 1953 national award.
27:14for the best situation comedy to I Love Lucy.
27:20Nothing can go wrong.
27:23And, you know, Joe McCarthy shows up on the scene.
27:27And before news cameras, Senator McCarthy in a dramatic confrontation.
27:31You can't make good and honest motion pictures in an atmosphere of fear.
27:36And Lucy, the most famous person in the world in television, gets accused of being a communist at the height of the McCarthy era.
27:42This was in the middle of the Red Scare.
27:44It's a real dark stain on the business.
27:47People were being wrongfully accused of being communists and really impacted a lot of talent in Hollywood.
27:53That's the way her life works, right?
27:55Like, every time something goes wrong.
27:58This time, it's the thing that could genuinely end her.
28:01All the other things, they're all pittance compared to this.
28:05This is the thing that can get you put in jail, get you blacklisted.
28:09People really, really are scared of communists at this point.
28:13This could end the show and put hundreds of people out of work and ruin everything that they've worked for.
28:27Lucy was a legitimately registered member of the Communist Party.
28:31The news really seized on it.
28:34Lucy's a red in hair and in, like, spirit.
28:38Lucy's a commie.
28:39It's really debatable whether she cared about politics really at all.
28:43Like, in her spirit, who knows?
28:46She did it as a favor to her grandfather because he helped raise her.
28:51It's a big scandal.
28:53Lucy's really scared.
28:55She's scared she's going to get booed.
28:57She worked so hard for her career.
29:00It was terrifying for her.
29:03Desi went out before they filmed the next episode.
29:06And he says that she's not a communist, that she loves America,
29:09that he loves America.
29:10Desi Arnaz was very patriotic about America.
29:14Desi had a perfect response to that, which is,
29:17the only thing read about Lucy is her hair.
29:19That's not even real.
29:20My wife, Lucille Ball.
29:22People leap to their feet, applaud, screaming, and it's over.
29:28She was able to overcome it all.
29:30But I think the fact that even she got dragged into it
29:32says a lot about what was going on in America in the 1950s.
29:36Desi pretty much shut it down.
29:38Desi was a badass.
29:40He just really knew how to talk to people.
29:43They are so important to the American people that Lucy gets out of communism.
29:49Like, it's like Lucy gets out of McCarthyism because of how important she is.
29:54I Love Lucy is still enduring because it's funny.
29:56It's still, first of all, just a fun watch.
30:03And you get a bunch of classic episodes that are the ones that people who really love the show
30:07go back to the most.
30:08And you get all of these celebrity guests.
30:10William Holden shows up.
30:17John Wayne shows up.
30:19Harpo Marks shows up.
30:21I'm inspired by what that show was able to do that we're not allowed to do on television now.
30:32There are takes on that show that last four minutes with no dialogue.
30:38And, of course, Lucy goes to the famous Brown Derby restaurant and she runs into William Holden.
30:43And, of course, she just wants to be a star, right?
30:45But she ultimately sets her nose on fire.
30:58Tell me, Mrs. Ricardo, have you ever considered acting?
31:02Has she ever considered acting?
31:06Somebody said, do you have a favorite one?
31:08And you just said the word grapes and people broke into applause.
31:10I was a grape stomper.
31:15The woman that Lucy recorded that scene with very notably was Italian.
31:23And she did not stage wrestle Lucy.
31:27So I made a dance out of it like this.
31:29And finally, I slipped.
31:32And in slipping, I hit her.
31:34And she took offense.
31:35And so she hauled off and let me have it.
31:37She kicked me down by the throat.
31:47And I had grapes up my nose, in my ears.
31:51And she was choking me.
31:52And I'm really beating her to get her off.
31:55And we had to stop.
32:00And somebody had to come in and say, look, let her up eventually.
32:04We had to get on with the scenes.
32:06And she said, oh, yeah.
32:06And down we went again.
32:08And out.
32:14This woman doesn't realize this is like stage combat.
32:18We need to take it easy.
32:19She almost drowns.
32:26She like beat her up.
32:28That was Lucille Ball's favorite episode on record of I Love Lucy.
32:33Don't do that at the table, dear.
32:36Do that again, son.
32:37Ricky.
32:37Who thought he's going to be a drummer?
32:40Well, he certainly is not.
32:41That's the last thing in the world I want him to be.
32:43I started playing drums when I was like two years old on trash cans in my backyard in Lafayette, Louisiana.
32:52The audition for the I Love Lucy show, they were looking to expand the part of little Ricky.
32:58I went to meet Lucy there in her glory.
33:01There she was in the flesh.
33:04And she looked at me and she said, well, he's cute, but what does he do?
33:09My dad said, he plays the drums.
33:11She said, well, there's a set of drums.
33:13So I played, started jamming on the drums.
33:16Finally, Desi himself came over, started playing with me, stood up after a while,
33:21laughed and said, I think we found little Ricky.
33:31My dad said, this is huge, you know, this is a big deal.
33:39Here I am like four and a half years old.
33:42I was little Ricky.
33:44The Babalu episode, the Ricardos go to Havana.
33:47Lucy meets Desi's family and it's this whole dynamic there.
33:50I love that episode.
33:51It's so sweet.
33:52Glad you've made my son, Ricky Jr.
33:55It's a lot of pressure, you know, for a little kid.
33:59I did other shows after that, but this was the big one.
34:02It was in front of a live audience.
34:04You did one take and that was it.
34:06It hurt my hands so much to do it because I'm not used to playing like that, you know,
34:14the Kongos.
34:17And it's like my, my voice cracked and it was like web.
34:24It was just kind of funny.
34:26And Lucy was very demanding and everybody being right on cue.
34:31Desi treated me really, really good.
34:33He teaches how to fish and ride horses and swim.
34:38I had a heart for him.
34:40We can't stash away five dozen eggs.
34:43You get the longest recorded laugh in I Love Lucy history.
34:46They raise chickens.
34:48Well, I'm going to put some in my blouse.
34:50Lucy puts a ton of eggs in her shirt and then has to practice a tango.
34:56She keeps committing.
35:01She doesn't break.
35:03The more the audience is laughing, the more she goes for it.
35:08It's the only time they ever cut a laugh down in the show's history.
35:19By the fall of 1957,
35:21Desi and Lucy were pretty exhausted from the weekly pace of the show.
35:26It's unusual for a show to end when you're on top.
35:30They could have probably kept going, but I think they were just, they were tired.
35:35And the show ends, I think they called it at the right time.
35:38She understood that leave them wanting more.
35:42There was identification with an American audience, but with audiences all over the world,
35:48we found out.
35:49They didn't have to understand the language to understand the predicament,
35:52and the way I got in and the way I got out, and the love at the end.
35:57We always had a happy ending.
35:58And domestic situations are very easily identified all over the world.
36:05When the bar is set that high that early, we can all be grateful for what happens in entertainment thereafter.
36:12Because Desi had retained the rights to I Love Lucy, there were so many episodes in the can
36:17that they were worth quite a lot.
36:19They made the decision to sell them back to CBS for something like $5 million.
36:23With that nest egg, it became the seed money that allowed them to buy the RKO Studios lot in Hollywood,
36:30which is where they'd met in 1940.
36:33And that made them the largest physical plant of movies and television in all of Los Angeles,
36:38bigger than any of the other big studios.
36:41Lucille Ball was the first female studio head.
36:46She was, by all accounts, pretty good at it.
36:49After she bought him out of the company in 1962, she went on to lead it,
36:53and thereby became the first female head of a studio in Hollywood.
36:57It was the General Motors of television.
37:00She was being asked to do something that no other woman was being asked to do.
37:04She was brave enough to leave her marriage.
37:07She was brave enough to keep coming up with new opportunities for herself and her talent.
37:13They just consistently produced more and more great shows, not just comedy TV.
37:20The Untouchables, a Desilu production.
37:28The Untouchables, which really created kind of the crime TV genre as we know it today.
37:36Desilu produced what became The Twilight Zone.
37:38In 1966, there were two pilots in development, and her business advisors told her that she'd wind
37:47up having to sell the studio if she greenlit them.
37:49But she believed in both of those shows, and she gave the go-ahead.
37:53And the two shows were Star Trek and Mission Impossible.
37:57Don't want us to see them.
38:01Lucille Ball gets to a point of having the confidence to overrule her all-male board of
38:06directors not once but twice to greenlight and fund the pilot of what becomes Star Trek.
38:14That was one that she got a lot of flack for, but she believed in it.
38:17And now some people call her the mother of sci-fi TV.
38:20They look like women from Mars!
38:23Lucille Ball had vision.
38:27She was a smart businesswoman.
38:29It was brave and also very, very savvy.
38:32Desilu Studios became the largest producer of television content in the world.
38:37Because of what Lucille Ball did in forming Desilu Productions,
38:40and really was responsible for the entire invention of syndicated American television.
38:47And that is what gave us all the shows that we love today to be able to be seen in repeats.
38:53Lucy and Desi created television as we know it.
38:57To this day, that's still how television operates.
39:00That all started with I Love Lucy.
39:09Most shows fade, and their legacy fades.
39:11Maybe they spoke to the times when they aired, but they don't age well.
39:15I Love Lucy is so timeless.
39:17For me, as a TV watcher, I Love Lucy is the iconic show.
39:23The way that she functioned as a lead character is also really impactful.
39:30You know, you see that in, like, Maude, Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown, this kind of woman with a dream.
39:37A show like Carol Burnett, her physical comedy definitely was influenced by Lucy.
39:43We all are influenced by Lucy.
39:45I was all about Lucille Ball, but then you, once you learn everything that Desi did,
39:50like, you can't separate Lucille Ball's success from Desi Arnaz's genius.
39:55Like, their geniuses complemented each other in this gorgeous way that made everything work.
40:01Their last words to each other are, I love you.
40:03And then a few days later, Lucy is honored at the Kennedy Center with a Kennedy Center honor.
40:10The biggest award an American performer can get.
40:14When she gets announced, everybody jumps to their feet.
40:18This is 30 years after I Love Lucy.
40:21She couldn't believe it.
40:25Robert Stack reads a letter that Desi wrote on his deathbed.
40:28I Love Lucy are just one mission, to make people laugh.
40:33He talks a lot about how I Love Lucy would have been nothing without Lucy.
40:38Desi concluded, Lucy was the show.
40:42Viv and Fred and I were just props.
40:44Damn good props, but props nevertheless.
40:49P.S.
40:51I Love Lucy was never just a title.
40:54And, I mean, he'd been dead for maybe five days.
41:01Lucy is beside herself crying.
41:03I Love Lucy was never just a title.
41:06I think that was like a really beautiful gift that he gave her at the end, in such a public way.
41:10And to just say, you were the heart and soul and the spirit and the star.
41:15And it was wonderful to be able to support you.
41:17It's so beautiful.
41:20I love Lucy and she loves me.
41:23We're as happy as two can be.
41:29Sometimes we quarrel, but then
41:34How will love make it up again?
41:38Lucy kisses like no one can.
41:41She's my missus and I'm her man.
41:45And life is heaven, you see.
41:49Cause I love Lucy, yes, I love Lucy.
41:53And Lucy loves me.
41:57I do.
42:00I do.
42:05I do.
42:09I do.
42:18I do.
42:19We'll see you next time.
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