As TODAY marks its 75th anniversary, the TODAY Archive is revisiting legendary interviews, stories that moved us and other iconic moments from our 75 years on the air. These are the segments that shaped TODAY and created a lasting legacy. Today, we look back at Lucille Ball talking about the legacy of โI Love Lucyโ on Feb. 16, 1983.
โI Love Lucyโ was an American institution when star Lucille Ball sat down with Jane Pauley to look back at the pioneering sitcom on Feb. 16, 1983.
โI Love Lucyโ premiered Oct. 15, 1951 โ nearly three months to the day before TODAY would first sign on โ and ran for six seasons, living on for decades beyond that in syndication. It chronicled a middle-class wife (Ball), who often gets involved in hairbrained schemes, much to the chagrin of her husband, played by Ballโs real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.
As Ball, who died in 1989, told Pauley, though, the show almost never got off the ground.
Did Lucille Ball Think She Was a Trailblazer?
โI Love Lucyโ remains one of the most beloved shows ever, but Ball didnโt consider the idea that she was some sort of visionary.
โNo … I was only going to work for about a year, a year or two, so that I had something like home movies to show my baby. I was pregnant at the time,โ she said.
Her daughter, Lucie, was born in 1951, and her son, Desi Jr., would be born in 1953, with the pregnancy famously being written into the show.
CBS wanted Ball and her husband to come up with an idea for a show. However, the network didnโt want him involved, also insisting the show shoot in New York.
โI stuck to my guns,โ Ball said. โI said, โI certainly donโt want to quit pictures and do television and have to move to New York. That doesnโt make sense. I want to stay home and have babies, and thatโs why we want to work together.โ And they said, โWell, it didnโt seem quite right to have a Cuban husband for a young American couple.โ I said, โWhy not? We are married.โ Well, they still didnโt buy it.โ
โYou gotta admit, it does sound like an odd pairing, doesnโt it?โ Pauley asked.
โAnd it was,โ Ball shot back, with a laugh.
Ball and Arnaz had no interest in shooting in New York. So when CBS threatened to drop the show, Ball said she and Arnaz โscraped together $5,000โ which helped them gain ownership of it.
How About Those Co-Stars?!
โI Love Lucyโ was enhanced by the presence of Vivian Vance and William Frawley, who played married couple Ethel and Fred Mertz, respectively.
โWe had an idea of what we wanted and they were available. They were there at the right time, the right place, and thank God we found them,โ Ball said.
โIt was a very, very close, well-knit marriage of two married generations, the older marrieds and the younger marrieds,โ she said, โand that was what made it so marvelous to play the satire against.โ
How Did Lucille Ball Approach the Show?
Calling herself a connoisseur of the show, Pauley admitted she could probably do some routines from it. This prompted Ball to ask if she could โVitameatavegamin,โ a reference to the famous episode where Lucy gets a job in a commercial for a tonic that, unbeknownst to her, has a lot of alcohol in it.
Pauley then tried to pronounce Vitameatavegamin, with help from Ball.
Before their sit down ended, the comedy icon reflected on audience reception to her show.
โA lot of people donโt love Lucy, especially when theyโre working, they donโt think of it that way,โ she said, before stressing the grueling schedule. โBut I had a show to get on, and we had our timing down a certain way.
โWe had to accomplish a lot of things by a certain time, and if I hadnโt accomplished them, I knew that I was way behind,โ she explained, โbecause we did our show from 10 oโclock Monday morning and we did it in front of an audience at 3 oโclock Thursday afternoon.โ
She added, โAnd every minute counted.โ
