The evening that I Love Lucy first went on the air, the
director and his wife invited us all to have dinner and watch the
premiere. Lucy and Desi were there, along with producer Jess Oppenheimer
and his wife, Vivian Vance and her husband, and our editor, Dann Cahn.
We gathered around the 12-in. screen to watch the opening episode, "The
Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub." We had seen the show at the filming,
so there wasn't much laughter. But Vivian's husband Phil Ober, who
hadn't been at the filming, was laughing so hard he almost fell out of
his chair, which we hoped was a good omen.
When the reviews appeared,
they were mixed. The Hollywood Reporter gave it a rave. Daily
Variety said the show needed work, but the New York Times
thought it had "promise." TIME called it "a triumph of bounce over
bumbling material." (Apparently the magazine had a change of heart later
on, because Lucy was featured on its cover in May 1952.) When the
ratings came out, I Love Lucy was in the Top 10, and six months
later it reached No. 1. People ask why the show was an immediate hit and
has remained popular for more than 50 years. Most of the credit goes to
the incredible comedy genius of Lucille Ball.
I Love Lucy
established a lot of records. It has been seen by more than 1 billion
people. But one of the show's biggest contributions to the entertainment
world was something that happened before we ever went on the air. In the
early '50s, most TV shows were performed for live broadcast in New York
City, and stations around the country played a kinescope, a copy of the
show filmed from a TV screen, which wasn't of good quality. But Lucy and
Desi were expecting their first child, and they didn't want to move to
New York. So Desi got a group of top technical people together who
figured out how to shoot the show with three film cameras in front of an
audience. CBS said that would cost too much, so Desi and Lucy took a cut
in salary and in return were given the rights to the negatives of the
films. Thus the three-camera film system, still used for situation
comedies today, was created, and the rerun was born.
Davis and Carroll co-wrote the pilot for I Love Lucy and
stayed with the show for six years
TIME Cover
Collection: Click
here to see covers from 1951
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