The decision to film the show also made CBS bigwigs uneasy. It would cost four times as much as a live show, and the only interested sponsor, Philip Morris, wasn't prepared to go that high. Again there was a compromise. Desi and Lucille agreed to take a smaller salary in return for producing the show and keeping title to the films.
Real Plumbing. Long years in the practical business of orchestra leading bad given Desi considerable organizing ability and business sense. He set up Desilu Productions (Desi president, Lucille vice president), and leased a sound stage from an independent Los Angeles studio. Because Lucille was "dead" without an audience, a side wall of the studio was knocked out to make a street entrance, and seats installed for an audience of 300. When a show is ready for the cameras, the audience laughter is picked up on overhead microphones and used in the final print.
Though I Love Lucy is filmed, it is more like a play than a movie. All of the lines and action are memorized and, whenever possible, the show is played straight through from beginning to end, and not shot in a number of unrelated scenes. The action takes place on four sets; two of them represent the Ricardos' Manhattan apartment, a third shows the nightclub where Ricky's band plays and the fourth is used for any other scenes called for by the script. Says Desi proudly: "We have real furniture, real plumbing, and a real kitchen where we serve real food. Even the plants are really growing; they're not phony."
Desilu Productions hired a pair of veteran troupers, William Frawley and Vivian Vance, to play the family next door and serve as foils and friends for Desi and Lucille. Academy Award-winning Karl (The Good Earth) Freund supervises the three cameras, and Director Marc Daniels (soon to be replaced by Bill Asher) gives Lucy its rattling pace. The writers Jess Oppenheimer, Bill Carroll and Madalyn Pugh-turn out scripts that do not impose too much on the audience's credulity and are reasonably free of clichés. The writers are held in an esteem not common in TV. Lucille bombards Jess Oppenheimer with photographs flatteringly inscribed to "the Bossman," and Desi has presented him with a statuette of a baseball player and a punning tribute, "To the man behind the ball."
"Wanta Play Cards?" Desi and Lucille
live an unpretentious life on a five-acre
ranch in the San Fernando Valley. The
only Hollywood note is a kidney-shaped
swimming pool, and the most recent addition to the house (a wing devoted to
daughter Lucie and her nurse) cost
$22,000-more than the house and land
cost originally. Neither Desi nor Lucille
has ever been socially ambitious, and their
friends are the same ones they have
known for years. Both Desi's mother (now
divorced from Arnaz Sr., who still lives in
Miami) and Lucille's Mom live near by.
At home, Lucille, who collects stray cats and dogs, is an amateur painter ("I use oils because it's easier to. correct mistakes than with water colors"), and generally considers herself a lazy, lounging homebody. She is fascinated by Desi's boundless energy. He spends weekends fishing on his 34-foot cabin cruiser, Desilu; plays violent tennis; likes to cook elaborate dishes. Says Lucille: "Everything is fine with him all the time. Wanta play cards? Fine. Play games? Fine. Go for a swim? Great." There's only one problem: "Desi is a great thermostat sneakerupper and I'm a thermostat sneakerdowner. Cold is the one thing that isn't great with him."
Sex & Chic. Though life has grown noticeably more placid for Desi and Lucille, it promises more money than they ever made before. Desilu Productions has already branched out beyond I Love Lucy. It is filming TV commercials for Red Skelton, and is at work on a new TV series, Our Miss Brooks, starring Eve Arden. Three of the best 30-minute Lucy shows are being put together in a package and will be experimentally released to movie theaters in the U.S. and Latin America. This year, I Love Lucy has grossed about $1,000,000, and Sponsor Philip Morris has signed a contract for 39 more shows beginning this fall. All of the old Lucy films can be sold again as new TV stations go on the air (eventually there will be 2,053 TV transmitters in the U.S., compared to today's 108).
In reaching the TV top, Lucille's telegenic good looks may be almost as important as her talent for comedy. She is sultry-voiced, sexy, and wears chic clothes with all the aplomb of a trained model and showgirl. Letters from her feminine fans show as much interest in Lucille's fashions as in her slapstick. Most successful comediennes (e.g., Imogene Coca, Fanny Brice, Beatrice Lillie) have made comic capital out of their physical appearance. Lucille belongs to a rare comic aristocracy: the clown with glamour.
