I Love Lucy Day 2024 is on Tuesday, October 15, 2024: What is your favorite I Love Lucy episode?

Tuesday, October 15, 2024 is I Love Lucy Day 2024. 12 lessons I've learned from watching “I Love Lucy” Lucy Lessons

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The one where Ethel and Lucy are having lunch at Hollywood's Brown Derby hoping to see movie stars and Lucy accidentally insults actor William Holden. Later Ricky calls to tell her he is bringing Mr. Holden back to their hotel for dinner and Lucy puts on the glasses and fake nose.

That was the days of live television and the scene where Mr. Holden set the fake nose on fire was a total mistake, their shock was real. Being the trooper she was, Lucy blew out the fire and kept going, but when it burst into flames a second time she created the greatest TV ad-lib of all time by dunking it in her cup of tea. NONE of that was in the script.

I love Lucy???

Yes, they were a married couple in real life.

In 1940, Ball met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls. Ball and Arnaz connected immediately and eloped the same year, garnering much press attention. Arnaz and Ball frequently argued, especially over his indiscretions with other women, but they always made up in the end.[26] Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army in 1942. He ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury.[26] As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. Ball filed for a divorce in 1944. Shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory decree, however, she reconciled with Arnaz again.[27] Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were only six years apart in age but apparently believed that it was less socially acceptable for an older woman to marry a younger man, and hence split the difference in their ages, both claiming a 1914 birth date.

Children and divorce

On July 17, 1951, just one month before her fortieth birthday and after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Desiree Arnaz.[5] A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.[6] When he was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings hit, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the show (indeed, Ball gave birth in real life on the same day that her Lucy Ricardo character gave birth).[6] There were several challenges from CBS, insisting that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air. After approval from several religious figures the network allowed the pregnancy storyline, but insisted that the word "expecting" be used instead of "pregnant". (Arnaz garnered laughs when he deliberately mispronounced it as "'spectin').[42] The episode's official title was "Lucy Is Enceinte," borrowing the French word for pregnant.[13] The birth made the first cover of TV Guide in January 1953.[43] Ball's instincts with business were often astonishingly sharp, and her love for Arnaz was passionate, but her relationships with her children were sometimes strained. Lucie Arnaz, her daughter, spoke of her mother's "controlling" nature.[44] Ball was very outspoken against the relationship that Desi Jr. had with Liza Minnelli. She was quoted as saying, "I miss Liza, but you cannot domesticate Liza."[45] She had a few very good friends in the business: Ginger Rogers, Mary Wickes and Vivian Vance. All were childless; Wickes never married.[46]

By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz; his increasing drinking further compounded matters.[47] On May 4, 1960, just two months after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, the couple divorced.[48] Until his death in 1986, however, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke very fondly of each other.[49] Indeed, both Arnaz and Ball spoke lovingly of each other after the breakup. Her real-life divorce indirectly found its way into her later television series, as she was always cast as a single woman.[50][51]

The following year, Ball did a musical on Broadway, Wildcat, co-starring Paula Stewart.[52] It was Stewart who introduced her to her next husband Gary Morton, a Borscht Belt stand-up comic who was thirteen years her junior.[8] Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of "I Love Lucy" due to his hectic work schedule.[45]That marked the beginning of a thirty-year friendship between Lucy and Paula. Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer. Morton also played occasional bit parts on Ball's various series.[45]

[edit] Later career

The 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat was a successful sell-out that ended its run early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show.[45] The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over", which she performed with Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show. She made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), and the musical Mame (1974), and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show (1962–68), which costarred Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy (1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball appeared on the Dick Cavett show and spoke of her history and life with Arnaz. She insisted that Mame was by far one of her most favorite "family" movies she had ever done. During that interview, Ball revealed how she felt about other actors and actresses as well as her love for Arnaz. She continued by telling Dick that the success to her life was, getting rid of what was wrong and replacing it with what is right. (Talking about her divorce from Arnaz and marriage to Morton) Lucy also reveals in this interview that the strangest thing to ever happen to her was after she had some dental work completed and after placing lead fillings in her teeth, she started hearing radio stations in her head. She explained coming home one night from the studio and as she passed one area, she heard what she thought was morse code or a "tapping." She stated that "As I backed up it got stronger. The next morning, I reported it to the authorities and upon investigation, they found a Japanese radio transmitter that had been buried and was activeley transmitting codes back to the Japanese." [33]

Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate. Director/producer John Frankenheimer, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury in a mother role in another film and insisted on having her for the part.[53]

Ball at her last public appearance at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989 just four weeks before her death

Ball at her last public appearance at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989 just four weeks before her death

During the mid-1980s, she attempted to resurrect her television career. In 1982, Ball hosted a two-part Three's Company retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show.[54] A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, was well received. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy, costarring her longtime foil Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and former actor Aaron Spelling, was a critical and commercial flop which was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC.[4] The failure of this series was said to have sent Ball into a serious depression, and other than a few miscellaneous awards show appearances, she was absent from the public eye for the last several years of her life. Her last public appearance, just one month before her death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards telecast in which she and fellow presenter, Bob Hope, were given a standing ovation.[55]

[edit] Death

On April 18, 1989, Ball complained of chest pains and was rushed to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She was diagnosed as having a dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent surgery for nearly eight hours. The surgery was successful, and Ball was recovering; she was walking around her room with little assistance.[7] On April 26, shortly after dawn, Ball awoke with severe back pains. Her aorta had ruptured in a second location and Ball quickly lost consciousness. All attempts to revive her proved unsuccessful and at approximately 05:47 PST, Lucille Ball died at the age of seventy-seven.[7] She was initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, but in 2002 her children moved her ashes to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York where Ball's mother, father, brother, and grandparents are buried.[44]

same source:

Ricky Ricardo was the character name of the Cuban husband.

Cuba was still our buddy back then.

Does anyone here Love Lucy?

I also love Lucy. I have every episode and I also collect I Love Lucy Barbie dolls and collectibles. I have every one of those too!! I watch her everyday on TV Land and watch my DVDs too. The great comedy from that show is the best and you can never tire from watching them. Every time I watch an episode it is funnier than before! Nice to know someone else likes her also.