THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy by Madelyn Pugh Davis with Bob Carroll Jr. (Emmis, 288 pp., $19.95). Madelyn Pugh Davis has...
...One thing about Ball is clear: Though in the public eye her persona collided with her character's, Ball had little in common with the bubbly, child-like Lucy Ricardo...
...to produce a gracefully written memoir of the five decades she and Carroll spent churning out hundreds of scripts for Lucille Ball's radio and television shows, most notably I Love Lucy...
...Indeed, most early television shows survive only as poor-quality kinescopes...
...Rachel DiCarlo...
...Dishy...
...Davis warns in the first chapter that her book is not a tell-all about the people she used to work with...
...She gently clarifies a bit of the show's mythology...
...Guest star and famed stage actress Tallulah Bank-head did shock the crew one day by pulling off her pants at a meeting...
...Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz, was not contractually obligated to weigh 20 pounds more than Ball, as Vance sometimes claimed...
...Groundbreaking...
...Davis offers flashes of insight: "Everyone is complicated and Lucy was more complicated than most...
...One of the reasons they decided to create I Love Lucy was to save their marriage...
...Back then, most television shows were made in New York, because the largest audience was on the East Coast...
...Their success prompted much of the television industry to eventually move its home base out west...
...They had filed for divorce once before...
...Often they would start with an ending first—one that would display Ball's unmatched ability to perform physical comedy, like dipping candy or grape-stomping—and then figure out how to get her there...
...She steers far away from any discussion of Ball's stormy relationship with costar and real-life husband Desi Arnaz or his high profile drinking, gambling, and womanizing, which have been chronicled by Ball's biographers...
...Since there was no coaxial cable and videotape had not yet been invented, the rest of the country watched a fuzzy kinescope version...
...She was often blunt and had trouble expressing herself...
...To make up for the extra expense, the Arnazes took a big pay cut, and, in exchange, owned the rights to the shows...
...Entertaining...
...Madelyn Pugh Davis has collaborated with her longtime writing partner Bob Carroll Jr...
...How they came up with story lines is the most interesting material...
...Davis was in charge of trying all of Lucy's stunts beforehand—like getting rolled up in a rug or smashing eggs in her blouse—to make sure they were appropriate for a woman to do...
...She also had the delicate task of supervising Ball's wardrobe...
...She and Carroll drew many of the storylines and characters from their own lives...
...Davis is sincere in her praise of Desi Arnaz, whose contribution to the show has been overlooked...
...The show would then be edited, and CBS would broadcast it later...
...The topic of the meeting—until Bankhead crashed it—was supposed to be how to deal with her outrageous behavior...
...Beautifully attired on TV as she was, Ball apparently had a difficult time choosing flattering clothes...
...One of the reasons I Love Lucy reruns can be seen today is thanks to a deal he negotiated to film the show live in Los Angeles...
...She made whatever you wrote look great...
...She wasn't exactly known for her tact...
...Lucy and Desi wanted to stay in Los Angeles, so Desi came up with the idea of filming the show in front of a studio audience in one take, if possible...
...Still, Davis writes, Ball was "a beautiful clown . . . a comedy writer's dream...
Vol. 11 • March 2006 • No. 25
