Lucille Ball
“That was Lucy: slapstick Garbo, female clown of the
century, by every standard the First Lady of Television. I Love Lucy, her
original series, was the most popular sitcom in TV history. In 1952 the show
captured 67 of every 100 viewers at 9 on Monday nights, and for four of its six
years (1951-57) on the air it ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings. The Lucy
Show (1962-68) and Here's Lucy (1968-74) ran for nine seasons in the Top 10.
And for 32 years reruns of I Love Lucy have dominated the worldwide syndication
market. As one fan said "Every
minute of the day, somewhere, someone is watching I Love Lucy.”
-
People Magazine, 1989
Lucille Ball was actually given the
chance to start “I Love Lucy” because of a clown routine that she
performed. The television networks had originally
rejected her request to do a series co-starring Desi Arnaz, her Cuban born
husband. They did not think the public
would accept the two of them together.
So, to prove that their concept would work, Ball and Arnaz went on a
tour of theaters and made a pilot film.
The basis for their act and film was a musical clown routine created by
Pepito the Spanish Clown. He supplied
them with the props, including a gimmicked cello, and taught Lucy how to do his
routine. The success of the act and the film
convinced CBS to allow the couple to try out their series. Ball later repeated Pepito’s musical clown
act in an episode of the show, and Pepito also performed some of his other
routines as a guest star on another episode.
Lucy Ricardo
is an extremely physical character. All of her movements are big, even when she’s
just doing dishes and brushing off her dress. I’ve noticed that often she either
takes up a ton of space and needs plenty of room, or is right in someone else’s
bubble of personal space. Along with her body movements, Lucille also had a
rubber face. She could contort it into all sorts of crazy positions that
sometimes don’t even seem possible. (I included an image of a common one) She
was incredibly expressive with her mouth and used intense lip color to accent
it. Her bright, doll like eyes were also an advantage, making her fascinating to
watch.
The show itself uses physical humor
and classic clown behavior. An episode usually consists of poor Lucy
recognizing a problem, coming up with a scheme to remedy said problem. Then,
her solution only makes things more complicated and creates an overwhelming
mess for Lucy to scramble around fixing. Another common scenario is a
misunderstanding between Lucy and her husband or their landlords. In an episode
I watched the other day, the couple was on a cruise and Lucy was upset because
Ricky was there as entertainment and had to work so she locked him in their
room together. When he wanted to leave, she did everything in her power to
distract him so he wouldn’t find out she lost the key. She started dancing with
him, got him to inspect the furniture in their room, and threw things all over.
When she decided to call for help, she yelled out their window and ended up
getting stuck in it. Then, she tried all sorts of ways to get unstuck: pushing,
bending, pulling, wiggling, shimmying, stretching. The whole thing was pretty
ridiculous. The woman was an expert at appearing ditzy and out of control,
which, ironically, takes a lot of precision.
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