Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made television history as a couple with ethnically different backgrounds, refusing to shoot in New York - the then television capital, and becoming the first television show to shoot with a 3 camera system in front of a live studio audience. They were pioneers in creating syndication and reruns and they even helped to create the overhead lighting grid used on sound stages today. Not bad for a show that almost didn't happen!
Lucille Ball wasn't the most successful movie star of her time and her name certainly didn't have the star power that many other actresses did. But she was funny. And she was on a popular CBS radio show called *My Favorite Husband* that fit in with what television viewers were looking for at the time. The airwaves (both radio and television) were ripe with shows talking about family and marriage. So when CBS decided to take the show to television, it's surprising that Lucy made the demand that she would only do it if she could have her real life husband, Desi Arnaz, star in it alongside her. It wasn't her only caveat for doing the show either. They did not want to move across country to shoot in New York, as was standard at the time. They wanted to stay in Hollywood where all the movies were being made. And they wanted to take advantage of the movie industries technologies, shooting on film that they wanted to store and keep to help preserve the the quality of the show. While by today's standards these seem like pretty simple demands, they were cutting edge and quite unheard of.Sponsors for the show weren't originally convinced that the television watching audience would buy that these two were a couple. Lucy and Desi had to take their show/marriage on the road to prove to the sponsors that audiences would 'buy' that they were a couple and that they were funny together! And while a great number of television shows are shot on sound stages in California now, in the 50's when I Love Lucy aired that was not the case. Film and therefore Hollywood, were seen as rivals to New York and television. Asking to stay and work together between film and the live broadcasting on the East coast was by all accounts simply not done. Plus with the time difference between the coasts live broadcasting would be impossible. So the duo came up with the idea of shooting on film and by using film cameras (3 at that!) they were hoping to create a better quality product. The use of film would eventually make syndication possible and created reruns - something no one had thought of at that point in time. The shows producers only agreed to allowing them to do this by insisting that Lucy and Desi pay for the storage themselves and even take a pay cut to make it happen. They agreed in return for having complete ownership of the series - with this little clause in their contract they were made into millionaire television stars.
Their efforts changed the entire landscape of television production. So if you ever wondered how live studio audiences became a practice on your favorite shows or why big lights hang from the ceiling in studios, or how reruns ever came to be, look to I Love Lucy. Or you could just watch it because it's still pretty darn funny!
Stay tuned for more I Love Lucy posts. She's a favorite of mine!
Let me know if you have any I Love Lucy favorite moments or fun facts.
@ekpickle