I Love Lucy: The Untold Story (11 page)

I always insisted that every
I Love Lucy
show have a logical foundation. I wanted there to be a sound reason for everything in the script, because I knew from experience that if you start with a believable premise and take the audience one step at a time, and they know why they’re being taken there, you can go to the heights of slapstick comedy and outlandish situations. And they’ll go along with you past the point of absolute believability, as long as the pleasure of being entertained outweighs the assault on their intelligence. But this only happens if the audience is completely relaxed, if you’ve made it as comfortable as possible for them by illuminating everything that might be considered illogical or unreasonable.

Take the candy factory scene in “Job Switching,” the first of more than a hundred
I Love Lucy
episodes directed by the wonderfully talented Bill Asher. The assembly line concept is an old one. It’s been done dozens of times on other shows. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen another show that didn’t violate the logic of the moment. They would have the conveyor belt speeding up and slowing down just for comedic effect, and for no other reason. And that’s the kind of thing that turns off an audience. It suddenly reminds them that this is just for fun, rather than allowing them to be comfortable and go with it.

Even the bread scene in “Pioneer Women” is a logical extension of what
could
happen if one put in too much yeast.  And the “Freezer” episode is merely an imaginative extension, having Lucy come out with icicles on her face. It’s not completely illogical. But if we had had her come out of the freezer frozen in a giant block of ice, then we would have lost everyone.

It was just as important that the reason for everything be self-explanatory. I was a real stickler for this. On one of the shows we had a scene where the door to the Ricardos’ living room was left open, and in the next scene that same door had to be closed. In the meantime, the only two characters in the scene were supposed to be intently watching something on the television set. Well, this led to a tremendous discussion. My position happened to be that we must find some way to close that door. We just couldn’t find it closed. That would be too expedient. Someone suggested, “Well, during the time we aren’t watching that scene, Ricky or Fred could’ve gotten up during a commercial, noticed the door was open and closed it.”

“Sure, they
could
have,” I said, “ but there’s no way for the audience to
know
that they did, and it’s a bit disturbing, isn’t it, if the audience doesn’t happen to think, ‘Oh, I know what happened. They got up during a commercial and closed the door.’ Just a little disturbing thought that pulls some of their attention away from the comedy. That thought, you know,  ‘Wait a minute—that door was open before.  How did it get closed?’”

We finally solved the problem to everyone’s satisfaction. The first scene was rewritten so that when Ricky entered the room he pushed the door with such great force that it swung open, hit the door stop, and swung closed again. And we accomplished this by putting a thread on the door and pulling it closed. But the audience
saw
the door close onscreen, so that when we got to the next scene there was no question how it got that way.

This kind of thing created a lot more work for us as writers. We would spend hours and hours taking all the necessary information and lacing it in while other things were happening, until we had everything logically locked down. Of course, if someone sat down to watch just the last ten minutes of an
I Love Lucy,
they might say, “My God, this is ridiculous.” But someone else who had been watching from the beginning would say, “No, wait a minute. You don’t understand how they got into this mess.” And he could explain it logically.

My insistence on having a logical basis for everything sometimes caused clashes on the set. During rehearsals for one episode I was called down to the stage because Lucy and our first director, Marc Daniels, were arguing about a bit of business that Marc wanted to do that wasn’t in the script. This sort of thing happened all the time and usually the improvisations and suggestions were sound and they became part of the show, but not this time.

Bobby Jellison was playing a milkman, and he was in the Ricardo bedroom.  And he wanted to get over to the window. Instead of walking around the bed, Marc wanted him to get up and walk
across
the bed. Lucy and Bobby both thought it was silly—there was no earthly reason why anyone would jump up on a bed if he could just as easily walk around it. But Marc felt that it was funny. When I came down and saw it, I had to tell Marc, “No, you can’t do it. Not unless you can give me a good reason why he would walk on the bed.” Now, that was in February 1952. After that, Marc, who was very concerned about who was boss, would literally cringe anytime I came on the stage.

Unfortunately, many of the
I Love Lucy
reruns on TV these days are missing a lot of the information necessary to have everything make sense. In 1958, a year after they stopped making the half-hour
I Love Lucy
shows, CBS cut about four minutes out of each of them for syndication purposes, to add more commercial time. And to avoid the expense of recutting the film using outtakes, footage from the other two cameras, all the cuts were made at the beginnings or ends of scenes.

Photo caption (next page):

It was just the three of us—me, Bob,
bottom right,
and Madelyn,
center—
writing every show until the fifth year, when I added Bob Schiller,
top right,
and Bob Weiskopf,
second from left,
to our writing staff.

Bob and Madelyn always did a wonderful job with the script.  But I made it a point, no matter how good their draft was, to redictate the entire thing from beginning to end, because that way each of the characters consistently spoke the same way each week.  It didn’t have to be
me,
necessarily, as long as it was filtered through one person’s senses.  But I felt that I knew best the mood and feel of our previous shows, and that I could bring it all into line so that nothing sounded too different or out of character.

To me, a situation comedy series is much like visiting a friend’s family.  You don’t know what they are going to say, but you know how each person is going to react in a situation and how each of them talks.  The more consistency there is, the more comfortable you are, and the more you can enjoy everything that happens.  So, rightly or wrongly, the show sounded the same each time because it funneled through me.

I did this for another reason as well.  Redictating the script from start to finish made me intimately familiar with everything in it.  If a question arose at any time during the production of that episode, I knew the reason everything was in there—every line, every piece of business.  So if someone wanted to make a change, I would immediately know if we couldn’t do it because of something that had happened earlier.  There has to be one person with that sort of overview.

I remember one time that Bob and Madelyn gave me their draft and I felt it was so good, and I was so tired, that I said, “That’s just the way I would do it.  I’m going to turn it into mimeo without any changes.” So at the first reading with the actors, questions naturally arose, and I was completely lost. I didn’t have any of the answers.  I had no idea why a certain line was in there, or a bit of business.  Scared me half to death. I never did it again.

But even though we always got along great, Bob and Madelyn thought that I loused up all their scripts.  One time, after they complained bitterly to me, I said, “There’s a good and logical reason for everything I do, everything I change.  On the next script, I’ll keep a journal of the reasons for all of my changes.”

It took me a lot of time, but I thought it was worth it.  When we sat down the following Monday, I asked them if they had read my revision.  They had.  “Okay,” I said, “I’m going to show you line by line the reason for every change.” Frankly, I thought I had done a pretty masterful job.  And when I was done, I asked them, “Now, don’t you agree that each of the changes was for a good reason?” “No,” they replied.  “We still think you screwed the whole thing up.”

Photo caption (next page):

The fourth annual Emmy Awards banquet in 1952. Accepting his second Emmy for excellence in comedy, Red Skelton remarked: “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve given it to the wrong redhead. I don’t deserve this. It should go to Lucille Ball.” The entire audience rose to its feet, cheering Lucy.

O
N
M
ARCH 2, 1952,
Desi turned thirty-five years old, and we gave him a big birthday party. In the middle of the festivities he took me aside, and he asked me again to let him have the executive producer credit. Well, his timing was excellent. My duties as producer and head writer had me so utterly exhausted that I had actually considered quitting the show. At that moment, the prospect of having Desi take over some of my responsibilities on the business end of things sounded attractive. What’s more, Lucy had come to see me only a few days earlier, asking me to let Desi have executive producer credit as a personal favor to her, in order to help keep the peace in their marriage.

When Desi assured me that his credit would have no effect whatsoever on my authority as producer, I acceded to his request.
We agreed that Desi would be named as executive producer of
I Love Lucy
commencing with the “Freezer” show, which would air at the end of April.

On Friday, April 18, the Nielsen ratings declared that
I Love Lucy
was now the number one show in America, reaching a record twenty-three million people, in nine and a half million homes. To celebrate, Desi gave a party for the cast and crew, at which he presented me with a trophy. It was, of all things, a statue of a baseball player taking a swing. At the base of the trophy, the inscription said: “Jess Oppenheimer: The Man Behind the Ball, 4-18-52, #1 Nielsen.”

It was a nice gesture by Desi. I decided I had probably been wrong to be so concerned about letting him have the “executive producer” credit.

Photo caption (next page):