Why I Love Lucy

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Yep, I am a huge Lucille Ball fan (but no, that’s not why I’m a redhead). I Love Lucy first aired several decades before I was born, but I can act out every episode, special, and even all 13 episodes of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour as a one woman show. I have seen all those movies from before she was “America’s Favorite Redhead” or even a redhead at all. I should have a room plastered in memorabilia (and I do really want these pops for my office if anyone is looking for Christmas gift ideas), but I don’t, so my family continues to live with me. So the question is, how can I be so enamored with a woman who died before I was ever old enough to appreciate her?

To start with the basics, I grew up on a steady diet of syndicated television. Most of my favorite shows as a kid were those originally aired in the 50’s and 60’s. I Love Lucy was in good company with shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Green Acres, The Munsters and I Dream of Jeannie. I was a weird kid, I looked forward to when Nick at Nite would do nightly classic TV marathons in the summer; if you are too young or just plain don't remember this, there would be a different show assigned to each night of the week Monday through Friday throughout July. I loved all these shows, but my favorite was I Love Lucy. If you are here, you probably know I have also always been a huge fan of classic movies, and if I knew there was going to be a Lucille Ball movie on TCM, I would with out a doubt be sure to see it or record it.

Lucy was a beautiful and incredibly talented woman. If you only ever knew her as Lucy Ricardo you only got to see one side of her, the incredible comedienne that was afraid of nothing if it meant getting a laugh, and she was wonderful at that, but she was so much more. Despite her television character's infamously bad singing voice, in movies like The Big Street (1942) Lucy showed us she really did have a wonderful voice. Though she was no Ginger Rogers she still occasionally showed off her dance skills in movies like Dance Girl, Dance (1940). As much as I enjoy all of these things, they were only a part of what made her so incredible.

The "Ricky Thinks He's Going Bald" eipsode is one of my favorites

Lucille Ball was tough. She lost her father to an illness before she was old enough to go to school, and was subsequently bounced from relative to relative for most of her childhood, sometimes with her mother, sometimes without. Living in various homes she learned many ways of life and took something from all of them. For better or worse, the thing she was most well known for she learned for living with her step-father's parents, Lucille Ball was a relentless perfectionist. It was no secret that on set she would get short with people when they were performing at a less than perfect level, but this was one of the things that made her the incredible woman she was, and most that worked with her loved her. She was also very passionate and driven. She fought tirelessly for the things she wanted and believed in. I Love Lucy almost never happened because the network and sponsors did not want to use her real life husband Desi Arnaz (as he was a "foreign"), but she refused to do the show without him and they became the first interracial couple on television.

Fear never stopped Lucy, not as an adult at least. In her autobiography, Love, Lucy, she wrote about the self conciousness of a teenager: “I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn’t think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers I was far too self centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.” That realization brought us a rarity at the time, a female comedian that was not afraid of physical humor. While most women of the time would flinch at a pie to the face or a tumble to the floor, Lucy was fearless, her brand of physical humor was and still is iconic. (In case you are wondering, my favorite example is a scene called “Slowly I Turn”, her take on an old vaudeville routine, you can check it out here.)

Physical comedy aside, Lucy‘s biggest act of fearlessness shocked the world. She started the show when she was 40 years old, at 41 she became pregnant with Desi, Jr. The network refused to allow the show to use the word “pregnant” at any point (as discussing pregnancy publicly was considered vulgar at the time), but Lucille Ball was the first woman to ever be pregnant on TV. On December 18, 1952 they announced her pregnancy to the world with an epispde titled “Lucy Is Enceinte“ and on January 19, 1953 ”Lucy Goes To The Hopsital” aired, the same day real life Desi, Jr was born. Today we don’t think twice about women being pregnant on TV, and even pull for some of our favorite characters to get pregnant, but in 1952, it was unheard of, and we can thank Lucy for making normal (even if she couldn’t call it “pregnant.”)

Interracial marriage and pregnancy on TV weren’t the end of her ground breaking achievements. As a fan of classic TV and movies, as well as an nerd for all things entrepreneurial, the one accomplishment that puts Lucille Ball at the top of my "Badass Women I Admire" list is the production company Desilu Productions. Lucy and her husband Desi Arnaz (best known as Ricky Ricardo) founded the company together in 1950 to sell and produce I Love Lucy. The studio they jointly owned not only created most of the shows Lucy stared in, but also shows like Star Trek and The Untouchables and was where shows like The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons were filmed. In 1962, two years after Ball and Arnaz divorced, she took over full control of the studio and bought out Desi’s shares, becoming the first t to own and operate a major film studio and one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. In what was considered a man’s world, a woman with henna colored hair was showing Hollywood who was really in charge.

I know I sound like a TCM biographer, but Lucille Ball really is one of my favorite women of all time. She paved the way for countless women by showing us we can be beautiful and feminine while still funny, confident, full of business savvy and an all around badass. Lucy, I will forever love you.

Vita-meata-vegamin Credit: giphy.com

All images are the property of CBS and used only to highlight how much I love Lucy!