Personally, I love "The Lucy Show" and I love it just as much as "I Love Lucy".

I never really cared for "Here's Lucy" and I cannot make judgment on the short-run "Life With Lucy" since I have never seen an episode of it.

How do you ILL fans like Lucy's other shows?

I liked all of her shows, my favorite being Here's Lucy since I remember watching during its original run. I didn't mind Life with Lucy, it just wasn't up to par with her other shows. I recently got to see Life With Lucy again and I actually enjoyed it.

Personally, I love "The Lucy Show" and I love it just as much as "I Love Lucy".

I never really cared for "Here's Lucy" and I cannot make judgment on the short-run "Life With Lucy" since I have never seen an episode of it.

How do you ILL fans like Lucy's other shows?

I like anything with Lucy, but TRULY LOVE I Love Lucy as it was so innovative, and pioneering--introducing new techniques and approaches--not to mention outrageously funny.

I Love Lucy was the best one yes, but i grew up with The Lucy show and i now watch that one a lot more than the first, i also love Here's Lucy, i also consider The Lucy Desi Comedy hour a different show and i love that one also, as for Life with Lucy, hey, it's still the great Lucille Ball, so i enjoy that one also. I worship all of Lucy's FIVE tv Series and watch all of them all the time. And seing as i know all the ILL ones by heart, it's really nice to look at the other ones once in a while, to see her doing something a little different from what is engrained in my mind and heart.

I recently got to see Life With Lucy again and I actually enjoyed it.
Even though I've heard it was a failure, I'd still like to see LWL. I'm interested to see what the chemistry was like between Lucy and Audrey Meadows.

I will only buy episodes where Vivian appears in Here's Lucy, and TLS

As a devoted ILL fan, I can only say that her other shows were hard for me to love just as much. I remember watching the ill-fated LIFE WITH LUCY and seeing this was the most horrible thing tv did to Lucy. I can't get out of my head seeing Lucy with earphones on while wearing some pink sweatsuit and her coming into the house all out of breath. It was not how I wish to have remembered Lucy at the end. :(

I watched Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show, but I was so annoyed by her kids on the show. Their acting skills were not up to par. I watched it during syndication and because it had Lucille Ball in the show. But I couldn't get into it the way I got into ILL.

i do like TLS as much as i do ILL. Esp. the early b&w episodes. i like Heres lucy but not as much as the first two. LWL is ok, but not what was expected from lucy.

I Love Lucy will always be the best series in my opinion, but I enjoy her other series, especially The Lucy Show -- the early episodes with Vivian are the best! I've seen many episodes of Here's Lucy that I've liked a lot, and a few that I was just mild about.

I watched the Life With Lucy episode this past weekend with Audrey Meadows, the first time in a long time that I've seen it. Had that series had as many strongly written episodes as that one was, I think it would have been a hit. But that is just my opinion. (Probably the saddest moment in Lucy's career has to be on an unaired episode of LWL which I believe was the last one they did. It's the scene where Lucy is in the grandparent show and she sings "Sunrise, Sunset" and to know she did that while Desi was dying is just heartbreaking. I've seen and read interviews with cast and crew of the show and they've talked about that scene, and all of them have said they knew Lucy was thinking of him while doing that.)

Even though I've heard it was a failure, I'd still like to see LWL. I'm interested to see what the chemistry was like between Lucy and Audrey Meadows.

I saw that episode not too long ago. It was more sad than funny for me watching two old ladies trying to do slapstick comedy.

Bill, if you love Lucy Ricardo and Alice Kramden as much as I do you may not want to see this episode.

I must be one of the few who actually enjoyed Life with Lucy. It wasn't as good as her other shows but it had Lucy and Gale Gordon so how bad could it be. I'd rather watch that then most of today's sitcoms. I liked all her shows. My favorite is probably the Lucy Show. That's the show I watched the most when I was a kid. I remember watching it on weekday mornings. I don't think I saw ILL until after that.

Even though I've heard it was a failure, I'd still like to see LWL. I'm interested to see what the chemistry was like between Lucy and Audrey Meadows.
They did have good chemistry together, they brought in Audrey to add something that was missing from the show, but it was too little too late. I think Lucy needed a better supporting cast. The network really didn't give the show a chance or writers who could collaberate with Lucy's old writers. After seeing Password Plus and watching Lucy going up against Betty White, they had chemistry and comrodery that could make a sitcom work.

I always thought Lucy would have made a great Golden Girl! :)

I always thought Lucy would have made a great Golden Girl! :)
So true, i always wished that myself. Now, as for Life with Lucy, what the heck do you expect? The woman was 75, how could she still have that impeccable timing and do youthful things at that age, but i thought she was very good with Audrey, the writing and the costars stank, for the most part, but the show was not as bad as is remembered. She had no lead in, if they had had her follow Who's the Boss or something popular back then, she might have built an audience, but nowadays, it's all NIT right away or DIE. People forget that The Dick Van Dyke show and Cheers, among many others, had lousy ratings in the beginning and were almost cancelled. And she should have tried something totally different, but her greedy husband was only after cash, instead of quality like her first husband. Also, after 23 years of doing the same situations, there was nothing new left to try, and she said it herself, she could never top herself and was competing with ILL reruns during the day. I never forgot Vicky Lawrence's kids saying we love her during the day better, she looks so old, or words to that effect. Like i always say, beautiful people have a tough time when they no longer have their looks. And Lucy was known for two things, she was a superb clown but also a beautiful woman back in the day. Her timing left her as she was pushing 80. She should have been a supporting player in an ensemble show, because delivering wisecracks she could still have done at that age, like on The golden Girls, you see, we're back to that, LOL!

I must be one of the few who actually enjoyed Life with Lucy. It wasn't as good as her other shows but it had Lucy and Gale Gordon so how bad could it be. I'd rather watch that then most of today's sitcoms. I liked all her shows. My favorite is probably the Lucy Show. That's the show I watched the most when I was a kid. I remember watching it on weekday mornings. I don't think I saw ILL until after that.
I think you may have hit on something there Sonny. Back then, the sitcoms were many, you had many to choose from. LWL didn't have a chance, the way it was written. Gimme Lucy any day over most of todays shows, but back then, we expected something better especially with Lucy being in it. The format was not good, the cast (not Gale) was terrible. I just didn't like it.

But! if that were on today, I think I would enjoy it simply because we don't have sitcoms like we did back then. They are a rare bunch. Something to just sit back and enjoy for 30 minutes is better than some reality junk like The Bachelor or American Idol.

Can anybody tell me how many episodes of LWL Audrey was in? I know there were 13 episodes filmed, and she was in the 8th one, which was the last one that aired, but I remember reading somewhere that she was supposed to be a regular on the show after her first appearance, so I assumed she was in the other 5 episodes that never aired as well. A couple people here have said they've seen "the episode" with Audrey, so I'm a little confused.

I think you may have hit on something there Sonny. Back then, the sitcoms were many, you had many to choose from. LWL didn't have a chance, the way it was written. Gimme Lucy any day over most of todays shows, but back then, we expected something better especially with Lucy being in it. The format was not good, the cast (not Gale) was terrible. I just didn't like it.

But! if that were on today, I think I would enjoy it simply because we don't have sitcoms like we did back then. They are a rare bunch. Something to just sit back and enjoy for 30 minutes is better than some reality junk like The Bachelor or American Idol.
If it was given a chance I think they might have been able to fix it. It was way better than the Ellen Burstyn Show which followed it. I also think it was on a bad night. ABC's Saturday lineup had collapsed right before then and NBC was the must see network that night. I know I watched the NBC lineup for most of the 80's. I taped LWL and watched it later until they canceled it. I think the big problem with today's sitcoms is that all the great comedians and comediennes have gone for the most part. Nobody's around to replace the legends.

If it was given a chance I think they might have been able to fix it. It was way better than the Ellen Burstyn Show which followed it. I also think it was on a bad night. ABC's Saturday lineup had collapsed right before then and NBC was the must see network that night. I know I watched the NBC lineup for most of the 80's. I taped LWL and watched it later until they canceled it. I think the big problem with today's sitcoms is that all the great comedians and comediennes have gone for the most part. Nobody's around to replace the legends.
The problem was there was no pilot and Lucy was contracted to have it done her way, with NO interference from the network. She wanted to bring back the "old sitcom style" that she felt was missing and that people missed.

Here is a lengthy article but very informative abt LIFE WITH LUCY and how it started and where it went wrong:

It was an ignominious ending to the most brilliant career a television star had ever - or will ever - have. Lucille Ball's unexpected 1986 comeback became her only series failure; a flop of major proportions.

Lucille Ball retired in 1974 after twenty-seven years of Monday night CBS broadcasts. Lucy's Number One Fan Michael Stern, a friend of the star beginning in her Here's Lucy years, tells us, "I think she was tired of the weekly grind and television was changing. That's when All In The Family was starting, Good Times and all these Norman Lear shows were on and she wasn't that type of person.

"It was time for her to relax. The kids were grown and she was going to do yearly specials. She probably thought she was going to do more than she did, she only did a handful of them, like five or six."

ABC paid a fortune to get Lucille Ball back on TV for the 1986-87 season, guaranteeing her a spot on the fall schedule with no pilot, audience testing or creative interference from the network. Produced by Aaron Spelling (who was hot then with Dynasty), the scripts were pathetic and the casting devastating.

Poor Lucy. It was her intent to update the old-fashioned style of sitcom - but this misguided production suffered from so many flaws it's hard to imagine a more poorly executed vehicle for the first lady of television. The disjointed first episode that set up the confusing premise was written by Lucy veterans Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn (Pugh Martin) Davis.

On Life With Lucy, Lucille Ball (in what looked like Kabuki makeup) played Lucy Barker, an impossibly energetic, health-conscious grandmother who comes to live with her daughter, son-in-law and their two kids in South Pasadena.

Back to play the heavy was 80 year-old Gale Gordon as Lucy's deceased husband's business partner Curtis McGibbons. He also moves into the house in the first episode (he was Lucy's daughter's father-in-law - I told you it was confusing).

Curtis runs a hardware store in South Pas (that Lucy inherited half ownership in when her husband died), so naturally Lucy decides that she'll 'help out' at the store.

"Life With Lucy on Saturdays may be pivotal to the success of the whole lineup," ABC's VP for scheduling stated in the fall of 1986. "People will surely watch the premiere, but the few weeks after that will be critical."

Michael Stern tells us about hanging out on the set - "When you were there you had a great time. When she did her last series, Life With Lucy, she couldn't believe that 12 years had passed between the two shows. She was having so much fun. She had more energy than I had and I was 25.

"She wanted to do everything. She wasn't like a star. She was happy to be coming back, she even said she was bringing 200 people back to work.

"She was happy that some of the same people that worked on I Love Lucy were with her 40 years later. The sound man, who was hard of hearing (which she always thought was funny), the director, Gale Gordon, her stand-in, they were all there.

"Oh, and her writers. She was able to get other writers, who wrote for M.A.S.H. or whatever, but she wanted her writers. There were lot of mistakes.

"She was missing an Ethel. One of the best episodes they had was with Audrey Meadows who played her sister.

"Lucy had more fun with John Ritter than with anybody. On that week, Lucy called it 'Ritter-itis' because he kept making her laugh. During the actual filming he broke her up. She had to say 'Cut!' She said that was only the third time in her life while filming a show that she actually had to say 'Cut' because she was laughing so hard. It was not like her."

The premiere episode did fairly well in the ratings (number 23 for the week) and the ovation that the 72 year-old comedienne got from the studio audience on her entrance went on for so long that most of it had to be edited out when the show aired.

The new Lucy was very much like the old Lucy. She was scatterbrained, meddling and rendered apoplectic in the presence of any B-list celebrity. Plots tended to revolve around the mechanical sight gag of the third act; in the first episode, a bubble machine floods the store, in another Lucy sinks into a hole on a construction site.

It might have been amusing if a forty-year old woman in the 1960s arranged the items in a hardware store in alphabetical order, but a seventy-five year old woman in the 1980s really should have known better.

Life With Lucy was cancelled after only three months due to anemic ratings that kept getting worse and worse as the weeks wore on. ABC bought out Lucy's contract; five episodes were filmed but never shown during the original network run.

Horrendous reviews and sudden cancellation crushed Lucille Ball's spirit. She took the rejection personally - believing that America no longer loved Lucy.

Michael Stern explains, "She was devastated. She said she had never been fired before and she really thought nobody liked her anymore. She was really hurt. I think she was more upset with ABC because they didn't give her a chance, seven episodes then out.

"All the reviews were bad. And she said, 'You know what, it wouldn't have been so bad if the reviews said, 'Lucille Ball's new series had no pizzazz' or whatever, but they kept knocking me.' They said; 'Lucille Ball is old,' 'She should be in a retirement home,' 'She should be dead.' Literally, they were saying the nastiest things about her. That she could not understand."

Lucille Ball died on April 26, 1989.


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"One of the shows I worked on in the 1980s was Life With Lucy, on which I have many amusing stories. Here are a few:
* The post-production supervisor on the show was Michael Martin, who coincidentally enough, was the son of Quinn Martin, famed TV producer. I believe his mother was Madeline Pugh, co-writer of the original I Love Lucy show, and producer/writer of Life With Lucy.

* The head lighting cameraman on the show was Leonard South, one of the finest cinematographers around, who was terrific to work with. (I did all the color-correction on the show, over at Complete Post in Hollywood.) Among other tidbits, he revealed to me that Lucy "never had a face-lift, but instead had makeup artists pull back her skin temporarily with adhesive tape, then conceal the tape under her wig." Reportedly, she never used her "actual hair" in any of her TV series. Lucy was also very conscious of lighting and filters, and we did numerous tests to make sure she didn't look too bad on TV. (All four film cameras had Mitchell "B" soft filters, and we used zero enhancement to ever sharpen the picture.)

* Lucy was in a foul mood for much of the show's filming, partially because she had elected to stop smoking for health reasons when the show began. Sadly, her ex-husband Desi Arnaz was dying in Palm Springs while the show was produced, and he would occasionally call her late at night in a delirium and beg her forgiveness for his years of cheating and abuse. She was kind enough to take those calls, but the calls were frequent enough that it cut into her sleep time and also affected her performances on the show.

* The single best episode of the show (or the least horrible), as was noted, was the one with Audrey Meadows playing her long-lost sister. There was talk for a few days about changing the show format and adding Audrey to the permanent cast, but nothing ever came of it; I think Audrey was independently wealthy from marriage and didn't need to work. I told one producer maybe adding Audrey to the cast could result in a sort of a new Golden Girls show (high in the ratings at the time), but he shrugged his shoulders and told me he didn't think Life With Lucy was long for this world.

* One of the co-executive producers was Lucy's husband, Gary Morton. Gary had produced her Here's Lucy series more than a decade earlier, but knew very little about modern TV production. I remember once when he was in an edit bay, "supervising" the cutting of Life With Lucy, he became distressed when he saw that there wasn't much of a reaction after a Lucy joke. The editor patiently explained to him, "Gary, the audience isn't laughing because this is take 3. They've already heard the joke twice before. We'll just cut in the laughs when we do the mix later." Morton got very angry and said, "Absolutely not! I demand that there be no canned laughter in this show!" The editor calmed him down and explained, "No, Gary -- we'll use the real audience laughs from Take 1, when they heard the joke for the first time." Morton calmed down... until five minutes later, when the same thing happened again.

* The exterior of Lucy's "Hardware Store" featured in the show was actually a vacant storefront located directly across the street from what is now the Warner Hollywood Studios, a couple of blocks west of the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and LaBrea Avenue in Hollywood.

* Much to my shock, Lucy never memorized any of her lines on the show, and instead used cue cards. This is normally verboten by any actors, even sitcom or soap opera actors who have to learn their lines quickly. Apparently, Lucy had been doing this for more than ten years. Michael Martin told me that if you look all the way back to The Lucy Show, you can see Lucy looking away from the actors in the scene to the cue cards, right before she says her lines. Reportedly, back then Lucy had no time to rehearse, because of her board meetings and other commitments as the head of Desilu Studios. I think she just continued to use cue cards because of stage fright or a bad memory (or maybe a little of both). There were very few screw-ups on the Life With Lucy set; Lucy ran a very tight ship, and everybody knew their lines (even if Lucy had to read hers). Gale Gordon was particularly good at his part, and I don't think he even blew his lines once during filming.

* I got to meet Lucy briefly on the set, because I knew one of the actors, Donovan "Scotty" Scott (a talented comic actor who happened to live in my neighborhood in West Hollywood). When I gave her one of my official CBS-distributed tapes of I Love Lucy to autograph, she snatched it out of my hands, then stared at it, gave me a dirty look, and said, "You know somethin'? I didn't get a ****in' dime for these things!" I was a little stunned, but not so stunned that I didn't mumble out my name and my profuse thanks for the autograph. She was actually nice about it, and I noticed that her autograph actually had the stylish "L" from the old show. Scotty told me that her real signature is nothing like that, but she altered her autograph just to give her fans what they expected.

* It's not true that Lucy only yelled "cut" on the Ritter episode (which was actually the first one filmed). She did it several times on the last couple of shows, when she was in her worst moods, because of the rumors that the show was going to be cancelled. I've never worked on a show, before or since, where an actor yelled "cut."

* All of us "little people" who worked on the show knew it was a complete train wreck, but the executive producers and writers insisted from the very beginning that Life With Lucy would zoom to the top of the ratings and be on the air for years. Sadly, this didn't prove to be the case.

"The episodes were never rerun, nor were they ever syndicated. Still, with all the stuff out on DVD, I'm surprised that Aaron Spelling Productions (who owned the rights) doesn't put them out legitimately. I can tell you the best shows were the ones that aired; the others were reaaalllly bad.

"So those are my Lucy stories. Scotty told me he stayed in touch with Lucy after the show ended; he said she'd sometimes start the conversation by saying, "Well, I just scanned the obits in Variety, and I'm not in there yet, so I guess I'm still alive." Scotty told me she was always gracious and professional with him, and was a genuinely good person, not one of your typical, shallow Hollywood types."

--Marc Wielage
Chatsworth, CA
[about a mile from the old Desilu Ranch]
http://www.tvparty.com/movlucy4.html

Audrey only appeared in the one episode. The other episodes that didn't air included a grandparents talent show, Lucy and Curtis getting stuck in a tree, and a guard goose!

Thanks for posting the article Irene, it was very informative.

Can anybody tell me how many episodes of LWL Audrey was in? I know there were 13 episodes filmed, and she was in the 8th one, which was the last one that aired, but I remember reading somewhere that she was supposed to be a regular on the show after her first appearance, so I assumed she was in the other 5 episodes that never aired as well. A couple people here have said they've seen "the episode" with Audrey, so I'm a little confused.
Don't you HAVE the shows? If you want copies, i could send you the original EIGHT, the one with Audrey is the best one, i never play the unaired ones.

Yes, the article is very informative, thanks for posting it, i hadn't read it in years. Very sad but very interesting.

Simply, I love EVERYTHING LUCY! Every show and every movie that I have seen.

Simply, I love EVERYTHING LUCY! Every show and every movie that I have seen.
Everything? All 500 plus tv shows from 5 series? All 79 movies? All the talk shows and game shows and guest appearances on other people's shows? All her specials and EVERYTHING? LOL!

Simply, I love EVERYTHING LUCY! Every show and every movie that I have seen.
Even Drafted? :lol:

Probably, alhough i heard the CIA is using DRAFTED to show prisoners at U S prisons around the world, apparently, it beats waterboarding to get them to talk. :lol: