Was Lucy's Popularity Dying?

[Babalu]

Originally Posted by MrCleveland

Lucielle Ball lost steam by 1968...she got discouraged to be in movies once Mame became a flop! Then she was in Life with Lucy and her fame was fading by then.

I don't think Lucy's 'fame' ever faded. I think her star power faded. There's a difference. During her lifetime, I Love Lucy was still the most popular show ever in syndication and she was treated as a living legend. But people weren't interested in seeing her try to recreate her formula with inferior material and casts. In fact, it was sad. It was like watching an aged great athlete fumble around on the field at old-timer's day.

[ILuvCarolBurnett]

Of course, she didn't start playing the "Lucy" character until she was 40. Had she started playing the character when she was 25 - 30 years old, it would have been more believable I think. By the time she started doing "The Lucy Show" she just looked to "mature" for the role.

By today's standards, it would be like a 55-year-old actress trying to play a 30 - 35 year old part of a "young wife" with a newborn.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by GameShowFan66

I think "I Love Lucy" was so engrained upon the American consciousness as a whole, that shows afterward "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy" were not as funny to us. We were so used to having Ricky, Fred & Ethel. The Lucy Show had Ethel "Vivian", but she left after 2 or 3 years, and it was just Lucy by herself pretty much. Gale Gordon was a great comic actor and foe for the various Lucy characters, but it just wasn't the same to me, and I'm sure to others too. That being said, I'd much rather watch "The Lucy Show" or "Here's Lucy" than just about anything that current sitcoms have to offer.

With that being said, I wonder if I Love Lucy wouldn't at all work or have any real relevance today (yes it may still be popular as it is because Lucille Ball was very funny) because in no sense in the world would a TV show depicting a wife who behaves like a child and an overbearing husband who treats her like a child be successful?

[mets82]

I dont see where Ricky was overbearing. I mean Lucy did act like a child sometimes. What would want Ricky to do? Walk all over him? I mean take these examples:

When Lucy was never ready on time
When Lucy switched kept switching tables
When Lucy went over her expense account
When Lucy tried to finagle her way into Ricky's shows


In these incidents, Ricky had to put his foot down. What would you want him to do?

[That Other Fan]

Originally Posted by MrCleveland

Lucielle Ball lost steam by 1968...she got discouraged to be in movies once Mame became a flop! Then she was in Life with Lucy and her fame was fading by then.

Yours, Mine, and Ours (released in 1968) was one of the highest grossing films of that year.

Here's Lucy was top 10 and top 15 for five of it's six seasons (It ranked Top 3 in it's third season). Lucy was going to end HL in season five, but then CBS president, Fred Silverman, convinced Lucy to continue the series for one more season (Basically, the network still needed her).

After HL, she did specials, which, for the most part, were ratings successes.

I think she had opportunities, she just didn't take them. Many blame her 2nd husband, Gary Morton, and he did discourage her from projects, that in hindsight, she should have taken. However, in hindsight, everything is foreseeable. lol

[mets82]

Yours, Mine and Ours was a very good and funny movie. I do think that maybe back then, people assoicated Lucy with Fred, Ethel and Ricky and maybe people were not used to seeing her on her own? I mean I wasnt around back then but maybe thats why some people see her as a flop as time went on.

I will say that from what I've watched Here's Lucy wasnt that great. Was there a guest star in every episode? Plus, to me, it just wasnt that funny.

[MichaelKeith]

I was around back then, (though only 3 in 1968) but have seen the movie Yours, Mine and Ours on tv a couple of times and not only is it a very good movie, but Miss Ball does a great job of acting in it. She also did a great job in 1985s Stone Pillow. Just a total professional all the way around. I don't think her popularity was dying out. I believe she voluntarily retired/ended the Here's Lucy show in 1974 because she was tired of the daily grind of series TV. Let's face it, she had effectively worked in tv most years since 1951, when I Love Lucy premiered.

[That Other Fan]

Originally Posted by mets82

Yours, Mine and Ours was a very good and funny movie. I do think that maybe back then, people assoicated Lucy with Fred, Ethel and Ricky and maybe people were not used to seeing her on her own? I mean I wasnt around back then but maybe thats why some people see her as a flop as time went on.

I will say that from what I've watched Here's Lucy wasnt that great. Was there a guest star in every episode? Plus, to me, it just wasnt that funny.

I think now it's a shock to see her as "Lucy" in an arena without Fred, Ethel, and Ricky, but she was something of an institution by the time "Here's Lucy" began it's run. You could literally see her on TV morning ("I Love Lucy"), noon ("The Lucy Show"), and night.

Pretty amazing considering there were only three channels at the time.

"Here's Lucy" was a top 10 series for most of it's six season run. "The Lucy Show" was a top 10 series for it's entire six season run (In fact, it finished it's last season as the #2 show on television), so the public never tired of her.

[scrapple]

I Love Lucy was probably the best sitcom ever. The Lucy Show wasn't in the same league, but it wasn't bad, mostly because you still had Vivian ( for awhile) and some of the ILL writers. But then she got in the habit of hiring REALLY weak supporting characters. Here's Lucy was the worst. No one strong enough to play off of, untalented kids and the endless parade of guest stars.

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by mets82

Yours, Mine and Ours was a very good and funny movie. I do think that maybe back then, people assoicated Lucy with Fred, Ethel and Ricky and maybe people were not used to seeing her on her own?

That's certainly not true. When Here's Lucy came on the air in 1968, Lucille Ball had just finished six years of The Lucy Show (won Emmys the last two seasons). That show had no Ricky or Fred. And Vivian Vance was only on the show the first three seasons. The Lucy Show show was one of CBS's top shows. So viewers were quite used to seeing Lucy without Ricky, Fred and Ethel, and had accepted her that way.

Originally Posted by mets82

I will say that from what I've watched Here's Lucy wasnt that great. Was there a guest star in every episode? Plus, to me, it just wasnt that funny.

No, there wasn't a guest star in every episode. It was actually only about half of the episodes that had a guest star. That's still a lot, but it's in people's imagination that every episode had a guest star.

The show is hit or miss. Several episodes each season were laugh-out-loud funny, but most are just so-so. In retrospect, Lucille Ball should have ended her weekly TV run with The Lucy Show. She had kept that show going allegedly so that she could have a hit show to use as leverage to sell CBS other Desilu series. (There was a yearly routine where Lucy would threaten to quit The Lucy Show if CBS didn't put a new Desilu show on the schedule.)

In 1967, Lucille Ball sold Desilu, so there was no longer a compelling reason for her to continue in series television other than her compulsion to be working all the time. But as an artist, she had earned so much clout in the industry: back-to-back Emmy Awards in '67 and '68 for The Lucy Show, on top of her earlier Emmys for I Love Lucy; her show was at the top of the ratings in 1968; and as has been noted, Yours, Mine and Ours was one of the biggest hits of 1968. It's true that there are not a ton of good scripts for older actresses, but Lucille Ball had so much clout and power, and such a huge fan base, she could have found projects that suited her.

I Love Lucy was the biggest TV show of the '50s, and The Lucy Show was one of the top shows of the '60s. She should have quit while she was ahead and focused on an occasional good movie role and TV specials. Doing Here's Lucy, in spite of its popularity at the time, did nothing to enhance her legacy.

[ILuvCarolBurnett]

Originally Posted by mets82

Yours, Mine and Ours was a very good and funny movie. I do think that maybe back then, people assoicated Lucy with Fred, Ethel and Ricky and maybe people were not used to seeing her on her own? I mean I wasnt around back then but maybe thats why some people see her as a flop as time went on.

I will say that from what I've watched Here's Lucy wasnt that great. Was there a guest star in every episode? Plus, to me, it just wasnt that funny.

I liked Desi Jr but Lucie was just annoying and unlikable. I liked Gale Gordon in The Lucy Show but not Here's Lucy. I. too, watched the series recently on some cable channel. After Desi Jr left it just became less and less interesting. The writing was "off" and they just seemed to be stretching for plausible "Lucy" ideas. I think the fact that Lucy and Gale were clearly aging, some of the physical bits just didn't have the same punch as if someone 30 years younger was doing them. And Mary Jane needed to be a regular. They missed the boat on using her only semi-regularly.

[Crusinforabrusin]

Here's Lucy was Lucille Ball's best show. Her and her children Lucy And Desi Arnaz Jr. are great in this show. And you can not forget Gale Gordon who was the best character of the show! I Love Lucy used to be my favorite Lucille Ball show but over time, I have grown to dislike it somewhat. it seems there's a lot of physical comedy in I Love Lucy. In Here's Lucy there's less physical comedy and more one-liners , which I enjoy

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by Crusinforabrusin

Here's Lucy was Lucille Ball's best show.

Umm . . . no.

[peppypacer]

Why did Lucy always scream her lines in her post I Love Lucy shows? Did she think the mikes weren't too good or something? The show where she had the teenage daughter and young son and Vivian Vance had a son and they lived together was not bad. But apparently she was jealous of the attention Candy Moore was getting and wrote her out of the show and eventually shipped her tv son to military school and went solo until bringing in her own two kids in a later series.

[Mr. Television]

Originally Posted by peppypacer

Why did Lucy always scream her lines in her post I Love Lucy shows? Did she think the mikes weren't too good or something? The show where she had the teenage daughter and young son and Vivian Vance had a son and they lived together was not bad. But apparently she was jealous of the attention Candy Moore was getting and wrote her out of the show and eventually shipped her tv son to military school and went solo until bringing in her own two kids in a later series.

I doubt she was was jealous of the attention Candy was getting. I don't think the kids had that many episodes centered around them after the first season.