Lucy's personality

[NOVARick]

Originally Posted by SPLAIN

Yeah, i too LOVED that Frawley story when i first read it, so INSIDER and so darn funny, LOL! Wasn't there also a story about the youngest Livingston boy doing a Lucy show as Mooney's son and her cutting his hair and him being annoyed that they had to redo the whole scene in front of the audience? As well as a great story about them having skate boards on the lot and a basketball hoop and other things and Lucy having them removed the minute she heard a kid got hurt while playing?

I'm trying to clear the cobwebs in my mind. I remember him telling a story about that appearance on The Lucy Show, but I can't remember the story! I do remember hearing Lucy doing away with those activities after someone got hurt, but I think I heard that from Jimmy Garrett. As for that story about the golf cart, I vaguely remember him saying something about feeling important when Lucy let him ride with her. I'm wondering if TDR might have misheard this story and maybe is confusing a comment from Lucille Ball with what Mr. Livingston might have said he was thinking in his own mind that day while riding around with Lucille Ball on the studio lot in her golf cart: feeling important because he was with the owner of the studio, so everybody else should "get the f*** out of the way."

As someone else commented, Lucy was blunt and straightforward, but she had a heart. I recently posted an interview with Gale Gordon where he explained why she was that way on the set. In a nutshell, it was because she had to get a big job done in a short amount of time and didn't have time to waste. Within four days, they went from their first script reading to filming the episode. Such is the fast pace of television. And Lucy was wearing many hats to boot, so she clearly didn't have time to waste. Besides being the star of the show and owner of the studio, she was in effect the executive producer as well. She had to deal with all the artistic and technical aspects. Yeah, I know Gary Morton had his name in the credits as executive producer. But it was only there nominally. She did that to try to help his ego so he wouldn't feel so much like Mr. Lucille Ball. But in fact, he wasn't up to doing that job. He was no Desi Arnaz. Gary's talents clearly lay elsewhere. I don't know what those talents were, but whatever they were, they lay elsewhere. I guess his most important talent was making Lucille Ball laugh. He didn't make anybody else laugh, but as long as he made Lucille Ball laugh, that's all that mattered. That was his job, everything else was Lucy's job.

Okay, I'm going way off on tangents here. I'm only trying to explain her behavior on the set. She was abrupt because she was busy. She was not that way because she was looking down on people. In fact, she was known for treating everyone equally. For example, she once arranged a great big surprise birthday party for the janitor on her set. Every person and every job was equally important in her mind. If a person didn't live up to their obligations, she wouldn't hesitate to give them the axe. But if they did, they would earn her loyalty and could count on having a job as long as she had a job. She had some of the same people working for her from her early movie days all the way to the end of her television career.

My whole point in saying all of this is that the thought of her going around the studio lot on a golf cart saying "I'm Lucille Ball, get the f*** out of the way" is inconsistent with the kind of person she was. I could go on and on with this topic, including deep diving into her inferiority complex, but that's another thread. Bottom line, I think there was some confusion with that Stanley Livingston story (or was it Barry?). I've heard both Livinstons speak about Lucille Ball, and the feeling I got from them is they liked her.

[SPLAIN]

Wow, what a great post Rick! I know they write those stories about her in books to sell the darn things and i know some men hated her having so much power over them and i know that people like Burton and Taylor were used to have smoke blown up their rear areas by people surrounding them so they made these comments about her over the decades that made her look much worse than she was. I would probably be the first person to get offended if she had talked to me the way she routinely talked to people, it was just her way, the way she was brought up, her insecurities as you rightfully stated but it still bothers me to think that she certainly was not Lucy Ricardo in real life, she was a real person with faults, she was human after all. But i did love BOTH her husbands making the same comment that what they liked most about her was her warmth. Desi said that on the 25th anniversary special and gary did it on the Barbara Walters special. Like Polly Bergen, her neighbor and backgammon buddy once stated, she appeared tough but was one big marshmellow inside. LOVED YOUR COMMENTS ON gARY BY THE WAY, you said it so much better than i ever can.