The Day The Laughter Divorced

March 2, 1960 marked the final day of filming for The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, an occasionally produced version of I Love Lucy.  It would also mark the last time that the beloved couple would appear onscreen together. 

If you recall, the Ricardos had since relocated to suburban Connecticut where they'd spent the past three and a half seasons tending to chickens, plowing down their neighbor’s garden with a lawnmower, and haphazardly building a backyard barbeque.  This move kept Lucy and Ricky as an everyman ideal as their move worked to emulate the suburban migration of the late 1950’s.  And since there would be no hijinks without the Mertzes, Fred tucked his nipples under his belt and grabbed Ethel by the short curlies to drag her out for a reunion.

"You would have hit her too, Ricky.  You would have hit her too..."

In this specific episode, their series finale, Ricky is depressed because he has not been getting any TV offers, so the gang, along with the help of Special Guest Star Ernie Kovacs and his wife, the (then) popular (and now completely forgotten- and dead) singer, Edie Adams, try to cheer him up.  Ethel takes to the piano (one of the greatest suspensions of disbelief I have ever encountered- apparently, she couldn’t make chocolates on an assembly line if she’d had a gun to her head, but sit her down at the piano and she can tickle ivories like Liberace).  Edie Adams clings gingerly to the balustrade and delivers a song that she selected with no emotional delicacy whatsoever- “That’s All”, a tune popularized by Frank Sinatra.  The lyrics are as follows:

I can only give you love that lasts forever

And a promise to be near each time you call

And the only heart I own

For you and you alone

That's all

That's all

During the serenade, Lucy was seated with her back to Ricky, which only made it easier for them to ignore each other’s tears. At that time, their marital discourse had led to so much bickering that even the critics began to take notice. On the set, they had stopped speaking altogether and had begun to communicate through an exhausting series of “Would you tell Ms. Ball…” and “Kindly let Mr. Arnaz know…” The live studio audience that once used to roar with delight when Lucy didn't freeze to death in a meat locker had to be replaced by a laugh track.  That decision was entirely appropriate; only a machine would find their disintegration amusing. 

The next day, divorce proceedings began.  It was truly the end of an era. 

Regretfully, Lucy didn’t let the dissolution of her 20-year marriage stand in the way of getting some severely sub-par entertainment on the air.  In 1962, Arnaz was unable to determine a way for Desilu Studios to regain the traction it once had, so he offered Lucy the opportunity to return to television. The Lucy Show was born, wherein she would be reunited with former co-star Vivian Vance who demanded more pay and equal billing.  (Vance also demanded a more flattering wardrobe and for her character’s name to be changed to “Vivian” so assholes would stop calling her “Ethel” on the street.) 

She didn't seem to mind that as much.

The premise of the show was simple; Ball and Vance were, in fact, not a lesbian couple living together in a bungalow.  Rather, they portrayed a widow and a divorcee respectively.  While The Lucy Show even secured the same time-slot as I Love Lucy's original run (Mondays at 8:30 on CBS), it was clear to viewers that something was amiss.  Quality of the scripts was in decline and, without Desi around, Lucy generally had a lot less ‘splainin to do.   

Several seasons later, she bought Desi out of his shares in the company and ultimately went on to lead the studio in the production of Mission Impossible and Star Trek.  Because of her newly acquired power, she began to constantly worry what potential harm that role might bring to her comedic image.  It is said that if she would grant an interview about her position as President of Desilu, she would spend her time with the reporter dusting the table between them to be sure her press would invoke her “just a regular gal that bakes 25 foot bread loaves” image.  The eventual sale of Desilu Studios to Gulf-Western put the merciful nail in the coffin for The Lucy Show, then in its sixth season (Vance had already walked several seasons prior). 

In 1968, Ball made yet another attempt at paying the bills with her beloved character in Here’s Lucy.  It’s opening credits featured a terrifying marionette that will likely haunt your dreams, as well as the names of her actual children who would now serve as her co-stars. 

See?  I wasn't kidding.  Seriously, would Raid kill that thing?

The scripts went from bad to worse and in its sixth (and final) season, the show ranked #29 in the ratings (and if everything old people tell me is true about TV in those days, that would be a 29 out of a possible 30). 

In 1986, the chain-smoking wax figure formerly known as Lucille Ball dusted off her pearls once again to shoot 13 episodes of Life With Lucy, of which only 8 episodes were aired.  

The redheaded ashtray standing in the back is what's left of Lucy.  Not pictured: the Grim Reaper.

This final attempt at reviving her beloved character was quite unsettling to audiences.  At this point, she was a not-so-spry 75 year-old, yet the audience’s expectations were that she would perform with the same gusto as she had when stomping grapes in I Love Lucy some 34 years prior.  This effort essentially proved that it’s much harder to take a pratfall when you have osteoporosis.  The year that marked the unceremonious death of her career was also the very same year that Desi was taken to play Babalu on the big bongo drums in the sky.  

The two, who had remained in-touch, spoke on what would have been their 46th wedding anniversary.  He was dead two days later.  

St. Peter Had Those Sleeves Waiting for Him. 

Edie Adams, the aforementioned songstress-with-seriously-bad-timing, recounted seeing Lucy appear a few years later at a charity event.  She stood at the podium and took her introduction. “My name is Lucille Ball,” she said, “and I used to be on television.”

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The real reason that I’m writing this is that, for the past week, I’ve have had one or fifteen thousand reasons to cry but had to keep consistently smiling throughout.  That frustrating emotion (known as life) kept leading me back to a picture I saw as a kid of Lucille Ball.  She was all done up as a Geisha for the filming of the penultimate episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour titled “The Ricardos Go To Japan”.  But, in this photo, it was clear that she had been crying, and not that fake squinched-face cry that made her famous.  No, these were real, honest-to-God tears that had cracked her foundation makeup and left rolling streaks drawn down her face that looked like fault lines.  Her bright blue eyes were puffed out and swollen and her mouth soured in a frown that would have made Canio proud.

Because You Didn't Understand That Reference

What struck me about this particular image of Lucy was what my recollection of that very episode had always been- nothing more than your average romp with Lucy and Desi, as blissfully in love as they had always been.  I remember her cutting through a shoji screen to spy on some movie star of yesteryear whose career went the way of the dodo. It was, as always, hilarious.  

But upon returning to that episode in a recent youtube binge, it’s quite clear what unhappy goings-on were truly afoot.  In the first scene, we see Ricky, Ethel and Fred walking with suitcases, as was typical in those later years where the couples spent all of their time traveling (presumably to other soundstages within the same lot).  But here, when Ricky asks, “Where is Lucy?” Ethel makes an excuse for her by saying that “She went with her mother to buy Little Ricky an ice cream bar.”  Lucy makes an entrance and sits in the airport until Ethel and Fred approach her; again, Ricky appears to be elsewhere.  When Ricky and Lucy finally do play a scene together, the warmest components onscreen seem to be their throats, which had been fried from emotionally chain-smoking countless cigarettes.  They seem to barely make eye contact and, when physical interaction is called for, they turn away from each other altogether. 

I mean, I guess the moral of all of this is that I’m not the first person who has ever had to suck it up and play make-believe with my emotions.  Everyone does it to some degree every day, some to monumental proportion as Lucy did here.  Sometimes the clown gets sad, and that’s okay, as long as the clown knows when it’s okay to laugh again.  And, thankfully, it appears that when I learn to laugh again, the network just might offer me a spin-off.