Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round they all laughed when Edison recorded sound they all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly they told Marconi wireless was a phony it's the same old cry.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome back to 100 Years of Television.
This is episode number 35, countdown number 72.
Lucy, you got some splaining to do for 100 weeks that started in October 2025.
This podcast is going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television and video.
The countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary, the day television as we know it first appeared on Earth.
I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, we witnessed the merger of analog video and Digital Computing in 1950.
Today we're going to talk about the payoff from one of the biggest gambles in television history.
In 1940, RKO Pictures released the film adaptation of a Broadway musical, Rogers and Hart's Too Many Girls.
Modestly successful at the box office, the movie might have faded into cinema history except for one minor detail.
That's where Lucy met Desi.
Lucille Ball, yes that was her real name, was born in Jamestown, New York, in 1911.
She spent much of her early career working on vaudeville stages, shaping a comic style around her rubbery face in pinpoint physical timing.
Lucy was a showbiz grinder, a chorus girl, B movie actress, and radio voice.
After two decades of middling success, she found her niche on the CBS radio comedy My Favorite Husband, where a talent for farce, awkward charm and big reactions found an audience.
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in Santiago, Cuba, in 1917.
The scion of an affluent and politically connected Cuban family, his father was the mayor of Santiago and a member of the Cuban House of Representatives. His grandfather was one of Cuba's wealthiest cigar barons, but all their property was confiscated in the Cuban Revolution of 1933, and the family fled to Miami.
Instead of chauffeurs and private tutors, teenage Desi took on menial jobs to help support the family, like cleaning out bird cages in the pet department of a Woolworths.
Drawn to the Afro Cuban rhythms of his native island, Desi studied guitar and percussion.
His first big break came when he joined the most popular Latin dance band of the time, the Xavier Cugat Orchestra. Recognizing Arnaz's talent and charisma, cougat put Desi in the spotlight as a vocalist and conga player.
Desi Arnaz became a bandleader in his own right in the late 1930s and and the Desi Arnaz Orchestra popularized the conga dance craze in the US Especially in New York nightclubs.
Soon his dynamic mix of musicianship and charm led to his biggest break. He was cast in the 1940 film version of Too Many Girls where he met Lucille Ball.
Lucy and Desi's on screen chemistry didn't amount to much.
But what started as an off screen flirtation quickly escalated into a whirlwind romance.
Six months later they eloped to Greenwich, Connecticut and plunged into one of Hollywood's most famous and combustible marriages.
Desi was a touring musician while Lucy was making films in Hollywood. They needed a creative vehicle to keep them working in the same city, preferably Los Angeles.
When CBS approached Lucy about adapting My Favorite Husband for television, she agreed on one condition. Her real life husband had to play her television husband too.
The network was dubious. A red headed American comedian married to a thickly accented Cuban bandleader. Would viewers buy it?
But after seeing audience reactions to a live vaudeville style stage show featuring the couple, CBS greenlit the project.
With sponsorship from Philip Morris, CBS launched I Love Lucy on October 15, 1951.
From the very first episode, the show topped the ratings and Lucille Ball quickly became a national obsession.
Each episode was written around a simple premise. Desi and Lucy Arnaz basically played themselves as Ricky and Lucy Ricardo.
Lucy, as a housewife with big dreams but no discernible talent, tried each week to match her bandleader husband's showbiz success.
Her screw ups often ended with Ricky scolding her in his thick Cuban accent.
Lucy, you got some splainin to do.
The cast was rounded out by the Ricardo's neighbors Fred and Ethel Mertz, played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance. The foursome, sarcastic but endearing chemistry anchored the series.
Vivian Vance in particular broke out as the first true female sitcom sidekick. A foil who could carry both a plot and the punchline.
Legend has it that during the six years that I Love Lucy aired nationally on the CBS network, water utilities in some cities noticed a huge pressure drop during commercial breaks and immediately after the show, as millions of viewers simultaneously flushed their toilets.
I Love Lucy didn't just generate laughs, it produced several important breakthroughs. It was the first regularly scheduled TV show to star a real life interracial couple. A white American actress and a Cuban born bandleader. And it was the first television show to portray a pregnancy, though the network censors forbade the use of the word pregnant. But I Love Lucy's biggest breakthrough was not in what was portrayed on the screen, but in how the show was produced for for the screen. And the impact those decisions had on the entire television business.
In New York, live television was produced with several video cameras on a stage in the control room. The director switched between different cameras for long shots and close ups from different angles.
The show went out live over the air and was lost to posterity unless a film camera was aimed at a monitor to make a kinescope recording of the broadcast.
But Desi Arnaz had several tricks up his sleeve.
First, he and Lucy wanted to produce their show using three film cameras. They wanted to produce it in Hollywood, not New York, even though New York was the setting of the show.
And they wanted to film in front of a studio audience in order to preserve the unpredictable energy of a live stage performance.
But Desi's biggest gamble was how the show would be shot. He wanted to produce the show directly on 35 millimeter film so that episodes could be rebroadcast. Something the kinescope recordings of the day were unsuitable for.
In what would ultimately prove to be one of the most short sighted cost savings in television history.
CBS balked at the added expense of three cameras rolling expensive 35 millimeter film.
To accommodate Desi's demands, the network insisted that he take a pay cut of roughly $1,000 per episode. Desi agreed, but only if the network made one crucial concession. He and Lucy would retain ownership of all the filmed episodes. With those terms dialed in, Desi called on veteran cinematographer Carl Freund, who devised a way of synchronizing the three cameras. Freund then orchestrated the studio lighting and camera blocking to preserve consistency and continuity between all three cameras.
The carefully staged cinematography assured seamless editing in post production. And everything was performed before a live studio audience.
The result was nothing less than a revolution in television production.
Using three cameras simultaneously allowed multiple angles of a single take, usually two opposing close ups and a wide angle. The performers enjoyed the reactions of the audience and the shows were recorded on high quality film stock that could be preserved, re edited and critically syndicated into infinite reruns.
Desi Arnaz was the architect and Carl Freund the general contractor. Together they created the system that would be used for decades to follow on shows like the Dick Van Dyke show, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers and Friends.
When I Love Lucy became a national phenomenon. Desi and Lucy controlled the reruns.
After the show's network run ended in 1957, they put its 180 episodes into syndication. And I Love Lucy became one of the most ubiquitous shows on television. Through the 1960s and 70s. You could hardly turn a TV dial without landing on an episode of I Love Lucy.
When talking about the financial arrangements, Desi Arnaz later estimated that after taxes and other considerations, he had effectively paid CBS about $5,000 to own the show.
In other words, by Desi's estimate, the network saved about $5,000. But over the years to come, he and Lucy earned millions.
In much the same way that animation laid the foundation for Walt Disney's empire, Desi Arnaz's clever dealing around the three camera system laid the foundation for an empire of Desi and Lucy's own.
Before the first episode of I Love Lucy premiered in 1951, the couple formed Desilu Productions, with Desi as president and executive producer. In 1957, with the abundant proceeds of their hit show, they acquired the RKO studio lots poetically the same place where they met on the set of Too many girls in 1940.
But by the time I Love Lucy ran its last episode On CBS in May 1957, there was trouble in paradise.
Desi's drinking and serial philandering doomed their partnership.
The marriage was effectively over at the same time as the show. Though their divorce was not final until 1960.
Desi stepped down from his role. Lucy bought out his share of the business and became the first woman to run a Hollywood studio.
Over the course of her stewardship, Desilu produced some of the most popular and iconic shows in television's next generation. Among them the Untouchables, Mission Impossible and Star Trek.
Lucy also created two new shows for herself.
The Lucy show aired 156 episodes over six seasons from 1962 to 1968 and reunited Lucy with Vivian Vance.
And Here's Lucy ran 144 episodes over another six seasons from 1968 to 1974. With her real life children, Lucy Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr playing her kids on screen, Lucille Ball ran Desilu Studios until 1967, when she sold it to Gulf and Western for a reported 17 million. That's about 150 million in $2026.
Gulf and Western turned Desilu into the cornerstone of Paramount Television.
Desi Arnaz mostly stepped back from acting and producing, but the impact of the show that he and Lucy created, and the business model that he pioneered left a lasting impact on the industry.
Despite their divorce, their mutual respect endured.
Lucy later said it was a hell of a love story.
Arnaz, just before his death in 1986, called I love Lucy the best thing we ever did together.
Desi Arnaz died just a few months before his 70th birthday and spoke with Lucy by phone shortly before he died. Her last words to him were I love you.
Lucy moved on to the great studio in the sky in 1989, and at age 77, the dial has given away to the remote, but just a few minutes of channel surfing can still pull up an episode of I Love Lucy.
This brings us to the end of number 72 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode when America confronts the dark underbelly of its history in the form of a TV show called Amos Andy.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027.
For more aim a gizmo to 100yearstv.com this podcast is written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:15:24] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy, they laughed at us and ha.
But ho ho ho who got the lives right now.
