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- Fans of “I Love Lucy” will find this deeply ironic, given that no one wrote “people” better than Jess Oppenheimer — from the milkman to the best friends and even the showgirls — each spoke and acted their part perfectly because Oppenheimer understood what made people tick.
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Jun 16, 2022 · Few know that “I Love Lucy” was actually based on a radio comedy program called “My Favorite Husband” featuring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning (and written by Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and...
Jessurun James Oppenheimer (November 11, 1913 – December 27, 1988) [2] was an American radio and television writer, producer, and director. He was the producer and head writer of the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy. [3] Lucille Ball called Oppenheimer “the brains” behind I Love Lucy.
- CBS Didn’T Think Americans Would Buy That Lucy Was Married to A “Foreign” Man.
- Lucy and Desi Had to Take Their Show on The Road to Convince The Network Brass.
- Only Lucy Was Allowed to Make Fun of Ricky’s Fractured English.
- Smoking Was Required On-Camera.
- William Frawley Was Far from The First Choice to Play Fred Mertz.
- Doris Ziffel Was Almost Ethel Mertz.
- The “Mertzes” Despised One Another off-camera.
- Desi Arnaz Had Lifts in His Shoes (and His Loveseat).
- Arnaz Flatly Rejected A Scene That Involved Ricky Cheating on His taxes.
- The Candy Lady Was A Big Dipper in Real Life.
When CBS approached Lucille Ball with the offer of turning her popular radio show My Favorite Husbandinto a television show, she was agreeable with one condition: that her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, would be cast in the role of her spouse (played on the radio by Richard Denning). The network balked—there was no way that American viewers would a...
Arnaz had a successful career touring the country with his rhumba band, which was one of the reasons Lucille wanted him to get cast as her TV husband—to keep him off the road and close to home. In an effort to show the network (and potential sponsors) that they could work together as a comedy team, they crafted a sort of vaudevillian skit that was ...
After a few episodes were filmed, it became an unwritten rule that only Lucy would ever poke fun at her husband’s pronunciation problems. The writers had allowed other characters to make remarks, but in each case the “joke” was met with stony silence from the studio audience. For some reason, it seemed cruel when anyone other than Lucy “mucked” Ric...
I Love Lucyalmost never made it to the air because CBS had trouble securing a sponsor for the show. Finally tobacco giant Philip Morris signed on at the 11th hour. As a result, lots of smoking was featured in each episode, and the name “Philip Morris” was worked into the dialogue whenever plausible. There was, however, one small problem: Lucille Ba...
Lucille Ball was eager to have Gale Gordon, whom she’d worked with on her My Favorite Husband radio show, play crusty neighbor and landlord Fred Mertz. But Gordon, who had a steady gig at the time on the Our Miss Brooks radio program, asked for more money than Desilu had to offer. Character actor William Frawley knew Ball in passing (they’d met bac...
Lucille had worked with Bea Benaderet in radio and wanted her to play Ethel Mertz. But Benaderet had just signed on to play Blanche Morton on the TV version of The Burns and Allen Show and was unavailable. Barbara Pepper was a personal friend of Ball’s, and the two had worked in films together, so she was the next serious consideration for the role...
Vivian Vance was 22 years younger than her TV husband and resented having such an “old poop” play her spouse. Frawley responded in kind, referring to her variously as “that sack of doorknobs” or just plain “b*tch.” But all that animosity was strictly behind the scenes and known mostly only to the series’ writers and directors. Frawley and Vance wer...
Arnaz listed his height as 5’11” in most official biographies, but those who worked with him knew that in reality he was 5’9” and wore four-inch lifts in his shoes. Lucille Ball stood 5’7” in her stocking feet, and when she wore heels she seemed to tower over her husband. Desi Arnaz Jr. would later explainto an interviewer that his father “was a Cu...
Desi Arnaz was an unabashed believer in the American Dream and was very patriotic when it came to his adopted homeland. Desi was 17 years old when Fulgencio Batista overthrew the Cuban government and the Arnaz family fled to Miami with little more than the clothes they were wearing. The family lived in a warehouse with some other refugees and Desi ...
“Job Switching” (often referred to as “The Candy Factory Episode”) has long been a fan favorite, particularly the scene where Lucy and Ethel are stuffing their faces and clothing with chocolates while trying to keep up with a speedy conveyor belt. The previous scene featured Lucy hand-dipping chocolates with a real-life dipper that stage manager He...
- Kara Kovalchik
- 3 min
Dec 29, 1988 · LOS ANGELES -- Jess Oppenheimer, who created the wildly popular 'I Love Lucy' and wrote for such greats of the Golden Age of Radio as Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen, died Tuesday. He was 75.
Sep 19, 2018 · Ball requested that Davis, Carroll, and Jess Oppenheimer (the producer and head writer on My Favorite Husband) write I Love Lucy ’s first episode. “And so we said 'I guess we better learn to...
Dec 30, 1988 · Jess Oppenheimer, a radio and television producer, director and writer who helped create one of television's most successful situation comedies, ''I Love Lucy,'' died of heart failure on Tuesday...
