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I don't think I'd ever want to rewatch LIFE WITH LUCY in its entirety so my thoughts on it are based on memories, plus a few clips and one episode I've watched on Youtube. It's certainly not a good show, but the critical scorn leveled against the show was ludicrously out-of-proportion. Take the staleness of HERE'S LUCY and shellac it with some Aaron Spelling genericness and, well, this what you get. Like Lucy's two previous sitcoms, there's not much of a premise and little in the way of characterization which leaves, right out of the gate, very little room to grow. Other than Gale Gordon, the supporting cast is uniformly bland or irksome.
The aghast reactions to Lucy's age seems silly in retrospect; she was physically spry for 75 and it's not like she was doing pratfalls down flights of stairs or dangling from a clock tower like Harold Lloyd. Otherwise, the show seems like a run-of-the-mill 80s sitcom -- kind of corny and empty, with humor ranging from mildly amusing to groan-worthy. I could rattle off a dozen shows of the era that I thought were far worse. Seems like people were inexplicably demanding it be as good as I LOVE LUCY, forgetting just how far Lucy's shows had declined by the mid-70s.
The last episode aired, guest starring Audrey Meadows, is almost good. Rumor is that if the show had continued, Audrey was going to be a regular or recurring cast member. That might have given the series a direction it lacked and Audrey could have been the comedy partner Lucy had been lacking since Vivian's departure in the mid-60s.
The aghast reactions to Lucy's age seems silly in retrospect; she was physically spry for 75 and it's not like she was doing pratfalls down flights of stairs or dangling from a clock tower like Harold Lloyd. Otherwise, the show seems like a run-of-the-mill 80s sitcom -- kind of corny and empty, with humor ranging from mildly amusing to groan-worthy. I could rattle off a dozen shows of the era that I thought were far worse. Seems like people were inexplicably demanding it be as good as I LOVE LUCY, forgetting just how far Lucy's shows had declined by the mid-70s.
The last episode aired, guest starring Audrey Meadows, is almost good. Rumor is that if the show had continued, Audrey was going to be a regular or recurring cast member. That might have given the series a direction it lacked and Audrey could have been the comedy partner Lucy had been lacking since Vivian's departure in the mid-60s.
I loved her and Desi in The long long trailer.
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That doesn't really sound like taking the blame to me.
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I haven't seen or read the Spelling interviews so I wasn't going to comment but, yeah, I take the blame for letting them make all those mistakes doesn't really seem like taking the blame. Some involved with the production of LIFE WITH LUCY have said the relationship with the Spelling team was strained and contentious; when the show was cancelled, Spelling had a lackey notify Lucy and Gary rather than doing it himself, despite practically getting his start on I LOVE LUCY back in the 50s.
The funniest tidbit about the series is mentioned in the excellent "The Lucy Book" -- the sound engineer on the series, who had worked with Ball all the way back in 1951, was by then wearing two hearing aids. Somehow that seems symbolic of the entire doomed folly.
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Well, if you watch and listen to his interviews, you will know that he really seemed to feel bad about the way LIFE WITH LUCY went and failed miserably. He was apparently hurt that the show fell and seemed to believe had he pushed for different writers and direction, then Lucy wouldn't have suffered such a short life and rather painful demise which ultimately ended her decades-long television career. He conjures it all up to his misguidance of a sitcom, and often says that the LIFE WITH LUCY incident was a prime example of why he didn't do more comedy. "If you fail at comedy with Lucille Ball," he said, "then you don't need to do comedy."
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I'm sure Spelling felt bad that he was largely responsible for Lucy's legendary career ending on such a sour note, but feeling bad isn't the same as taking the blame. Impossible to know how much or little creative input Spelling had in the series, but LIFE WITH LUCY feels as much like a Spelling production as a retread of older "Lucy" shows. That bland, generic family feels like what we would have gotten from Spelling if he produced more sitcoms; there's really no precedent in Lucy's earlier shows for that kind of rote domestic comedy.
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In the interview Aaron Spelling did for the Archives of American Television, he says a few different times "that it was my fault." I'd say that's him taking the blame. Out of respect, he gave Lucy the creative control she asked for and rightfully deserved, but also admitted the show would've been more successful had it taken another route with different writers at the helm.
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Well, in fairness, that's not what you said above. You provided neither links to the interviews nor direct quotes, but said Spelling said his fault was letting Lucy have total control. That sounds like passive-aggressive pushing the blame. If Spelling did indeed take full responsibility, then good for him; maybe he wasn't a showbiz weasel.
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I understand that I probably haven't relayed the information too well.
He talks about what the interviewer calls "The Lucy Show" near the end of part five, and wraps it up at the start of part six.
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Spellings' version here doesn't jive with other accounts I've read, in which Spelling owed ABC a sitcom, he pitched it to Lucy & Gary, and Gary persuaded an indifferent Lucy to proceed. The timeline doesn't matter really, but the idea that Lucy was a driving force behind the show -- in both pitching it to Spelling and demanding creative control -- is at odds with the usual accounts that Lucy was ambivalent, agreeing to any suggestions made by the writers and producers because she didn't want to make waves.
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Jibe.
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Since I have the book out, here's the article on Lucille from "TV Sirens".
Late in 1985, Lucille Ball glided into a roomful of reporters at the Four Seasons to promote STONE PILLOW, her TV movie about a Manhattan bag lady. Flanked by hubby Gary Morton and director George Schaefer, Lucy was decked out in a black velvet suit, a white ruffled blouse, and a comically oversized pair of diamond cluster rings. Witnessing this spectacle, an eager-beaver reporter suggested that Lucy would be the last citizen of Beverly Hills to understand the plight of the homeless. But at this point in her career, Lucy could play Mother Teresa and make it a reflection of her own life.
STONE PILLOW is totally expressive of its TV diva — it's The Lucille Ball Story in bag-lady drag. Every line, every inflection, every plot twist mirrors a woman who's been pounding showbiz pavements for more than half a century with a Philip Morris in one hand and a margarita in the other. Lucy plays a character Schaefer described as "Independent, selfish, eccentric, gabby, and cocky." Her husband and son left her years before. She takes under her wing a young, black-haired woman whom she mistakes for a runaway, endlessly barking advice: "You gotta know how to protect yourself. First of all, you gotta make 'em think you're crazy! And you gotta kick 'em anywhere, everywhere! And you gotta bite 'em, scratch their eyes out! Remember, you're fightin' for your life!"
For twenty-five years -— from the days of Prohibition to the dawn of McCarthyism -— Lucille Ball fought for her life. She struggled as a model, a salesgirl, and a waitress; as a bit player, a Goldwyn Girl, and a "Technicolor Tessie"; as a straight man, a radio clown, and an unlucky leading lady. By the time I LOVE LUCY hit the air in 1951, she was forty years old, had appeared in nearly seventy films, and had been married to Desi Arnaz for a decade. She had matched Ginger Rogers and Eve Arden in STAGE DOOR, upstaged Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in WITHOUT LOVE, and exhibited great gifts in Dorothy Arzner's DANCE, GIRL, DANCE. But none of that gave Lucy what she wanted. She was not a star.
On TV she got what she could never get in movies -- control, Lucy and Desi called the shots with a business sassy that's become part of the Desilu legend: how she insisted Desi star with her; how he pioneered shooting for TV on film with three cameras, thereby insuring the preservation of the show; how both retained all rights to the show in exchange for a tiny pay cut. In a few years Desilu was a giant, owning even the RKO lot where Lucy and Desi were once contract players. After their divorce in 1960, Desi sold his share to Lucy, who sold it all to Gulf + Western.
Brilliantly unbridled as she was in her prime, by the time of HERE'S LUCY (1968—74) she was a too-thin baritone squeezed into form-fitting suits with alarmingly high collars. Heavily made-up and teased to the max, Lucy had become a mesmerizing parody of herself, reworking old plots without a change in attitude and continually being referred to as "girl." In one late episode -- a horrifying excursion into surrealism -- Lucy plays herself as a dignified TV personality in a black fright wig and gold brocade muumuu. She holds a Lucille Ball lookalike contest, which the red-headed Lucy and her daughter, Lucie, enter. Dressed in matching wigs and muumuus, mother and daughter compete on TV. Mommie wins.
During the filming of STONE PILLOW near Grand Central Terminal, I was dining at the Oyster Bar. Halfway through the red snapper, I dropped my fork; Lucy, in full bag-lady drag, traipsed by with an entourage of five. Plopping down at a table, she ordered a margarita. A waiter, a waitress, a maitre d', and two busboys scurried in all directions. Lucy sent back her drink —- once, twice, three times. "She's crazy!" cried one worker, racing past my table in a sweat. When I asked if I should go over and tell Lucy how much I love her, another worker gasped, "I wouldn't if I were you."
At the STONE PILLOW press conference Lucy was on her best behavior -- she is, after all, seventy-five. Smoking nonfiltered Philip Morris (an early sponsor) and fielding some inexplicably hostile questions, she wavered between riotous wit (her imitation of Katharine Hepburn is a scream) and moody confusion. Several times she asked Morton, her husband of twenty-five years and apparent protector in all matters, to help her respond to particularly perplexing questions. But when asked if she saw any parallels between the character's life in STONE PILLOW and her own, Lucy delivered a beautifully timed double take that brought down the house. "No!" she shrieked. But Schaefer chose to contradict his star, insisting on how she'd kept detailed notes on her character and understood this woman better than anyone could.
Lucille Ball is not so much at the end of the line as in a catch-22: she can't exactly do her style of comedy anymore and can't really do drama (she was "scared to death" of STONE PILLOW). What she can do -— and what she does to riveting effect in this film -— is tell us all about the legend of Lucy. It's a legend built on very little -— perhaps four years out of sixty -— but it dwarfs any other to come out of TV. As she got up from her chair at the Four Seasons, the Legend still seemed capable of collaring a waiter and intoning a speech from Pillow: "I'm not crazy. I'm smart. I'm still here. And I know how to protect myself."
Late in 1985, Lucille Ball glided into a roomful of reporters at the Four Seasons to promote STONE PILLOW, her TV movie about a Manhattan bag lady. Flanked by hubby Gary Morton and director George Schaefer, Lucy was decked out in a black velvet suit, a white ruffled blouse, and a comically oversized pair of diamond cluster rings. Witnessing this spectacle, an eager-beaver reporter suggested that Lucy would be the last citizen of Beverly Hills to understand the plight of the homeless. But at this point in her career, Lucy could play Mother Teresa and make it a reflection of her own life.
STONE PILLOW is totally expressive of its TV diva — it's The Lucille Ball Story in bag-lady drag. Every line, every inflection, every plot twist mirrors a woman who's been pounding showbiz pavements for more than half a century with a Philip Morris in one hand and a margarita in the other. Lucy plays a character Schaefer described as "Independent, selfish, eccentric, gabby, and cocky." Her husband and son left her years before. She takes under her wing a young, black-haired woman whom she mistakes for a runaway, endlessly barking advice: "You gotta know how to protect yourself. First of all, you gotta make 'em think you're crazy! And you gotta kick 'em anywhere, everywhere! And you gotta bite 'em, scratch their eyes out! Remember, you're fightin' for your life!"
For twenty-five years -— from the days of Prohibition to the dawn of McCarthyism -— Lucille Ball fought for her life. She struggled as a model, a salesgirl, and a waitress; as a bit player, a Goldwyn Girl, and a "Technicolor Tessie"; as a straight man, a radio clown, and an unlucky leading lady. By the time I LOVE LUCY hit the air in 1951, she was forty years old, had appeared in nearly seventy films, and had been married to Desi Arnaz for a decade. She had matched Ginger Rogers and Eve Arden in STAGE DOOR, upstaged Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in WITHOUT LOVE, and exhibited great gifts in Dorothy Arzner's DANCE, GIRL, DANCE. But none of that gave Lucy what she wanted. She was not a star.
On TV she got what she could never get in movies -- control, Lucy and Desi called the shots with a business sassy that's become part of the Desilu legend: how she insisted Desi star with her; how he pioneered shooting for TV on film with three cameras, thereby insuring the preservation of the show; how both retained all rights to the show in exchange for a tiny pay cut. In a few years Desilu was a giant, owning even the RKO lot where Lucy and Desi were once contract players. After their divorce in 1960, Desi sold his share to Lucy, who sold it all to Gulf + Western.
Brilliantly unbridled as she was in her prime, by the time of HERE'S LUCY (1968—74) she was a too-thin baritone squeezed into form-fitting suits with alarmingly high collars. Heavily made-up and teased to the max, Lucy had become a mesmerizing parody of herself, reworking old plots without a change in attitude and continually being referred to as "girl." In one late episode -- a horrifying excursion into surrealism -- Lucy plays herself as a dignified TV personality in a black fright wig and gold brocade muumuu. She holds a Lucille Ball lookalike contest, which the red-headed Lucy and her daughter, Lucie, enter. Dressed in matching wigs and muumuus, mother and daughter compete on TV. Mommie wins.
During the filming of STONE PILLOW near Grand Central Terminal, I was dining at the Oyster Bar. Halfway through the red snapper, I dropped my fork; Lucy, in full bag-lady drag, traipsed by with an entourage of five. Plopping down at a table, she ordered a margarita. A waiter, a waitress, a maitre d', and two busboys scurried in all directions. Lucy sent back her drink —- once, twice, three times. "She's crazy!" cried one worker, racing past my table in a sweat. When I asked if I should go over and tell Lucy how much I love her, another worker gasped, "I wouldn't if I were you."
At the STONE PILLOW press conference Lucy was on her best behavior -- she is, after all, seventy-five. Smoking nonfiltered Philip Morris (an early sponsor) and fielding some inexplicably hostile questions, she wavered between riotous wit (her imitation of Katharine Hepburn is a scream) and moody confusion. Several times she asked Morton, her husband of twenty-five years and apparent protector in all matters, to help her respond to particularly perplexing questions. But when asked if she saw any parallels between the character's life in STONE PILLOW and her own, Lucy delivered a beautifully timed double take that brought down the house. "No!" she shrieked. But Schaefer chose to contradict his star, insisting on how she'd kept detailed notes on her character and understood this woman better than anyone could.
Lucille Ball is not so much at the end of the line as in a catch-22: she can't exactly do her style of comedy anymore and can't really do drama (she was "scared to death" of STONE PILLOW). What she can do -— and what she does to riveting effect in this film -— is tell us all about the legend of Lucy. It's a legend built on very little -— perhaps four years out of sixty -— but it dwarfs any other to come out of TV. As she got up from her chair at the Four Seasons, the Legend still seemed capable of collaring a waiter and intoning a speech from Pillow: "I'm not crazy. I'm smart. I'm still here. And I know how to protect myself."
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I'm finally taking the time to sit down and write my LIFE WITH LUCY review, which I just know all of you have been anxiously awaiting. I cannot believe there was such a long time that I hadn't the slightest inclination that this show even existed. Once I found it, I went in and out on believing whether or not it would finally see the light of day on some form of official release. Online fan sites were cluttered with home made sets, but I kept this inner hope that one day it would come out on DVD. When I saw that CBS was finally going to release the show last year, I was totally psyched. My fiancee bought it for my birthday last year, but with so many things on my shelf, it was a while before I finally got to it.
So here it goes. I'm just going to dive right into the show itself.
In the first episode of LIFE WITH LUCY called "One Good Grandparent Deserves Another", Lucy Barker (Ball) is just moving in with her daughter Margo (Ann Dusenberry), her husband Ted (Larry Anderson), and their two children Becky (Jenny Lewis) and Kevin (Philip J. Amelio II). Margo is trying her best to look at the bright side of the issue, while Ted seems weary as to whether or not it's going to work. They both agree that Ted's father isn't going to like the idea. Lucy, on the other hand, couldn't be more thrilled that she's moving in with her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren, and she makes herself feel at home right away. It isn't long before Ted's father Curtis (Gale Gordon) comes back from vacation and soon decides to move in with the family to make sure Lucy doesn't stir up any trouble with her antics. Curtis and Lucy's deceased husband also owned and operated a local hardware store together and naturally Lucy decides that after all these years she's going to help Curtis run the business.
That's the basic LIFE WITH LUCY premise. It's a rather simple, common little setup for a family-orientated sitcom. The second episode guest stars John Ritter (of THREE'S COMPANY, a show Lucy heavily endorsed) as himself visiting the smaller community where he's intending on taking a vacation and acting in a play. Lucy gets up to her old starstruck tricks, and finds a way into Ritter's play. She messes it all up, of course, but were we really expecting her not to? John Ritter was a real professional and he and Lucy seem to be having a ball with this episode. They each get into some pretty heavy physical stuff (which apparently worried the audience because of Lucy's age), and the audience uproars in laughter and enthusiastic applause.
The episode people find most redeeming within LIFE WITH LUCY is "Love Among the Two-by-Fours", which guest starred Peter Graves as Lucy's old school flame. I must admit it was a genuinely sweet episode and I loved how Lucy and Graves seemed totally committed to the work. Their final exchange atop a building in the midst of repairs ends hilariously as the roof caves in beneath them as they kiss. It's a perfectly sweet and charming episode, and I can perfectly understand why fans (even those harshest toward the show) like this episode.
Let's get on to the rest of them. "Lucy Is A Sax Symbol" brings back the Lucy character being a former saxophonist, which goes back to those I LOVE LUCY days when Lucy Ricardo would insist on playing her saxophone when her group of friends wanted to put a band together. In the LIFE WITH LUCY version, Lucy gets excited when her granddaughter shows interest in the saxophone, but gets a little sidelined toward the end when her interest fizzles. Another good episode is "Mother of the Bride" (which was the eighth and final episode of the series aired) guest starring Audrey Meadows (of THE HONEYMOONERS fame). Audrey is Lucy's sister in the story and she comes to visit while her work has been detoured. She wiggles her way into helping plan Margo and Ted's tenth anniversary party where the couple has decided to renew their vows, making Lucy feel left out and unappreciated. Audrey Meadows is another professional of television's golden age, and I like how she and Lucy play off one another. Their bit in front of the wedding arch about refusing to stand next to one another is funny. Nothing like two golden gals making us laugh.
The final five episodes don't bring anything too special to the table, but I'll skim over them quickly. The best one is probably "Lucy's Green Thumb", where she accidentally makes a liquid that helps plants grow large and quick, but ends up killing them, or "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do", where Curtis decides to retire and sell all his shares of the hardware store to Lucy. The latter is probably the better of the two, if only for one of the final scenes where you get to see a long-held friendship between Lucy and Gale Gordon on camera. They had known each other for probably thirty-five years, and their interaction in this episode shows how deep their friendship went in real life. True respect for the other and it shows.
Here's thing thing. I'm not going to try and convince any of you that LIFE WITH LUCY is a good show. Almost all of you have preconceived ideas and you're not going to budge. Fair enough. But I will stress that this show isn't nearly as bad as they make it out to be. I seriously doubt I'd put it on a "worst shows in history" lists. That's a little extreme and not at all accurate. Now, does LIFE WITH LUCY have issues? It certainly does. The only good choice among the cast, outside Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon, was probably Donovan Scott as Leonard, the maintenance guy at the hardware store. He wasn't great, but he played off the two old pros well and made me chuckle a few times. The rest of the cast is gawd awful. Ann Dusenberry, who plays Lucy's daughter, is probably the worst. I swear she cannot say anything without yelling. Everything she says seems like she's YELLING to people on the back row. And that could be overlooked if she had chemistry, but she doesn't. Larry Anderson, as Gale Gordon's son, does a little better, but he's not getting any "attaboy" awards, either. He's hammy and dull. And as for the kids, well, I guess they're cute in that generic "cute kid" sitcom-kinda-way, but, yeah, moving on.
There's a number of things I could list that need to be fixed with LIFE WITH LUCY. On the surface, the setup isn't too different from a lot of other family comedies of the same period. One glowing aspect to me is how little the show revolved around "Life with Lucy". You'd think there would be more interaction with the family at home, but every episode seems to point toward the hardware store where Lucy and Gale Gordon can shine. It's just a reworking of scenery, but offers basically the same thing that the two did on both THE LUCY SHOW and HERE'S LUCY, and they're even in-laws like they were on the latter. The one thing I did like about LIFE WITH LUCY was where it was set. It supposedly takes place in South Pasadena, and the way the show "looks" makes it feel like the characters are living in a small town. That was different for Lucy. All her shows had taken place in either New York or California, and her being in what appeared to be a smaller town made it seem like they were going to keep the show a little more grounded and not overload it with guest stars.
We all know LIFE WITH LUCY tanked and quick. The ratings were low, reviews were harsh, and ABC axed it after two months. The network and Lucy brought in Audrey Meadows to test her with the audience as a possible new full-time cast member, moving the show in another direction. Now, what that direction was actually going to be, I haven't the slightest idea. Maybe it was going to be another "Lucy and Viv"-type show, but with Viv being replaced with Audrey. I don't know, but either way the show was cancelled before anything different could be worked out.
I must admit that I actually enjoyed watching LIFE WITH LUCY this past week. It was not the best I've seen, but it was mildly refreshing and I found myself laughing out loud a few times per episode. Maybe I'm looking at the show too Lucy-blind, but it's not as gawd awful as I had been led to believe. The supporting was weak, but had it been better, the show itself would've played better. I don't think it was the quality of the scripts that caused the show to tank, because goodness knows shows like FULL HOUSE, THE HOGAN FAMILY, and GROWING PAINS turned out some cheesy, weak scripts over the years, and they were big hits for many seasons. I think the issue was really the supporting cast. They were bad, really bad. Lucy and Gale Gordon are great, and it's too bad that this bad reputation show was their swan song.
So here it goes. I'm just going to dive right into the show itself.
In the first episode of LIFE WITH LUCY called "One Good Grandparent Deserves Another", Lucy Barker (Ball) is just moving in with her daughter Margo (Ann Dusenberry), her husband Ted (Larry Anderson), and their two children Becky (Jenny Lewis) and Kevin (Philip J. Amelio II). Margo is trying her best to look at the bright side of the issue, while Ted seems weary as to whether or not it's going to work. They both agree that Ted's father isn't going to like the idea. Lucy, on the other hand, couldn't be more thrilled that she's moving in with her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren, and she makes herself feel at home right away. It isn't long before Ted's father Curtis (Gale Gordon) comes back from vacation and soon decides to move in with the family to make sure Lucy doesn't stir up any trouble with her antics. Curtis and Lucy's deceased husband also owned and operated a local hardware store together and naturally Lucy decides that after all these years she's going to help Curtis run the business.
That's the basic LIFE WITH LUCY premise. It's a rather simple, common little setup for a family-orientated sitcom. The second episode guest stars John Ritter (of THREE'S COMPANY, a show Lucy heavily endorsed) as himself visiting the smaller community where he's intending on taking a vacation and acting in a play. Lucy gets up to her old starstruck tricks, and finds a way into Ritter's play. She messes it all up, of course, but were we really expecting her not to? John Ritter was a real professional and he and Lucy seem to be having a ball with this episode. They each get into some pretty heavy physical stuff (which apparently worried the audience because of Lucy's age), and the audience uproars in laughter and enthusiastic applause.
The episode people find most redeeming within LIFE WITH LUCY is "Love Among the Two-by-Fours", which guest starred Peter Graves as Lucy's old school flame. I must admit it was a genuinely sweet episode and I loved how Lucy and Graves seemed totally committed to the work. Their final exchange atop a building in the midst of repairs ends hilariously as the roof caves in beneath them as they kiss. It's a perfectly sweet and charming episode, and I can perfectly understand why fans (even those harshest toward the show) like this episode.
The final five episodes don't bring anything too special to the table, but I'll skim over them quickly. The best one is probably "Lucy's Green Thumb", where she accidentally makes a liquid that helps plants grow large and quick, but ends up killing them, or "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do", where Curtis decides to retire and sell all his shares of the hardware store to Lucy. The latter is probably the better of the two, if only for one of the final scenes where you get to see a long-held friendship between Lucy and Gale Gordon on camera. They had known each other for probably thirty-five years, and their interaction in this episode shows how deep their friendship went in real life. True respect for the other and it shows.
Here's thing thing. I'm not going to try and convince any of you that LIFE WITH LUCY is a good show. Almost all of you have preconceived ideas and you're not going to budge. Fair enough. But I will stress that this show isn't nearly as bad as they make it out to be. I seriously doubt I'd put it on a "worst shows in history" lists. That's a little extreme and not at all accurate. Now, does LIFE WITH LUCY have issues? It certainly does. The only good choice among the cast, outside Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon, was probably Donovan Scott as Leonard, the maintenance guy at the hardware store. He wasn't great, but he played off the two old pros well and made me chuckle a few times. The rest of the cast is gawd awful. Ann Dusenberry, who plays Lucy's daughter, is probably the worst. I swear she cannot say anything without yelling. Everything she says seems like she's YELLING to people on the back row. And that could be overlooked if she had chemistry, but she doesn't. Larry Anderson, as Gale Gordon's son, does a little better, but he's not getting any "attaboy" awards, either. He's hammy and dull. And as for the kids, well, I guess they're cute in that generic "cute kid" sitcom-kinda-way, but, yeah, moving on.
There's a number of things I could list that need to be fixed with LIFE WITH LUCY. On the surface, the setup isn't too different from a lot of other family comedies of the same period. One glowing aspect to me is how little the show revolved around "Life with Lucy". You'd think there would be more interaction with the family at home, but every episode seems to point toward the hardware store where Lucy and Gale Gordon can shine. It's just a reworking of scenery, but offers basically the same thing that the two did on both THE LUCY SHOW and HERE'S LUCY, and they're even in-laws like they were on the latter. The one thing I did like about LIFE WITH LUCY was where it was set. It supposedly takes place in South Pasadena, and the way the show "looks" makes it feel like the characters are living in a small town. That was different for Lucy. All her shows had taken place in either New York or California, and her being in what appeared to be a smaller town made it seem like they were going to keep the show a little more grounded and not overload it with guest stars.
We all know LIFE WITH LUCY tanked and quick. The ratings were low, reviews were harsh, and ABC axed it after two months. The network and Lucy brought in Audrey Meadows to test her with the audience as a possible new full-time cast member, moving the show in another direction. Now, what that direction was actually going to be, I haven't the slightest idea. Maybe it was going to be another "Lucy and Viv"-type show, but with Viv being replaced with Audrey. I don't know, but either way the show was cancelled before anything different could be worked out.
I must admit that I actually enjoyed watching LIFE WITH LUCY this past week. It was not the best I've seen, but it was mildly refreshing and I found myself laughing out loud a few times per episode. Maybe I'm looking at the show too Lucy-blind, but it's not as gawd awful as I had been led to believe. The supporting was weak, but had it been better, the show itself would've played better. I don't think it was the quality of the scripts that caused the show to tank, because goodness knows shows like FULL HOUSE, THE HOGAN FAMILY, and GROWING PAINS turned out some cheesy, weak scripts over the years, and they were big hits for many seasons. I think the issue was really the supporting cast. They were bad, really bad. Lucy and Gale Gordon are great, and it's too bad that this bad reputation show was their swan song.
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That was at least partly Lucy's fault. She insisted the actors speak up for the studio audience as in the old days, apparently oblivious to the technological improvements in sound engineering. Ann just seemed to take that instruction about 10 decibels more extreme than anyone else in the cast. (Incidentally, if she looks familiar -- she's the girl who survived the shark attack in JAWS 2.)
I wonder if that's also why Lucy's makeup is so god awful in LIFE WITH LUCY; exaggerated for the sake of the studio audience.
Spelling made a similar comment in the interview; I assume he meant the TV audience and not the studio audience. Those in the production have said the problem with the studio audience was the opposite. In the years since HERE'S LUCY, Lucille had become something of a national monument. The audience was so thrilled to see her in person, they laughed and clapped at everything. This gave the producer's a false confidence the show was working, so they were genuinely shocked when the early reviews were so harsh.
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I've heard this said before. It seems to be a common story so I'm sure it is at least partially true.
Yes, he often spoke of how the audience "gasped" when they saw her reach for a book on the shelf, or something like that. I've never thought that to be entirely accurate, because the studio audience watching LIFE WITH LUCY seemed to find everything Lucy did hilarious. The audience busted out in applause every single time she walked on or off camera, and they laughed after practically every line.
Wasn't it also Spelling that said they thought by the show was working because of the studio audience response? It may not have been him, but something's telling me it was.