Life With Lucy

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Mirrorblade.1, Sep 1, 2014.

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  1. bartels76

    bartels76 Forum Hall Of Fame

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    What a bizarre rip off of a set that is.
     
  2. bartels76

    bartels76 Forum Hall Of Fame

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    I wouldn't want her as a permanent part of the cast as I can't see her replacing anyone as I think it would've been crowded with her. However, it would have been great to have in a recurring role though.

    PS- All the of Life With Lucy episodes are on Youtube.
    Life with Lucy (1986): The Complete Series - YouTube
     
  3. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

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    Well, thats your opinion and thats fine. Personally, I could see Lucy in the Bea Arthur role in a nanosecond and I think she would have been fantastic in it.
     
  4. Vidiot

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    Gale Gordon was a total pro, very nice man, and his comedic timing was still impeccable when he did the show. First-class gentleman. Nobody could do a "slow boil" better than Gordon in his prime.

    Looks like there were 13 episodes after all -- my memory was only 12. I'm 90% sure only eight shows actually got aired on ABC before the series got the axe. That was a sad experience.
     
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  5. O Don Piano

    O Don Piano Senior Member

    The only redeeming few seconds in the link provided is the heartfelt, and loud, applause Lucy gets when she appears for the first time.
    Almost made me cry!
    The rest is truly awful. But takes NOTHING away from her accomplishments in her prime.
     
  6. bartels76

    bartels76 Forum Hall Of Fame

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    Exonerating Ms. Ball: A Look at LIFE WITH LUCY
     
  7. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

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    I'm mystified as to how you got that out of what I wrote. You've completely missed the point I was making.

    Lucy was quite funny when she was younger, but her comic persona did not work well when played by an elderly woman. Put simply, physical comedy is the purview of the young... comedians whose acts age well are those whose humor is more verbal than physical. Did Lucy have the talent to do something else? Quite possibly, but she apparently wasn't interested in trying something different.
     
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  8. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    "It was a big mistake to allow this comeback vehicle to be created by a pair of writers whose ideas of comedy never evolved past 1958 and whose figurative well of creativity had been dry since 1963..."

    That's a huge mistake by this blogger and an insult to the writers on the show. But I only know that because I was there.

    The reality was that the writers had done lots and lots and lots of other, more modern shows in the 15 years since Here's Lucy went off the air (huge ratings for Madelyn Davis as writer/producer on Alice). They were smart, talented people who tried very hard to write a modern, contemporary hit show designed for the same audiences that were watching Cosby and Golden Girls and so on, but the reality is... Lucy rejected them. Her defense was, "I know my audience, and they want to see me do the old schtick, not this new stuff." Lucy steadfastly refused to do a 1980s-style show.

    So -- against the advice of producer Aaron Spelling, the writers, and others -- Lucy pushed them to go into basically the same kinds of shows she had done in the early 1970s. The plots with the kids and the family were particularly cornball and silly. By the time everybody realized the ratings had fallen off the cliff, it was too late to pull the plane out of a nosedive (to mix my metaphors).

    I thought the best episode of Life with Lucy they ever did was the one with guest star Audrey Meadows as Lucy's sister, because she also had real comedy chops and there was a lot of conflict and action with the two characters arguing and reacting with each other. I told one producer, "man, we could've done a great show with the two of them every week." He nodded sadly but said, "unfortunately, that's not the show we wound up with."
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2018
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  9. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

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    Hey, at least John Ritter is in one of the episodes. That's a bright spot, to be sure.
     
  10. Vidiot

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    Staggeringly bad. Watching Lucy try to "romance" WWI soldier John Ritter in the play-within-a-show is weird and uncomfortable, almost like necrophilia. Awful. And yet both were really, really talented people.
     
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  11. bartels76

    bartels76 Forum Hall Of Fame

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    Alice was a really good written show that they were involved with.

    Do you have any insight on how Audrey and Lucille got along? Jayne (her sister) said something a long time ago that there was something between them that she couldn't get into. Also, it was said Audrey was offered to come on permanently (right before it was canceled and she refused).
     
  12. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

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    Czes: Youre looking at old "I Love Lucy" clips with all that physical comedy and you've reached the conclusion that's all Lucille Ball did well.

    In her subsequent series, "The Lucy Show" and "Heres Lucy", she did very little physical comedy. Those shows were situational, relying on the Daffy nature of the Lucy character and how her reaction to life's problems differed from everyone else. She was GREAT at that, like in the episode where she cons Buddy Rich into giving Craig Drum Lessons. I dont see that being affected by age. As for not being interested, where did you get that?

    "Life With Lucy" was poorly written, plain and simple. It tried to update "I Love Lucy", which was the mistake. If it were me, I would have paired Lucille Ball with another legendary actress like Carole Burnett, and have then play off each other. I think that could have been a very funny comedy.
     
  13. Vidiot

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    Absolutely no clue. I only worked with the post-producer and the editor, so I wasn't privvy to behind-the-scenes conversations like that. I can say Audrey had a good time and looked great in the part. I think the truth is that Audrey Meadows had married the CEO of Continental Airlines in the early 1960s and never needed to work for the rest of her life, plus she got residuals from The Honeymooners, which were on endlessly in every market. So it's not like she wanted to work or needed the money.
     
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  14. James Slattery

    James Slattery Forum Resident

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    The Lucy Show was only good in the first few seasons when Vivian Vance was there. The shows went downhill after she left and Here's Lucy was pretty terrible. That show was more like a sketch in a variety show than like a TV series. How that lasted 6 seasons, I'll never know.
     
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  15. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

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    I'll say one thing Life With Lucy has going for it- it makes me want to watch a few hours of I Love Lucy so I'll laugh and get this sad feeling out of my brain...
     
  16. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

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    It couldnt have been "pretty terrible" since it lasted 6 seasons. "Pretty Terrible" shows get cancelled because nobody watches and the advertisers pull their $$.
    Heres Lucy was a successful show, so really not sure what your point was.
     
  17. James Slattery

    James Slattery Forum Resident

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    You're kidding, right? Small Wonder ran 5 seasons as did The Brady Bunch. Facts of Life ran even longer and don't get me started on Bonanza. Unwatchable. Popularity doesn't equal quality.
     
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  18. Gill-man

    Gill-man Forum Resident

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    Your confusing your taste for quality.
     
  19. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    From TVShowsOnDVD:

    COMING ON 10/8:

    * Life With Lucy - The Complete Series (CBS/Paramount)
    DVD
    -----ATTENTION LUCILLE BALL FANS: The legendary comedienne's final sitcom is here in its entirety, for the first time ever on DVD! LIFE WITH LUCY stars everyone's favorite redhead as a widowed grandmother who decides to "help" her late husband's partner (Gale Gordon, The Lucy Show) run their family's hardware store. Complete your personal LUCY collection with this hilariously heart-warming series featuring JENNY LEWIS (Troop Beverly Hills), DONOVAN SCOTT (Police Academy), ANN DUSENBERRY, LARRY ANDERSON, guest appearances by JOHN RITTER (Three's Company), Audrey Meadows (The Honeymooners), Peter Graves (Mission Impossible) and 5 NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN EPISODES! Co-starring Jenny Lewis (Troop Beverly Hills), Gale Gordon ("The Lucy Show"), and Donovan Scott (Police Academy); Guest appearances by TV legends John Ritter ("Three's Company"), Peter Graves ("Mission:Impossible"), and Audrey Meadows ("The Honeymooners"). 2-disc set.
     
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  20. JamieC

    JamieC Senior Member

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    I hope that nothing hinges on this selling well. If ever there was a case for a MOD set for a dead show, this is it. Me? I have zero interest in seeing these again.
    If I had to ask for a half season failure I would call for Otherworld from 85, or Drive from 07.
     
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  21. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I posted that as a sort of final chapter to this thread. Read the first two posts on page 1.
     
  22. James Slattery

    James Slattery Forum Resident

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    Long Island
    Aside from the obvious, which is that watching an old woman in physical peril is scary and not humorous, there was also the fact that I Love Lucy had been playing in endless reruns for decades and viewers knew the old routines better than Lucy or the writers did, as they had seen them dozens of times, which Lucy and her people likely hadn't. An unfortunate by product was that The Ellen Burstyn Show, which was paired with LWL on Saturday night, and actually was funny, suffered from having such a bad lead in and also was cancelled quickly as well.
     
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  23. MRamble

    MRamble Forum Resident

    The I Love Lucy cast were like the Beatles. All four made it great. All of Lucy's shows were like solo Paul or something. Gale Gordon was great but I couldn't go along with it for two series
     
  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

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    Yeah, my old 1970s/1980s friend Donovan Scott was basically the guy who took all the pratfalls in Life with Lucy, and his joke was "I'm the guy doing the stunts that Lucy used to do in the 1950s." They were all painfully aware that the audience would be concerned that the star was frail and in danger of breaking a hip or something. She was actually surprisingly robust and had a lot of energy on set, but she was very cranky (as I recall) because she had recently quit smoking right before they went into production on the show. That's never a great idea when you're 75.
     
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  25. scousette

    scousette Forum Resident

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    I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show are superior to her later efforts.
     
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