#happy 6th year anniversary to the greatest episode of television ever

[renamusing]

feel like pure shit just want them back

[papermoonloveslucy]

INTERVIEW OF A LIFETIME: LUCILLE BALL

December 6, 1977

Barbara Walters (Host) was born in Boston in 1929. She first became known as a television personality in the early 1960s, when she was a writer of 'women's interest stories' on “The Today Show.” In 1976, she became the first female co-anchor of a network evening news on the “ABC Evening News.” From 1979 to 2004, she worked as co-host and a producer for the ABC news magazine “20/20.” In 1997, Walters created and co-hosted “The View,” a daytime talk show with an all-female panel. She retired as a co-host in 2014, but still serves as executive producer. In 1996, Walters was ranked #34 on the TV Guide "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time" list. Lucille Ball was #1. In 2000 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2001, she appeared on “I Love Lucy's 50th Anniversary Special.”  

Lucille Ball was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon, which was not a success and was canceled after just 13 episodes.

Gary Morton was a comedian who worked the famed ‘Borscht Belt’ in the Catskills Mountains. He met Lucille Ball shortly after her divorce from Desi Arnaz and they married in November 1961. At her request, Morton gave up his nightclub career and became a producer of “The Lucy Show.” Morton also served as a warm-up comic for the show’s studio audience. He appeared in several episodes of both “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy.” Morton passed away in 1999.

Lucie Arnaz (Archive Footage)

Desi Arnaz Jr. (Archive Footage)

Desi Aranz Sr. (Archive Footage)

Earlier in the evening of December 6, 1977, ABC aired new episodes of “Laverne and Shirley” (a show often compared to the antics of Lucy and Ethel) and “Three's Company” (a show Ball admired, and hosted a retrospective of in 1982).  

When the show was repackaged for the Lifetime Network, Barbara Walters taped a new introduction and conclusion to the interview as well as new voice-over narration, referencing events from 1977 to Ball's death in 1989. She introduces the show by telling viewers that Lucy talked frankly about her failed marriage to Desi Arnaz, with her second husband, Gary Morton, sitting beside her.  

Portions of the interview were later incorporated into "Barbara Walters: 20 Years at ABC."

The interview starts in the living room of Ball's Roxbury Drive mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

Lucy: “There's always one room you live in. Play games in. The plants grow better in.”

Lucy tells Walters that they have 85,000 feet of home movies. She screens one called “The Fat Little Cowboy” starring a two and a half year-old Desi Jr. and a four year-old Little Lucie. While the film is being screened in the living room, Lucy tells Walters that the two are much closer now than they were as children. 

Showing stills of her children in “The Lucy Show” and “Here's Lucy,” Walters flashes back (again through still photos) to when Lucy met Desi Arnaz and the creation of “I Love Lucy.”  

Walters: (voice over) “There has never been a success like Lucy.”

Walters' narration talks about Lucy's divorce from Desi in 1960.

The interview moves outdoors to the patio, the narration noting that Lucy was 66 at the time, Desi Arnaz was still alive, and the subject of the divorce was still painful.  

Walters: “When you and Desi were married you had everything!” Lucy: “We had nothing. He had his own band and was in a play in New York.”

Ball firmly tells Walters that while she was acting, Desi was building the business, although nobody would believe it was him doing the building. She says he didn't deserve some of the names they called him. Lucy asserts there was an anti-Latino bias against Arnaz.

Walters: “And then it fell apart.” Lucy: “That was his problem.”

Walters quotes Lucy as saying that with Gary Morton, she didn't make the same mistake twice.

Lucy: “He's not a loser. I married a loser. He could win, win, high stakes. He worked very hard, but he had to lose. Everything he built, he had to break down. He still claims he's the same way.”

Walters asks whom takes care of whom. Gary says they take care of each other, but Lucy insists it is all Gary.  

When first marrying Gary, she was cautious. She didn't want to rob him of his individuality. Lucy mentions that Gary finds solace in golf and that Lucy never minded that.

Walters asks if it is true that Lucy doesn't 'think funny.' Lucy agrees saying she can do funny things other people write down in detail, but she doesn't think funny. She and Gary say they make each other laugh. Gary says she'll do 'Lucy-isms'. Lucy gives an example of a 'Lucy-ism': when making a chopped chicken liver platter for guests, the top came off the salt shaker creating a mound of salt atop the food. To try to fix it, she rinsed it in the sink. They went out to dinner that night. 

Gary says Lucy's best quality is her warmth. Gary is hard-pressed to come up with her worst quality but Lucy says it is that she hates that he takes naps.

Lucy says she lives by the ‘think positive’ ideals of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

Walters asks Lucy what it was like when she stopped doing series television in 1974. “Traumatic,” says Ball. She thinks she stayed on a bit too long, but only stuck it out because her children were on the show. She says she always prided herself on “when to get off.” Walters wonders if the Lucy Ricardo character could work today as well is it did 25 years ago. Lucy hints that people may be getting tired of “the new stuff” and want what they know and want to see again.

Gary Morton says that Lucy (the character) is seen all over the world and there is no limit when something is funny. Lucy says she always felt her audience needed a show that had a beginning, a middle, and a happy ending.  

Lucy: “They're trying to make entertainment out of newsreels. What we see in news, which is not very happy these days. To me, that's not entertainment.”

Walters asks Lucy if she ever watches “I Love Lucy” Lucy says no, but that she sometimes runs across one turning the dial. She tells Walters about CBS's reluctance to accept Desi as her husband on TV. Lucy fully expected the show to end after a just year.    

Walters: “They say you're very tough to work for.  Are you? Are you a perfectionist?”  Lucy: “Perfectionist? I have an attention to detail. That's the way I learned my craft.”

Gary says Lucy tends to be a protective mother. Walters says that Lucy's onscreen and off-screen pregnancy was big news, getting bigger ratings than the inauguration of the President and the coronation of the Queen. Lucy says she wasn't aware of any of that because she was busy having the baby, but learned about it afterwards.

Walters wondered if she was worried about having a baby so late in life. Lucy says no one warned her about the risks. Her daughter was born by by C-section, so Lucy was in pain after the birth and cried with joy so much that holding her newborn child actually hurt.

Prodded by Walters, Lucy tells the story of first hearing that she was pregnant on the radio. Apparently, in 1950, radio gossip columnist Walter Winchell had spies in the lab and intercepted the results of Lucy's pregnancy test before the couple could be notified. Lucy lost the child.  

Walters wonders how Lucie and Desi Jr. differentiated between their parents' real life and their television lives. Gary says they eventually grew up and realized the difference. Lucy used the fantasy world of their show as a form of escape from reality. She says “I had to pretend, but it helped.”

Walters wraps up the interview (in the updated wrap-around segment) by saying that Lucy died in 1989, but that her legacy is as one of the greats of television history.

This Date in Lucy History –  December 6th

"Lucy Wants to Move to the Country" (ILL S6;E15) – filmed December 6, 1956

"Lucy Saves Milton Berle" (TLS S4;E12) – first aired December 6, 1965

"Lucy in the Jungle" (HL S4;E13) – first aired December 6, 1971