"Life With Lucy" (1986)

1. Lucy had too much control- She'd been out of the game for 12 years at that point, and no longer had any idea what the public wanted.

2. She hired her old writers- Bob Carroll and Madeleine Pugh were brought in as producers. Big mistake. Lucy was a fan of The Golden Girls, but she thought "That's not what the public wants from me." She was likely right. But neither did writers pushing 70 really know.

3. The children- they were smart to do away with Lucy and Viv's kids on The Lucy Show. Somehow, the little kids on Life with Lucy presence it too goodie goodie. Seriously, Life with Lucy made Here's Lucy seem edgy by comparison.

4. The supporting cast- it's like they cast two giant pieces of Wonder Bread to play Lucy's son and daughter in law. Two less memorable actors I can't fathom. And don't get me started on a mugging, 75 year old Gale Gordon.

Lucy's schtick was already tired by the late 1950s. Some of the early seasons of The Lucy Show were tolerable, but after Vivian left and Mr. Mooney became a major character, each season, and then series, became more painful.

Worse than Mame. Which is saying something.

I love Lucy, but she was like the female Bob Hope, doing the same schtick forever...

A more realistic portrayal of Lucy downing martinis and chain-smoking and dishing about Hollywood would have been better.

Her slapstick shtick is ridic on an old lady who looks like an exhumed corpse wearing a clown wig.

I know this isn’t a popular opinion, but I love Gale Gordon and always thought he was really funny and added a lot. And people love I Love Lucy. The problem is people don’t love Grandma Lucy mugging for the camera. That broad slapstick comedy works but not for a 70 plus woman or at least as a lead. It just reminds us how old she was. There must have been a way to do both. A GG type show and some physical stuff.

A friend of mine commented at the time that the rest of the cast looked like real people, and there was Lucy, in an orange wig and clown makeup, looking like Baby Jane Hudson!

“Life Support Lucy”

[quote]A friend of mine commented at the time that the rest of the cast looked like real people, and there was Lucy, in an orange wig and clown makeup, looking like Baby Jane Hudson!

You mean like this...but Lucy had to record it one note at a time and they had to use a saxaphone to cover up most of Lucy's off-key notes.

[quote]A more realistic portrayal of Lucy downing martinis and chain-smoking and dishing about Hollywood would have been better.

In all seriousness, that would've been a great idea for a show.

Lucy's Life Matters!

God, I remember the reviews were brutal.

You have to remember that she was a B-movie actress and that the Lucy character made her a *superstar* on television. She didn't really have anything else to fall back on. Outside of Ordinary People and Whose Life...? Mary never had another career high after Mary Richards.

Aaron Spelling later regretted giving her too much creative freedom.

...and the final series, "Lifeless Lucy!"

[quote]Outside of Ordinary People and Whose Life...? Mary never had another career high after Mary Richards.

Just Between Friends

Finnegan Begin Again

This seems like the kind of show Trump would have watched.

"Her slapstick shtick is ridic on an old lady who looks like an exhumed corpse wearing a clown wig."

I mean the whole show really sucked. However, the suckiest cherry on top, was the supporting cast. The husband didn't just sniff cookies he sniffed a whole carrot cake in one episode.

[quote]Just Between Friends

[quote]Finnegan Begin Again

Bless your heart, r15.

Ugh, those glasses, r18.

He'd have been hot without them.

The glasses were no doubt Lucy's idea. r20.

OK, see, on this particular Tuesday, you could've watched six hours of Lucy. There's "I Love Lucy," "The Lucy Show," "Here's Lucy!"

If Spelling has cast Lucy as the chief villainess on his Dynasty spin-off The Colbys, that fucking flop would’ve eclipsed Dynasty.

R22, do you like The Guide, too??

Not long before she died Lucy participated in a wonderful multi-part TV documentary about RKO were she had been a starlet and burgeoning star. She looks better there than she had in a long time. Maybe her makeup and hair were a little more restrained and she's wearing an elegant Chanel type suit. IIRC her voice even sounds less harsh and imperious. She's much more engaging here than I remember her in her later TV interviews on talk shows.

She speaks very conversationally and eloquently about her early years at the studio, about working with Kate Hepburn on Stage Door (she found her very intimidating) and about the classes she took at the studio with Ginger Rogers' mother. Sorry not to link it but I think the interview is easily found on youtube. The entire documentary is great.

I think you can find it on YouTube. During the mid 70's Lucy did a something of a miniseries. Six episodes I think. It was called What Now, Catherine Curtis?. For it's time it was a great show. About a newly divorced, middle aged woman, moving to NYC on her own. Ditching her kids and her upper crust existence. It was an excellent show. I think it was a three parter. Part of the first episode was actually heartbreaking when she was talking to her exes picture. You could tell she was channeling Desi. Then calling her kids and they would have no time for her. It covered her sleeping with a blue collar guy, Art Carney, dating a younger guy, and other things. It was so out of the I Love Lucy box. So unlike anything else she ever did.

The ratings were very good and the network begged her to make it a weekly. She didn't want to. For its time though it was quality. Showed she could be someone else on TV. Too bad she didn't run with it.

"About a newly divorced, middle aged woman, moving to NYC on her own."

Lucy would have been in her mid-60s in the 1970s, hardly middle-aged (more accurately elderly). I hope the kids weren't toddlers... or even teens.

what a dump.

Maybe she was talked out of it, R26.

I recently watched "A Letter to Three Wives" and afterward thought about Ann Sothern vs. Lucille. Ann could do comedy, drama, or dramedy adeptly. By the late 1930s she was a major film actor. She was so popular and successful as the character "Maisie" she did 10 films. She had a reasonable level of control over her 1950s/1960s TV shows without being married to the head of the production company.

When I watch Lucille in some of her old movies, I sometimes hear Lucy Ricardo. Lucille had a somewhat limited repertoire of ways to deliver lines. Lucille was not stupid: she openly spoke about her limitations in interviews and followed her instincts until she did Mame.

She and Desi were rabidly ambitious (that may be what held their marriage together as long as it did), but Lucy could essentially do only one thing well, and she knew it. That may have led to her bitterness, drinking, and clinging to the past all the way to "Life with Lucy."

They had Lucy dress up like a nurse in one episode and she looked like some haunted demonic nun from a gothic tale of terror.

I think Lucy could do drama well. But in the 50s when her voice went so gravelly and with her orange hair and overdrawn lips there was just something so scary clown about her that just got worse and worse over the years.

If you want to see her at her best, looking beautiful, watch Without Love. Her part is just supporting but she steals every scene she’s in from Katharine Hepburn.

Personally, I enjoyed "Gangway for Loosey" more than any of these other shows...

[quote]I recently watched "A Letter to Three Wives" and afterward thought about Ann Sothern vs. Lucille. Ann could do comedy, drama, or dramedy adeptly.

I could SING, too.

[quote]Aaron Spelling later regretted giving her too much creative freedom.

And Lucy regretted giving Aaron a part in "I Love Lucy."

The whole premise was off. As others mentioned, the supporting cast was dull, and Lucy appeared out of place starring in a family sitcom. She was too old, too recognizably famous (too "LUCY!!"), and too extreme in appearance ("clown makeup/garish red hair) to pull this off.

She was trying to recreate the same old formula with her as the grandmother, which just didn't work. No one cared about this nuclear family sortof shoehorned into a Lucy sitcom.

Instead of her umpteenth family sitcom she should've really started from scratch. If she wanted some of the Golden Girls magic she should've played a single woman with a bevy of older lady supporting characters. GG as a star vehicle rather than an ensemble. Could've worked.

If ya liked it.... you'll luv " Life With Diane" (2023)

Really, they should've made a series about Lucy living in a high rise in Century City, drinking, smoking, yelling at the help, playing backgammon, and fielding calls from her agent with outrageous offers that her poor beleaguered husband tries to talk her out of.

"Basic Instinct? And you want me to show my WHAT?" "Lucy, I don't think that's such a good idea..."

Jesus Christ; can we stop with this topic?

It didn't help matters that she looked like an embalmed corpse, even with a gallon of Vaseline smeared on the camera lens.

R39 you DO realize you have the option to simply ignore this topic, and either click on another, or even start an interesting topic of your own, right dear?

R39 is a dumb cunt

Gary told R39 not to post but she still did

In season 2 Lucy got a new sidekick every episode and they explained it away as her friends all die from overexertion after being caught up in one of Lucy's wacky hairbrained, and at this age, deadly, schemes.

Free!!!

Who the heck is GARY??

Re: Life With Lucy, I always found it peculiar that Lucy insisted on using the ‘old formula’ of her three previous sitcoms - a formula that really only worked for the first one, I Love Lucy. Other than maybe the two first seasons of The Lucy Show, the other four seasons of TLS and all six seasons of Here’s Lucy were pretty dire and unfunny.

r46 Gary Morton, Lucy's second husband. He talked Lucy out of things and played golf all day. And that was about all he did. Lucie and Desi Jr. never liked him all that much.

But he looked like had a huge dick, r48

Why not just make a weekly sitcom out of STONE PILLOW?

It was funny enough!

The telefilm ended with her getting a home...BUT...

Episode 101: The taxman comes a knockin' and ole Florabelle hasn't got a dime to her name so it's back out on the streets she goes.

Special guest stars: Ed Koch and Britt Ekland

Episode 102: WATCH YOUR SEAT!

It's off to free clinic for Florabelle when she accidentally contracts syphilis from a public toilet seat. Hilarity ensues when doctors mix up her test results with a patient suffering from a new affliction called GRIDS.

Special guests: Amanda Blake, Timothy Patrick Murphy and Charles Pierce as Nurse Cratched

A DLer once described Gary Morton as "one of those old 70s guys in polyester pants who just finished stinking up the bathroom so bad the paint was peeling off the walls."

I can't believe that icon, Ann Dusenberry has received so much disrespect on this thread. Not only did she star in the iconic role of beauty queen turned shark attack survivor (though she had to watch her boyfriend get eaten), Tina Wilcox in Jaws 2, but she also portrayed Amy in the definitive version of Little Women starring DL's favorite recluse Susan Dey as Jo, Eve Plumb as Beth, and Meredith Baxter-Lesbian as Meg. Dusenberry has stated that Life with Lucy was destroyed in rewrites as she originally had a bit wherein she would push Lucy down the stairs in every episode, but apparantly "outside influences" asked the writers to remove the bit.

I've posted this before, but seems pertinent to this thread. As a '70s kid, LOVED "I Love Lucy" reruns in the morning, LIKED "The Lucy Show" reruns that followed, and DIDN'T like Ball's current series, "Here's Lucy," which was on Monday nights. And I avoided "Life With Lucy" for the short time it was on. But I always liked Lucy and had a lot of empathy for her, growing old as a living legend, trapped by her "Lucy" image. Here's my memory of growing up with Lucy...

She had one iconic role and she was trapped by it. She really never tried to escape it either.

I remember watching the series at the time. I wanted to like it, for a Lucy’s sake, but it wasn’t particularly funny. The best episode was the one in which John Ritter guest starred on.

One of the main problems (of many) the show had was the supporting cast. They added nothing. Zilch.

It resembled a forgettable 80s series like Webster or My Two Dads.

DLers may have forgotten and some may be too young to know, but Lucy did have a huge hit movie in 1968, YOURS, MINE AND OURS opposite Henry Fonda. A little bit of Lucy Ricardo may have slipped in here and there but it was a fresh characterization for her. I'm not sure where this credit fits in on the time line with The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy.

I watched ILL as a child and enjoyed Lucy's zany antics. But when I saw the show with adult eyes, I realized that what really made it work was the presence of two perfect "straight men" -- Desi Arnaz and William Frawley. Desi let Lucy have the spotlight, so his excellent comedic work is easy to overlook... until you compare him to Gale Gordon (for example), and all the other failed straight men in Lucy's later career.

Every Costello needs an Abbott, every Jerry Lewis needs a Dean Martin -- without that grounding element, the hyperactive antics are just irritating.

Gale Gordon was great when he played the genuine straight man opposite Eve Arden on Our Miss Brooks. It's when he was asked to be as "funny" as the leading lady that he failed and became interminably tiresome. Thank god he was too busy to be cast as Fred Mertz!

Bullshit. Lucy needed Viv. That was lightning in a bottle. No other female cohort had that chemistry with her. And they were friends which gave them equal balance as opposed to husband and wife.

Loved the episode where Lucy fell into the basement and died.

Lucie has talked about how her father was overlooked in ILL’s success. Besides his role on the show, which he was rarely credited for, he was responsible for much of the behind-the-scenes stuff.

[quote]Loved the episode where Lucy fell into the basement and died.

That was Alexis Smith, r61.

R58, I'd like to thank you from the bottom of my heart!

What Now, Catherine Curtis was terrific and pretty edgy for it's time. I recall Catherine having a pregnancy scare and going back and forth about whether or not to keep it/put it up for adoption/or have an abortion. Ultimately, it was a false alarm, but I believe she then insisted on getting an IUD inserted.

...and what a scare it must of been for Catherine Curtis, since Lucille Ball was 65 at the time!

Episode 103: THE RETURN (Special Sweeps Week Premier!)

Just as Flora is getting settled back on the streets, why who should show up but her old friend and social worker Carrie Lang (special guest star Daphne Zuniga). Only she has a major problem...she's pregnant! ...And its going to be black! Will Flora be able to use her training as a WW2 triage nurse to "take care" of Carrie's little problem or will the memory of dear Sonny throw a wrench in the works?

Co-starring: Mario Van Peebles and Lucie Arnaz as Norma McCorvey

WHET Mario Van Peebles? He was hottttttt!

'Here's Lucy' was shit except for Lucie Jr. and Desi Jr.

Life with Loose Stool

Or as Gary called it, "Life with Loosey"

At least the show didn't have to continue after Ball died as 'Lucy's Family' or 'Life Without Lucy.'

After L*U*C*Y

Here's an earlier attempt, when Lucy came back, to NBC back in 1980. I think this show was supposed to be a setup for Donald O'Connor to have a sitcom. But Lucy's front and center, with aging guest star cameos. This time they're melding the real Lucy with her "Lucy" character. Her love of backgammon is written in, but not her chain smoking and scotch on the rocks sipping!