Original subtitles

It's the sitcom that started it all.

Television owes everything to "I Love Lucy".

"I Love Lucy" literally invented the way to do it.

One of the biggest shows of all time.

The one time B movie actress

and her band leader husband would break all the rules...

Well, that'll wait. This won't. Come on.

...and changed television forever.

The first network TV show that was done

in a higher quality.

Desi realized that Lucy came alive in front

of a live audience.

So I said, we'll film it in front of a live audience.

I said, well, that has never been done.

You can't do that.

Desi and Lucy were smart enough to retain

ownership rights so that they could invent the rerun

and make money off this show.

It's indication they became TV's first millionaires.

The innovations off-camera were matched

by the innovations on screen.

Hi, Lucy!

Here we are seeing the first, kind of,

intercultural couple.

Not only that, but the female was the lead.

She was so strong and bold.

Vitameatavegamin and the chocolate factory

and her stomping grapes will always hold up.

It's like a perfect storm.

Desi said it happens once

in a lifetimes if it happens at all.

The success of "I Love Lucy" would create

a television empire.

They bought RKO Studios.

Desilu was the largest

independent producer of television.

They went on to do shows like "The Andy Griffith Show"

and "Dick Van Dyke", "Star Trek" "Mission Impossible".

But after nearly a decade on screen,

the collaboration and the marriage ended.

The last episode airs.

The next day Lucy

drops the mic and files for divorce.

It breaks my heart that they got divorced.

No matter what wackiness Lucy pulled, at the end

of each episode, they loved each other.

Find out how this iconic TV show came together,

how did this unconventional couple

reinvent television and create a show that is still

adored and imitated decades later.

I think the essence of the show is love.

I think the heart says it all.

♪

70 years after the premiere of "I Love Lucy"

audiences young and old are still captivated by a show

that is among the best sitcoms in television history.

When "I Love Lucy" premiered in 1951, nobody could predict

it would become one of the most iconic TV shows of all time.

Timelessness is probably the first thing I associate

with "I Love Lucy", because it's been able to endure.

It's almost a work of art, I would say.

Probably the most hilarious show I've ever seen.

And it holds up.

That is the foundation of modern television,

not just the golden age of television.

"I Love Lucy" is the foundation of television as we know it.

Television owes everything to "I Love Lucy".

Television owes its comic rhythms to "I Love Lucy",

it owes its comic aesthetic to "I Love Lucy",

and every star now who's able to sign a production deal

that allows them to develop their own material,

they owe everything to Lucy and Desi, everything.

Six seasons of unforgettable moments

like this one which aired on CBS on May 5th, 1952.

Hello, friends.

I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl.

Are you tired, run down, listless?

Do you poop out at parties?

Are you unpopular?

The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle.

Now, you take some.

Oh.

It's so tasty, too.

You give her a little, tiny, silly thing to play,

she plays 50 different versions of it.

The answer to all your problems is in

this bittle loddle. Uh, little bottle.

She's basically taking a spoonful of something gross.

And it's seven to eight minutes of her doing that.

And she's getting increasingly drunk because for no good reason

Vitameatavegamin is 25% alcohol.

There's no good explanation for why that is,

but she has a number of spoonfuls and she

becomes increasingly drunk.

So why don't you join the thousands of happy, peppy

people and get a great bi bottle of Mitametamigimin.

If you go back and watch the little gradations

of the drunkenness, of the belligerence

as she gets more drunk, it's brilliant and it

plays that way today.

With her husband, Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball

created a cultural phenomenon.

But it's one that begins

not under the bright lights of Hollywood, but

in Jamestown, New York.

She grew up in western New York State,

always dreaming of stardom, an tried her luck

in New York City.

At age 16, Ball lands a modeling gig

in New York.

And while making her way

in the world of theater, Hollywood calls.

Lucille Ball started out as kind of a show girl type.

She'd been a model in New York and she was recruited

to be in a Samuel Goldwyn film.

That led to a contract

at RKO Studios, where she began

to get bigger parts and she became a big star

in B pictures.

She was called queen of the B's because a lot

of her movies they considered B movies, but still,

a beautiful movie star.

Somewhere along the line, she's not getting

the glamour girl parts.

She's not quite getting the comedy parts yet, either.

But she meets and falls in love with Desi Arnaz.

Their backgrounds were certainly different.

Desi comes from a family that were Cuban exiles,

had to reinvent themselves, had come from wealth in Cuba,

but then, certainly, when they came to this country,

had to do some reinvention.

Lucy and Desi elope in 1940, but rarely see

each other with Arnaz on the road with his band

and Ball in Los Angeles landing small parts

in radio and film.

She was not the A list.

Lucille Ball was never really

the leading lady, she was always the friend of the leading lady

in the big movie systems.

In 1948, CBS cast Lucille Ball as a daffy

but intelligent housewife on the radio show,

"My Favorite Husband", and later asks her

to develop a comedy fo television.

Remember, TV is new.

TV is a deathtrap at this point, okay?

Yeah, TV, nobody wants to be on TV.

Radio is where it's at.

And someone asked her to adapt her radio show

to television.

She was looking for excuses to be closer to Desi Arnaz.

Remember, Desi Arnaz was

really a big band leader, traveling around the country.

And she would do movies in one spot, his band would

take him in another spot.

They were looking for something that would bring them together.

And CBS said, no way.

No way are they going to believe you're married

to a Cuban guy with a thick accent.

And she's like, but I am married to a Cuban guy

with a thick accent.

CBS were really concerned that Lucy being married

to a foreigner is something audiences would not buy.

This was great concern to the network.

I think the intercultural relationship

at the center, was something that wasn't on television

at the time, and bigger picture, wasn't something that so much

was in the culture at the time. And so it was forcing a lot

of people, from network executives,

to sponsors, to audiences, to confront something

that existed in the real world but was not something people

wanted to be discussing.

To prove that Desi Arnaz would be a viable husband

for her on television, she hired some writers.

And they wrote a Vaudeville show and they actually took

the Vaudeville show with Desi Arnaz as her husband

on the road.

They auditioned in different cities,

showing the bosses that the public would eat this up.

They formed Desilu Productions in 1950

to manage the tour.

Desilu originated as the name of the ranch

in Chatsworth, California.

It was a combination of Desi and Lucy, obviously.

Desi formed Desilu Productions to manage his band.

The traveling show is a hit.

The network had no choice but to really accept Desi

as the husband, because people were eating it up.

And once the audience was, you know, exposed to this type

of relationship, there was literally no going back.

♪

In 1951, CBS takes a big gamble and gives

"I Love Lucy" a coveted spot on their prime time schedule.

A new pioneering sitcom centered around the lives

of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.

"I Love Lucy" is really about the marriage

between Lucy and Desi.

It's really art imitating life imitating art in a lot of ways.

To round out the ensemble, the team cast

Lucy's sidekick, Ethel Mertz and her

curmudgeon landlord husband, Fred.

They found Vivian Vance performing in San Diego

on stage.

And the director of the show

went down and saw her and he brought Desi to see her

and said, she's great, she's perfect, she's Ethel.

But when they brought Vivian to Lucille

to get her approval,

Lucy didn't react very well.

She said, she doesn't look like a landlady.

I want a dumpy landlady

with peroxide blonde hair in curlers, and a bathrobe.

This woman doesn't look like that at all.

And Vivian was taken aback.

It wasn't a warm embrace there.

Vivian was an attractive woman.

And she did kind of dowdy down to be Ethel.

But what starts as a somewhat frosty relationship

will ultimately become a lifelong friendship.

From there, it went uphill.

And Lucy became friendly

with Vivian and came to respect her opinion,

and depended on her as a show doctor

when things weren't quite right.

And they would work out

their routines together where they naturalized things

so that it looked like it wa really happening.

Although there may have even been friction in the beginning

according to some sources, between Lucille Ball

and Vivian Vance, by the time "I Love Lucy" was over,

and then Lucy was doing "The Lucy Show"

and "Here's Lucy", she wanted to work with Viv.

And they were great friends in real life.

Lucy and Ricky may have been the heart

of the show, but Lucy and Ethel bring comedy gold.

My goodness!

Well, it's a happy little loaf, isn't it?

Oh!

I got it!

Put it on the board!

How'd this oven door get open?

Ethel! Ethel!

For Ethel's husband, the studio turns

to a veteran Vaudeville and Broadway actor.

To do the Fred Mertz role, they picked William Frawley.

And William Frawley, everybody loved.

But he had a drinking problem, so they were trepidatious

about bringing him in, because they weren't sure

he was gonna deliver.

It was a grind. They were doing 39 shows a year.

So Desi made him promise he would never drink

on the set, or come in drunk, or any of that.

And he promised. And he never did.

The funny thing is about Fred and Ethel is that they

did not get along at all.

And the interesting thing is

on camera, you totally can read that.

I mean, their whole joke was that they kind of

hated each other.

They were professionals.

And it never showed on the air that they didn't really

like each other very much.

Vivian thought of herself as a leading lady,

and she didn't really like the idea of people believing

that she would be married to that old coot

is what she called him.

With the main roles cast, the characters take shape.

Bill Frawley was exactly like Fred Mertz.

And he was just a grumpy curmudgeon, wasn't crazy

about being married.

Vivian Vance played Ethel in a way that, you know,

was realistic and kind of mothering toward Lucy

who was somewhat childish and would always be roped

into situations.

And she had great reactions.

Lucy brought a very broad range of facial expressions

and natural timing to her character,

which was kind of a daffy housewife who always

had a scheme going.

She had great physicality, she was great with props.

So she was able to do

all these central things in each episode.

Desi was a great straight man.

He, you know, could react,

he was a strong performer.

And he never forgot a line.

Always on the mark and totally believable

as the husband.

Ricky Ricardo's punctuation was not always perfect,

but he was in on the joke.

However, there's only one person

on the show that could make fun of his accent,

and that was his wife, Lucy.

They were ahead on diversity.

They just put together a good show.

"I Love Lucy" in its simplest form, is about

a housewife who's married to a famous band leader,

and she wants a piece of his fame,

and she wants to be in his shows.

But it's so much more than that.

In addition to the idea of seeking stardom,

which might not have been enough to sustain a show,

because it might not be relatable enough

to the average American who doesn't wanna necessarily

be a star, the show was about marriage

and it was about friendship.

The cast is set, but no one could expect that

this B list movie actress and her husband would

forever change the way television is done.

By 1951, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

are leading the way on "I Love Lucy".

Even before its premiere, the duo begins reimagining

and redesigning the way television is produced,

edited, and broadcast.

Things would be produced in the East Coast, aired live,

and then what would air in later timezone

was something called the kinescope, which was

literally like taking a camera and aiming it at the TV

and filming what aired on the TV.

It's like if you took your phone and filmed your television.

That's what the quality would be like.

But as production of "I Love Lucy" begins,

Ball insists they shoot in LA.

Lucy did not want to do the show from New York.

And the network said, well, you have to do the show

from New York. There's no other way to do it.

It has to be done from here.

And then Desi said, well, what if we film the show

in Hollywood and then broadcast the films?

And then everybody gets the same high quality.

And they said, well, that's way too expensive.

Desi proposes a solution, one that will

ultimately make the couple millions and forever change

the game in television.

He said, well, what if we put up part of our salary

to make up for the difference and then we own the negatives?

And they said, well, we could, I guess.

Desi and Lucy were smart enough

to retain ownership rights to those episodes

so that they could invent the rerun

and make money off the show.

But to rebroadcast the episodes,

the recordings of "I Love Lucy" will need to be highest

in quality.

Oh, thank you, dear.

Hey, the last one. You better get another pack.

Okay.

Lucy, and Desi, And Phillip Morris,

who was behind the show,

they decided that they wanted to have a clearer picture.

And they went with 35 millimeter film.

They're still doing that today.

I mean, it sounds crazy, but even in this age of digital,

there are still shows shooting on film 60, 70 years later.

Lucy would record "My Favorite Husband"

before a live audience, and believed doing so

gave the show invaluable energy.

She wants the same thing for "I Love Lucy",

and she and Desi insist on that live audience.

Another innovation that still holds up today.

Desi realized that Lucy came alive in front

of a live audience.

It turned her on, it make her excited.

So they said, well, we'll film it in front of a live audience.

And they said, you can't do that.

I mean, there's unions, there's no sound stages

in Hollywood with bleachers.

You know, you have to really create this.

So they said, we will.

He was really taking a gamble, but they did it, you know?

At the time, most television shows use

only one camera.

They were single-camera film shows that were shot

with one camera and different set ups.

So they'd do the long shot and then they'd go

in and do the medium shot, and then they'd do the close up.

And they didn't have an audience,

they just threw a laugh track on.

Lucy didn't want that kind of show.

So what they needed up doing

was they had three cameras, like on a live show,

and they had an audience.

But multiple cameras present a whole new challenge.

Actually, the three camera shoot got in the way

of the audience. That was always the big joke.

It was like, you know, the three camera shoot worked

for certain live broadcasts.

It didn't matter if the cameras were in the way.

So when Desi would do his

warm up for each show, he would say, you know,

ladies and gentlemen, we promise you that never

will you have cameras in your line of sight.

And just to show you, and he'd sit down

and then bring all the cameras in and you

couldn't even see 'em.

So it, you know, there was an impediment with that.

Not only does th team insist

on a live audience, they profit from their laughter.

They actually ended up selling their laugh track

to other shows.

The laughter that was recorded on the shooting

of "I Love Lucy" was used for laugh tracks for decades

after "I Love Lucy". I other words, you could

watch shows from the '70s that have a laugh track

that was made by the audience of "I Love Lucy",

which means an awful lot of people laughing

at a '70s sitcom were probably already dead.

They were laughing from the grave.

You can watch some of the later "Sargent Bilko" shows,

the "Phil Silver Show", and you can hear

the "I Love Lucy" people.

There's a unique quality

to the "Lucy" audience because Lucy's mother was

always in the audience, and when something was about

to happen, you could hear her say, uh-oh.

To perform seamlessly in front

of a live studio audience, rehearsals become vital.

Lucy was a perfectionist and a stickler for rehearsals.

She loved to rehearse to the point the other actors

were like, not again.

'Cause she just, you know, wanted it perfect.

And now it takes four hours to shoot a half-hour show,

back then, you know, it was probably 40 minutes.

I mean, they barely ever stopped.

They went from beginning to end, very few mistakes.

There's not a lot of bloopers from "Lucy" because

they didn't make them. They just went right through it.

In edit, Desi Arnaz find it difficult

seeing only one camera angle at a time, but comes up

with a groundbreaking plan.

They created what they called the four-headed monster.

The four-headed monster was the four screen video

that could run each camera angle at once,

so you could pick.

Whereas in a live show, there's a man in a booth

looking at three monitors and picking.

In this one, the editor had to do all of that.

And so he would pick the scenes and he'd

glue them together the way they did back then.

Although Lucy was the star of the show,

behind the scenes, Desi was a producer,

was a technician, was a magician that really was

ahead of his time.

He's the one that found

the technical solution to this problem.

Desi was a man ahead of his time.

It's like a perfect storm.

You had the talent,

you had the technology, and you had this idea

for doing it in front of an audience.

And it all came together.

With money and reputation on the line,

"I Love Lucy" gets ready for its big premiere.

"I Love Lucy" premieres

on Monday, October 15th, 1951.

"I Love Lucy" debuted on CBS Television.

And it received some good notices,

some not good notices.

It gained steam quickly.

Just three months earlier, Lucille Ball

delivered the couple's first child, Lucy Arnaz.

With their new bundle of joy, Lucy and Desi watched their

show take off.

No matter what neighborhood you were in, people would say,

did you watch the show last night?

They didn't even say did you watch "I Love Lucy".

People knew you meant "I Love Lucy".

It got to the point where "Lucy" was so popular that

in Chicago, the water pressure would go down

during the commercial break because everybody would

go to the bathroom during that moment.

In its first season, "I Love Lucy" hits the top 10

in the ratings and becomes th first TV show to reach

more than 10 million homes.

People, once they saw this program, you couldn't

wait for the next one.

And it had a great, you know, it's like, did you know

what Lucy did this week?

Here we are seeing the first, kind of, intercultural couple,

which we had never really seen before, and it definitely

sparked some controversy.

Not only that, but the female was the lead.

I mean, very few people can

name comics from back in the '30s and '40s.

Lucy's probably gonna be the one that people name.

Sort of this perfect combination of spices

that just made the best meal that we could've asked for.

Part of the appeal lives in the physical comedy.

One of the most iconic episodes, "Job Switching" airs on CBS

on September 15th, 1952.

In it, Lucy and Ethel

try their hand at wrapping sweet treats.

Well, fine. You're doing splendidly.

Speed it up a little!

And they're just tossing the chocolate truffles

into their mouth trying to keep up.

There isn't a punchline in that.

You know, that's what I love about the comedy.

It's not like they're setting it up.

They're just doing it and that's what's so great about it.

Like, the joke is in and of itself,

is in the physical comedy.

Most people agree that the conveyor belt,

the chocolate factory is one of the best.

Everybody recognizes it, everybody still laughs at it.

She's just always trying to do too much.

It had that kind of slap stick comedy

but also that heart.

It just felt like she was so strong and bold.

And to see that in a time frame

where you didn't get that a lot in the '50s.

hi, Lucy.

Oh, hi, honey.

Once she felt confident, she went for it.

And she did a lot of great stuff.

And added things that wouldn't be expected.

Even during rehearsals, she would do something extra

and the writers would say, leave that in, leave that in.

Even though she stuck to the script,

she occasionally brought something that made it

even better.

Lucy stomping grapes in Italy

and getting into a fight, that's a big popular one.

Everybody knows that one.

She's stomping around and it gets

out of control, as it easily does.

And shes covered in just purple.

It's like, even though it's black and white,

you can see the color, you can feel the color.

She made black and white television colorful.

On "The Dick Cavett Show"

in 1974, Lucy recalls what really went down

shooting that episode.

My head was supposed to... well, my head never popped up.

She kept me down by the throat.

And I had grapes up my nose, in my ears.

And she was choking me. And I'm really beating her.

And I got her by the throat and I'm like [groans] like that.

Up she went.

Lots of laughs for viewers, but not all

are happy behind the scenes.

Tensions continue to mount

between Vivian Vance and William Frawley.

Of course they were always at each other's throats

on camera, but when the camera stopped rolling,

they were always at each other's throats.

They just didn't like each other.

Vivian thought that he was, you know, not a very

well-trained actor, he was this Vaudevillian that was

just not to her level, and he thought she couldn't

sing her way out of a paper bag.

But when you saw it on screen it just worked.

The comedic timing was spot on.

But soon, there will be reason to celebrate.

Lucy is expecting their second child.

I can only assume that, you know, those twin beds

were pushed together at one point.

That became a big problem because they couldn't

show pregnancy on TV or hadn't shown it.

At the time, women were not allowed to be pregnant

on television. It had not really been done before.

They thought it would turn audiences off.

CBS executives suggest hiding the pregnancy,

but Desi shuts them down.

Desi says, there's no way to hide it because when she

gets pregnant, she gets huge.

So they decided they were gonna write it into the scripts.

Network censors keep a close eye

right down to the language.

You can't say pregnant on TV.

It was just, like, unbelievable but true.

So they brought in clergy, you know, they brought in

a rabbi and a priest, and they talked about how best

to present this.

So they called it expecting.

The '50s were a time of weird conservatism,

as we all know, including the fact that

on television, married couples slept in twin beds.

Even when the couple was married in real life and tried

to argue that that wa ridiculous.

So how Little Ricky was ever conceived, I don't know.

Wink.

But the fact that Lucille Ball

was pregnant in real life gave "I Love Lucy" the chance

to break yet another taboo, because they had no choice.

On the show, Lucy famously reveals

the news to her TV husband in his club.

She tells somebody, just slip him a note saying

I'm expecting, and I'm looking for a way to tell him

but there's never enough time because that had been what

had been happening. All through the episode,

she'd been rehearsing how she was gonna do this

beautiful scene, and they kept getting interrupted.

And so she finally does it.

♪

Honey. Honey, oh. Honey, no.

- Yes. - Really?

- Yes. - Why didn't you tell me?

Well, you didn't give me a chance.

- Are you kidding. - No.

And here's one of th beautiful moments

that's preserved forever and that millions of people

not only have seen, but will always remember.

To work around the pregnancy, "I Love Lucy"

turns to a little TV trickery.

They were able to use the "I Love Lucys" that had

aired the previous season and put wraparounds on them.

So they'd be talking about the baby and they'd say,

oh, remember when Lucy did this, and they'd go back.

So that also gave a lot of people who hadn't been able

to see the first season, 'cause television was

growing very quickly then, and a lot of stations didn't

come online 'til '52.

So there already had been

a season of "I Love Lucy" they hadn't seen.

So that was a way for them to catch up.

And this is where the rerun came in.

"I Love Lucy" was the first real successful show

to be rerun.

Because they shot it in such a high quality

for its time, the show withstood the test

of time, even if it wasn't in color.

Lucy and Desi already had a little girl.

Not knowing if they were going to have a boy or a girl

in real life this time, the couple decide that Lucy

and Ricky Ricardo would have a boy.

America was invested in Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

We were invested in "I Love Lucy".

They were the first pregnancy on television.

Everybody had gone through this whole pregnancy.

So everybody was on pins and needles, is it a boy?

Is it a girl?

The highest rated "I Love Lucy" episode,

"Lucy Goes to the Hospital" airs on CBS

on January 19th, 1953.

♪

]

It happened to be the day that Lucille Ball gave birth

to Desi Jr. o it was a double-whammy

PR stunt, but Lucy had cesareans.

So she knew that this baby had to be delivered by cesarean

and her doctor did cesareans on Mondays,

which just happened to be th day "I Love Lucy" aired.

So in the morning, Lucille Ball gives birth

to Desi Jr. and in the evening, Lucy Ricardo gives birth

to Ricky Jr.

44 million people,

or 71% of the viewing audience tune in.

She used to joke that the next day,

it was the inaugural of Eisenhower.

And Desi Jr.'s birth knocked that off the front page.

Their baby episode outrated the inauguration

of Dwight Eisenhower.

They made history. And you know what's funny?

We all felt like Little Ricky was our kid.

One of the most famous and most-watched episodes

of all time in TV history is the one in which she

has that baby.

The child becomes the cover of the very first "TV Guide",

the bible of television listings at that time.

Off screen, baby makes four.

With their family and business growing,

Lucy and Ricky seem to have it all,

but behind the cameras, success is taking its toll.

By 1953, "I Love Lucy" reigns supreme

in the ratings, remaining the top-rated show

on television for 11 consecutive months.

A lot of people tuned in to watch this show.

The ratings at the time were a ratings juggernaut.

Meanwhile, their business, Desilu, grows.

It has Desilu Productions owned all this equipment

that just sat there for most of the week

until they filmed.

So in order to monetize

this stuff, they started doing "Our Miss Brooks"

on the days they weren't doing "Lucy".

Other top-billed programs not owned by Desilu,

but renting studio space are the "Danny Thomas Show",

"Wyatt Earp", and "The Real McCoys".

It started to snowball.

They had to move into larger quarters.

It was really getting big.

And they were doing pilots for other shows.

And now our show for next week...

Hi, Honey.

Oh, hello, dear. What are you doing here?

I wanna show you something. Come on.

Wait a minute. I'm just about to tell the folks

about next week's playhouse.

Well, that'll wait. This won't. Come on.

Here we go again.

They bought RKO Studios, it was a huge thing.

They added three lots, 35 sounds stages.

Then they went public and had shareholders.

It was no longer a family company.

It was a huge thing that he was running

and trying to keep it afloat.

And you have to sell shows.

They finally got another hit with "The Untouchables".

And that was a bit hit on ABC.

From the mid-'50s

to the mid''60s, Desilu was the largest

independent producer of television.

And it was ahead of the studios basically, because the studios

didn't get in the game until later.

They now owned the studio where they began

as contract players.

Lucy and Desi both had been contract players at RKO,

which they ended up buying 20 years later.

She always would say when she was a young starlet on the lot,

someday I'll own all of this.

But she did actually own it.

With the studio business flourishing,

Lucy and Desi cut down on the number of episodes

being filmed, extending "I Love Lucy"

to one-hour specials.

Lucy decided that she wanted to spend more time at home.

You know, I think their kids were getting to the point

where they needed more attention.

And she thought they'd ease back.

And Desi was, you know, still having to go

go hard charging as a business man

running all of this.

To accommodate the change in format,

the Ricardos leave New York City.

So they move to the country in Connecticut.

So they had a house instead of an apartment,

and more space, and it was better,

and they were moving up in the world.

So the first hour season was set in that.

And then it began being guest stars and locations.

So they went to Vegas, they went to Japan.

You know, it was more adventurous.

Although the hour shows, a lot of critics said

you don't need an hour, they were fine

as a half hour. These are padded.

But the ratings were always there.

They always got the ratings.

Lucy was a winner for CBS all the time.

Off camera, though, the marriage is suffering.

Once they bought RKO, it escalated and Desi became

under a lot of stress, began drinking more,

you know, made a public spectacle of himself

on occasion, and she found that to be abhorrent,

which she would not put up with.

Especially her stature now was huge, and she was,

like, this queen of television.

Their marriage was deteriorating.

It was hard because so much pressure of the American public

was put on them and they were America's couple.

If they hadn't been both a loving and flawed couple

at the same time, we wouldn't have

gotten "I Love Lucy".

If they had been purely loving and faithful,

she wouldn't have necessarily needed to keep him close.

If they had never fallen in love

we would have never fallen in love with them.

It's so interesting to me that "I Love Lucy"

and really this bedrock of television comedy relies

on this love story of theirs that is flawed

in such a human way.

After 13 hour-long specials,

the curtain closes on the show and the marriage.

The day after filming, Lucy files for divorce.

At the end of the last episode Lucy and Ricky kiss to make up.

And Lucy says to Ricky, honey, I was only trying to help.

And he said...

Look, Lucy, uh, from now on you can help me,

by not trying to help me, eh?

And they kiss.

And that was the end of the whole thing.

That was the end of 10 years

of this whole success and magical union of these,

their dreams had come true.

It was amicable,

but the marriage was no longer feasible.

I imagine it's pretty difficult to be

as famous as they were back then, ave a

professional relationship, have a personal relationship.

I mean, they were really supporting

each other's careers then.

I'm sure words had been said.

I'm sure it was a very heated debates at night.

They both have really energetic personalities

that, at times, clashed.

It was hard because so much

of the pressure of the American public was put on them.

And they were America's couple in a lot of ways.

I mean, it was the first couple

that we fell in love with both of them at the same time.

I mean, they're an iconic couple, even today.

Something took a toll on them, whether it be fame.

You know, I think there was a point where Lucille Ball

was driven,

she wanted more.

Fans were shocked.

People were shocked to learn

that Lucy and Desi were divorced.

I mean, it's like, it couldn't be.

They see this perfect union on television all these years.

The last thing you could imagine.

And Lucy got hate mail and all kinds of people

begging her to please reconsider.

You know, it was a big deal.

Millions of people were moved by this.

So she never treated that lightly.

She carried guilt about that.

♪

After the divorce, the co-owner

and Hollywood mogul buys her husband out

of Desilu productions.

They had a buyout agreement where one could invoke

against the other whenever it came in.

So the advisors asked Lucy if she would invoke that

'cause he was a detriment to the company at this point.

And so they did. They called him in

and they told him, and he just left.

And his secretary told me that after that meeting he came

to his desk and he picked up a photo cube of his children

and walked out.

He didn't take anything else out of the office.

That's all he cared about.

But the former bandleader, executive,

and TV innovator's impact would be felt for decades.

Desi never got the recognition he deserved, and he was actually

the mastermind behind the whole thing.

Lucy was great. And what she did was great.

But he really built the studio.

He was the pioneer in all of this stuff.

Now, with Desi out of the picture,

Lucille Ball steps up to run a multimillion dollar studio.

♪

By 1960, America's favorite couple is over.

Fade to black on the true Hollywood love story

of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

It breaks my heart to know that they got divorced.

It sounds silly, but you watch "I Love Lucy", and the one

thing that was great at the end of that show was,

no matter what wackiness Lucy pulled, no matter what

resistance Ricky showed, at the end of each episode,

they loved each other.

After the hour shows ended, Lucy went to Broadway.

And she did a Broadway show called "Wild Cat".

It didn't last very long.

So they kinda needed Lucy back to prop up the studio's fortune

because although it was renting a lot of space to, like,

"The Andy Griffith Show", "The Dick Van Dyke Show",

lots of other programs, they didn't own them,

only providing the camera and the crew.

so the license fee that an owned show brought

and made a big difference and they needed Lucy

to have a half hour again. And so I think it was against

her better judgment, but she went back with

"The Lucy Show" and that went right to number one.

You know, it was, like, immediately.

For Lucy, it's another ratings hit

on the small screen.

But the future of Desilu Productions

remains up in the air.

Lucy wasn't keen on being an executive.

And she really liked what she did.

And she didn't really wanna get into that end of it,

but she had to.

Lucille Ball was really the first Oprah.

I mean, she is really just this media mogul.

She was kinda the first woman to start this empire.

She buys Desi out of his shares of Desilu Productions

and runs the whole thing herself.

I mean, a true independent woman.

She still had the same people in place that had been

with them all these years.

So all the executives

helped her and she relied on them.

She had to make decisions, but she felt secure

as long as these people were there because they

knew the story and they knew the drill.

Desilu has had a number of productions

underneath their belt. Some are so iconic,

so famous, and I'm sure you'd' be shocked to know.

Have you ever heard of "Star Trek"?

You know, that's, that's pretty big.

You know, now it's like this cultural phenomenon.

That was actually under Desilu.

And then of course, "Mission Impossible".

One of those shows would have made you very successful.

They had dozens.

In 1967, after five years at the helm,

Lucy sells Desilu to Gulfwestern in a $17 million deal.

Ball nets $10.2 million in stock

and remains a Hollywood legend until her death in 1989.

But nothing she does will ever eclipse "I Love Lucy".

Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball were showbiz geniuses.

A lot of women in the 1950s and '60s wanted more.

And Lucy was that.

"I Love Lucy" earns four Emmy awards during its run,

and then a fifth when the Academy inducts the show into

the Television Hall of Fame.

With the top-notch writers, with the dogged determination

of their star, Lucy, and also the innovative

technology and filming techniques this show

really, really invented, this show went on to be

one of the biggest shows of all time.

Not only because of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's

savvy, but because the show is just universally funny,

"I Love Lucy" is one of the first shows to be shown

around the world.

It wasn't so much about the language, it was

about the visuals and the situations,

the human qualities of people and what human nature

leads people to do.

Anybody can understand that.

And that's one reason why it stays popular.

I think she is one of the most iconic figures,

probably ever. Not only is this a timeless show

that people can kind of watch with their kids

for generations to come, I mean, it's very rare

to find a television show that grandma and grandpa,

mom and dad, son and daughter can watch together.

And "I Love Lucy" is certainly one of them.

And all of us can laugh along with it.

That's the thing about laughter. It's this universal language.

You can sort of mute the television

in the chocolate factory

and her stomping grapes will always hold up.

That's the thing about physical comedy

is you actually don't need a language at all.

You just need to watch and have a great time,

which is why it's so universal today.

"Rolling Stone" magazine ranks

"I Love Lucy" the fourth best sitcom of all time.

I've seen a huge growth in fans, and I've seen a lot

more young people come into the picture.

It's quite interesting that she still strikes a chord.

70 years an counting since its premiere,

"I Love Lucy" and the red-headed star

from Jamestown leave behind and undeniable legacy.

People are still obsessed with "I Love Lucy"

because the comedy is timeless.

Television comedy owes everything to "I Love Lucy"

because they literally invented the way to do it

and they invented the types of comedy that we see

on TV today, the comedic archetypes,

and the types of story lines that echo everything

you've ever seen after "Lucy".

I think any show that's on air right now that wants

to be considered a comedy owes its debt to "I Love Lucy".

I don't think there's any sort of, even if it's

a different format, "I Love Lucy" walked

so "Sex and the City" could run.

I'm just obsessed with Lucille Ball and everything

she stood for, and everything that she probably

had to go through at the time.

Being a woman,

being very independent on her own, being in this

intercultural marriage, being pregnant on air,

you know, expecting on air.

But I'm obsessed with how

her confidence never faded, she was always who she was,

and "I Love Lucy" is really a testament to that.

Even her cry was funny.

I mean, it was loud, it was in your face.

And even when she's crying, you're laughing along with her.

She's just 100% funny.

When you think about what "I Love Lucy" did,

it was diversity in gender.

70 years, God,

it's 70 years later, we're still trying

to catch up to what "I Love Lucy" did back then.

We're talking about "I Love Lucy" today

because of her talent. The writers knew what

a great physical comedian she was and how dedicated

she was, and how she studied her craft

and rehearsed, and could do anything.

If you're portraying a friendship and you're

writing a series, you're undoubtedly harking

back to Lucy and Ethel.

If you're showing the battle of the sexes between

husband and wife, about her battling saying,

it's harder to stay at home and him saying, no,

you go out and get a job, that story, how many times

has that been done on sitcoms and how many times

have you shown couple fight like Lucy and Rick fight?

It's the bedrock of every comedy that's on the air.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are

Hollywood influencers to this day.

Not just because of their comedic talent

or pioneering productions, but for the spark that existed

between them, both on screen and off.

I think the essence of the show is love.

I think the heart says it all.

It's all about a love affair.

I think that everyone I talked to that worked there

and on the show and for Lucy and Desi

all felt the same way about the heart.

You know, there was a lot of heart in it.