Lucille Ball enjoyed The Lucy Show because her fictional husband wasn't involved
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz built part of their career by being together. Of course, they both had a ton of talent apart from each other, but Ball and Arnaz were the original power couple.
Together they had a marriage, two children, a production company and some of the best classic TV sitcoms of the '50s and '60s. Now, those are some couples' goals.
TV viewers adored Lucy and Desi's relationship and banter in the 1951 series I Love Lucy. Their relationship gathered a lot of attention from the media, and had everyone hoping to find a Lucy or a Desi of their own.
However, in 1960, the romance came to an end when the couple got divorced. And in 1962, The Lucy Show premiered on CBS, but instead of featuring the famous foursome from I Love Lucy, the series only featured this twosome: Lucy Carmichael and Vivian Bagley.
Lucy Carmichael was a widow with two children while Vivian Bagley, played by Vivian Vance, was a divorcee with one child. Turns out, Lucy Carmichael was just as single as Lucille Ball after her divorce from Arnaz.
According to a 1962 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ball said she was worried the public wouldn't accept The Lucy Show without the presence of her husband Ricky (Desi Arnaz) and Ethel's husband Fred (William Frawley).
"I think they are going to miss Ricky and Fred. After all those years," Ball said. "But I hope and pray they'll like the show enough and that's funny enough to help them accept us without the husbands."
With the exception of the two unavoidably missing ingredients, Ball said it would be hard to distinguish The Lucy Show from its predecessor. In The Lucy Show, Lucy and Viv are still getting themselves in unbelievable situations, preposterous binds and silly scenarios.
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"This is a pretty active life," Ball said. "In the first show I had to learn to work on a trampoline, and I was scared to death I'd hurt myself. In the second show, I had to make friends with a herd of sheep. And now, this week, it's fencing."
According to the interview, almost everyone who worked on I Love Lucy came back for The Lucy Show.
The I Love Lucy writers were on the job again, most of the cast and crew stayed the same and even Arnaz, despite the divorce, remained friends with Ball and was an executive producer of the new series.
The only important person missing from the original I Love Lucy was Fred Mertz, played by William Frawley. According to the interview, Frawley left Lucy to work on another hit program: My Three Sons.
"I'm back playing the character I know best and like best - Lucy," Ball said. "But I don't think I'd be doing this if it hadn't been for Viv. The studios had the idea, and the offers were fabulous. But the thing that jelled it all was Viv."
According to Ball, the biggest difference between her old series and The Lucy Show was motivation.
"Before, we were always being threatened by our husbands - we were always doing kooky things so that Ricky or Fred wouldn't find something out. Now we're substituting other kinds of threats - weather, lack of dates, our kids," Ball said. "We were all pretty nervous during the first show, but now we're smoothing out pretty well."
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