Read Online I Love Lucy: The Untold Story by Jess Oppenheimer, Gregg Oppenheimer - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jess Oppenheimer, Gregg Oppenheimer
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couldn’t reach.
As running Desilu started to take more of Desi’s time, he would continually be leaving rehearsals to go to meetings. Many times Lucy would see him starting to leave and protest, “Desi, Desi—we need the rehearsal!” And Desi would look at her with a puzzled expression and say, “What are you talking about? We know the words!” He never could quite understand what was going on inside of Lucy’s head.
For Lucy, who was basically unhappy, the only release she had was in her work. That was the only time I ever saw her really enjoy herself. Except at parties. She was a great partygoer. Lucy liked nothing better than to be at a party, playing a game of some kind. But she had an unhappy home life with Desi. She was anxious to get away from it.She would come in and would want to work, work, work, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, day in and day out. This helped the show tremendously, but it was a tragic situation for her personally.
The signs of the eventual bust-up of their marriage were visible even in the early days of I Love Lucy. It was clear that something was wrong. Desi had his 38-foot power cruiser, which Lucy didn’t like at all. After we would finishfilming a show, Desi would go down to his boat at Corona del Mar with his drinking, card-playing buddies, and Lucy would go back to the ranch. Unless they had something to do together for publicity, they wouldn’t see each other again until the following week when they both arrived on the set for the first read-through.
Their marital problems were already there before I Love Lucy, of course, but they just increased geometrically with the tremendous success and popularity of the show. It would have been tough enough for Lucy and Desi to adjust to all of the sudden money and acclaim even if they had nothing else bothering them. But with all these other things on their minds it placed an incredible strain on their marriage.
It was just destined not to work. Lucy needed to be dominated, and Desi wasn’t happy in a relationship where his wife had a more powerful reputation than he did. He was deeply hurt by all the publicity that said the success of the show was entirely due to her artistry.
A couple of months after I Love Lucy went on the air, Lucy came storming into my office. “That’s it!” she yelled. “That's it. The series is over. Desi can go to hell. I’m not going to work with him anymore.”
It took me a long time to calm her down. At least one source of the problems between them was easy to understand. Lucy had always been a bigger star than Desi, but at least they had been in different parts of the entertainment industry. But now they were both in the same show. With Lucy getting all of the acting acclaim and the production credit going to me, he really didn’t have much to hang on to. And Lucy’s relationship with him was suffering as a result. I managed to quietly patch things up between them, but it was clear to me that the problem was not going to go away.
Lucy, in interviews, had long been giving Desi as much credit as she could for the success of the show. Now she decided to take more concrete steps to balance their relative standing in the public eye.At rehearsal one day she took Al Simon aside and asked him to do her a personal favor. “Al,” she said, “I would appreciate it if you would suggest to Desi that he be executive producer of I Love Lucy .”
Not long after that, Desi came to see me in my office. “Jess,” hesaid, “you and I know that after this show goes off the air I’m not going to get a lot of other acting jobs. What I really want to do is produce, but I need to build a reputation as a producer. How would you feel about letting me take ‘executive producer’ credit on the show?”
Now, up to that point all of the important decisions on the show had been reached by consensus, after extensive consultations with Desi and everyone else concerned. But I had made it clear from the outset that if I
As running Desilu started to take more of Desi’s time, he would continually be leaving rehearsals to go to meetings. Many times Lucy would see him starting to leave and protest, “Desi, Desi—we need the rehearsal!” And Desi would look at her with a puzzled expression and say, “What are you talking about? We know the words!” He never could quite understand what was going on inside of Lucy’s head.
For Lucy, who was basically unhappy, the only release she had was in her work. That was the only time I ever saw her really enjoy herself. Except at parties. She was a great partygoer. Lucy liked nothing better than to be at a party, playing a game of some kind. But she had an unhappy home life with Desi. She was anxious to get away from it.She would come in and would want to work, work, work, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, day in and day out. This helped the show tremendously, but it was a tragic situation for her personally.
The signs of the eventual bust-up of their marriage were visible even in the early days of I Love Lucy. It was clear that something was wrong. Desi had his 38-foot power cruiser, which Lucy didn’t like at all. After we would finishfilming a show, Desi would go down to his boat at Corona del Mar with his drinking, card-playing buddies, and Lucy would go back to the ranch. Unless they had something to do together for publicity, they wouldn’t see each other again until the following week when they both arrived on the set for the first read-through.
Their marital problems were already there before I Love Lucy, of course, but they just increased geometrically with the tremendous success and popularity of the show. It would have been tough enough for Lucy and Desi to adjust to all of the sudden money and acclaim even if they had nothing else bothering them. But with all these other things on their minds it placed an incredible strain on their marriage.
It was just destined not to work. Lucy needed to be dominated, and Desi wasn’t happy in a relationship where his wife had a more powerful reputation than he did. He was deeply hurt by all the publicity that said the success of the show was entirely due to her artistry.
A couple of months after I Love Lucy went on the air, Lucy came storming into my office. “That’s it!” she yelled. “That's it. The series is over. Desi can go to hell. I’m not going to work with him anymore.”
It took me a long time to calm her down. At least one source of the problems between them was easy to understand. Lucy had always been a bigger star than Desi, but at least they had been in different parts of the entertainment industry. But now they were both in the same show. With Lucy getting all of the acting acclaim and the production credit going to me, he really didn’t have much to hang on to. And Lucy’s relationship with him was suffering as a result. I managed to quietly patch things up between them, but it was clear to me that the problem was not going to go away.
Lucy, in interviews, had long been giving Desi as much credit as she could for the success of the show. Now she decided to take more concrete steps to balance their relative standing in the public eye.At rehearsal one day she took Al Simon aside and asked him to do her a personal favor. “Al,” she said, “I would appreciate it if you would suggest to Desi that he be executive producer of I Love Lucy .”
Not long after that, Desi came to see me in my office. “Jess,” hesaid, “you and I know that after this show goes off the air I’m not going to get a lot of other acting jobs. What I really want to do is produce, but I need to build a reputation as a producer. How would you feel about letting me take ‘executive producer’ credit on the show?”
Now, up to that point all of the important decisions on the show had been reached by consensus, after extensive consultations with Desi and everyone else concerned. But I had made it clear from the outset that if I
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