Having A Ball

AT first I wondered--why would the Hasty Pudding Club name Lucille Ball Woman of the Year in 1988? Ball deserves as many awards as the entertainment industry can hand out--she's a legend. Yet, in recent years, her TV projects have been few and far between. Her 1986 return to the sitcom world, Lucy, was a short-lived failure. Woman of the Past Four Decades, maybe, but not Woman of the Year.

But then I turned on my TV set. Susan St. James and Jane Curtin were playing the title roles in Kate and Allie, the CBS sitcom about two single mothers who share three children and one household. On that evening's episode, the duo spent most of the show in a slapstick routine climbing on their furniture after spotting a mouse on the floor, while their kids stood by, nonplussed. Seemed a little bit like something Lucy and Viv might do in The Lucy Show, when Ball and Vivian Vance played--you guessed it--two single mothers with three kids, all sharing one house.

Then I remembered Laverne De Fazio and Shirley Feeney of Laverne & Shirley fame. Many critics saw a direct connection between the antics of Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams and those of Lucy and Ethel on I Love Lucy. The opening credits of Laverne & Shirley, with the two title characters capping beer bottles on an assembly line, are reminiscent of the famous scene of Lucy and Ethel wrapping chocolates in assembly-line fashion in one of I Love Lucy's most enduring episodes. And after all, what are Lenny and Squiggy but an exaggerated Ricky and Fred.

WITH TV's yen for nostalgia, no pair of two female friends on sitcoms will ever be able to escape comparison with Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance. Their camaraderie in the 50's and 60's paved the way for copycat duos in the 70s and 80s. But Ball's shows have endured for much longer than the characters. Many of the plot devices used on I Love Lucy have become staples for the sitcomes of today.

There was the standard "Lucy wants to be in show biz." episode, in which she would finagle her way into husband Ricky Ricardo's act at the Tropicana nightclub. The writers wrote half an episode of actual sitcom dialogue and left the rest up to the Vaudevillean song and dance talents of Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel. From The Dick Van Dyke Show to the Cosby Show to The Brady Bunch, the "cast puts on a show" episode has become a standard.

The plots of Lucy's shows were usually kept simple. In addition to the "show biz" skits, each season you could count on seeing the wives making bets with the husbands or on Lucy arguing about money with Ricky or her buffoon banker, Mr. Mooney.

Although Ball's shows did not defy the female homemaker convention, in many ways the programs were ahead of their time in portraying women confident enough to act on their own, outside of their stereotypical domain. Unlike most of the bubble-headed, husband-dominated wives of 50's sitcoms, Lucy was feisty and determined. On I Love Lucy, it was obvious that, in one way or another, Lucy and Ethel really ran and controlled the show. And later, on The Lucy Show, Lucy and Viv were surely among TV's first single mothers; Viv's character was even divorced.

ULTIMATELY it wasn't the plots, but Lucy that was the centerpiece of these shows. Lucille Ball's face has been seen by more people in the world, more often, than the face of anyone else in history, according to TV Guide's analysis. Her incredible range of comic facial expression is light years ahead of Cosby, and her innovative slapstick has influenced several subsequent generations of comedians. At last year's first annual American Comedy Awards, winners Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin both paid homage to Lucy in their acceptance speeches.

Yet when Ball turned 40 in 1951, she still had not made a lasting mark on the entertainment industry, despite her 75 movie roles until that time. It was with the debut of I Love Lucy in October 1951 that Ball's pioneering impact was felt--behind the screen as well as on it.

Comedy was prevalent on TV in the late '40s and early '50s, but most of it took the form of live variety shows like Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater. In 1953 I Love Lucy won the first Emmy Award given in the situation comedy category.

I Love Lucy was also innovative for the way in which it was broadcast. It was the first sitcom to be shot in California, and it was the first to be filmed ahead of time--most shows then were broadcast live from New York.

Because it was the first to use film instead of live transmission--then the TV industry did not have the technology to save live shows for high quality rebroadcast--I Love Lucy invented the possibility of the rerun.

I Love Lucy was also the first program to be owned by its producers, Lucy and husband Desi Arnaz (who called their outfit Desilu Productions), rather than owned by the network. Today networks pay a show's producers for the rights to broadcast an episode a limited number of times. After a few years, the producer can then sell his series as reruns to stations across the country and make millions more. Lucy started all this, and has made up to $100 million in the process.

TAKING this all into account, Lucille Ball may not be such an untimely choice for Woman of the Year. The sitcom--the style that I Love Lucy virtually invented--is predominant in the '80's. So are reruns. And through rebroadcasts of her three hit series, 'round the clock, 'round the world and at half past midnight in Boston, Ball probably will be seen by more people this year than any of today's hottest stars. This year and any other year the TV shows are broadcast the way they are now, Lucille Ball is well-deserving of the honor of Woman of the Year.