A madcap romp. A caviar dispatch. A nuisance in the lobby. Sophisticated boom-boom. A cult and occult favorite. Falbalas et Fanfreluches. In Technicolor. With special guest appearances by an illustrious cat. Read chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven.
Everyone should have someone they admire. Obviously, the more renowned one is the harder this gets, as you’ve just met too many people. Luckily for me, however, I have another option (in addition to just looking in the mirror). For at the tender age of three, I found my idol.
She came to me the way most life lessons have come to me—through the television. On this fateful day, I was deposited (I was a late walker and an early advocate of “why do, when others can do for you”) in front of the black and white image of Lucy Ricardo trapped in a meat freezer. In that moment, everything became clear—I had found my idol and I suddenly understood my destiny. A few years later, I would understand what had happened in this moment: I had been called by God.
This second revelation came to me, again, through the television. This time in the form of Roseanne Barr’s short lived—but excellent—talk show, The Roseanne Show. One episode featured a conversation between Roseanne and Al Sharpton. Roseanne and Al bonded over their experiences of both being called by God at the age of three—him to preach and her to go into comedy. As I watched them sitting on their leopard print chairs, which came from Roseanne’s house, I had a new understanding of what had happened to me at three years old. I, too, had been called by God—to continue the legacy of Lucille Ball. It was 1998. The year I would have had a bat mitzvah, had I been allowed. But what could be more Jewish than discovering you have been called by God while watching a talk show filmed in front of a live studio audience in Hollywood? I tell you these things, as Joan Didion says, so you know who you are reading.
From the moment I saw Lucy in the meat freezer, I vowed to follow in her footsteps. I, too, would be a comedienne. I, too, would engage in screwball antics. I, too, would conquer Hollywood (please see Jews Control Hollywood! for more information). Being the ambitious child that I was, I got to work right away on watching every I Love Lucy episode and learning all that I could about Lucille Ball.
I became a deft physical comedienne—I wasn’t falling down, I was falling up! I practiced doing impressions—of my teachers, family, and the characters on Married with Children (I did a great Al Bundy!). I would drag around a book on Lucille Ball as my “security object.” I learned the entire “Poor Us” routine from The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. I created an entire performance based on Lucy Ricardo’s Hollywood shenanigans. My act was distilled to sticking my face into a plate of spaghetti. I performed this routine at restaurants throughout the greater Akron area. Many of these restaurants are now closed.
When the Ricardo’s drove to California, it was my dream to drive to California. When they bought a house in Westport, Connecticut, I wanted to move to Connecticut. And when I had a few days to go wherever I wanted in Europe, I used Lucy Ricardo as my guide and went to Lucerne where the Ricardos and Mertz got snowed in and fought over Lucy’s cheese sandwich. I have, you see, always been loosely tethered to reality and grasping for stardom.
But more than anything, I took Lucy Ricardo’s cry of, “But, Ricky, why can’t I be in the show” to heart. Because, yes, why couldn’t I be in the show! With Lucille Ball as my idol and this as my motto, I knew I would become a star. I also knew never to take that Christopher Hitchens article seriously. Unfortunately, I went to NYU where they took that article very seriously (I will cover NYU at a later date in a chapter called My Downfall).
And although I have yet to have my own television show (and I must say, I feel like a lot of people are not pulling their weight in making this happen for me), and although the only person to speak of Lucille Ball and me in the same sentence is me, I feel as her main acolyte and disciple, it is my duty to share some insights into her legacy.
If you know any history worth knowing, you probably know that Lucille Ball was the first woman to own a major studio. She was a pioneer in having creative control. Desilu, which Lucille Ball got sole custody of in her divorce from Desi Arnaz, produced a number of shows (besides all Lucy iterations) that would go on to live in infamy on TVLand, for as long as TVLand lasted. I Love Lucy was not only a pioneer in all areas of narrative television, but out of its three writers, one, Madelyn Pugh Davis, was a woman (that’s one-third of the writers, for any boys who aren’t good at math). And Ricky Ricardo was a Cuban immigrant, which was considered highly controversial—it is also why, to this day, I still believe I can understand Spanish without having ever taken a lesson. And there is so much more!
When I was eight I saw Gloria Steinem on TV saying Lucille Ball was not really that big a deal, since, after all, she still made Lucy Ricardo a housewife. I thought to myself “Gloria, you are wrong and now ranked on my nemesis list.” I also thought, once again, “I really do know more than everyone else.” For I knew Lucille Ball was truly a groundbreaker and one of the most important people in American entertainment history.
Yet even the most well educated among us do not know all of the facts. Luckily, I am here to impart wisdom, as God and Roseanne Barr intended. For today’s lesson, I am going to focus on I Love Lucy (although, who could forget her as the Mame of our dreams. Or in The Long, Long Trailer, where the big action sequence involved a trailer going really, really slow). Thus I present:
Victoria’s (Jewish) Gospel of Lucille Ball in Three Parts!
One. Lucille Ball invented autofiction. Not that French guy. If there’s one thing any Jew can tell you, it’s don’t trust the French. It was Lucille Ball who brought the combining of autobiography and fiction into the popular conscious. She played a character with her own first name, who was born in her own hometown, who was married to her actual husband, and who dreamed of having the job she actually had. Not only that, but she was a pioneer in the art of having famous people come on her show and play themselves. This formula has become the basis for American television.
Naturally, I love autofiction because, in the words of Bette Midler about herself, it is a monument to megalomania.
Two. Lucille Ball gave the world the first sitcom episode to have politics hiding in delightful comedy. As a child, one of my favorite I Love Lucy episodes was “Pioneer Women”. It articulated so many of the things I felt in the depth of my soul! In this episode, Lucy and Ethel bet Ricky and Fred that they can last longer than them living like it’s 1900. And so, everyone dons period costumes and forgoes all modern technology. Ah, the episode spoke to me already as I have always felt that I would have done well in another era— after all, I really have a great future ahead of me in vaudeville!
This episode is most well-known for being the one where Lucy tries to bake bread and the when she goes to open the oven the bread keeps growing and growing until it’s taken over the whole kitchen. “Yes,” I thought when watching as a child, “a disaster is the only thing worth making in the kitchen. And I, too, love bread.”
At the end of the episode two women from The Society Matrons’ League, a club that Lucy and Ethel have applied to, show up to the Ricardo’s apartment to do a surprise inspection to make sure they’re fit to be members. Ricky tells the women that the reason everyone is dressed so strangely and that the apartment looks so odd is because they’re in the middle of rehearsing an act. Unfortunately, this backfires as the women from The Society Matrons’ League find out that they are—oh no!—show people. Well, The League, as of a few seasons ago, did start admitting one or two show people—because they needed the money—and so they might be willing to make allowances. When Lucy questions why they feel the need to “make allowances” for show people, they double down. Lucy tells them that they can go back and report that she looked them over and doesn’t want to be a part of their club. Then Lucy, Ricky, Ethel, and Fred eat some bread. Because, oh yes, they were show people!
How this spoke to me! For I knew that I, too, at heart was a show person and in opposition to all things boring and bourgeois. And as a precocious and politically active child, I also knew that “show people” was a stand-in for any group that was different than white, Christian Americans, and, given that it was about show business, it was especially a stand-in for Jews (again, please see Jews Control Hollywood!). So that’s right, “Pioneer Women” is the original political sitcom episode; a protest against discrimination. With bonnets!
Three. Lucy Ricardo was the most confident and most ambitious woman to ever be on TV! There was truly nothing that Lucy Ricardo thought she couldn’t do. She had a plan for everything. Need to make money quickly? She had a plan. Need to meet a famous person? She had a plan. Not only did she always want to be in the show, but she frequently felt she could do all the things to make the show. She wrote. She directed. She was an agent. I really related! She might not have had a job, but she thought she could do all of them (I really relate!). This is quite the contrast to a number of contemporary female television characters who are so busy being sexually liberated that they don’t have time to be ambitious! And although Lucy’s scheming to get into the show and be the star she knew she could be was usually foiled, Lucille Ball had not been foiled—she was a star and was running the show (see section one on autofiction).
A couple of years ago, I offered to write about this aspect of Lucille Ball for The New York Times. They said it wasn’t relevant. But why wait for other people to decide what is relevant when I can decide for myself. As journalist David Corn said, “The news is what people have forgotten, not just what people don’t know yet.” And as Madonna said, “everyone is entitled to my opinion.” And as I said, “L’etat c’est moi”
***
As you can see, by the wisdom shared here, Lucille Ball is truly worthy of being my idol. And if you take one thing away from today’s history lesson, it should be the greatness of Lucille Ball. If you take two things away, it should be the greatness of Lucille Ball and that I should have my own TV show (Lucille Ball was 40 when the I Love Lucy premiered, but patience has never been a virtue of mine—I prefer the other virtues like scheming and sequins). If any of you would like to help me in achieving God and Lucille Ball’s plan for me, please call my agent, who will be played by me.
We will be covering my other idol, Barbra Joan Streisand, during the Jewish holidays.
Please call my agent,
Victoria
Status Report:
Am I famous yet? Weirdly, still no.
Do I have my own television show yet? No, and what are you going to about it?
Is this really happening? Yes
Footnotes:
The first I Love Lucy episode I ever saw was “The Freezer.” It is also my earliest memory.
Roseanne Barr, who we have covered in a previous footnote, did actually have a talk show and it was actually quite good (and very liberal). I once wrote to her at her talk show asking for an autographed picture to give to my childhood best friend for his bar mitzvah. She sent back a photo of her all in leopard print and congratulated him on his bar mitzvah, which I thought was very classy. He does not read this newsletter, which I do not think is classy at all.
It is true that I was not allowed to have a bat mitzvah. What a shonda!
In 2007 Christopher Hitchens wrote an infamous article arguing that women couldn’t be funny.
There is a truly long list of the ways that I Love Lucy changed television both in front of and behind the camera. Desi Arnaz was also responsible for many of these.
I can’t remember the television special where Gloria Steinem made some idiotic remarks about Lucille Ball, but it did happen and for years I held a grudge against her for this. But she has accomplished a great deal and is not my nemesis. However, for the record, her view of Lucille Ball is wrong. And, for the record, she has been, regrettably, lacking in standing up against antisemitism in contemporary women’s movements like the Women’s March.
The Lucille Ball Mame is the greatest Mame.
The term autofiction was coined by French writer Serge Doubrovsky, who was Jewish. During the Holocaust, the French actively collaborated with the Nazis, something they attempted to deny for years.
The Bette Midler quote is as the character Dolores De Lago (the Toast of Chicago) about Bette from A View From A Broad, which I just recently read and discovered—to my delight and horror—that a number of my jokes are very, very similar to hers. And, I must say, they are working out far better for one of us than the other.
“Pioneer Women” was an episode during the first season of I Love Lucy.
The head writer and producer of I Love Lucy, Jess Oppenheimer, was Jewish.
There are a few episodes of I Love Lucy where Lucy writes or directs. In one where she is directing an operetta (that she also wrote) she uses a whistle to help her give instructions. Directors who are reading, take note! Although, Lucille Ball was never credited as a director on any of her shows, in the 1970s she did an interview where a young woman asked her if she’d ever had any interest in directing, and she responded that she had occasionally directed on her TV shows when their regular directors weren’t available.
I really did offer to write about Lucille Ball and ambition for The New York Times. I also offered to write about Jennifer Aniston. In my looney, Lucy Ricardo way of thinking, I thought this might help me get my own TV show. After all, I thought, the Times would offer validation of me as a worthwhile individual and people like it when you’re validated because that means they don’t have to make up their own mind about you. Also, I thought being in the Times would get me a lot of attention. Now I think, I should be interviewed in the Times and get a lot of attention that way. If any of you have other thoughts on how I can get a lot of attention, please let me know!
(Also, I could still make myself available to write either of these pieces, since we have already established “L’etat c’est moi” and this is the kind of thing that did work for Nora Ephron.)
Yes, I did know all of these things about Lucille Ball without having to look them up.
