Word: desilu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Despite the sophistication that underlay her slapstick and the respect she commanded as the first woman to head a studio, Desilu Productions, Ball said she saw herself as "not an idea girl but a doer." Like the silent comedians she studied (Buster Keaton, her onetime office mate at MGM, taught her how to handle props) and impersonated (her mirror-image confrontation with Harpo Marx and her Chaplin homage were priceless), Ball rehearsed every sequence obsessively. Yet when the cameras were rolling she made each gesture look spontaneous, each wisecrack seem an ad lib. Memorably, Lucy and her sidekick Ethel Mertz...
...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...