Word: desis
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...decision to film the show also made CBS bigwigs uneasy. It would cost four times as much as a live show, and the only interested sponsor, Philip Morris, wasn't prepared to go that high. Again there was a compromise. Desi and Lucille agreed to take a smaller salary in return for producing the show and keeping title to the films...
Real Plumbing. Long years in the practical business of orchestra leading had given Desi considerable organizing ability and business sense. He set up Desilu Productions (Desi president, Lucille vice president), and leased a sound stage from an independent Los Angeles studio. Because Lucille was "dead" without an audience, a side wall of the studio was knocked out to make a street entrance, and seats installed for an audience of 300. When a show is ready for the cameras, the audience laughter is picked up on overhead microphones and used in the final print...
...shot in a number of unrelated scenes. The action takes place on four sets; two of them represent the Ricardos' Manhattan apartment, a third shows the nightclub where Ricky's band plays and the fourth is used for any other scenes called for by the script. Says Desi proudly: "We have real furniture, real plumbing, and a real kitchen where we serve real food. Even the plants are really growing; they're not phony...
Desilu Productions hired a pair of veteran troupers, William Frawley and Vivian Vance, to play the family next door and serve as foils and friends for Desi and Lucille. Academy Award-winning Karl (The Good Earth) Freund supervises the three cameras, and Director Marc Daniels (soon to be replaced by Bill Asher) gives Lucy its rattling pace. The writers-Jess Oppenheimer, Bill Carroll and Madalyn Pugh-turn out scripts that do not impose too much on the audience's credulity and are reasonably free of cliches. The writers are held in an esteem not common in TV. Lucille bombards...
...five-acre ranch in the San Fernando Valley. The only Hollywood note is a kidney-shaped swimming pool, and the most recent addition to the house (a wing devoted to daughter Lucie and her nurse) cost $22,000-more than the house and land cost originally. Neither Desi nor Lucille has ever been socially ambitious, and their friends are the same ones they have known for years. Both Desi's mother (now divorced from Arnaz Sr., who still lives in Miami) and Lucille's Mom live near...