Life with Lucy

Although most viewers will remember Lucille Ball as the ditzy and clumsy redhead on I Love Lucy, she was in fact a behind-the-scenes mover and shaker in Hollywood, as well as a television pioneer. From her humble beginnings as a chorus line girl in Ziegfeld’s Follies, she went on to become America’s sweetheart with her own sitcom, pioneered the three camera technique that has become the standard in filming television sitcoms today, and eventually became the first woman to head her own studio, Desilu Productions, which she assumed sole control of after the death of husband Desi Arnaz. The chain-smoking redhead kept putting out product right up to the very end, her last being the short-lived sitcom Life with Lucy. She played Lucy Barker, a grandmother now living with her daughter’s family and getting into all the same kinds of zany trouble and slapstick antics that fans of her original show came to love her for. Life With Lucy faded away quickly amid tepid reviews, but Lucy herself held on for a few more years, until her passing in 1989 at the age of seventy-seven. Life with Lucy co-star Ann Dusenberry may not be remembered for being a Hollywood powerhouse. However, the view of this blonde beauty’s powerhouse pom-poms from the films Basic Training and The Men’s Club should be preserved in a film vault somewhere, even if the films themselves are utter cack. In Men’s Club, she gave us a heavenly post-coital view of her panting, sweat-slicked strap hangers that’s gotta be worth a niche in any movie buff’s hall of fame.