215: Being the Ricardos with Michael Karol

00;02;37;16 – 00;02;47;16
Dan LeFebvre
Before we dove into some of the details about the movie, if you want to take a step back and give being the Ricardos a letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

00;02;47;28 – 00;03;12;28
Michael Karol
Gee, I would probably give it a C-minus overall, maybe even at D or D-minus in certain areas. The screenplay makes noting that at one time Lucy aches to be known as a serious actress up there with Professor Davis. Hayward. Whatever. I’m just not sure how true that is. Lucy wanted success in her film career. Sure. An audience that would respond to her performance like any actress.

00;03;12;28 – 00;03;36;03
Michael Karol
But when she got one in the right medium television, she saw it like no one else before. Sense and Joan. Hardly any director. Our producer knew what to do with this. Number two. A conspicuously bad error. A historical error. Lucy sprints home to tell Desi. She got the part. The big street, one of her big, dramatic roles. The movie that could put her up there.

00;03;36;11 – 00;03;56;02
Michael Karol
And this is the movie talking with Judy, Rita and Betty. And Desi goes, What? Judy and Lucy answers Holliday. The problem is the big script was released in 1942, and Judy Holliday did not have a screen presence then and wouldn’t until 1949 with Adams writ. Hello, research.

00;03;57;08 – 00;04;01;02
Dan LeFebvre
That seems like a simple thing, that it’s all in dialog that they could fix.

00;04;01;02 – 00;04;21;07
Michael Karol
That film via RKO had a production who has the one firing Lucy after her big stage sets, which again, I don’t need to know if that’s true. Keeps throwing Judy Holliday at Lucy’s face, and it just wasn’t true. It never happened that Holliday was getting roles low secret at play. Dramatic license is one thing, but the Sybil effect and supposed to be factual.

00;04;21;07 – 00;04;22;19
Michael Karol
All right. So much.

00;04;22;25 – 00;04;23;08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah.

00;04;23;22 – 00;04;53;20
Michael Karol
Also number three, throughout the movie, it is shown that Bob, Carol Junior and Madelyn Pugh, Lucy’s wonderful writers have been argumentative relationship. I’ve never heard that suggested in all the years that I’ve researched, written about what I call the Lucy versus including all the creators I’ve spoken to, like editor Dan Conn and director William Archer. And in their surviving film interviews, Carolyn, you sent very much at ease and comfortable as colleagues and writing partners.

00;04;54;05 – 00;05;14;29
Michael Karol
They look like they have a very nice relationship. And it’s odd to see Marathon Island constantly sniping at Bob as if he’s not worthy of being apart. And finally, Lucy always intimated that she had the most fun during the rehearsals and filming of I Love Lucy, that that was her forte. She especially love rehearsing with Beth Vivian Vance from this film.

00;05;14;29 – 00;05;35;07
Michael Karol
You’d think this was the most argumentative set ever. Everybody’s Lucy and Madeline. Lucy and Desi. Desi and Jess Oppenheimer. Lucy insists that Lucy and Viv, even Bill, Madeleine and Jess and Madeline and Bob at each other’s throats all the time. Where was the love that created this legendary sitcom with the word love in the title?

00;05;35;18 – 00;05;36;21
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, that’s a great point.

00;05;36;22 – 00;05;58;05
Michael Karol
I mean, I guess they went after the dramatic tension or whatever, but those characters, I don’t think were portrayed the way the real people were. Sure, there were times when there was tension that didn’t go on, especially Bill and Beth. But I mean, I never heard of, like I said, battle thinking so little, apparently right at this film about the right part.

00;05;58;14 – 00;05;58;21
Michael Karol
Hmm.

00;05;59;08 – 00;06;22;10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And that’s a great point. At the movie’s time, timeline does bounce around a lot, but I wanted to kind of start with a natural beginning to the story. How it shows Lucille and Desi meeting. According to the movie, Desi Arnaz led his orchestra at zero as well. Lucy was under contract at RKO doing some minor roles, and as the movie shows, it they met seemed to fall for each other right away.

00;06;22;11 – 00;06;29;18
Dan LeFebvre
They eloped and seemed to be really happy, at least at first. How old did the movie do showing how Lucy and Desi met?

00;06;30;00 – 00;06;53;27
Michael Karol
Horrible. I think you might be able to tell already. I wasn’t real fond of this as the older versions of their characters are. And this interview to describe how Lucy investment. There’s another major error. Desi first laid eyes on heavily made up Lucy in the RKO commissary right after she’d shot a big fight scene with Mari Ara for the 1940 movie Dance Girl.

00;06;53;27 – 00;07;15;00
Michael Karol
That’s one of her best movies, whereas Linda Lavin as Marilyn Cue the older Matt says the first time Desi saw her, she was unrecognizable because her character, a burlesque girl, was not by her pals. That is actually a quote by Desi describing what Lucy looked like the first time you saw her, not how she got her fake black eye.

00;07;15;17 – 00;07;34;14
Michael Karol
What she said was she looked like a $2 or had been badly beaten. That’s shoddy research on Sorkin’s part. And Aaron Sorkin, the story is there for anybody to fight in those salient places. So, Lucy, does it first saw each other at the RKO commissary. Desi was there to shoot the movie version of this Broadway hit, Too Many Girls.

00;07;34;21 – 00;07;59;11
Michael Karol
When Desi later saw Lucy as she really appeared and as they acted together in the film, and interestingly enough, the first page shares Desi’s character fainting because Lucy’s going drop dead gorgeous. It was as they both upset love at first sight. They eloped six months later in November 1940, and they were happy at first. Any things conspired to put stress on their relationship?

00;07;59;12 – 00;08;23;02
Michael Karol
Some were typical show biz things that affect couples. Others were inherent to their own personalities and the way they acted. But Lucy’s career being bigger than it does is the fact that he was away much of the time touring with Bare Lucy and famously said, You can’t have kids over the phone. And the fact that they weren’t able to have children, which Lucy dearly wanted until ten years since they’re married.

00;08;23;06 – 00;08;40;17
Michael Karol
I love Lucy, beginning with the pilot and early fifties and the show to CBS becoming TV’s biggest hit ever. Plus, the two children they had by that certainly extended the marriage, made it more viable because let’s face it, how could they break up? They were America’s couple.

00;08;40;21 – 00;08;58;12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, they were kind of in the spotlight for sure of terribly. Well, you mentioned Lucy’s career there, and I wanted to ask because the way the movie kind of portrays this, at least when they meet, there’s a line of dialog in there where Lucy talks about how, you know, she’s a contract player at RKO and her career has reached cruising altitude, as she says it, moving.

00;08;58;19 – 00;09;06;25
Dan LeFebvre
She seems to be at peace with that. Again, according to the movie, can you give a little more historical context, I guess, around Lucy’s career? Up until she met Desi.

00;09;06;29 – 00;09;31;13
Michael Karol
That’s the right way. For that, she was an RKO contract player. They’re saying, is that Lucy? But what? She had gone as far as she could and she was kind of content with that. No, that’s very wrong. This came to Hollywood in 1933 as a Goldwyn Girl, first girl. She was immediately employed as a chorus girl or extra or bit part player and then graduated during the years supporting parts.

00;09;31;23 – 00;09;55;10
Michael Karol
Most likely due in large part to her attitude. She would do anything asked of her. It would help further her career. Like, for example, being the only one of 12 chorus girls willing to take a pie in the face in the 1933. And I used to sing quotes comedy Roman scandals, which so the legend got has prompted legendary director Busby Berkeley to say to star Eddie Cantor, Get that girl’s name.

00;09;55;10 – 00;10;18;20
Michael Karol
That’s the one it’s going to make. And her best first her first best part of Arcadia was in 1937, staged at. Ultimately she was playing lead some of the excerpts. The fact is Lucy’s presence elevated every picture she was in because she was that good and that noticeable. And ultimately, as I said, no one knew what to do with Lucy.

00;10;18;21 – 00;10;40;15
Michael Karol
She was a pretty woman who could play comedy, do slapstick and excel at drama. And apparently the studios thought they had all the great actresses they needed as she was cracked as a second tier star and gave her parts that didn’t begin to scratch up her talents at RKO. She finally had reached her personal zenith, or as far as the studio would allow, so to speak.

00;10;40;23 – 00;11;07;23
Michael Karol
She’d film no less than 14 movies between 38 and 1940, eventually rising to the top and respectable B-plus or even A-minus pictures and ending her tenure. RKO with two literary classics. I think I mentioned both of them already leading roles in Dance Girl Dance from 1940, which is now preserved in the Library of Congress, the National Film Registry House movie at Spence and 1942 is the big screen with time date.

00;11;07;23 – 00;11;36;01
Michael Karol
Henry Fonda proving Lucy could emote with the best of them as a nasty cripple nightclub singer. I love this one review of that by James Agee and Time magazine. Well, ready, Lucille Ball, who was born for the parts Ginger Rogers frets over tackles. Her emotional role is for sirloin and she didn’t care who was looking. So it was just the big street that caught everyone’s attention, especially the folks at MGM, which is often referred to as the Tiffany of Movie Studios.

00;11;36;17 – 00;12;09;07
Michael Karol
They offered her a contract, which was a definite step up. So she wasn’t cruising, you know what I mean? Yeah. And granted, MGM mostly didn’t know what to do with her either. They cast her as herself in decent roles. But as for that, as a brassy chorus girl or in flashy Technicolor cameos in films like Chicago Follies and Thousands Cheer, but no matter, Lucy met and again learned or called around with silent film legends Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, also languishing at MGM at the time, sadly underused.

00;12;09;07 – 00;12;31;10
Michael Karol
Who taught her about comedy? That was Lloyd who directed her, I think, at once, and how to use props. That was Buster Keaton on one very, very important bank. Also at the MGM, the resident hairstylist, Sidney Aguilera, to say that Louis’s hair was brown, but her soul is on fire and both gave her a unique red orange, apricot tin.

00;12;31;24 – 00;12;55;26
Michael Karol
That was the first step in becoming her most famous character, that wacky redhead. Talk about what’s your card? Now, Lucy, Natasha, as I said, in 1940 at RKO, and they sold that fluffy college musical to many girls after they married, Jessie was playing with the band gigs all over the country, swooning Ella while Lucy’s career had ratcheted up that constant tension not being together.

00;12;55;26 – 00;13;17;21
Michael Karol
And she was on the road and set this movie career, basically never taking off. But a little show called I Love Lucy would change all that. So while MGM didn’t use Lucy and films as I have, and she did have a handful of great roles and best foot forward, the guy was the lady without love with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn stole the movie and easy to wet.

00;13;18;11 – 00;13;38;11
Michael Karol
It was a big step in preparing her for us to come. I wouldn’t say at all that she was losing out at altitude and pretty content with her career when she met Desi now. Lucy always wanted more. But more importantly, she was always learning and starring that knowledge for future use and in good stead in the late forties and especially during the show 1950s.

00;13;39;01 – 00;13;56;08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And it sounds like just from the amount of movies that she was doing and the type of movie like moving up to to MGM like she. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t at cruising altitude like it says in the movie, like, okay, this is where I’m always going to be and I’m okay with that. So that’s the impression I got from the movie.

00;13;56;08 – 00;14;10;21
Michael Karol
Was I never read that particular attitude and all the stuff I found out where her attitude was are now more full steam ahead. And I say It’s got to be better and I could do this and that, whatever.

00;14;12;07 – 00;14;29;07
Dan LeFebvre
During one of the scenes in the movie, we see Lucy performing in a show called My Favorite Husband on CBS Radio. And then we, as the movie portrays it, they want to turn that into a television show. And she agrees as long as she can cast her real life husband, Desi Arnaz, as her husband on the TV show.

00;14;29;26 – 00;14;48;20
Dan LeFebvre
And she gets a lot of kickback for this, as the CBS exec in the movie says and I’ll quote here, it says, We cannot have an all-American girl married to a man who is not American. And Lucy points out that Desi is American. He was even a sergeant in the U.S. Army and served during the war. But he’s also of Cuban descent.

00;14;48;20 – 00;14;57;15
Dan LeFebvre
And so in the movie, they clearly don’t like that idea. How did the movie do showing this transition from my favorite husband to I Love Lucy?

00;14;58;05 – 00;15;23;08
Michael Karol
Well, like a lot of things that happen and Lucy does, whose lives it was given the shortened prefab version, I guess necessary because it constrictions but it’s skipped over a lot of important events in the pair’s life. Lucy at Tired of making movies by the late forties. She knew that MGM was going to really do anything with her and that contract was over, so that were of little consequence to her career.

00;15;23;08 – 00;15;42;05
Michael Karol
So in 1947, she took a chance and a star dark comedy called Dream Girl on a very successful national tour. She got rave reviews as a woman who daydreams her way into various scenarios. It was like a part that was made for her. And during the tour, Lucy discovered something that would impact your career in a great way.

00;15;42;13 – 00;16;07;14
Michael Karol
She loved performing in front of a live audience. He loved making people laugh and reacting to their reactions. Everything she learned from Lloyd came from comic timing, using props, slapstick was put into that play on stage, and the end result was her being offered a radio show. The sitcom My Favorite, which very importantly was filmed before a live audience furthering Lucy’s direction.

00;16;07;16 – 00;16;29;14
Michael Karol
That that was how she was met. Yes. Since the radio show was a success, CBS brass wanted it was on CBS. They wanted to move it to TV. And yes, no one except Desi wanted Desi to play her husband. As you said, there’s someone else who would believe one of the exactly the best that all America. Lucy be married to a foreign to which Lucy would respond.

00;16;29;14 – 00;16;50;26
Michael Karol
But he is my husband. Lucy Desi took their act on the road as sort of a promise to CBS to show them public with love or did love and a vaudeville type. They performed in movie theaters around the country and it was a huge success which led to the pilot, the pilot and the eventual groundbreaking TV show. I don’t think that was in the movie.

00;16;51;28 – 00;17;14;16
Dan LeFebvre
No, no, it wasn’t. And it’s something I am curious about. As you’re as you were saying that with with her, obviously not at cruising altitude like we were talking about. How did she perceive the move from doing movies like this to then doing a radio show? Was that seen as kind of a step down in her eyes, like her career was kind of moving backwards?

00;17;14;17 – 00;17;38;14
Michael Karol
Well, she knew that her as I said, that her movie career was was it was. I’d say she had done radio for many years on different shows, different she’d done USO stuff. And so she was familiar with the medium. And I think she liked the sitcom that she was going to go to. I don’t so I don’t think she considered this set down the fact again that it was going to be before a live audience.

00;17;38;21 – 00;17;47;03
Michael Karol
That totally appealed to her after joining the show. So she did that. And fortuitously, that led to the development of the TV show.

00;17;47;14 – 00;18;06;18
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. If we go back to the movie, most of it does take place during one specific week during the filming of I Love Lucy. There’s text on screen for each day. You know, Mondays the table read, Tuesdays blocking rehearsal. So on to the taping on Friday we’ll get to some of the things that the movie depicts.

00;18;06;18 – 00;18;25;14
Dan LeFebvre
And but I wanted to ask just the amount of things that happened in this week to me as I was watching this, I was like, this just has to be Hollywood timing to have so many things happen in a single week. Is the movie actually showing an actual week or is it taking a bunch of different things and throwing them into a single week?

00;18;25;14 – 00;18;48;10
Michael Karol
No, it’s totally what you just saw. The single week format was more to make it easier to frame the entire story, I think, than the actual fact that everything in the movie happened during this one week. It most assuredly did not. They did, as you say, take different events and meld them into a week format or as I like to say, at W a format, if you will, based on Lucy.

00;18;48;10 – 00;19;10;27
Michael Karol
I Love Lucy. A shooting schedule. They also threw in flashbacks, some of which, as I know, that are absolutely historically not correct, making it even harder to follow this story in a linear way. So, I mean, I understand the show business constrictions, the constrictions of doing a two hour, 15 minute or whatever movie as opposed to, you know, anything longer.

00;19;10;27 – 00;19;14;11
Michael Karol
I mean, whatever. But you still need to play with the facts.

00;19;14;26 – 00;19;31;24
Dan LeFebvre
Right? Sure. Especially in that way. I mean, with the restriction of a medium like movie, right. You you are covering a lot of, you know, years of somebody’s life in in a couple hours. But with the way that they did it here, that’s why I had to ask about the week thing, because it makes it seem like they’re not covering years of somebody’s life.

00;19;31;24 – 00;19;33;07
Dan LeFebvre
Really? That they’re covering a week.

00;19;33;15 – 00;19;48;29
Michael Karol
No, I think that’s why they got the Lucy movie career so wrong, because they just needed sort of to dance around to these little pop bites, like, oh, Judy Holliday got all the roles that that no, that’s not.

00;19;51;10 – 00;20;14;03
Dan LeFebvre
One of the things that does show during that week that causes a lot of stress for Lucy Desi. And really everyone on the show is when the movie depicts this rumor of Lucy being a member of the Communist Party. As the movie shows it, it comes from a radio program by Walter Winchell where he says, and I quote again, something from the movie that one of television’s most popular stars was confronted with her membership in the Communist Party, end quote.

00;20;14;17 – 00;20;31;12
Dan LeFebvre
And according to the movie, Lucy never denies it. She says the man who raised her was your grandfather, Fred Sea Hunt, and he was a member of the party. So in 1936, she checks the box to please him. How well did the movie do with the whole Lucille Ball being a member of the Communist Party storyline?

00;20;31;23 – 00;20;36;25
Michael Karol
Well, if you allow me a little here before I get to the actual Communist Party accusation.

00;20;37;04 – 00;20;37;26
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00;20;37;27 – 00;21;05;15
Michael Karol
Okay. So the first table read is shown early on. It’s a monday morning test of that week. I love seats for Fred and Ethel fucked with everybody at the table except the stars. And there you see Ali at Shawkat. That’s your name? Jake. Let’s see. Tony Hale, the fifties versions of Madelyn Pugh and Bucktown, junior and executive producer Aesop and including Nina Arianda and Jake Simmons as Vivian Vance and Mike Frawley.

00;21;05;25 – 00;21;25;23
Michael Karol
They’re arguing about seven year old Rusty Hamer on the Danny Thomas show being forced to sign a loyalty pledge and the ongoing Red Scare and the particular ness of it all. Frawley, who’s ignoring bats by reading the paper and not really listening to her while engages in conversation, I still have no idea what she’s talking about. Yielding one pretty funny exchange.

00;21;26;03 – 00;22;01;12
Michael Karol
Vance to Frawley. Are you drunk? FRAWLEY Sarcastic. Well, it’s 10 a.m. there. And so, you know, of course and although that’s kid these kinds of exchanges as far as I know between between bill never occurred they just didn’t really interact with each other. But there’s so much arguing between the cast writers and Oppenheimer, as I note, that the viewer can only come with the thought at least that this retelling that just played by the usually wonderful Tony Hale as a whiny put upon college senior trying to represent any disrespectful theater underclassmen into shape.

00;22;01;25 – 00;22;34;14
Michael Karol
I’m not really much in charge as pubescent tells him to shut up. I don’t think that would have had real life as just off where they’re being grilled by attorneys are people on Philip morris and CBS. Kidman does a palatable job of relating the story how Lucy registered as Communist in 1936 to placate her socialist grandpa. But here, as in many other seats, I was noticeably cut off by Kidman’s physical appearance as Lucy, in the sense that her face is too skinny or contoured and her body not voluptuous enough.

00;22;34;16 – 00;22;56;29
Michael Karol
Lucy’s way more fill that curvy. Nicole delivers the story of Lucy’s Communist Party membership very matter of factly to the men in the row. And though it’s impossible to know exactly what happened in that room, if indeed it did happen like that in that room, I’d like to think that Lucy was slightly a bit more emotional. As for Desi, happy about them as perfunctory?

00;22;56;29 – 00;23;19;10
Michael Karol
Very to the point, noting that after the original broadcast, Owen picked up the story. Lucy had already been cleared by a few act, very little emotion more like this situation is nothing lo everything and okay, that’s one way of playing it. But you know, if Desi Arnaz, when it comes to this topic, particularly he was quite emotional, perhaps a bit lacking in emotional deliver.

00;23;19;24 – 00;23;46;23
Michael Karol
Desi was so proud to be an American and the career that he was allowed to pursue as foreigner in our country, he took this issue very seriously. More so than how it was played. So I guess you could say that they didn’t blow it. And recounting the communist reveal. But it’s hard to confirm exactly what happened. And the lead performances by viewers are likely not much the way that the understandably emotional real life Lucy Desi reacted.

00;23;46;26 – 00;24;01;04
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, if we don’t know 100% what happened behind closed doors. But I like how you took context from the real people and how they probably would have actually been if they were in that sort of situation. It sounds like it would have it would have been different than what we saw on screen.

00;24;01;16 – 00;24;26;01
Michael Karol
The real thing that set Lucy would split by 1953. That show was already the super hit, that it would stay for the next four years. And the public was really in love with all of that, not just the chimpanzee, but Bette and Bill and anyone associated with the show. So it would have been very difficult because the way that Lucy did register as communists was an innocent thing.

00;24;26;01 – 00;24;34;22
Michael Karol
She did it for her grandfather. It would have been really hard to convince the public that she was anything negative in that sense.

00;24;34;22 – 00;25;01;11
Dan LeFebvre
That makes sense. There is another major event that happens in that same week that we’re talking about in the movie, and it’s when Lucy announces that she’s pregnant, not on the show, but she announces it to Desi and then the staff kind of behind the scenes. And according to the movie, this is a big deal. The executives from CBS and Philip morris seem to be concerned that people will wonder how Lucy got pregnant, thinking about the idea of Ricky and Lucy sleeping together.

00;25;01;11 – 00;25;18;13
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s just too much for TV. I think there’s another quote I pull from the movie is from CBS executive Howard Winkie in the movie, and he says, quote, We’ll be putting our foot down on this one. We can’t do it. And, quote, Did Lucy announce her pregnancy to the staff during this chaotic week like the movie shows?

00;25;19;10 – 00;25;45;14
Michael Karol
Probably not. And 1933, that’s when that particular scene plays. But during that same week as Communist Party, I doubt it very much so. It was a revolutionary concept at the time, especially on TV’s number one show. So naturally there was a major respect network and sponsors. The movie kind of tells the actual story, but in the film, Sorkin gives the credit to Desi Arnaz.

00;25;45;25 – 00;26;09;07
Michael Karol
And Arnaz was truly a television pioneer, and you might even call him a genius in that meeting, he changed the way the industry made television shows forever. He created the river, but Sorkin’s felt as doesn’t see breaking the news to the writing staff. And Oppenheim, who aren’t all that thrilled. After all, they might be fearful of their job since the idea is the next by the network or sponsors.

00;26;09;20 – 00;26;33;22
Michael Karol
Still desi a positive. Lucy will have her baby. This is in the movie and that it will be filmed for TBS. Lucy Ricardo, however, in her own autobiography, Lucy’s version of events differ. She says in this quote, In May 1952, Desi and I both Fox. It’s just Oppenheimer’s slated she wrote. Well, amigo Desi told just I just heard from the doctor.

00;26;33;22 – 00;27;05;10
Michael Karol
Lucy’s having another baby in January, so we’ll have to cancel everything. That’s the end of the show. Just stop looking at us. Silo. Then he remarked casually, I would suggest this to any other actress in the world. But why don’t we continue the show, have a baby on TV? And the L.A. Times noted that CBS and that and I’m sure the pronunciation of this by O.W. age that see it the one which represented a sponsor Philip morris bio maybe I don’t know, we weren’t excited by the idea, but they went along with some conditions.

00;27;05;11 – 00;27;29;23
Michael Karol
The advertisers originally stipulated that they would only agree to one or two episodes about pregnancy. Arnaz wrote a letter to Phillip morris, Chairman Alfred Lyons, reminding the executive of the success the show had delivered to date under their creative decision making and suggested not so subtly that any changes to that now would warrant a shift in culpability for any subsequent failures of the show because of it.

00;27;29;28 – 00;27;52;10
Michael Karol
And if I may read it for my book, The Final Word from Lucy Ever seen Lucille Ball Encyclopedia? When Lucy became pregnant during the second season of her hit show exec producer Just Offenheiser, Oppenheimer and Arnaz in on the idea of writing it into the script as a way of keeping the show going without interruptions at that time, performers couldn’t even say the word pregnant on TV.

00;27;52;20 – 00;28;29;17
Michael Karol
It was expected or expectant was about as risque as Arnaz smartly decided to get stripped approval to select clerics of all faiths and thus one of the CBS networks. Okay, go ahead. Storyline The night Lucy gave birth to Little Ricky on air January 19th, 1953, Desi Arnaz Jr was delivered by sharing a section in Los Angeles. The Birth of Little Ricky episode was the sitcoms most watched ever, eclipsing President Eisenhower’s inauguration the next day and remained a benchmark for upsets tuned to one show until the sixties.

00;28;29;28 – 00;28;53;12
Michael Karol
It garnered 44 million viewers, 72% of every TV home at the time, a figure that would be coveted today by any TV executive and virtually impossible to achieve except for an event like the Super Bowl due to the fractured nature of the viewing audience, thanks to the huge amount of viewing choices now available at just three networks, for example, but streaming and all of that, too.

00;28;53;24 – 00;29;10;05
Michael Karol
And it remains one of the most watched episodes of primetime television ever broadcast. Years later, Arnaz learned that Phillip morris as chairman. Lyons sent out a confidential memo to his staff to whom it may concern Don’t screw out the Cuban.

00;29;10;05 – 00;29;30;24
Dan LeFebvre
I think they show that in the movie, don’t they? At some point I seem to remember him saying that. So now I was convinced with the popularity of that if the sponsors like Phillip morris and stuff didn’t want they didn’t want that, but then they pushed for it and they got it and it was so successful. Did that have a big impact outside?

00;29;30;24 – 00;29;43;08
Dan LeFebvre
And a movie doesn’t really touch on this because it just focuses on on I Love Lucy. Did it have an impact on how they were able to do episodes in the future, like without as much pushback since obviously they got it right.

00;29;43;17 – 00;30;17;16
Michael Karol
Yeah, absolutely. That was a total thing. But I think more importantly, Lucy and big picture of Desi, a little picture, Lucy made the first national cover of TV Guide and the headline was Lucy’s $50 Million Baby. Now, all the merchandizing for the kid and for the Ricardos, for the family furniture paid dolls, living room sets, etc. That all speaks to the enormous influence that Lucy and Desi as the Ricardos and their show the public.

00;30;17;25 – 00;30;20;10
Michael Karol
And I don’t think anyone is going to scribble out that.

00;30;20;28 – 00;30;39;29
Dan LeFebvre
Much money talks. I guess the end of the day right throughout most of the movie, there is some tension that we see between William Frawley, who plays Fred Mertz, and Vivian Vance, who plays his wife, Ethel Mertz. And I Love Lucy. William is drinking all the time. You mentioned earlier, you know, it’s like I am. Yeah, of course I’m going to be drunk.

00;30;39;29 – 00;30;55;19
Dan LeFebvre
And then Vivian goes on a diet to make herself feel better because she’s being cast as someone married to her grandpa, as she says in the movie, pointing out the age difference between Fred and Ethel characters in the show. Was there really that tension between those two actors that we see in the movie?

00;30;55;24 – 00;31;24;28
Michael Karol
Yes, it’s really well known that it’s been written about a lot. Frawley was known to be a heavy drinker, which, as you said, I alluded to already at that table and not much for him either. It’s reported that you had cut out his lines in the script so that you would know his lines. Then when it came to rehearsing and then filming and the lines got huge laughs, you really wouldn’t understand why they did because you didn’t know what the was in his drinking.

00;31;24;28 – 00;31;46;01
Michael Karol
That was just a weird thing that he did. Frawley had pledged to Desi Arnaz before they would sign him to this show that he would never let his drinking interfere with this performance. And as you said, the first time it’s done is you’re at it. You’re at all indications it never did. Finally, it creates the fiction and the friction.

00;31;46;03 – 00;32;06;14
Michael Karol
Media brought up St Vincent’s wallet and the story is overheard. Were complaining early on, maybe the first season about playing the wife of such an old man. He’s old enough to be my father during early rehearsals and it was all downhill from there. They were not friendly off camera. Vivian, for her part, did not stand being identified as the wife.

00;32;06;14 – 00;32;32;17
Michael Karol
Some looked and acted like Fröhlich was indeed old enough to be her father. I think grandfather’s stretching and she especially despised having to kiss Sara, climb into bed with them. But they were both professional enough and fond enough of their paychecks apparel to keep all of that off camera. The real life tension between the two actually worked to help create the realness of the quarrels of marriage of merchants.

00;32;32;28 – 00;32;42;24
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. So they they kind of played off it, even though he may not have known why it was so funny. I like that bit about cutting out the the line.

00;32;42;29 – 00;33;01;15
Michael Karol
You know, they were offered a spin off at the end of the half hour show or maybe, oh, really? Of the hours just featuring the Nazis. But he refused it. And that’s really why he began to hate her for that that he wanted he would deliver to die, and it would have made them both a lot of money but that Ian rats was just.

00;33;01;15 – 00;33;03;22
Michael Karol
No, that was it. She was going to act with him.

00;33;04;10 – 00;33;22;21
Dan LeFebvre
I want to ask about there’s an episode where they’re filming throughout the week in the movie and that episode, according to the movie, is directed by Donald Glass. And the movie makes it very clear that Lucy does not like him as a director. Everything is going on that week that of course, we know now was not actually happening that week.

00;33;22;21 – 00;33;45;27
Dan LeFebvre
But in the movie she takes it upon herself to start to direct a lot of the scenes. At one point we see she even calls in William and Vivian down to the stage at 2 a.m. to practice the dinner scene to get it just right. As I was watching the movie, I wasn’t sure if they were trying to really suggest that Lucy was only being so picky because of the stress of everything going on that seems they’re saying is going on in this week.

00;33;45;27 – 00;34;01;14
Dan LeFebvre
Or if they were trying to suggest that she was always that picky about getting everything right, that she would basically take over directing duties if she felt the director wasn’t doing their job. Was Lucy that involved in the direction and production of episodes as the movie shows?

00;34;01;14 – 00;34;19;29
Michael Karol
Did Lucy need to be so much in charge, even at that point in her career, that she’d corralled her costars and tell them to do anything at any time of the day, and they do it. This movie makes a hard point about that. Certainly that control trait has been remarked on by many costars and friends during Lucy’s post.

00;34;20;03 – 00;34;43;10
Michael Karol
I Love Lucy career, The Lucy Show and here’s Lucy. This might be the one thing this movie got somewhere right, though. Maybe her saying to Bill and Viv after giving them direction particular scene that I am the biggest asset in the portfolio, the Columbia Broadcasting System. Philip Arthur CIGARETS Westinghouse is taking that a bit too far. Still, Bill does tell her before the show and this fictional exchange.

00;34;43;10 – 00;35;18;25
Michael Karol
I believe that after her notes, the dinner scene is inarguably better. But the bottom line Lucy know her stuff, how to get a laugh timing. How long to wait until continuing where one’s best lighting was, where your key shot was? The use of props and on and off, all from her 20 year apprenticeship in the movies. When she directed People and I mean not as the director, but on the set, including big stars like her friends Jack Benny and George Burns on her future shows, they may not have liked it, but 99% of the time was.

00;35;18;26 – 00;35;46;23
Michael Karol
That’s right. So I also wrote about this issue and Lucy Agency Bill Asher yeah he William Ash Sugar directed Bewitched later on and married at Starbucks with Montgomery for example found out on his first day of work that rumors I would say no testing her coworkers to see how much they could take were true. Asher took over directing I Love Lucy after the first season and was the director for the whole series through its conclusion, directing a total of 102 episodes.

00;35;47;08 – 00;36;11;23
Michael Karol
As she remembered the account her as Lucy giving him too much direction. Lucy, as she recalled saying during a Jamestown, New York Lucy festival in the, I guess early to mid 2000. If you want to direct, go ahead and you won’t have to pay anyone. At which point, he says. Lucy broke down in tears about the set and she retired to the men’s room because he didn’t yet have an office.

00;36;12;08 – 00;36;31;27
Michael Karol
He finally returned to the set. I met Desi, who started yelling at him in Spanish until Asher said, Desi, give it to me in English, please. After hearing the story, Desi was very understanding. I think he saw a friend action and agreed with Asher, but told him to find Lucy in her dressing room. Bring her back to the set, as she says I did.

00;36;32;00 – 00;36;52;08
Michael Karol
She and I looked and cried for a few minutes. Then Lucy, pull yourself together and my back to work after that. But I never had enough. So I think a lot of the time she was testing people to see how far she could go and how much they would take. Some people were okay with that. Some people just sloughed it off like Jack Benny.

00;36;52;25 – 00;37;22;11
Michael Karol
I think that I needed another Lucy show and she was pregnant about something just calm down that it’s your show, okay? And some people walked off Joan Blondell after Lucy, she was being sort of auditioned to take the place of Vivian Batts, either late in the Lucy Show or on today’s Lucy. And in the episode, this one episode, apparently, Lucy didn’t like what she did, so she mind flushing a toilet like that.

00;37;22;11 – 00;37;32;23
Michael Karol
It was crap, I guess. Well, Blondell Kolchak walked off the set, never came back. So there was all different kinds of reactions to what Lucy’s tired persona was.

00;37;32;26 – 00;37;58;17
Dan LeFebvre
Was that more after she became so famous? I mean, you mentioned that that scene where she talks about, you know, she’s the biggest asset in the portfolio. Did she did she feel that sort of stress that she had this successful show with I Love Lucy and then outside the timeline of the movie? But, you know, with the shows after I Love Lucy, that she wasn’t able to get that same thing back or she felt she had to try to get that same success.

00;37;58;20 – 00;38;21;18
Michael Karol
Yes, I think absolutely. And after Desi was on the show for the first like 13 or 14 episodes and then he left and then she ended up buying shares as they were became the first woman to control the studio. So a lot of responsibility. And she had to greenlight shows and tell people now and and put people out of work its head.

00;38;21;28 – 00;38;40;01
Michael Karol
But she had to do it and she did it. She famously Carol BURNETT, who’s a good friend of hers, that kid is when they put the S at the end of my name, Lucille Ball. I don’t like strong women back then her to I guess you.

00;38;40;01 – 00;38;57;08
Dan LeFebvre
Well it makes sense though I mean if she’s having to do the business side of things and she’s you know as as an actress and just as a creative sometimes as the business side is not what they like to do. I mean. Yeah, and fair enough. I mean, it’s not easy.

00;38;57;15 – 00;39;10;29
Michael Karol
No, but she did a great job and she was the first one to handle that role in a studio and such. That’s, you know, which is pretty substantial. So you got to give her credit for sure.

00;39;11;14 – 00;39;34;22
Dan LeFebvre
Near the end of the movie, Desi’s plan to make the whole Lucy being a communist and the press go away is to invite the press to a taping of the show before they begin. He shows everyone. The Herald Express newspaper in the movie has big red letters and it says Lucille Ball of Red. I think even there was a line a dog was like, I didn’t even know the newspaper had red print.

00;39;35;24 – 00;39;56;01
Dan LeFebvre
The studio audience there gasps when they see the headline, and then he takes a phone call from a man that verifies that the FBI has no reason to believe Lucy is a communist, and that man identifies himself. J. Edgar Hoover. The plane works, everyone. Cheers, Lucy. The press writes about it, and according to the movie, they save the show.

00;39;56;15 – 00;40;04;21
Dan LeFebvre
The Desi Arnaz really talked to Hoover on the phone to confirm that Lucy wasn’t a communist for the live studio audience like you see in the end of the movie, right?

00;40;05;07 – 00;40;27;12
Michael Karol
According to many sources, Desi didn’t call Hoover in earshot of the studio audience, and some also claim in front of her gathered reporters and that the FBI director stated, like, sent your wife cleared of any charges, 100% clear. But other respected sources like the L.A. Times say no. And I’m quoting here In reality, there was no call from Hoover.

00;40;27;12 – 00;40;53;13
Michael Karol
The ball’s name was cleared before an episode solving Representative Donald L. Jackson, chairman of the House un-American Activities Committee, held a press conference in Hollywood at a hotel room publicly absolved Ball of any wrongdoing. As the film shows, Arnaz did address the studio audience before the filming that night, reading from a speech he typed, what he said was, Lucy has never been a communist, not now and never will be.

00;40;53;25 – 00;41;15;28
Michael Karol
I was kicked out of Cuba. It continued because of Tommy you despise everything about it. Lucy is as American as Bernie and Eisenhower. And finally, as she wrote in his memoir, he introduced Lucy before the taping that now I watch their Me I favorite wife, my favorite red hat back. That’s the only thing I read about her. And even that’s not legitimate.

00;41;16;12 – 00;41;23;16
Michael Karol
Lucille Ball and that Lucy, with tears in her eyes, came out and received a standing ovation from the studio audience.

00;41;23;16 – 00;41;31;21
Dan LeFebvre
So it seems like they they picked pieces of of things. But yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it was a little different than that.

00;41;31;28 – 00;41;35;02
Michael Karol
Just a little. Yeah.

00;41;35;02 – 00;41;54;13
Dan LeFebvre
At the very end of the movie, again, it’s around the same time like as they’re doing the show, like Lucy confronts Desi about him cheating on her. She has some lipstick on a handkerchief. And I think he says something about, Oh, that’s yours. And then she pulls out another handkerchief with lipstick and this one’s mine. And then finally he admits that he is cheating.

00;41;54;19 – 00;42;19;09
Dan LeFebvre
He says it really meant nothing. They were just called girls. Then she says they have a show to do. So forget about this for half an hour. And that’s how the movie ends. There’s some text at the very end that says, March 3rd, 1960, Lucy filed for divorce from Desi the morning after their final performance together. So the impression that I got from the movie was their marriage only stayed as long as the TV show did.

00;42;19;12 – 00;42;25;13
Dan LeFebvre
So maybe it was more about a business relationship than a true loving marriage at the end. Is that right?

00;42;25;13 – 00;42;49;27
Michael Karol
I don’t think so, no. There was actually a real true love between Lucy and that’s it. But like you said, by the mid-fifties, following that enough arnaz’s drinking and philandering still dissolving. I Love Lucy would have put so many people out of work and caused so many problems. And Lucy also truly loved that show and performing. She loved performing and rehearsing for it every week.

00;42;50;05 – 00;43;13;10
Michael Karol
It was kind of a tonic to her, so she stayed on long enough to see I Love Lucy finished its run and cement its place in history. In fact, it’s been noted that Lucy and Dusty were happiest and only really civil to each other during this time when the cameras were rolling. They weren’t Lucy and Desi, but rather Ricky and confidential rat as his wild night out.

00;43;13;10 – 00;43;38;27
Michael Karol
That was the headline in the early years of their marriage before the launch of I Love Lucy wrote in her autobiography While I Was Knocking Myself Out, We’ll be making a Bond tour as my marriage crashing fast, Desi’s nightlife and even blasé Hollywood talk so everybody knew about it. Confidential magazine, other story about a Palm Springs weekender is this to her millions duplex during the summer of 1944?

00;43;38;27 – 00;44;11;12
Michael Karol
Does each stop coming all one night I tossed sleepless there until dawn. One drink. But our marriage had gone awry and what I had done wrong. And this was the mid-forties so that but they did reconcile set of divorcing. But does his self-destructive behavior continue? It got worse. As she got more successful, it became worse years later. Confidential rat, another nasty piece headlined this Desi Really Love, See Reporting Quotes, all of Desi’s indiscretions and his January 1985 KO.

00;44;11;23 – 00;44;29;27
Michael Karol
Now, at that point, I Love Lucy was in its fifth next, the last half hour season. And by the way, the series was the first to go out on that one. Ratings. So Brad Sawtelle Order for Confidential wrote behind the scenes Arnaz’s a Latin lover who loves Lucy most of the time, but by no means all of the time.

00;44;30;01 – 00;44;50;03
Michael Karol
But there’s this interesting tidbit that she told one of his Palm Springs side dishes. According to the article, that is still leprosy. This rings true, as I noted before, throughout their lives. Even after the divorce, Desi and Lucy remained very friendly and relied on each other for advice on different things and recalled the loves of each other’s lives by close friends.

00;44;50;03 – 00;45;17;24
Michael Karol
And then later, People magazine, a little more respected than confidential, ran a cover piece after Lucy died called The Untold Story of Mickey and Desi the Booms, The Brawls, the other one that began by noting the irony of Sam testing eating at the set of an RKO film titled Two Girls in the piece, Lucy’s longtime publicist, Charles Pomerantz, recounted his client’s reaction to the article, noted that she did it with humor.

00;45;18;11 – 00;45;34;19
Michael Karol
He says, I gave an advance copy of the confidential story to Jessie. And then she said, I want to read. This story was during a rehearsal day. She went into a drugstore. Everyone was frozen on the set. She finally came out, tossed the magazine that it said, Oh, well, I could tell him or not, and I love Lucy.

00;45;34;19 – 00;45;53;27
Michael Karol
Director William Asher told people they were having the baby and we did the show about the birth of Ricky that she was terribly emotional about her. He really was crazy about you could feel how they felt. And Madelyn Pugh Davis added in the same article, Desi was a charmer. We used to call him the Cuban R because it burns.

00;45;54;00 – 00;46;17;07
Michael Karol
I’m afraid you’d say, Listen, amigo, you were done for. But the reality was that, sadly, according to Island biographer Farr, Daniels wrote what first book was I that you see? She told me that by 1956 there wasn’t even a marriage. They were just going through a routine for the children. She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was just gruesome broads that was in her divorce papers.

00;46;17;07 – 00;46;41;22
Michael Karol
This matter of fact, so soon as he did remain married for five more years, finally divorcing in 1968, she married at 20 years marriage in November of 62 ball aunt as it sure does sit there are 3 billion it took over the couple first launch of major Hollywood studio. It was thanks to Lucy that Star Trek Mission Impossible and Mannix greenlit got their chance at shine comforts.

00;46;41;25 – 00;46;48;09
Dan LeFebvre
So it sounds like their marriage. Yeah kind of went did go downhill towards the end there sure.

00;46;49;08 – 00;46;57;05
Michael Karol
Lucy tried her hardest thing and she forgave a lot. And I think the worst part of it for her was public humiliation.

00;46;57;05 – 00;47;08;06
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, they were. I mean, the number one show. So, I mean, I don’t know if they call them paparazzi back then, but I mean, just the amount of public spotlight that they’d have.

00;47;08;10 – 00;47;19;11
Michael Karol
Yeah, I think that it was basically only confidential and other spurious magazines that were even worse and confidential that would dare to publish anything like that about as they were.

00;47;19;11 – 00;47;22;21
Dan LeFebvre
So it was confidential, kind of like a tabloid then.

00;47;22;29 – 00;47;32;02
Michael Karol
It was it wasn’t spies, it was a magazine, but it was read out. Now, Lawrence was very tabloidy and content. Yeah.

00;47;32;15 – 00;47;52;00
Dan LeFebvre
I don’t remember the exact dialog, but I remember some dialog from the movie where I think it was Desi that was talking about gave the impression that Confidential was not as reputable of news source. And it’s like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s an I got the impression that they were kind of the grocery store tabloid type news source of.

00;47;52;05 – 00;48;02;06
Michael Karol
One child of one of the most popular accents of the country. So lots people read it, but they didn’t go there for regular readers. They read it for Hollywood gossip or celebrity gossip.

00;48;02;07 – 00;48;10;10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. How old do you think the movie did with Nicole Kidman portrayal of Lucy and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz.

00;48;10;26 – 00;48;33;18
Michael Karol
As the star duo Enter the Round Table starts at the beginning of the film. There’s a lot of a lot more spiteful backbiting. That’s what I was saying before that. Just like what kind of a set the sister picked. I’m not one of them is really portrayed as actually likable, although Javier Bardem is just he starts to get into character about 15 minutes and he addressed themselves.

00;48;34;02 – 00;48;53;03
Michael Karol
I’m the president. I see they’re speaking to you right now. For the next 30 minutes. All I went to Girl was the script. I kind of like that. That was authority. It felt like something touching my tits. But then as the scene shifts from the table, read to the actors in black and white doing scenes actually at the show, can it shall we hear Kidman’s Lucy Ricardo voice?

00;48;53;03 – 00;49;21;03
Michael Karol
And it took me right out of the film, just as her not quite there. I look as Lucy too many times. It was obvious Kidman was trying to get a higher register as Lucy, but it didn’t work for me. Her entire you see Ricardo performance at the start is too cute. Yeah. It’s obvious that she studied Lucy’s mannerisms as she Ricardo, and how she spoke and moved and her facial expressions, etc. There’s some work, but that’s okay.

00;49;21;03 – 00;49;40;28
Michael Karol
But after all, Kidman’s that actress, so you would expect her to do that research. What she doesn’t capture is the essence of I do still balance Ricardo to that point. And for most of the film, Kidman does a bit better as the movie goes on. Like Lucy, recreating the great stopping episode tells the truth, and especially in the Fred rapport.

00;49;41;13 – 00;50;19;08
Michael Karol
So she totally gets his voice right as the characters are devastated, less convincing at the extreme show as Desi, the musician slash entertainer, looking down via an analogy, getting a feeling not sexy. What we created, she could shake her maracas. That abstemious was extensive and I got it wrong. A similar set or demonstrate actor. But it’s another Desi’s easy charm and Grace Bardem is more appealing as desi scene Babalu at Ciro’s, but he still can’t recapture the sexiness, realness and emotional impact of the actual Desi performing his signature song.

00;50;20;03 – 00;50;39;18
Michael Karol
And Kidman, a great actress as Lucy made up with the black eye or whatever, is so nasty and off pretty verbally, almost dark and playful would have been the way to go. You have to wonder, why would Desi ever have been interested? I unfortunately are. None of us can go back in time when real life versions of these events.

00;50;39;24 – 00;51;13;28
Michael Karol
But I have seen I’m sure you’ve seen everyone sent Lucy and gathered together many times in various film appearances. The game shows, publicity around movie premieres and their easy, genuine bachelor was nothing like what is portrayed. Which it does is combustible attraction. Physically and emotionally is a very important component. And CNBC and Lucy Ricky relationships. Almost everyone that knew that in real life, as I’ve said, including the IRS, maintains that despite their divorce, they remained the love of each other’s lives.

00;51;14;04 – 00;51;16;01
Michael Karol
It’s not really evident here in this film.

00;51;16;12 – 00;51;28;14
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s interesting. Would you say that that’s one of the bigger inaccuracies in the film is how they were portrayed? Or is there something else that you kind of just stood out as one of the most inaccurate things about the film?

00;51;28;28 – 00;51;54;04
Michael Karol
Yes, absolutely. But just the alarming liberties with the truth in general, facts that were out there. Anyone, especially a TV luminary like Aaron Sorkin, they were not hidden. They were ignored. They may have nailed a few tenths. The actors playing Vivian Vance, Lynn Frawley. Right. Although I doubt that Frawley had such a close relationship with Lucy, as intimated by several conversations that they sure she Vivian were way closer.

00;51;54;15 – 00;52;16;22
Michael Karol
Nina Arianda J.K. Simmons as Bill and Bill for best out of all the actors, each putting correct and easy shades of their characters mostly. Thanks for watching Simmons get up from the reading table and flipping his hat on. Was Kendall watching Bill Frawley and Arianda very subtly conveyed your agony? I think that dishwater of what you have thought.

00;52;16;22 – 00;52;39;25
Michael Karol
She breathes in a red cocktail dress that Lucy not to suddenly Kate is not for Ethel talk. The Mertz actors really got their counterparts dislike of each other, coupled with the willingness to do what they had to to make the show. The scene between Lucy and there, just before the filming of the episode, Sweet and Touching, both actresses rocked at a cop.

00;52;39;25 – 00;53;06;18
Michael Karol
Ed Murdoch says by the time the movie got to filming, actual episode had met him. Bardo groaned on me a little. The movie picks up noticeably in the last half hour because the two hour actors are not trying to be the characters inhabit them had previously. So I think being the Ricardos, it’s not a big sloppy mess, but it played with the facts and there’s a reason on Earth it should have.

00;53;07;03 – 00;53;30;24
Michael Karol
Lucy Nancy are two of the most written about people who ever lived. There’s plenty of documentation of anything you care to know. So again, my bestselling book, Lucy to See Them, was so upset with the bottom line was I didn’t like it. Lots of things were wrong or off. A few were. Some fewer things were right. Good. If you’re a Lucy completist or you’ll have to see it for us.

00;53;30;24 – 00;53;50;05
Michael Karol
But we’re still waiting for an idiot biography. Let’s get Dusty played by real actors. Where are we? Actually, I’m not. I’m. We’re the content. Lucy at Desi Abdullah have Howard countless hours of film that never get old. May they continue to keep us laughing. Best medicine, right? For Altman? Yeah.

00;53;50;13 – 00;54;00;25
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. My final question for you might be the most difficult one yet. If you could change one thing about the movie to make it a little closer, what really happened? What would that one thing be?

00;54;00;27 – 00;54;36;02
Michael Karol
Well, it’s not difficult at all, but could it be two things? And this is a subject for all the historical inaccuracy. It’s like mention. But there are two major things that would have made an infinitely better film. I would recast it, possibly with Cate Blanchett, who was originally attached to the projects, but certainly with an actress, were physically akin to the real Lucille Ball and ditto with DC cast the Latino actor more closely resembling that’s not as physically and temperamentally an extremely handsome, sexy and disarming fellow, something that Bardem, as good an actor as he is, could capture.

00;54;36;07 – 00;54;50;09
Dan LeFebvre
Interesting dynamic that makes sense that would be it’s it’s interesting to hear you talk about that because Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem they are they’re good they they’re good at what they do. But they just didn’t capture the essence. It sounds like they didn’t.

00;54;50;15 – 00;55;11;07
Michael Karol
Were I don’t think they were right for either either was right for that particular role. I can understand why they would have taken that, because it’s a very high profile project. But everyone that’s tried to play Lucy over the years of various TV movies and even on sitcoms, nobody can get it right. There’s no other Lucy, there’s no other destiny, there’s no other Ethel or Freddie.

00;55;11;16 – 00;55;15;25
Michael Karol
So why not watch The Real Thing? Who needs the biography?

00;55;15;25 – 00;55;17;09
Dan LeFebvre
They go watch the real thing first.

00;55;17;12 – 00;55;19;19
Michael Karol
So much written about by me.

00;55;19;19 – 00;55;34;10
Dan LeFebvre
So it was a speaking of which, thank you so much for coming on to chat about being the Ricardos. You have written a lot about Lucille Ball, so for listeners who want to learn more about her, can you give a recommendation for which of your books to start with and where they can get a copy of it?

00;55;34;15 – 00;55;57;03
Michael Karol
I’d love to, Lucy to see Lucille Ball and see Encyclopedia is my magnum Opus 50 greatest match. As my dear late friend author Craig Hamer used to call it. It’s extremely comprehensive as pictures of people who knew and work with Lucy, and it’s arranged alphabetically. So it’s not like your typical biography could jump around or to entry level.

00;55;57;03 – 00;56;28;21
Michael Karol
One thing leads to another. It’s an index so you can follow whichever of your favorite performers, and it has separate bios, all of the big four, as I call them, CTC, William for all in advance. And there was just so I mean, when I went to the New York Library, the Performing Arts, which is where I did most of this research, and I asked for the files on Lucille Ball, the press clippings, huge thousands of files that were like two or three inch thick or more that obviously haven’t been looked at in years.

00;56;29;03 – 00;56;50;25
Michael Karol
And my feeling was when I saw a lot of the stuff, I was like, well, whether Lucy loved badminton or not, you know, there’s a picture of her playing. And I’m like, you know, if I don’t know that stuff, then a lot of her fans aren’t aware of it any more either. So that’s why I like books. So there was so much info and press stockings left over from the original and trivia that was just hanging out by branch.

00;56;51;02 – 00;57;18;01
Michael Karol
I channeled that into four other books, the Lucy Book of Lists that was in honor of her 100th birthday. I see them print, which covers print articles, didn’t make it easier to see less reports. I’m too little known is written about. I Love Lucy. Vivian Vance The Lucy I Love Lucy play. It was at a time when you had a successful entity and some media and they just automatically like wrote a play about it.

00;57;18;01 – 00;57;38;28
Michael Karol
Like, Let’s see if we can make this a success. It’s really interesting. I found it at the New York Public Library and I stayed there for a half an hour and Xeroxed the whole thing so I could read it was the star and then the final book I wrote the comic DNA of Lucille Ball interpreting the icon that you can find them all at Amazon.

00;57;38;28 – 00;57;51;23
Michael Karol
Barnes Noble good reads for any online bookseller as well as a few brick and mortar stores. But if they don’t carry them, just go up to the counter, asked them to order the books, point them to my Amazon page and you can buy them that way.

00;57;52;07 – 00;57;59;21
Dan LeFebvre
And I’ll make sure to include a link to them in the show notes for this episode too. If you’re listening and looking for those. Thank you. Thank you again so much for your time, Michael.

00;57;59;25 – 00;58;08;26
Michael Karol
It was my pleasure.