I Love Lucy - Museum of the Moving Image

SCREENING
AMERICA
SCREENING
AMERICA
CAST OF CHARACTERS
I love lucy
1951–1957
Lucille Ball
as Lucy Ricardo
Desi Arnaz
as Ricky Ricardo
Vivian Vance
as Ethel Mertz
William Frawley
as Fred Mertz
More than half a century after
it debuted, I Love Lucy remains
perhaps the most popular and
successful television show
ever produced.
It dominated the ratings for most of its six-year run,
and transformed the way television shows were
made. “Job Switching,” the premiere episode of the
show’s blockbuster second season, may be I Love
Lucy’s most famous episode—and it is certainly one
of its funniest. But “Job Switching” is more than
a television landmark; it is also a product of its time.
The episode’s deceptively simple premise—
housewives Lucy and Ethel get jobs at a chocolate
factory while their husbands stay home to do
housework—offers rich insight into the roles that
middle-class men and women were expected to
play in 1950s America.
broadcast
From October 1951 until June 1957
on CBS, Monday, 9:00 p.m.
“Job Switching”
First broadcast: September 15, 1952.
25 minutes.
Written by Madelyn Pugh, Jess Oppenheimer,
and Bob Carroll, Jr.
Directed by William Asher.
Produced by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Left: In the April 28, 1952, episode, “The Freezer,” Lucy and Ethel get two sides of
beef and a giant walk-in meat freezer. Lucy walks in and can’t get out, becoming
a “human Popsicle” before Ricky and Ethel rescue her.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
THE LUCY
PHENOMENON
I Love Lucy slid quietly into
the CBS schedule on Monday,
October 15, 1951, at 9:00 p.m.—
the last thing it ever did quietly.
The show exploded into a national phenomenon.
Six months after its premiere, more than ten million
of the country’s fifteen million television sets tuned
in to a Lucy episode—the first time so many viewers
had watched a single program. Lucy ended its first
season at third place in the overall ratings, and was the
runaway top-rated show for four of the next five years.
According to popular myth, Lucy’s Monday
broadcasts brought America to a grinding halt. The
telephone company reported that phone usage
dropped dramatically during the show’s half hour.
In Chicago, the department store Marshall Field’s
switched its evening hours from Monday to Thursday,
a change it announced in a display-window sign
reading “We love Lucy, too, so we’re closing on
Monday nights.” When presidential candidate Adlai
Stevenson’s campaign pitch cut into Lucy’s airtime
in the fall of 1952, angry viewers flooded his office
with hate mail. CBS reported that a record 44 million
people watched the January 19, 1952, episode, in
which Lucy gives birth to Little Ricky. And Lucy was
a merchandising bonanza, inspiring licensed products
ranging from bedroom suites and pajamas to toys,
games, dolls, lingerie, and Desi dressing gowns.
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I LOVE LUCY
Above: TV Guide, April 3, 1953. The fictional birth
of Little Ricky and the actual birth of Desi Arnaz, Jr.
were timed to coincide. The double births pushed
Lucy’s popularity to an all-time high and set off a new
wave of product licensing that inspired the epithet,
“Lucy’s $50,000,000 baby.”
From The New York Times, Sunday, October 26, 1952.
The pajamas, blouses, aprons, dolls, and Desi
dressing gowns and bongo drums featured in this
two-page spread were just a fraction of the
licensed merchandise spawned by I Love Lucy.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Movie Life, March 1944. The feature
article told of the “Movie Life of Lucille
Ball,” including her November 1940
marriage to Desi Arnaz, in nine pages
of photographs.
Production
History
None of the people closest to
I Love Lucy’s creation anticipated
the show’s phenomenal success,
and it’s a small wonder that the
show made it to the screen at all.
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I LOVE LUCY
The original conception for Lucy was something
quite different from what it became, and the show
took its final shape only after a difficult period of
development marked by several clashes between
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, its creators and stars,
and CBS and sponsor Philip Morris.
A film actress since 1933, Lucille Ball was a
movie star by the early 1940s. By the late 1940s,
she had become disenchanted with her film career,
and in 1947 she took a job as the female lead—
a scatterbrained housewife married to Richard
Denning—in the CBS radio program My Favorite
Husband (1948–1951). The show was a success,
and it significantly broadened Ball’s fame and
appeal. In 1950, CBS told her that it wanted to
transfer the program to television, adding that
Jell-O would continue its sponsorship only if Ball
and Denning remained as the leads. Ball, however,
saw an opportunity to salvage her crumbling
ten-year-old marriage to bandleader Desi Arnaz.
She told CBS that she would do the show only if
Arnaz took the Denning role. CBS and Jell-O balked
because Arnaz was Cuban. CBS was sure that
viewers would never accept him, with his thick Cuban
accent, as Ball’s on-screen husband, despite their
marriage in real life.
Setting out to prove the network wrong, the
Arnazes formed Desilu Productions and created
a stage show—essentially a vaudeville act about a
movie star and her bandleader husband—that they
toured around the country. The show’s tremendous
success made the network more receptive to the
idea of a Lucy/Desi show, but it still refused to finance
production. Instead, CBS offered to sell airtime to
the Arnazes if they produced the show themselves.
They borrowed some money, shot a test film, and
then went out to find the all-important sponsor.
At this early stage of television history,
advertisers were much more powerful than they are
now, and sometimes even owned the shows they
sponsored. Such programs would have only one
advertiser, its name often part of the title. Texaco
Star Theater (1948–1956), Colgate Comedy Hour
(1950–1955), and Philco Television Playhouse (1948–
1955) were all on the schedule in 1952. Advertisers
exercised direct control over the creation and content
of programs,a role that now belongs solely to
networks, though the economic imperative of
attracting advertising dollars still heavily influences
programming decisions.
Half a dozen ad agencies turned down the
Arnazes’ test film before it landed at Philip Morris. The
cigarette giant signed on, and production was slated
to begin. Everything looked swell until the Arnazes’
desire to stay in Southern California bumped up
against established methods of television production
and the limitations of early television technology.
In 1951, most television programs were
broadcast live from New York City. Videotape wasn’t
introduced until 1956, and television cameras were,
in effect, transmitters, not recorders. A television
program played in a studio and went into the camera
and out over the airwaves or coaxial cables as a
broadcast signal. However, in 1951, live broadcasts
could reach only as far as Chicago via coaxial cable.
For television stations in the earlier time zones in
the West and regions of the East not linked to New
York by cable, it was therefore necessary to record
the live program for later broadcast. This recording
was done on film. A camera set up in the studio
filmed the program as it appeared on a studio
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ABOUT THE SHOW
television monitor, just as if you were to film the image
off your TV set. The result was called a kinescope.
Grainy and warped around the edges, the picture
quality was worse than the original broadcast image.
The Arnazes refused to move to New York to
do Lucy live, instead proposing to stay in Hollywood
and film the show prior to broadcast. CBS and Philip
Morris liked the idea but not the additional cost it
entailed, and the Arnazes took pay cuts. In exchange,
the network and sponsor gave them total ownership
of the I Love Lucy programs. The high-quality films
were a significant improvement over the kinescope
images, and they could be easily duplicated and
shown again and again. The general wisdom of the
time—that the public would never tolerate reruns—
proved to be wrong. The show’s runaway success,
and the ability to rebroadcast the episodes exactly
as first aired, made Desilu Productions the first
television empire and the Arnazes multimillionaires.
Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball performing in their stage show.
Left: Filming the April 20, 1953, episode, “No Children Allowed.”
Above: The Arnazes pose with I Love Lucy’s writers. Left to right:
Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr., and Jess Oppenheimer.
Production
Methods
I Love Lucy made television
history in nearly everything it
did. But perhaps its greatest
innovation was technical—
a new production method that
grew out of the decision to
shoot the program on film and
the “problem” that Lucille
Ball was at her best in front
of a live audience.
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I LOVE LUCY
Before Lucy, no one had ever tried to shoot a sitcom
on film in front of a live audience. To do so meant
that the show had to be acted in narrative sequence,
like a stage play, so the audience could follow the
story. Since one camera could never be mobile
enough to capture the changing points of view that
are the hallmark, and in large part the appeal, of
moving-image media, Desi Arnaz hired legendary
cinematographer Karl Freund to devise a multicamera system of filming Lucy. The system Freund
developed used three cameras to film the half-hour
show in approximately one hour. There were several
pauses to allow the actors to change costumes
and the technical crews to adjust lighting and reset
the cameras.
I Love Lucy was filmed in front of a live
audience at 8:00 on Friday evenings. Lucy began
production on a five-day schedule starting Monday,
but as cast and crew became familiar with the
routine, they shortened it to four days. On Tuesday,
the actors gathered around a rehearsal table for
a script reading with the writers, who made changes
based on the actors’ interpretations and input
fromthem and the director. On Wednesday, after
memorizing their lines, the actors rehearsed on the
set without cameras or camera crew. On Thursday,
the camera and electrical crews came in to work
outlighting and camera movements. The cast then
entered to rehearse the show again, while camera
placement, movement, and lighting were fine-tuned.
Thursday night, the actors went through a cameraless
dress rehearsal for the benefit of network officials
and the writers, who often made further revisions to
the dialogue and action. On Friday afternoon, the
entire cast and crew rehearsed again, and at 4:30 did
a final dress rehearsal with the cameras. The audience
came in around 7:30, and Lucy went before the
cameras at 8:00. Because of the careful planning
and numerous rehearsals, retakes were seldom
necessary. Over the weekend, a film editor assembled
the program by selecting the best shots from the
three cameras. Prints, which cost approximately
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ABOUT THE SHOW
$30 each, were made and sent to CBS outlets around
the country in time for the Monday airdate.
I Love Lucy started a trend toward filming
television shows, which soon made Hollywood, where
the film studios and other facilities were, the center
of television production. Lucy’s three-camera system
was copied almost immediately, and won Desilu
and Karl Freund numerous awards for technical
achievement. Desilu’s multicamera system and fouror five-day shooting schedule remained standard
practice in sitcom production for nearly five decades.
“Job Switching.” The lady boss shouts,
“Speed it up a little,” but Lucy and Ethel
have already got their hands, and their
mouths, full. Courtesy of Photofest.
“Job
Switching”
The premiere episode of
the show’s second season,
“Job Switching” is a rich
mine of signs, symbols, and
language that contains a
broad expression of roles
assigned to men and women
in 1950s America.
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I LOVE LUCY
A deft visual and verbal shorthand propels the plot
of the episode—telling the story in the less than thirty
minutes of available airtime. That code language
holds the key to the show’s message then and its
meaning today.
The episode’s first scene establishes both
its premise and the sharp gender boundaries that,
when blurred, will be the source of the comedy.
Ricky bursts into the Ricardo apartment and confronts
Lucy with a check to the beauty parlor that she has
bounced. The tone of the ensuing argument makes
their husband/wife relationship feel more like that
between a parent and child. A stern, paternal Ricky
announces his discovery of her misdeed and demands
an explanation. Her sheepish reply, spoken like a
question, is “You don’t give me enough money?”
That explanation provokes a furious volley of orders
and questions from Ricky, to which Lucy responds,
“Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” and “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” Fred and
Ethel, the Ricardos’ upstairs neighbors, enter midargument, and Fred defines the territory we have
entered: “When it comes to money, there are two
kinds of people—the earners and the spenders—or
as they are more popularly known, husbands and
wives.” Lucy rises to the challenge, proposes they
switch roles, and pulls a reluctant Ethel along with
her. Ricky and Fred, confident in their ability to lie
around the house all day playing canasta, a popular
card game at the time, jovially indulge them.
As the episode progresses, the characters
switch aspects of each other’s identities—costume,
behavior, and tone of voice—as well as their jobs.
Inscene two, we see Ricky in the kitchen preparing
breakfast, but the first thing we notice—the audience’s
laughter tells us they noticed it too—is the flowery
apron he’s wearing. Ricky is still wearing the apron in
later scenes that show him ironing and cooking, and
Fred, who occasionally breaks into a thick falsetto,
shows up at various times in an even more elaborate
apron and a turban. The frilly costumes identify Ricky
and Fred’s domestic experiments as women’s work—
there are no masculine clothes for housework,
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ABOUT THE SHOW
because it is not a male function.
Lucy strides into the kitchen for breakfast,
in a reversal of the usual sequence, just as Ricky
finishes putting out the food. Though she doesn’t
wear Ricky’s clothes, she does pick up some of
his behavior. She sits in his place at the breakfast
table, reads the morning paper in such a way that
it blots him out, and ignores his questions. Ricky
gets the message, but the larger point is the way
the sequence turns the tables on Ricky, making him
the subservient one. And then he gets in trouble—
he accepts Lucy’s compliments on the delicious
breakfast, but it turns out that Ricky ordered it from
the corner drugstore after ruining a dozen eggs
trying to cook it himself. It is the first of many failures
on both sides of the job switching experiment.
The largest and most interesting failure
belongs to Lucy and Ethel. The two women are far
less prepared for their foray into the workforce
than the men are for their domestic chores. Ricky
and Fred are at least familiar with the kitchen
and know what an ironing board looks like, but Lucy
and Ethel have washed up on truly foreign shores
when they visit the Acme Employment Agency. Their
visit is certainly funny, but much of the humor comes
from the genuine looks of insecurity, bewilderment,
and fear that cloud Lucy’s and Ethel’s faces. They
have no training, no experience—as Ethel says,
“We don’t know how to do anything.” Being women
limits their options as well. The man at the agency
rattles off a list of positions that includes the
standard assortment of acceptable jobs for women.
“I have a lot of stenographic jobs available,” he
announces cheerily.
All looks grim until he reveals two openings
for candy makers. Lucy responds intuitively and
enthusiastically to the suggestion, her face brightening
immediately, almost like a child’s, as she says, “Oh,
that’s it. That’s our specialty.” Lucy doesn’t really know
anything about candy making, but she is confident
because she senses familiar territory—domestic
territory. With its obvious associations with cooking
and its more subtle associations with a major
preoccupation of childhood—and a symbol of
childishness—the job that takes Lucy and Ethel out
of the domestic sphere essentially returns them to
it; the candy [factory] is called Kramer’s Kandy
Kitchen. Many jobs commonly held by women in the
1950s, like nurse, housekeeper, cook, and teacher,
were extensions of women’s domestic duties.
Despite its name, Kramer’s Kandy Kitchen
is not the place for the 1950s conception of a middleclass married woman. The factory’s lady boss—
severe and angular, with close-cropped hair, no
makeup, a voice like a bark, and no apparent sense of
humor—is almost military in demeanor. She addresses
Lucy and Ethel either individually by their last names
as if they were men or collectively as “girls.” They
learn about their jobs in an “indoctrination session,”
and they wear identical plain uniforms, topped by hats
that conceal their hair. The message taking shape is
that women begin to lose their femininity at the point
at which they enter the working world.
Perhaps the most interesting character at
the candy factory, and maybe in all of “Job Switching,”
is Lucy’s coworker in the dipping department.
This woman is not only thoroughly defeminized but
dehumanized as well, to the point that she seems
literally to have lost her senses. She never speaks;
she doesn’t acknowledge Lucy’s entrance; and she
is utterly oblivious to Lucy’s attempt at conversation.
Her particular task—form balls of dough with one
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I LOVE LUCY
hand while dipping them in chocolate with the other—
would be [difficult] for most people, on the order
of simultaneously rubbing your stomach and patting
your head, but she performs it effortlessly. Lucy,
comically flailing away next to her, is clearly incapable
of it. When Lucy, trying to swat a fly, accidentally
slathers the coworker’s face with chocolate, the
response is automatic and primitive—she slathers
Lucy right back.
In the second factory scene, the boss reassigns
Lucy and Ethel to wrap chocolates on the conveyor
belt. Lucy now responds to the boss with a guttural,
“Yes, sir.” The conveyor belt, of course, moves too
fast for them. They compensate by stuffing the
unwrapped chocolates into their hats, their bras, and,
most significantly, their mouths. Lucy and Ethel are
now back where they began—the sign on the door
behind Lucy reads “Kitchen.” They are literal consumers
who have scammed their way into an industrial
system where they don’t belong, wreaking general
havoc and destroying the crowning symbol of
American industrial achievement—the conveyor belt.
They practically eat the factory.
The episode ends the only way it could have
in 1952, with Lucy and Ethel fired, Ricky and Fred’s
dinner an epic disaster that almost ruins the Ricardo
kitchen, and all four of them back in their usual
clothes. Everyone acknowledges their failures, and
we are safely returned to the status quo. The most
notable aspect of this brief, almost perfunctory scene
is that Ricky and Fred leave their wives a note in which
they again address them as “girls.” And the men give
each of their girls a big box of chocolates. It’s a joke,
and it’s funny, but it is also true that Lucy and Ethel
have come home to resume their roles as oversized
children pledged to love, cherish, cook, clean, dust,
vacuum, honor, and obey.
“Job Switching.” Lucy and Ethel react
negatively to the jobs suggested to them
by the man at the Acme Employment
Agency. Courtesy of Photofest.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
Postwar America
The 1952 world of “Job Switching”
represents an era many Americans
look back to with nostalgia.
Ricky confronts Lucy after she tries
to throw away his old clothes in the
December 7, 1953 episode “Changing
the Boys’ Wardrobe.” Courtesy of
Photofest.
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I LOVE LUCY
Lucy and Ricky’s apartment, complete with the latest
appliances, shows the material wealth middle-class
Americans were accumulating in the aftermath of
World War II. Like other television couples of the era,
the Ricardos and Mertzes epitomized the ideal of
the American family—breadwinning husband and
homemaking wife—a norm “Job Switching” inverts
for laughs but ultimately affirms. The unlocked
apartment doors and casual visits by the neighbors
suggest a simpler, safer world of shared values—
values that were white and middle-class, despite
Ricky’s Cuban background. “Job Switching” is a
window onto the ’50s Americans want to remember,
real enough in its way, but the popularity of the
show, then and now, has also preserved a view of
American life that ignores the traumas of the early
’50s, such as the cold war and accompanying
Red Scare, and the hot war in Korea, and also omits
those Americans—black, poor, Hispanic, Native
American—who didn’t fit the idealized pattern.
Post–World War II America was, by many
measures, at the height of its power and influence
in the world. The United States had led its allies
to a hard-fought victory against the Germans and
Japanese in 1945; convinced other countries to
join the newly formed United Nations, located in New
York; provided postwar aid through the Marshall
Plan to get Western Europe back on its feet; and
successfully defended the Greek government against
Communist insurgents. No other country came
close to the U.S. in military spending or conventional
weapons capability.
On the home front, the members of the
“Greatest Generation” were reaping the rewards of
their efforts. Millions took advantage of government
programs that provided college educations to war
veterans, fueling the explosion of a new middle class.
Home from the war, soldiers married and moved
to burgeoning suburbs, some with mass-produced
homes affordable to newly affluent buyers, who
were predominantly white, married, and young. The
resources once devoted to producing war materiel
were turned to making products for consumers whose
real wages, on average, were rising. By 1952, Americans
were enjoying the highest standard of living in the
world. They equipped their new dream houses with
the latest labor-saving devices—washing machines,
dryers, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators—and, of
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HISTORICALBACKGROUND
BACKGROUND
HISTORICAL
Women working in a chicken cannery, 1950.
Ariel view of Levittown, NY, 1949. Developer William
Levitt, “the builder who practically invented the
modern suburbs,” began building this community, on
what had been potato fields, in 1948. By 1951, 17,311
nearly identical houses had been built there, and
World War II veterans could purchase the $7,900,
800-square-foot houses for no money down and $65
a month. Courtesy of Levittown Public Library.
course, the technological wonder that would eventually
transform the American home: the television.
When “Job Switching” aired, television was
in the middle of its takeover of the American living
room. In just the two years since 1950, the number
of households with television sets had risen from five
million to more than fifteen million. TV Guide soon
became America’s best-selling periodical, and I Love
Lucy its favorite weeknight entertainment.
In 1952, televisions had—at most—seven
channels, and everyone watched the same programs
at the same time. What they saw reinforced the
mainstream ideals of the day. Television reflected the
generally cheery outlook of white, middle-class
society—due partly to the production code the nation’s
major radio and television broadcasters had imposed
on themselves in 1951 and partly to the economics
of production. The TV code prohibited mention of any
subjects that might violate the “highest standards
of respect for the American home,” recognizing in
particular the “special needs of children.” Popular
shows could not even portray characters who were
divorced! The three main networks, NBC, ABC, and
CBS, treated their audiences as one undifferentiated
mass. So did their shows’ corporate sponsors. Then
as now, advertisers sought to avoid issues that might
antagonize potential customers.
In the political and cultural climate of 1952,
the only “safe” subject was wholesome family values.
White, Anglo-Saxon nuclear families dominated
theairwaves on such shows as Father Knows Best
(1954–1960). TV wives were zany and submissive,
husbands hardworking, and children clean-cut and
obedient. TV families lived well, and nothing truly
bad happened to them. Lassie, a hero collie with her
own TV following from 1954 into the ‘70s, always
saved the day. Ethnic or regional differences barely
existed—the Aranazes’ getting (not without difficulty)
CBS to accept Desi as Lucy’s husband is the exeption
that proves the rule.
Women and Family Life
Though Lucy and other shows presented the division
of male and female roles at home as timeless, the ‘50s
actually represented a reversal in a long American
movement toward greater rights for women. The war
years had seen tremendous new opportunities for
women as men joined the military. Labor shortages
in wartime industries allowed women to fill jobs
previously considered too rigorous for them. The
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I LOVE LUCY
media heralded female riveters and welders in defense
plants as patriots. After the war, most women lost
their high-paying, skilled jobs to returning veterans.
A backlash began that would last until the ‘60s and
the arrival in the mainstream of feminism—itself
a reaction to the stiffling attitudes of the ‘50s. Family
life, which had been interrupted by the war, became
the focus of American culture. As Betty Friedman
later wrote, “The suburban husewife was the dream
image of the young American woman...She was
healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about
her husband, her children, and her home.”
Psychologists, educators, magazine writers,
even moviemakers and advertisers of the ’50s all
agreed that no job was more exacting, more necessary,
or more rewarding than that of housewife and
mother. Any woman who wanted more from life than
domesticityseemed neurotic and unfeminine. Schools
taught girls typing, cooking, and etiquette, while
boys took classes in carpentry and auto mechanics.
The percentage of women in college was smaller
than it had been in the ’20s or ’30s, and the number
of women pursuing advanced degrees also declined.
If women had to work—and of course, many of them
did—the jobs available to them were low-paying
“women’s work.” Women were typically cleaners,
secretaries, receptionists, and nurses; they still
maintained full responsibility for child care and
domestic chores at home, and few thought of their
jobs as careers. The gap between average wages for
men and women in the U.S. was the greatest in the
industrialized world.
The children of those newly domesticated
women became the baby boom generation. Delayed
marriages, wartime separations, and economic
hardships before and during World War II resulted,
after 1945, in the greatest surge of births ever seen
in the U.S. In 1952, the American birth rate reached
a new high. Lucille Ball had baby number two in
real life in early 1953—and Lucy Ricardo had a son
on the show. During the 1956–57 season, the
Ricardos moved to the suburbs, like many middleclass Americans of the era. The new suburban
communities really were ethnically and racially
homogeneous, and many baby boomers spent
their childhoods sheltered from the fears and
injustices that permeated American life in the ’50s.
The Cold War
In 1952, the U.S. was at war in Korea—a war that
commentators now refer to as the Forgotten War.
During the three-year conflict to preserve the
independence of South Korea from the Communist
North Korea, more than 36,000 American military
personnel died, and 100,000 more were wounded.
The war was just the latest front in the cold war
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
That contest for worldwide hegemony began in
1946 and did not really end until 1989, with the collapse
of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. In 1952, many
Americans feared the Soviets might be winning.
The U.S. seemed to lack clout commensurate with
its world leadership—in 1949, it had “lost” China to
the Communists, according to propaganda widely
accepted in the American press, and then the
Soviets developed their own nuclear bomb, with
missiles to deliver it. The threat of nuclear war
was ever-present. It’s hard to recapture the fear
Americans lived with in the midst of their ’50s
prosperity—fear of destruction raining on them from
the sky. It inspired schools to teach children to hide
under their desks in case of nuclear attack, and
later in the decade led to a craze for useless but
impressive-looking fallout shelters.
Many Americans were also afraid that
“godless Communism” would spread from its half of
the world and smother their freedoms. Politicians
made their careers exploiting voters’ paranoia about
Communist infiltration of American institutions—
from the State Department to Hollywood. Senator
Joseph R. McCarthy first discovered the political
benefits of making wild accusations of Communist
influence on those institutions, and the fledgling
congressman (later president) Richard M. Nixon first
made a name for himself as one such “red-baiter.”
Somehow, the lure of Communism seemed so
potent that voters believed, among other things,
that allowing performers with hidden Communist
sympathies to write for or appear on American
movie and TV screens would undermine “true”
American values.
Congressional committees demanded that
targeted Americans defend their political beliefs at
public hearings. Government employees lost their
jobs; screenwriters were blacklisted; teachers in thirtytwo states had to take loyalty oaths. Even Lucille
Ball was not immune to scrutiny. In 1953, Congressman
15
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Elliott Erwitt, Young Mother, New Rochelle, NY, 1955.
Courtesy of Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos.
In I Love Lucy’s final season, Lucy, Ricky, and Little
Ricky move into this suburban house in Westport,
Connecticut. Courtesy of Photofest.
Donald L. Jackson of the House Un-American
Activities Committee announced that Ball had
registered to vote in a 1936 Communist Party primary
election. She made a public apology and explained
she’d done it only to keep her deluded grandfather
“happy in his declining years.” Ball and I Love Lucy
weathered the storm. Her advertisers continued to
back her, and the show’s ratings held.
Racism and Segregation
That wasn’t the first time that Ball had encountered
difficulties because of the social and cultural norms
of ’50s middle-class, white America. CBS’s initial
refusal to cast Desi Arnaz as her on-screen husband,
on the grounds that the television audience would
not accept the two of them as a couple, reflected the
laws of the time. When Ball married Arnaz, thirty of
the forty-eight states in the Union forbade interracial
marriage. Indeed, blacks, Asians, Native Americans,
and Hispanics routinely encountered discrimination
from “mainstream” Americans, who in the 1950s
still practiced—and justified—racial segregation.
Nonwhites were second-class citizens in their own
country, with African Americans singled out in
particular. All the former slave states in the South,
plus Oklahoma, legalized the social separation
of whites and blacks in every public facility from
buses, hotels, and restaurants to schools, libraries,
and even drinking fountains. Few blacks could
register to vote. In the North, de facto segregation
existed—blacks lived mainly in their own
neighborhoods, often with substandard housing,
and performed largely menial jobs, except for a small
number of professionals: doctors, lawyers, ministers,
and teachers, often educated in traditionally black
universities, who worked within the black community.
Some cracks were beginning to appear in the
wall of racial prejudice by 1952. Jackie Robinson,
the first black man to play for a major-league baseball
team in more than sixty years, had by then been
leading the Dodgers to win National League pennants
for five seasons. Yet he still faced the opprobrium of
other players and fans—nor could he, in many parts of
the country, stay in the same hotel as the white
members of his team. The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People had already begun
its legal assault, led by Charles Hamilton Houston
and Thurgood Marshall, on segregation in education.
They brought cases that would lead, in 1954, to the
Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education,
16
I LOVE LUCY
which declared racial segregation in schools
unconstitutional. Only a year later, Rosa Parks would
refuse to sit in the back of a segregated bus in
Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott
and bringing a young minister named Martin Luther
King, Jr. to national prominence at the start of a
protracted struggle for African-American political
and social equality.
The difficulties faced by nonwhite people in
America in the ’50s, like those faced by working
women, rarely appeared in America’s living rooms
on prime-time entertainment television. Black
characters on white shows were servants, like Beulah
and Rochester, or foolish buffoons, such as Amos
and Andy—whose show originated on the radio with
white actors voicing the two black protagonists.
And despite Ball’s professional success, Lucy Ricardo
remained a housewife who could only dream of
having a show-business career of her own. The
portrayal of a safe, conformist, even childlike
white America in “Job Switching” reveals it as a
product of its time.
Above: From the New York Times, Sunday, October 26, 1952. The Help Wanted—
Female listings were half as long as the Help Wanted—Male ones.
QUESTIONS FOR
DISCUSSION
I Love Lucy was a national phenomenon in 1952.
What do you think made it so popular? Can you
think of any show that is on television today that
is a “national phenomenon”? If so, how is the
show—and the popular response to the show—
similar to or different from I Love Lucy?
CBS originally refused to cast Desi Arnaz as Lucille
Ball’s husband. Why? If I Love Lucy were being made
today, do you think the network would resist casting
Arnaz? Why or why not?
Left: 7Up display advertising card, c. 1950. The perfect
TV family is watching Kukla, Fran & Ollie 1947-1957.
According to the guide, “the characters switch
aspects of each other’s identities,” as well as
their jobs. What does this mean? What examples
does the guide give? Is the “job switching”
experiment successful?
17
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
I Love Lucy presents an idealized view of American
life in the ’50s. According to the guide, what conflicts,
events, and social issues does the show ignore or
omit? Think of a popular sitcom on television today.
Does it depict contemporary life accurately? If not,
what does it leave out?
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SCREENING
AMERICA
Screening America is a curriculum-based education program that uses films and television episodes to assist in the
teaching of English, social studies, and English as a second language.
Gail Sussman Marcus, history consultant.
Support for the Museum’s education programs is generously provided by Marc Haas Foundation, The McGraw-Hill
Companies, and Michael Tuch Foundation. Screening America takes place in the Celeste and Armand Bartos
Screening Room of the Ann and Andrew Tisch Education Center. Major support for the Museum’s new education
center has been provided by The Andrew and Ann Tisch Foundation, Mahnaz and Adam Bartos, Leon and
Michaela Constantiner, HBO, Burton Lawrence London, the National Endowment for the Humanities,
Michael and Gabrielle Palitz, and the William Fox, Jr. Foundation. The Museum is housed in a building
owned by the City of New York and receives vital funding for annual operations from the New York
City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional public support for the Museum’s programs
is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, New York State Council
on the Arts, and the Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State
Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation).