The Legend of Lucille Ball

Lucy Ricardo: [Lucy gets caught spying on the neighbors] I was, uh... bird-watching!

Ricky Ricardo: Bird-watching?

Lucy Ricardo: Uh, yeah! Do you know that there's a yellow-bellied woodpecker on our lawn?

Ricky Ricardo: No, but I know that there's a red-headed cuckoo in the living room.

I was a feminist academic, had published about intersectional feminism, lectured about the history of feminist thought, researched the lives of marginalised women. My feminism is still central to who I am. And I love I Love Lucy.

But Rachel, isn’t I Love Lucy a gentle domestic comedy, now just a nostalgia piece about a stay at home mother married to an ambitious entertainer, who says things like?

“I don’t want my wife in show business… I want a wife who is just a wife…”

Well, settle in. I see it differently.

You see being a funny woman is subversive. As Carol Burnett says:

“If you’re a woman, it’s difficult to break through the barrier of having others accept you as funny. There’s all that training you’ve had since you were three. Be a lady! Don’t yell or try to be funny. Just be a nice little girl. Sit quietly with your knees close together and speak only when you’re spoken to. Women are afraid to make themselves unattractive. I’m not afraid of that, goodness knows!”

And neither was Lucille Ball.

Being a housewife who plots to escape domesticity, tramples grapes, and gets drunk icing cakes is quietly revolutionary.

The Queen of the B Movies had failed to secure stardom while with RKO and MGM in the 1930s and 1940s. So, Lucille Ball, like many film actors of the era turned to radio to supplement her income. My Favourite Husband was the radio programme which helped to launch Ball as the comedic housewife who performed well in front of an audience.

In 1950, Ball was approached by CBS to do a TV version. Ball seized upon the idea as a way of working with her husband, Desi Arnaz. CBS executives didn’t think an audience would buy the notion of an All-American girl with a Cuban night-club performer as her husband. But Ball was determined to prove them wrong by putting together a Vaudeville act with her husband to prove its potential popularity. It worked. And this was a quietly revolutionary act, which put a mixed race couple at the centre of the action.

I Love Lucy is often seen as a byword for cosy domesticity, but it was always on the edge of something more tantalising.

Technologically it pioneered the art of the television sitcom, by filming in front of a live audience, shooting with three cameras and the action in sequence.

Although it followed the blueprint of situation comedy (peaceful situation, confounding action, denouement, nothing radically changes), it bought something very new to the screen – pregnancy.

Lucille Ball appeared on the small screen pregnant with her second child, which was written into the script. When Lucy delivered “Little Ricky” in an episode called “Lucy goes to hospital”, 44 million viewers tuned in. The timing coincided with her own delivery of Desi Arnaz Jnr. The word pregnancy was never mentioned during the series. Lucy was only ever described as ‘expecting’ but it was an important milestone for the representation of motherhood on screen.

There is no denying, however, that most episodes are variations of Ricky telling his wife:

“I want my wife to be a wife. I want you to bring me my slippers when I go back home, prepare my dinner and raise my children.”

Lucy was condemned to be a failed performer in each episode. (Yes, the irony. She gives appalling auditions, proving her comedic sensibilities).

But even under this plot there is the quiet sense of the frustrations and fantasies of millions of housewives. The domestic malaise of Friedan’s “the problem with no name” in The Feminine Mystique is there in disguised comedic form. Her vaudeville turns makes the boredom of changing sheets, childcare and cooking bearable.

Ethel Mertz: There's lots of things you're good at.

Lucy Ricardo: Like what?

Ethel Mertz: Well, you're awfully good at... uh... You've always been great at...

Lucy Ricardo: Those are the same ones Ricky came up with.

The Arnaz-Ball marriage was hardly fairy-tale. It was two people in love who did not always demonstrate it, especially Arnaz known for his drinking and womanizing, that eventually led to their divorce.

But a further innovation was the interplay between ‘real’ and ‘reel’ life as a 1953 Look magazine article called it. There is a self-awareness and reflexivity that pre-shadows The Office and Fleabag sly looks to camera. Lucy states Ricky needs a “pretty girl” in his show, and we know that she is the “pretty girl” that he needs. Her incredible face-pulling and awkward physicality both undermine and underline her prettiness.

Of course, I might also love Lucy, because, like me, she is a red head. Tango Red hair dye chosen for the technicolour of the 1940s. Red hair is in opposition to the dumb blonde and the smart brunette. It is the odd, madcap, unconventional choice of the kook.

Ball’s red hair had another particular connotation in the 1950s entertainment world. In 1936 Ball had registered interest with the Communist party and this act led her to be questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. Ball was cleared of suspicion when she explained she only did it to please her socialist grandfather, but the suspicion was still reported as fact in the Los Angeles Herald Express with the headline in bold and red LUCILLE BALL NAMED RED.

The power of HUAC was such that the merest suggestion of communist leanings could ruin careers. But Lucille Ball was one of the few to weather the storm relatively unscathed. On the night of that headline, Arnaz warmed up the studio audience with his usual jokes. But he also gave a serious speech about the dangers of communism, relaying his own flight from Cuba. The crowd cheered when he ended with – “My favourite redhead – in fact that’s the only thing red about her, and even that’s not legitimate – Lucille Ball!”

Lucy Ricardo: Ricky, we're revolting.

Ricky Ricardo: No more than usual.

I’m not claiming wholesale violent revolution when I watch I Love Lucy. It feels safe. But a part of that safety comes from seeing something I often miss on screen – a woman allowed to be funny, foolish, clever, manipulative and centre stage. She is no sidekick. She is a quiet, disarming revolution. And that is why I Love Lucy.