Free I Love Lucy: The Untold Story by Jess Oppenheimer, Gregg Oppenheimer Page A

who could understand and relate to the problems they were seeing on thescreen. They’d just be happy that this time it was happening to somebody else instead of to them. In my opinion, the funniest single line ever uttered on I Love Lucy was when Lucy summed up in an epigram what happens to a lot of marriages: “Since we said, ‘I do,’ there are so many things we don’t.” The line was not particularly funny in itself, but it gave viewers a sudden, deep insight into themselves—a shock, relieved by laughter.
    We tried never to get too far away from basic human behavior. We composed a list of common problems that most viewers face: diet, money, noisy neighbors, business competition, and so on. Sometimes we’d go through the list until one of these topics provided a springboard for a script.
    Of course, if you look hard enough, you can find humor even in the unlikeliest of situations. My favorite example involved Lester White, a veteran comedy writer for Bob Hope and others, who succumbed to cancer a few years ago at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. After lengthy treatment, Lester’s doctor finally visited him in his room one day and gave him the grim prognosis: the doctor could not predict how long Lester had to live—he could go at any moment.
    “I’m sorry Les,” the doctor concluded. “All we can do is try to make you as comfortable as possible for your remaining time.”
    After the doctor left, as Lester sat in his room contemplating his fate, a nurse entered to take his vital signs. This particular nurse happened to be extremely heavy; she must have weighed at least 300 pounds. Lester just stared at her as she moved around the room, busying herself with taking his temperature, checking his blood pressure, refilling his pitcher of ice water, fluffing his pillow. Her chores done, she stood at the foot of the bed and addressed Lester. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. White?”
    Lester looked at the enormously fat nurse standing before him and said, “For God’s sake—don’t sing.”
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    In writing I Love Lucy we tried never to get too far away from basic human behavior.  We composed a list of common problems that most viewers face: diet, money, noisy neighbors, business competition, and so on.  And sometimes we would go through that list until one of the topics provided a springboard for a script.
    Other story ideas would come from our personal experiences, including the “Passports” show, based on my mother’s passport troubles, and “Ricky Thinks He’s Getting Bald,” which grew out of my own experiments with baldness cures.
    My wife, Es, used to hate the sloppy old clothes that I wore around the house. There was one particularly awful-looking pair of beat-up old tennis shoes that she kept asking me to throw away, and I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. She finally found a way to stop me from wearing them. She took one of the shoes from the closet and had it bronzed.
    We never actually had Lucy bronze Ricky’s shoes on I Love Lucy. But we did do a show called “Changing the Boys’ Wardrobe,” in which Lucy and Ethel get so fed up with Ricky’s and Fred’s worn-out old clothes that they sell them to a used clothing store.

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    Photo caption (next page):
    Lucy asked me to join in this publicity shot for "Ricky Thinks He's Getting Bald," which was based on my own experience with losing my hair.

    Another time, when Bob and Madelyn and I went to lunch together, Madelyn ordered a ham sandwich. And then Bob ordered veal chops. Before I could give the waiter my order, Madelyn said, “Wait a minute. That sounds good. I’ll have the veal chops.” And then as soon as I gave my order—for roast beef, Madelyn said, “Ooh, wait. Forget the veal chops—I’ll have the roast beef instead.”That lunch inspired a segment of My Favorite Husband entitled “Liz Changes Her Mind,” in which Liz drives a waiter crazy by constantly changing