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Read along as Lucille Ball’s staff writer Madelyn Pugh Davis shares priceless moments behind the scenes of I Love Lucy.
I love Lucy. You love Lucy. We all love Lucy. At any time, day or night, I Love Lucy is on TV somewhere in the world—which means that, 24 hours a day, Lucille Ball is speaking the words that Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote.
One of television’s groundbreaking female writers, Madelyn helped shape the landscape of American comedy. As Lucille Ball’s staff writer for nearly 50 years—spanning I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life with Lucy—Madelyn was responsible for thousands of hours of classic TV. Many of the story elements used on the shows were, in fact, taken from Madelyn’s own life and immortalized by Ball’s comic genius.
This compelling memoir offers an unprecedented glimpse into the golden age of television comedy, celebrating the power of laughter, creativity, and perseverance in shaping American entertainment. Madelyn and her long-time writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr., share with you their favorite memories from crafting the stories for Lucy, Desi, and cast. In Laughing with Lucy, you’ll learn about
- the scramble to address Ball’s real-life pregnancy on the show without using the “p” word
- behind-the-scenes, painstaking work to create “spontaneous” jokes
- how, whenever an elaborate physical comedy gag was devised, Madelyn had to act it out first to be sure that a woman could perform it
- Madelyn’s and Bob’s fond memories of the partnership between Lucille Ball, the consummate perfectionist, and Desi Arnaz, the charmer
Experience television’s greatest era through the eyes of a pioneering woman writer. In Laughing with Lucy, Madelyn looks back with wit and affection on her many years working with Lucy, Desi, and other entertainment legends—and the adventures that came her way.
Madelyn Pugh Davis and her writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr., have been in the entertainment business for more than 50 years. Together they have written more than 400 television shows—all the I Love Lucy shows as well as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, Life with Lucy, and The Mothers-in-Law—and about 300 radio shows. They have produced more than 200 television shows.
Davis and Carroll were Executive Producers on the Private Benjamin and Alice TV series, and they also wrote for Steve Allen, Debbie Reynolds, Dorothy Loudon, and Dinah Shore.
Davis and Carroll are two-time Emmy nominees for their work on I Love Lucy, and they received a Golden Globe Award as the producers of Alice. In 2001, UCLA Film School honored Davis with a Lifetime Achievement in Television Writing.
One: Don’t You Have a Better Joke Than That?
Two: But I Wanted to Be a Foreign Correspondent
Three: Worse Than Married
Four: The Cuban Arm
Five: Lucy Isn’t Pregnant, She’s Expecting
Six: California, Here We Come
Seven: You Wouldn’t Fit in, You’re a Girl
Eight: Bon Voyage
Nine: Our Longest Laugh
Ten: The Mertzes (or as Desi Called Them, “The Merzes”)
Eleven: What’s New?
Twelve: Did You Really Try out All Those Stunts?
Thirteen: I’m Going over to the Pope’s House
Fourteen: Your Show’s Only Half an Hour; What Do You Do the Rest of the Week?
Fifteen: Don’t Step on the Children
Sixteen: Who Am I?
Seventeen: Who’s the Pushy Broad at the End of the Table?
Afterword
Index
About the Authors