If she had had kids younger if she had gotten pregnant for a third time if she had been younger let's say in season four would they have given the Ricardos two kids sorta like on Bewithched or probably ended the show?
sharePlease, one kid was enough.
shareI highly doubt it. This show should've probably never introduced a kid in the first place. If Lucille Ball hadn't gotten pregnant in real life, there most likely would have been no Little Ricky. It wasn't intended to be the same type of show like Leave It To Beaver or The Brady Bunch that dealt with families with children. It was about two couples who were best friends and got into crazy situations. There's a reason why we rarely saw Little Ricky when he was a baby. He was always either sleeping or with Mrs. Trumble. I think it worked a little better when he was older and they started including him in the storylines more. But even then, he wasn't featured nearly as much as the adults were.
shareI highly doubt it. This show should've probably never introduced a kid in the first place.
I agree. I mean, I understand why they wanted to include Lucille's pregnancy in the show. But it's almost as if once the pregnancy part was over with, they didn't know what to do with the baby after that lol. They didn't want to change the format of the show to revolve around a kid, so instead they continued as usual and just threw the baby in there every once in a while so that we all knew he still existed. Like I said, it seemed to change a bit once he was older and could actually contribute to the storylines. A few episodes were even built around him, like the one about the school play, his birthday party where Superman showed up and when he played the drums
shareI agree. I mean, I understand why they wanted to include Lucille's pregnancy in the show.
I don't know if they thought it "would be nice" to incorporate her pregnancy because they thought the show was over since pregnancy was rarely addressed on TV (actually it had only been shown once before). The idea was Jess Oppenheimer's to incorporate the baby into the show. Hiding her would not have worked very well, she looked quite large when she was pregnant and the outfits she wore made her look like a house. But they made TV history by her having the baby, someone had to do it. They did it with Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched too.
shareSorry, I'm not buying. It was totally natural for Lucy and Ricky to have a baby,
and as the series went into season two, I highly doubt Ball's second pregnancy
was an "accident." I'm sure they were "trying." Lucy and Desi were control
freaks and wouldn't have let something like that happen through sheer
serendipity.
Bringing in a baby brought in story ideas, and while I'm hardly a fan of
the so-called pregnancy "classics" (Lucy's trying to tell Ricky she's
pregnant is a total snooze-fest to me; the birth of Little Ricky is almost
as tedious), Little Ricky RARELY interfered with all the great seasons
that followed.
Sure, in season six, we get a few clunkers ("Little Ricky Gets Stage Fright"),
but we also get the Superman episode and several others. He's also a good
plot device for Mrs. Trumble (an adorable character) and for some of the
country eps (he and Bruce hide all those chickens!). For the most part,
the writers were very clever to not let Little Ricky interfere.
Little Ricky solidified Ricky and Lucy's marriage, and he made the Ricardos and
Mertz's permanently bonded, due to the latter being God parents. LR was also
responsible for some hilarious eps with Caroline, like "Baby Pictures."
He may not have been the most important character on the show, but like The
Dick Van Dyke Show, the series would've been missing some serious bonding
and character development without a child in the house.
Gbennett, if the At Home With Lucy & Desi piece is available anywhere, I think you would like it.
There are some great early shots of each of them, and their children provide commentary.
Ball was really huge during pregnancies and she had several misses. She remarried Dexi in a church at his mother's behest. Mama felt they weren't blessed with children because to her, a civil marriage was invalid in God's eyes.
It is an endearing, yet sad look at them. Both aged badly. But the last shots are home movies of her and Desi in a pool, romping with one of their grandchildren. Even though remarried to others, the love emanates from them.
"I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me..."
Hiding her would not have worked very well, she looked quite large when she was pregnant and the outfits she wore made her look like a house.I agree. Hiding her pregnancy with all the routines she had to do would have been impossible. It wasn't a soap.
Little Ricky RARELY interfered with all the great seasonsAgreed. Somebody on the board is obsessed and bitter over the poor kid. share
that followed
Little Ricky was harmless in part because he was so young. Contrast him with the Lucy Show kids: the daughter who was always overacting, the Fred Mertz-like son who thought he was funnier than he really was, and the bland blond kid. All of them dull as dishwater, and always shouting their lines at the top of their lungs.
shareDisagree here, as well. As much as I'm no fan of Ball's later series, the kids
were well-cast. How many kids could pull off what "Jerry" did?? He had
excellent timing. I thought Candy Moore was cute and Ralph Hart totally
believable. Both of the boys were far more effective than Keith, who played
LR. He played the drums, was cute, and smirked. That was it.
TLS was tolerable in its first year, but became increasingly lamer in its
second and third seasons. By the time Vance left, it was a mess. And for
us, as an audience, to buy that Lucy C would put her kids in "boarding school",
and move out to L.A. so she could work for abusive Mooney was nonsense. Just
big-name stars, stale scripts, and Ball shouting every line, every week, every
season.
Yeah, Lucy pleased CBS in the ratings. But art was nowhere to be found.
Who knew Little Ricky ran away from home and went to live in Mayberry and became one of of Opie Taylor's best friends? And who could blame him, having such a lunatic of a mother?
shareGubbio, I'm going to voice my opinion about your thought that they could have used "high camera angles" and have her hide behind furniture."
I don't believe they could have truly done that in this sort of series, the way it was filmed, in the early 1950s. Had they filmed like a movie, with cameras filming a wide shot, then moving about for close-ups of the different lines, etc., it would have been possible. But they filmed with three cameras and there were no zoom lenses then. To get a close up--they needed to have whole camera move in close to the actor(s). Now they did move them around during the filming, but we rarely saw any closeups of any actors here, particularly when all four principle actors were in the room together. Having a camera in tight on Lucy would have interfered with other camera shots showing the others.
Possible your way? Perhaps, but it would have been quite awkward to stage it and that leads into more expenses and we all know how they carefully tried to keep costs down.
Why don't we just shoot 'em down and be through with it?
When they filmed the pilot for Season 1, Lucille was still recovering from Lucie's birth and that is why she was in slightly loose clothing or robes the first fewf episodes (she had both children via C-section and back then, it was a more complicated and painful recovery than the way the surgery is done now).
From the books I have read about the show, even while it was a hit, they were still worrying that it might not be picked up for another season and then Lucille found out she was pregnant again. With the prospect of perhaps losing the show's sponsors, they decided to write in the pregnancy and the network gave them a lot of problems. Arnaz went through hoop after hoop and made his point and won.
I have a DVD about the Arnazes that is like a "Home Movie" narrated by their daughter. It includes actual footage shot at their ranchito while Ball was pregnant and trust me, the maternity clothes she wore on the show were not just to cover her: she was huge during her pregnancies and in the footage she actually shows part of her stomach. She was one of those women whose pregnancies were heavy ones, yet she worked hard to spring back because playing Lucy was an incredibly physically demanding job considering some of the stunts and fancy legwork involved.
"I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me..."
Well said. And let's not forget, Lucy was FORTY when all this began (babies,
the series). Ball was such a trailblazer for older women.