Loving Lucy at 50

Jennifer K Mahal

That red hair. Those big, mascara-rimmed eyes. That raucous laugh. How

could anyone not love Lucille Ball? With her impish smile and screwball

antics, she won the hearts of audiences week after week from 1951 to 1957

with her top-rated TV show, “I Love Lucy.”

A 50th anniversary “experience” at the Orange County Fair ($3, $2 for

children) pays homage to the princess of pratfalls and her merry band

(Desi Arnaz, William Frawley and Vivian Vance) with re-creations of the

original show’s sets, photos and memorabilia from a number of collections

-- including those of Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie Arnaz -- and games

featuring moments from favorite episodes.

At a press preview, Gregg Oppenheimer, son of “I Love Lucy” creator

Jess Oppenheimer, tried the “Job Switching” game, in which participants

have to wrap fake chocolates coming down a conveyor belt.

“I was so bad at it, the box of papers ended up going in the conveyor

belt,” Oppenheimer said.

Other games include the Vitameatavegemin pitch and “Lucy’s Italian

Movie,” which encourages patrons to stomp really hard on a

pressure-sensitive plate inside a fake wine vat.

The games will be videotaped for an anniversary special to be

broadcast Oct. 15 on CBS.

Lucy impersonator Suzanne La Rusch will wander through the fairgrounds

on 10 of the fair’s 17 days.

“I’ll be over by the hog-calling contest,” said the ringer, who has

been painting her lips into Lucy’s kewpie-doll style for 10 years.

Through its six seasons on air, “I Love Lucy” never ranked lower than

third in the ratings. Reruns can still be seen on television most

mornings.

“It’s timeless and will make people laugh forever,” Oppenheimer said.

“It was an excellent comedy.”

He smiles. “And the writing was good too.”

A number of classic Lucy moments were inspired by things that happened

in the Oppenheimer family. When Ethel cuts Lucy’s spaghetti with a pair

of scissors during a nonchalant lunch -- featuring William Holden -- at

the Brown Derby, Oppenheimer is reminded of his mother.

“Mom carries scissors in her purse,” he said. “That’s where Dad got

the idea.”

Then there is the episode in which Ricky thinks he’s going bald,

inspired by the time Jess Oppenheimer had that same thought.

“If you look in the script [where] it notes that Lucy uses the scalp

agitator [on Ricky], it says ‘See the producer. He endured this scene at

the start of what became a rather becoming lack of hair,”’ Gregg

Oppenheimer said.

The other writers around the table -- Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob

Carroll Jr., joined in 1955 by the writing team of Bob Weiskopf and Bob

Schiller -- also provided Jess Oppenheimer with creative inspiration.

“Every time someone would order something, Carroll would change his

order,” Gregg Oppenheimer said. “That became the ‘Lucy changes her mind’

episode.”

Schiller said he never talks about the show without complimenting the

original writing team.

“They sure deserve a lot of credit,” Schiller said. “We never worked

at night and never worked weekends. The characters were so well-defined

-- a little cliche -- that they wrote themselves.”

The writer, who was partly responsible for the infamous grape-stomping

episode, called Lucille Ball “the queen of comedy.’

“There was nobody better,” Schiller said.