Trivia I just learned yesterday about I Love Lucy reruns:
William Frawley’s contract stipulated he was to be paid full residuals into perpetuity- unheard of for a supporting actor today though they were still making the rules at the time (and Audrey Meadows had a similar arrangement for The Honeymooners). The only reason that his estate is not paid for every airing of every episode of I Love Lucy to this day is because Desilu bought back the residual rights from his heirs (nephews and nieces as he had no kids) in the late 1960s for a considerable sum (but one that still saved them a fortune in the long run).
When Frawley died, Arnaz bought a full page ad in the Hollywood Reporter that said “Buenas Noches, Amigo!”, which I always thought was a nice gesture.
Vivian Vance hated Frawley in real life , partly because she was so much younger than him (22 years). She thought they should have hired a younger actor.
Vance had a point. The show took pains to make her seem much older than she was. I always got the impression that she was easily in Frawley’s decade when I saw it in syndication as a kid.
I Love Lucy (1951-1957) may have pointed the way for other series with Hispanic actors/characters: Zorro (1957-1959) and The Real McCoys (1957-1963, a Danny Thomas production).
Robert Stack was interviewed once about The Untouchables and joked that by the end they were fighting “Esperanto crimelords” because Italians, Sicilians, Cubans, Chinese, and everybody else swamped the Desilu offices whenever they had a villain of that ethnicity on the show (even when it was a real figure like Capone). Desi got fed up and started changing their names to some unidentifiable origin.
Hispanics weren’t really considered a seperate “racial” category in the '50s, at least outside of Texas & the Southwest. They more in the funny foreigner category like Italians (Arnaz’s character in The Long, Long Trailer was Italian). It helped that the Arzazes were aristocratic criollos of pure Spanish descent. Lucy and Desi’s marriage was valid throughout the Union.
I don’t remember there being any Blacks on I Love Lucyat all, save for the Pullman porter on the train when they came back from Hollywood.
IIRC she was in a restaurant when she got news of his death and responded by buying everyone champagne. After I Love Lucy ended a spinoff centered on the Mertzes (presumably moving back to NYC) was proposed; Frawley was all for it, Vance wouldn’t even consider it.
Vance and Ball didn’t like eachother at first, but grew to be close friends. Vance’s two major conditions for being on The Lucy Show were; to wear fashionable & properly fitted clothing (on ILL her costumes were fitted to make her look fat), and that her character’s first name be Vivian (she was sick of people calling her Ethel in public).
Arnaz and Frawley were birds of a feather. Frawley could barely find work because he was a known alcoholic. He promised Desi he’d always show up on time and sober, and apparently he did. Desi himself was mistrusted later in life because of his increased drinking. In the convoluted world of trivial connections it all gets tied back to Frawley years earlier on Broadway singing the tune Melancholy Baby, and a drunken Damon Runyon in the audience repeatedly calling out “Sing Melancholy Baby” through the rest of the performance, making it a common drunken meme for many years.
Amazing, in an industry of raving egomaniacs and eternal feuds!
I also thought she was the same age - what is the female version of avuncular?
I think that her being upset at being typecast as the older avuncular female role is pretty normal. I would hate it [if I were an actor] if everybody thought I was in my 50s or 60s when I was in my 30s. Imagine only getting offered that kind of supporting elder woman role when you are just past the ingenue age. Sort of a female Abe Vigoda.
The novelist Frank Yerby, one of the bestselling writers of the mid 20th century, was from Georgia and his ancestry was “all of the above” and his looks reflected it; if you went by percentages most of his ancestors were European and Native American with some African thrown in, which of course by the the laws of Georgia meant he was 100% black.
He described going on a road trip to California and into various diners and sometimes being asked “Are you Mexican or [black]?”, because Mexicans they could serve but blacks they couldn’t. He said that his answer tended to depend on how hungry he was.
He finally got fed up with the U.S. in the 1960s due largely to racism (and for personal reasons- divorce, taxes, etc.) and moved to Spain, where he said in later interviews nobody particularly cared about his racial make-up and for the first time ever he was treated as just an American.
See, he’s a Black guy writing romances, and your average Southern dumb ass would be expected to say, “Gee, I had no idea that he was Black”, being all cool, but sounding stupid, as, “Gee, I didn’t know that Black fellers could write books”, so…NM.
That is the one I recall. They are about to get on the train. I believe Lucy runs off and he asks the Conductor or Porter, “Hey boy, when does the train leave?” or something like that.
Sam McDaniel (had to look that up), who looked even more Georgian than Frank Yerby. His career was a good example of (paraphrasing Hattie McDaniel) "I can be a porter for $5 a week, or play one for $50 a week.
His career was a good example of (paraphrasing Hattie McDaniel) "I can be a porter for $5 a week, or play one for $50 a week.