Who's on First?
by Jess Oppenheimer
(from "Laughs, Luck...and Lucy")
"ONE THING WE STILL LACKED was a name for the show. The script on my desk simply said 'So and so presents LUCY starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz,' but 'Lucy' was just a working title. And Desi was still giving me a problem about the credits. He just couldn’t understand why we had Lucy's name ahead of his. Why couldn’t he be first? After about a week of going back and forth with him on this, I had finally managed to convince him on the basis that it was the 'gallant' thing to do--to let the lady go first. But even then he had come back to me one more time, saying, 'I tell you what, Jess, why don’t we compromise and make it alphabetical?'
Because we were doing a live show, the cards bearing the title and credits had to be made up in advance. All of us had contributed possible names for the program, and I had the long list of suggestions in front of me. It was time to choose. As I sat at my desk reading it for the tenth or eleventh time, I kept coming back to the same title: I Love Lucy. That's the one, I decided. It would convey the essential nature of the show--an examination of marriage between two people who truly love each other. As I thought more about my choice, I realized that I had just solved another problem as well. The 'I' in I Love Lucy was Desi. I had given him first-place billing after all." |
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