| Laughs, Luck...and Lucy | 8 | |||||
| Swallowing hard, Desi said, "We just came from the doctor. Lucy's going to have a baby." Pleased as he and Lucy were about having another child, both of them were certain that it meant that "I Love Lucy" would have to go off the air. The cardinal rule of those who controlled the new medium of television was not to present anything that might offend anyone. The CBS censor had a list of words that could never be uttered on the air, and "pregnant" was one of them. Of course, today we can not only say the word "pregnant" on TV, but also make graphic reference to all the various organs, equipment, and procedures that contribute to that condition -- or lack of it. It's hard to imagine that simply putting a pregnant woman on television could ever have been considered daring. But in the early 1950s, the very thought of a TV show dealing with as real an idea as having a baby was simply unheard of. To Lucy and Desi, it looked as though they would have to quit TV just as they reached the top. As the show's head writer and producer, I was the one who had to decide how to save I Love Lucy. "What can we do, Jess?" Desi asked. "How long will we have to be off the air?" |  | |||||
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| Laughs, Luck...and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time by Jess Oppenheimer with Gregg Oppenheimer © 1996 by Gregg Oppenheimer. All Rights Reserved | ||||||
