A Television Classic Gets Its Start at Hollywood Center Studios

One of the most popular and enduring shows in the history of television, I Love Lucy came to life in 1951 on Stage 2 at Hollywood Center Studios. Based on the radio show My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning, the series almost didn't get off the ground when CBS initially balked at Ball's demand that her husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, play the other lead. The network also expressed skepticism over the stars' insistence that the show be shot in Hollywood to accommodate Ball, who was pregnant.

At that time, most television shows were broadcast live on the East Coast and via kinescopes in the West. In order to overcome the problem with time zones, Arnaz proposed the radical process of shooting the show on film and editing it like a movie. In order to preserve the spontaneity of Ball's performance, Lucy was performed like a stage play, without interruptions, and shot with three cameras in front of a live audience—the first show to do so. (CBS again balked at the expected cost of this arrangement, but it proved to be an outstanding business decision as it set the stage for the series' incredibly long run in syndication.) The series was also the first to be lit from above, in a system developed for it by cinematographer Karl Freund.

Shooting in front of a live audience was a challenge, especially as, in those days, there were no retakes. If an actor flubbed a line, he had to cover for it. In Ball's famous "Vitameatavegamin," she actually mixes up the dialogue, but covers for it so well, viewers hardly notice.

I Love Lucy remained at Hollywood Center for two seasons, through the birth of "Little Ricky," the couple's son. (Keith Thibodeaux who played Little Ricky is the series' last surviving cast member.) In 1953, Ball and Arnaz formed, Desilu, which became one of the most successful companies in television and the producer of such other classics as The Andy Griffith Show, Mission: Impossible, Star Trek and Mannix.