My Favorite Husband

Early in 1938 while working with RKO, Lucy first appeared in

Jack Haley's weekly radio program, The Wonder Show. This lead

to a featured spot on Phil Baker's Hollywood radio show, where

Lucy worked with some wonderful comics and learned to rely on

timing and tone of voice for comic effects.

Ten years later, Lucy would find herself with her own Radio

Series. While producing films for Columbia Pictures, CBS

offered Lucy a Radio show based upon the book, Mr. and Mrs.

Cugat by Isabelle Scott Rorick. Lucy was interested,

especially if Desi could costar, but the big brass at CBS

thought he was not the type to play a typical American

husband. CBS turned a deaf ear to her proposal and she was

teamed with Richard Denning in My Favorite Husband.

This half-hour weekly show revolved around the travails of Liz

and George Cugat, a very normal, middle-class couple from

Minneapolis. "Two people who live together, and like it." Liz

is a dizzy, scheming wife who gets into relatively minor but

vexing scrapes that makes life challenging for her

long-suffering husband, a banker played by Richard Denning.

Gale Gordon was the bank president, the same role that was to

be his on The Lucy Show. The characters of Liz and George

Cugat soon had their names changed to Liz and George Cooper.

Lucy found radio a wonderful way to make a lot of extra money.

She would be on the movie set during the day and at night

rehearse the script and tape the show.

Her writers for the show were Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll,

Jr. and the producer-director was Jess Oppenheimer, a

connection that would become particularly fruitful in the

years to come. In addition to taking charge, Jess Oppenheimer

gradually began to revamp the program. He also reworked Lucy's

role into a daffier, broader character, much closer to the

Lucy Ricardo who would soon appear on television.

The show was performed in front of a live studio audience, not

just actors in front of microphones reading their lines. The

performers were in costume as well and it was much like

theater. It provided Lucy with her first regular gig that

involved feedback from a live audience. She found the

experience exhilarting as did the audience.

Something magical happened when Lucille began to work in front

of them and she began hitting performance levels that were

missing from any of her previous film work. She absolutely

bloomed in front of an audience.

With the success of My Favorite Husband, CBS began talking

about taking the show to television. Lucy saw the possibility

of a television series as an opportunity to not only take her

radio success to another level, but as an ideal way to mesh

career and marriage into one by working with Desi on the same

show.

Lucy refused to do the show without Desi, which was a major

stumbling block for CBS. In order to get CBS to agree and as a

way to promote themselves Lucy and Desi formed a partnership,

launching Desilu Productions in the Spring of 1950. They took

their vaudeville act on the road, which eventually became the

Pilot for the I Love Lucy show featuring Pepito Perez, the

renowned Spanish clown.

NBC became interested in the two and thought they made an

attractive package, with Lucille's film and radio career and

Ricky's nightclub and recording contract with RCA. CBS had no

other offer except to accept the two and abruptly okayed the

television sitcom that Lucy wanted with Desi portraying her

husband.

With that, one of the greatest sitcoms of all time had been

formed. The world will never be without Lucy. She was not

merely an actress or a comedian. She was "Lucy" and she was

loved.

From 07/05/48 to 03/31/51 CBS aired this popular program

starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning as Liz and George

Cooper of 321 Bundy Drive, Sheridan Falls. Also heard in the

cast were Gale Gordon, Bea Benaderet and Ruth Perrott. The

writers were Jess Oppenheimer, Bob Carroll Jr., and Madelyn

Pugh (Davis), who also wrote the TV program "I Love Lucy."

LONG BEFORE LUCY MET RICKY, American audiences fell in love

with Lucy's crazy antics -- on the radio. Her character's name

was Liz, not Lucy. And her husband George (played by Richard

Denning) was a smalltown banker, not an entertainer. But

between 1948 and 1951 My Favorite Husband delighted Lucy's

loyal listeners each week with many of the same scatterbrained

schemes that would later come to be TV classics on "I Love

Lucy."

MR. & MRS. CUGAT: THE RECORD OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE,by Isobel

Scott Rorick -- the book that formed the basis for Lucille

Ball's radio sitcom, My Favorite Husband -- was the story of a

real "society" crowd. Click here to see how the show's

announcer, Bob LeMond, introduced these characters to the

radio audience in one of the show's earliest episodes, before

the show's writers brought them "down to earth."

"DECEMBER, 1948 BROUGHT good news. The ratings were up, and

Pat Weaver at Young & Rubicam had bought the program for

General Foods, makers of Jell-O, starting in January. Although

Lucy's new, more 'down-to-earth' Liz Cugat was an improvement,

I decided that the show still needed a few more changes to

make the characters easier for the audience to identify with.

The first was to change their last name from 'Cugat' to

'Cooper.' I also didn't feel the average listener related too

well to the problems of the vice president of a bank, so we

made it clear that husband George, although he had this

fancy-sounding title, in fact wasn't making any more than the

garage attendant down the street. This gave them the universal

'average man's' problem of making ends meet. This also allowed

us to have more fun with Liz's 'unique' way of figuring

household finances."

"EVEN WITH ALL of the changes in the show, I still had a

problem-Lucy was relatively stiff working in front of an

audience. She just didn't have the wildly antic quality that I

was looking for. I had been trying for some time to get her

and Dick Denning to loosen up and act out the jokes and

reactions, to dramatize what was going on, instead of just

standing there waiting to read the next line when the laugh

subsided. I knew how effective this could be from watching

Jack Benny do his radio program. Jack would lay his hand

against his cheek, open his eyes wide, and look out at the

studio audience, slowly changing his point of view, like a

comic lighthouse. And as long as he looked, they laughed.

I remember telling Lucy, 'Let go. Act it out. Take your time.'

But she was simply afraid to try. So one day, at rehearsal, I

handed Lucy a couple of Jack Benny tickets.

She looked at me blankly.

Lucille Ball rehearses My Favorite Husband with Richard

Denning

click to enlarge

'What are these for?'

'I want you to go to school,' I told her.

It did the trick. When Lucy came into the studio for the next

rehearsal, I could see she was excited. 'Oh my God, Jess,' she

gushed, 'I didn't realize!'

She just couldn't wait to get started trying out the new,

emancipated attitude she had discovered. On that week's show

Lucy really hammed it up, playing it much broader than she

ever had before. She coupled this with her newfound freedom of

movement, and there were times I thought we'd have to catch

her with a butterfly net to get her back to the microphone.

The audience roared their approval, and Lucy loved it. So did

I."

"THE SHOW NEEDED another married couple, as a counterpoint to

George and Liz. We decided that this should be George's boss,

Rudolph Atterbury, president of the bank, and his wife, Iris,

who would be Liz's best friend. Gale Gordon, best known to

radio listeners at the time in his continuing role as 'Mayor

LaTrivia' on 'Fibber McGee and Molly' and 'The Great

Gildersleeve,' had appeared on our show a few weeks before, in

the part of a trial judge. The unique comic chemistry between

Gale and Lucy was apparent immediately, and I decided to cast

him as Mr. Atterbury.

In the part of Mr. Atterbury's wife, Iris, I cast Bea

Benaderet, the wonderful comedy actress whom I had known since

my days at KFRC in San Francisco, and who would later become

the voice of Betty Rubble on 'The Flintstones' and star in the

television series 'Petticoat Junction.' Bea, who was well

known as 'Blanche Morton' on 'Burns and Allen,' had been

appearing almost weekly on 'My Favorite Husband' in a variety

of nonrecurring roles. The Iris Atterbury character opened up

whole new directions for us and for the character of Liz

Cooper-she finally had a real confederate to include in her

wild schemes, particularly whenever the battle was 'wives vs.

husbands.'"