The Latin jazz cutting through the black and white fuzz of early 1950s television drummed out a message in the first few seconds: this show is going to be different! Most network family sitcoms of the era were solidly WASP and Ricky and Lucy Ricardo represented a “mixed marriage.” Most husbands went to work at the office, but Ricky's workplace was the Tropicana Club, where he held forth with his orchestra at night under neon palm trees. Most sitcoms came with children, but Ricky and Lucy delayed the birth of their first kid and incorporated it into an episode. Did I mention Ricky and Lucy were really married, and their show, “I Love Lucy,” was an imaginative construct out of their show biz life?
Lucille Ball would have turned one hundred this August and her centennial is honored by the release of the work for which the prolific actress remains best remembered. A new DVD, “The Best of I Love Lucy,” collects 14 favorite episodes of America's most unusual TV family of their time. Baby Boomer nostalgia aside, the program has lost little of its laugh-out-loud humor as Lucy enlists her much older neighbor Ethyl (Vivian Vance) in one scheme after another. Usually, it amounts to trying to crack the glass ceiling of low expectations for women with obvious ambition and ability. Although Lucy usually bruises her head on that ceiling, her efforts must have sent a jubilant example for the women (and girls) in the audience.
Ball was a versatile actress, and “I Love Lucy” gave her weekly opportunities to show her stuff. Especially indebted to the Charlie Chaplin school of silent acting (a paradox for such a boisterous presence), Ball commanded superb gestures and body language. She could have been a mime, but that would have wasted her sense for the comic dialogue delivery.
