Desilu

... invented the three-camera shoot.

Yeah, Desilu Productions was, uh, part of the, uh, the, uh, programming for a long time, uh, in, uh, in broadcasting.

I mean, before, you know, Sheldon Leonard, you know, took over that, uh, spot, you know, with the, uh, All in the Family and stuff like that, it was Desilu.

I mean, that was the, uh, production studio.

So, you know, both, both, uh, both Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, man, had the thing going on.

I had done this with, uh, Doris Singleton and Bob Schiller separately from the other interviews that you've already heard.

Plus, I have a brief new interview with Ted Rich, who worked for Desilu Studios as head film librarian, supervising film editor, and as assistant editorial supervisor.

I just recently found this collection of these brief interviews.

I didn't think I still had them, but I did.

Uh, so we hadn't really been outside, and Jess said it's time we thought about opening the show a little bit.

Desilu made a tie-up with the Pontiac people to, uh, drive the Ricardos and the Mertes to Hollywood, uh, where Ricky was, uh, going to be in a movie.

Uh, I think, uh, he'd already had a screen test, I believe.

And, uh, uh, he was signed to do a movie, and they would drive to Hollywood.

And Desilu made a tie-up with Pontiac to station several Pontiacs along the way, and that, uh, someone would be assigned to go back with a crew and shoot exteriors with doubles of coming across the country.

Well, I was the someone who was designated to go back east because I had a knowledge, and, uh, Bill Asher was now the director, and we had a great rapport.

And he told me the kind of shots he would like, uh, such as, uh, they would all leave the apartment and go to the, over the George Washington Bridge and singing California, Here I Come, or California, Here We Come.

When they got to the hour-long episodes, each was almost always shot in some exterior location.

Yep.

A- and actually, the company was called Desilu, for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball.

Mm-hmm.

And Desilu, I've told this story before, and I learned this when I went out to, uh, Hollywood and I was on the Rodney Carrington Show.

We filmed in the same building that, uh, Seinfeld had, had been filmed in.

But I got to talking about two people that worked in the studio.

... way of filming.

Mm-hmm.

No, exactly.

[laughs] And they started off with Desilu Productions, uh, that was the, again, the, uh, film...

And, and became the Hollywood empire.

Yeah.

But they were always in the midst of quoting five or six different people about something that happened.

But when I put them all together and added what I knew about what happened, it transported me back to Desilu in the 50s, and I felt I was there behind the scenes, and something magic happened.

And the important thing that I tried to get into the book was my dad's sense of humor, because there are many books about Isle of Lucy, but most of them aren't very funny, and I wanted this book to be as funny as Isle of Lucy.

Deep down, what did Jess Oppenheimer really think of Lucille Ball?

So, again, we're thinking 1951, and it was called I Love Lucy.

And it was produced, of course, by Desilu and, of course, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball.

They had this... amazing show and i think in so many ways maybe similar to the honeymooners and so forth that kind of uh laid the basis for for the sitcom and i think if they would call it the three camera sitcom kind of thing these days uh but they definitely uh just blazed the trail And they blazed the trail in so many ways of the kinds of stories they told and so forth.

It was comedy and it was, you know, the situation comedy is really what sitcom basically.

Right,

well, but it was Desilu Studios.

I think he had his, you know, yeah, but you're right.

It was all, I mean, Lucy was the one who did the big green light stamp.