Lucie Arnaz Visits the Lucy-Desi Center

Lucie Arnaz paid a visit to the Lucy-Desi Center and met with the Center's Acting Excutive Director, Ed Fagan on a new initiative.

From the Jamestown Post-Journal:

Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill was in Jamestown on Friday morning to see the center off on its newest venture - a national initiative that will combine humor and health care.

The center's initiative will bring humor to hospitals and clinics around the country.

"Laughter is the best medicine," said Ed Fagan, the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center's acting executive director. "We want to carry that idea to clinics and hospitals - anywhere where the healing power of laughter is most needed. We think this, more than any center or museum, most closely represents the way Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz wanted to enrich the world."

This weekend, experts from Tampa, Fla., St. Louis, Mo., and Rochester will come to Jamestown and collaborate with Lucy-Desi Center officials on how their initiative can best be undertaken. A local advisory committee has also been formed, according to Mary Jane Price, the center's mission and outreach director.

"This weekend marks a greatly needed, new direction for the Lucy-Desi Center," Ms. Price said.

Ms. Price said the weekend's roundtable discussion has been in the works for about the last six months - ever since she met Ms. Luckinbill at the National Humor Conference in June.

"We got to talking about my ideas for the (mission and outreach) department and discussing our thoughts on how we could best honor the legacies of her parents, and those kinds of things," Ms. Price said. "Other participants joined in the brainstorming, and now we're coming together this weekend to define our initiative."

Mrs. Luckinbill said the center's new initiative is "perfect."

"Since we first agreed to be involved here in Mom's hometown, all Desi and I have ever hoped for was that she and Dad would be remembered with something unique and uplifting," she said. "We thought Jamestown could be a powerful destination offering more than just memories and memorabilia with a vision toward the future. It's headed that way, and I think it's perfect."

Also Friday morning, Mrs. Luckinbill and Fagan announced that last month, a new three-year business and licensing agreement between Mrs. Luckinbill, Desi Arnaz Jr. and the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center was signed. The agreement means the center can continue using images and likenesses of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

"I can't overemphasize how important this licensing agreement is to the center," Fagan said. "Lucie and her brother have entrusted to us the legacy of their parents. We will make carrying that legacy forward in new directions a top priority."

Lucy Saying Farewell to TVLand at Year's End

All things must come to an end sometime or so they say. TVLand who has played "I Love Lucy" series since time remembered is now going to end the beloved series at the end of the year.

According to SitcomesOnline, I Love Lucy is headed for The Hallmark Channel this January, TV Land has to say goodbye. TV Land says "Bon Voyage" to 2008 and I Love Lucy as they countdown to the New Year with everybody's favorite classic sitcom, I Love Lucy, as the show leaves the network. Spend the day living vicariously through The Ricardos' and The Mertzes' antics, escapades and adventures as we countdown the all-time Top 25 I Love Lucy episodes--voted by you the fans. All throughout the month of December, TV Land gives fans the opportunity to vote which episodes they want to see during Lucy's New Year's Eve Countdown. Customized countdown flags and packaged I Love Lucy vignettes with color commentary will air throughout the stunt as it gains momentum and reaches its zenith with the I Love Lucy episode ranked #1 by the viewers. It was a year to remember and it'll be a TV Land send-off viewers will never forget. Goodbye Lucy!

Desi Arnaz Interview on ReRun It

Desi Arnaz was much more than Lucille Ball’s co-star. He was an innovative entertainment industry pioneer who was responsible for creating the multi-camera technique, which introduced the concept of having several cameras shooting the same scene, at the same time, but from different angels. It was revolutionary in the 1950’s and remains a standard in the business today.

Desi Arnaz talks about I Love Lucy, his studio and his innovative camera technique in interviews, exclusively at RerunIt.com.

Segment 1 "The Chemestry"

Segment 2 "Universal Appeal"

Segment 3 "Multi-Camera is Born"

Lucille Ball Lighting Up in Library

The New York Public Library is running an exhibit featuring various cigarette advertisements from the last century. Many of the ads make claims that today would be ridiculous if not libelous. one proclaiming "more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."

The exhibit, titled "Not a Cough in a Carload: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking," opened Tuesday and will be at the library's Science, Industry and Business branch on Madison Avenue through Dec. 26.

Of course, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had many cigarette sponsors such as Phillip Morris. Lucille Ball even became "The Chesterfield Girl" on billboards when she was a model before her movie and TV career. Lucille Ball became such a fan of Chesterfield cigarettes that years later, during the filming of the "I Love Lucy" series, she put Chesterfield cigarettes in her sponsors' Phillip Morris cigarette boxes in order to smoke her favorite brand without annoying her sponsor.

You can view a few of these cigarette ads in video advertisements from "I Love Lucy" at the Everything Lucy website.

In addition to Lucille Ball, you'll see Santa Claus puffing on a PallMall as well as movie stars, athletes and others, such as Ronald Regan, Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Even cartoon characters such as Flintstones appear in the ads. No one was left out, even children and babies were used as props in the ads.

The curator, Dr. Robert Jackler, said he began collecting tobacco ads when his mother, a longtime smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer. This exhibit is a memorial to her since her death last year.

You can read more about the exhibit from the Associate Press or The New York Times


The New York Public Library is located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in New York City.

Jenny Lewis of "Life With Lucy" Fame, Digs into Her Past

A former child star from a broken home, Jenny Lewis is the voice of Rilo Kiley who had a cult hit with the Watson Twins. Her new solo album sees her dig ever deeper into the dark side of her past. Nick Hasted meets her in LA.

Jenny Lewis, who played Becky McGibbon with Lucille Ball in "Life With Lucy" when she was young provided an inside look into her life in an interview with The Independent. Excerpts of that interview below:

Put out to work by her mother as a child-actress in Hollywood, aged four, she worked alongside Lucille Ball, and Angelina Jolie.

"You know I've felt how I feel today since I was eight years old. I've always felt lonely, even if I'm in a great relationship, or surrounded by my friends and family. I don't know what happened prior to that that made me feel that way. But I've been the same person since 1982."

That was when she became a full-time television actress, five years after her parents divorced. They were a double act in showbiz's twilight zone. After divorce, dad disappeared. Mum, unemployed in LA, put her toddler to work on TV.

The cameras that stared at Lewis through her adolescence perhaps explain her shyness since. It took more than a decade as a musician for her to release a record under her own name. It's as if some vital emotional growth was held back, in her Hollywood childhood. "I feel like I never got a chance to be a child," she agrees. "I wouldn't change it for the world. But when you're a kid supporting your family, you're forced to keep your eye on the prize. I have a great work ethic, from watching Lucille Ball, not necessarily my own family."

"I've lived a good and strange life. I'm a late bloomer, in every aspect. I'm a slow-moving train. But I'll get there eventually. I like people, that's the thing. I'm the most negative optimist you'll ever meet."

For the complete interview, please read "Jenny Lewis - My private traumas" from The Independent.