Unaverage Situation

A little after dawn, somewhere along Los Angeles' Sepulveda Boulevard, Lucille Ball used to meet her husband, Desi Arnaz. He would be going home after a night of leading his orchestra at Ciro's. She would be headed for a day's work at her movie studio. "We would pull off the road and talk for a few minutes," Lucille recalls. Then she adds: "That's a dull way to live, brother!"

By giving up movies and nightclubs for their TV show, I Love Lucy (Mon. 9 p.m., CBS), Lucille and Desi now have all their weekends free, and work only four days a week--together. In brightening up their own lives, they have done quite a lot to make a cheerful half hour once a week for millions of televiewers. The show, begun only last October, has rocketed up in the popularity ratings, is now fourth among Nielsen's top ten.

Much of the credit belongs to Lucille, a redheaded, uninhibited comedienne who takes pratfalls and pie-throwings in her stride, manages to add an extra wriggle or a rubber-faced doubletake to each funny line. Cuban-born Desi Arnaz gets enough masculine authority into his role to keep Lucy from degenerating into a Dagwood and Blondie farce. Three writers turn out scripts that bring flashes of grown-up humor to such standard subjects as amateur theatricals and wedding anniversaries. Says Lucille: "We try to be an average married couple getting into unaverage situations."

To make I Love Lucy, Lucille and Desi set up a family corporation called Desilu Productions. Leasing a Los Angeles sound stage from an independent studio, they knocked out a street wall, put up a marquee labeled "Desilu Playhouse." When a show is ready for the cameras, a real audience files into the playhouse and the laughter is picked up on overhead microphones for use in the final print.

Sponsor Philip Morris pays $30,000 a week for I Love Lucy, which gives Lucille and Desi a weekly income of $5,000 to $7,000. And Desilu is branching out to do TV commercials. "After all," observes Desi, "when we get too old or too fat to get in front of the cameras, we can always be producers."

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