Well, okay, the two beloved performers aren’t actually in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame (ATAS HoF) Plaza themselves because, well…they’re dead. But on March 1 (my, ahem, birthday) 2012, when TV’s best-loved neighbors and pals were inducted into the HoF, it came with the promise of busts of both actors being made for the Los Angeles-based ATAS HoF plaza.

As it turns out, Richard Becker, the sculptor who was chosen to create the bust of Vivian Vance, contacted me during his creative process, sharing pictures he had done of the clay model that would eventually be used to make the bronze bust, and asking how I felt about Vance’s likeness. You can only imagine (you really can’t!) how excited I was, and honored, to be asked my opinion on such a matter. And Becker was kind enough to take one or two of my suggestions to heart (he had asked others to look at the work-in-progress as well).

I shared the final clay model with my Facebook and website readers last year, and I’ve been waiting to get photos of the actual bust which, was installed this past January. A friend at ATAS finally came through, and it is with great honor that I present to you all the ATAS HoF busts of Vivian Vance and William Frawley (I have a query in to get the name of the artist who created Frawley’s bust) as they repose at ATAS (photos by Michael Burr/Invision, for ATAS).

FYI, Vance’s sister, Lou Ann Graham, and Doris Singleton, aka Carolyn Appleby, and Vance’s I Love Lucy castmate, did the induction honors for Vance at the March 1, 2012, ceremony, while Frawley’s My Three Sons co-stars Stanley and Barry Livingston, plus actress pal Patricia Barry (who inherited Frawley’s estate, including his lucrative sitcom syndication checks), stood up for the crusty character actor. If you’re in L.A., you owe it to yourself visit the ATAS HoF and check out the statues, plaques, and busts of most of the TV greats who have been inducted since the first ceremony in 1984 (which included Lucille Ball, of course).

An article in The Miami News dated November 18, 1958, by UPI’s Vernon Scott, showcased Lucy as she attempted to play a TV role that was not Lucy Ricardo for the first time in eight years: she starred as the title character in the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse’s one-hour drama, “K.O. Kitty.” Playing a female prize-fight manager (certainly what must have been a rarity at that time in real life), it also Ball’s first time on the small screen without her I Love Lucy co-stars: husband Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley.

Ball and Arnaz had given up the groundbreaking half-hour sitcom after the 1956-’57 season to concentrate on other projects, but continued their classic I Love Lucy characters (as did Vance and Frawley) on 13 hour-long shows through 1960, best known as their syndicated title, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

Lucy told Scott she was more worried about playing a character other than “Lucy” than acting onscreen without Desi and the rest. After adding that Desi “had almost nothing to do with” the hour-long drama, Lucy told Scott, “It seemed strange to turn around and not find him at my side. But I missed Vivian even more. We were inseparable during the ‘Lucy’ series.”

Hmmm…given public comments like that (and pictures like the one in this post, from a 1954 TV-Radio Mirror article), maybe it’s not so surprising, then, that there were rumors at the time (according to Vance’s unpublished autobiography) that she and Ball were lovers.

Gold Derby, a website about entertainment awards of all kinds, recently posted a photo feature dubbed “The 26 Most Outrageous Emmy Snubs Ever,” and to the website’s credit, Desi Arnaz was one of those singled out. Gold Derby noted that, “Desi Arnaz pioneered the three-camera system for filming situation comedies before a live studio audience when co-starring with his then-wife Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy. She won two Emmys for this TV classic and was nominated for another seven.” But Arnaz was never even nominated for an Emmy, although supporting players Vivian Vance and William Frawley were multiple nominees (Vance won the Emmys’ first Best Series Supporting Actress Emmy).

Arnaz took the snubs well, noting that, “When the Emmys have a category for best bongo player and I’m not nominated, then I’ll get mad!” and even hosted the Awards show twice, in 1952 (with Lucy) and 1957. Arnaz was finally given the recognition he deserved as a true television pioneer when he was inducted into the Emmys’ Television Hall of Fame in 1990, four years after his death, alongside his “baby,” I Love Lucy, which remains the only TV series thus far to be elected into the Hall of Fame. Vance and Frawley joined their co-stars in the Hall of Fame in 2012 (Ball was one of the first seven inductees, in 1984), making I Love Lucy the only TV series in which all its principals actors have been inducted.

[This is the first of a new type of post I call Annotated Press Clips. These will be recurring posts that take a publicity article from Lucy’s career, and examine it as it reflected gossip or the actual truth. My comments, except for the introductory paragraph directly below this, are in brackets. Like these -->]

A bit more than 60 years ago, Lucille Ball was relishing her status at her new movie studio, MGM, often called the Tiffany’s of Hollywood studios. MGM gave Ball a real star build-up, from changing her hair-color to putting her in “A” movies—which her former studio, RKO, rarely had done. But even MGM didn’t know what to do with Lucy, a consummate clo3wn who was also beautiful. Here’s a great article from the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, dated April 26, 1943, just at the beginning of this phase of Lucy’s movie career, credited to Hollywood gossip doyenne Louella Parsons.

Lucille Ball, Titian-Haired Beauty, Is MGM’s Favorite

By Louella O. Parsons

HOLLYWOOD—Last Year, Greer Garson was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s hot favorite. This year it is Lucille Ball, another dazzling redhead. With Lana Turner, the titian-haired glamour girl, out of pictures until fall, Lucille is the top musical comedy girl on the lot, and she’s never been as much of a draw at the box office as she is sure to be when “DuBarry Was A Lady” and “Best Foot Forward” are released.

[Note: “Titian” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “of a brownish-orange color,” which was somewhat accurate regarding Lucy in 1943 after MGM hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff changed her color to flaming red. but I’ve always thought of Lana Turner in the 1940s as a drop-dead blonde. So perhaps the redoubtable Ms. Parsons, who loved to use “big” words like titian in an attempt to make readers think she was classy and educated, should have left it as “Lucille Ball, Red-Haired Beauty…” and maybe her editor might have discovered the mistake in calling Turner as titian-haired as well. Just sayin’.]

“I am grateful,” Lucille said, “that I am not going to do a second-hand “B” at RKO after these two musicals, but Charles Koerner [RKO’s production chief at the time] said he wouldn’t use me in the one picture I owe him until they had something really important.” [Lucille didn’t make a picture for RKO again until 1949’s Easy Living, not an “A” picture and once again a waste of her talents. Koerner had died in 1946.]

Lucille Ball, who fascinated me with her strawberry blonde hair and cerise bandana, sat in my garden while we talked of forming, movies, and soldier husbands. She’ll soon have one, too, for Desi [Arnaz] goes into the Army the twenty-seventh of this month.

“I promised Desi I’d write him every day,” says Lucille, “but letters won’t be a substitute for having him here at home and battling with him. We have so much fun kissing and making up.”

There was a twinkle in her eye when she talked about Desi, who has all the tempestuous emotions of the Latin race. [sic] He is a Cuban, and his real name is Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III. (No, I can’t pronounce it, either. [Careful, Louella, your patronizing 1940s racism is peeking through.]

Lucille and Desi took a farm near Marsons ranch about two years ago, and while the boyfriend is fighting the Japs [sic], she and her mother and grandfather will keep the crops growing. [Parsons’ former home, once part of the 28-acre Marsons Farm in Northridge, Calif., sold in December 2011 for $719,000. The Arnaz ranch was actually a hop, skip, and a jump away from Parson, in nearby Chatsworth.]

“But you needn’t think,” Lucille said, “That I’m going to spend all my leisure time being a farmerette [sic]. I’ve got things to do. I am going to study. I am going to learn Spanish so when Desi comes back I can spin off the lingo a mile a minute, and learn to pronounce his name. I am going to study singing, too. I have never had a chance to improve my voice. I was only 16 when I joined Flo Ziegfeld’s third road-show company, Rio Rita, and I have been working ever since. I even worked [as a model] at Hattie Carnegie’s swank New York shop.

“I was fired from Flo Ziegfeld’s show,” she said, “and I had to go to work for Hattie to keep from starving to death.”

Lucille is one of the most forthright girls I ever knew. She makes no secret of her age. Said she’s well over 25 and that she’s made 25 pictures—even a Western. She is one of the few actresses who admits she’s not a permanent 20. [Lucille was in fact 32 at the time of this interview, and in fact had appeared in more than 60 films by this time, many of them shorts or bit parts made at RKO before 1937.]

I asked about a story that was printed that she and Desi had parted, and which I knew couldn’t be true, for the two of them are madly in love. Two people couldn’t battle as they do and not care. [The Arnazes were already famous for their break-up/make-up battles, just three year into their marriage. And Lucy didn’t try to hide it.]

“The whole thing started,” said Lucille, “when Desi stayed in town one night after a broadcast. He had an appointment early the next morning and decided not to come out to the farm. I know now no matter what appointments we have, neither one of us should ever stay in town all night without the other. It starts too much ‘separation’ talk. We have had lots of battles but on that particular occasion we didn’t even have a cross word.

“I am crazy about Desi,” she said. “You know that I wouldn’t plan to join his church if I thought there was danger of our parting. I wouldn’t take a step like that. It wouldn’t be fair to him, to me or to the church. I am going to take instructions, and when Desi comes back on a furlough, we are going to be remarried—that is, if the church will have me.”

[In the late 1940s Lucy and Desi did remarry in a Catholic church; their first marriage was performed by a Justice of the Peace in Connecticut. Lucy believed the church blessing might hasten their having children. She’d had several miscarriages before Lucie Arnaz was born in 1951, followed by Desi Jr. in 1953. P.S. The photo accompanying this post was taken by Clarence Bull, who became famous for his MGM star portraits in Hollywood's Golden Age.]

What would Lucille Ball have been without Vivian Vance? A lot less funny and believable. It was Vance’s knowing stage presence (having been a Broadway veteran by the time she was hired to play Ethel Mertz in I Love Lucy) and perfectly timed reactions to Lucy’s scheming (whether Ball was Lucy Ricardo or Lucy Carmichael) that made us, the viewer, believe that they could actually get into those predicaments, i.e., that the girls might really be found baking a surreal-sized loaf of bread, or working on a candy factory assembly, or stealing John Wayne’s footprints from the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, or getting stuck in a shower stall rapidly filling up with with water, or…you get the drift.

Vance certainly got her share of appreciation during her lifetime, and even more since her passing in 1979. Here’s some from yours truly: in 2009, when Vance would have turned 100, I celebrated by devoting many posts on this web page to Vance and her career, with and without Lucy. You can find the link to the page that gathers them all together here. Enjoy!

Lucille Ball was nothing if not loyal to friends she made from almost the first minute she arrived in Hollywood in 1933. One of her first friendships developed with fellow Goldwyn Girl Barbara Pepper, with whom she filmed 1933′s Roman Scandals, Pepper’s first movie, and one of Lucy’s earliest, among others. Pepper, an appealing blue-eyed blonde, had also been a Ziegfeld girl.

Pepper rarely got the lead role in the more than 130 movies and countless TV appearances she made during her career. But the parts she did get, even if they were one-liners, were often made noticeable by Pepper’s brassy, likable persona. The picture above is from one of those, 1940′s Foreign Correspondent, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Immediately prior to Hitch’s traditional cameo in his movie, we see Pepper bounce out of a hotel and approach lead Joel McCrea (left, not facing camera) and humorist Robert Benchley, who had a slightly larger cameo than Pepper. Pepper was Benchley’s breakfast date.

Pepper rarely graduated to more than bit parts in her entire career, but she got steady work until the late 1940s, when her husband, actor Craig Reynolds, died in a tragic motorcycle accident. Faced with the prospect of a dwindling career and raising two young sons, Pepper fell into depression and alcoholism. Friends like Lucy helped out by casting her whenever they could; Pepper played nine bit parts in I Love Lucy from 1952-1955.

It’s been reported that when Bea Benaderet was unavailable for the role of Ethel Mertz in I Love Lucy, Pepper was seriously considered. Ultimately, her alcoholism kept her from the role; William Frawley, a prolific character actor known for his love of the bottle, had already been cast — albeit after promising Desi Arnaz that his drinking would never interfere with his work on the show, which it didn’t — and it was felt one drinker on the show was enough of a risk.

Pepper kept getting small roles in movies and TV, and then, as a final hurrah, she was cast as Doris Ziffel on Green Acres, where she played a cranky farmer’s wife and “mother” to Harold the pig (who got more fan mail than she did). She played the part from 1965-1968 (she first played it in three 1964 appearances on fellow “country” sitcom Petticoat Junction), but was forced to leave Green Acres due to health issues, specifically a heart problem. She was replaced by gruff-voiced character actress Fran Ryan. But if anyone knows of Pepper, it’s likely thanks to Green Acres.

She died of heart disease in 1969 almost 44 years ago, but I will always remember her beautiful blonde effervescence in contrast to the sloppy, overweight person she had become due to her many demons.

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced on May 21 that comedian Carol Burnett, best known for her groundbreaking variety series on CBS, The Carol Burnett Show, which ran from 1967-1978, was named the winner of this year’s Mark Twain Prize. Burnett will receive the honor on October 20 in Washington, D.C. The tribute, which usually features fellow comedians performing in honor of the winner, will be taped on October 20 and air on PBS October 30.

Eighty-year-old Burnett said she “can’t believe” she is receiving the prize from the Kennedy Center, and added wryly, “It’s almost impossible to be funnier than the people in Washington.”

Lucille Ball became a mentor to Burnett after seeing her smash Broadway debut in 1959′s Once Upon A Mattress. Burnett has often described how Ball came backstage after the performance to congratulate Burnett, and said, “If you ever need anything, kid, just let me know.” Burnett took Ball at her word and asked to to co-star in a variety special CBS had given her, which eventually became Carol + 2 (Zero Mostel rounded out the trio). It aired in January 1967, and its success allowed to CBS to green-light Burnett’s variety show, which debuted the following fall (despite some executives’ reserve about how successful a woman could be hosting a variety hour). Burnett proved them wrong, and the rest is sketch comedy history.

Ball and Burnett remained friends until Ball died in 1989, frequently guest-starring on each other’s shows. Ball sent Burnett flowers every year on her birthday (April 26), and on that date in 1989, just after Burnett got word that Lucy had died, she received Lucy’s annual gift.

As Burnett recalled for Access Hollywood in 2011, “Every year on my birthday, she would send me flowers; she gave me a baby shower for my second baby and she was on my show several times and then I guested on hers. We were really close. She died on my birthday. I remember getting up and seeing it (the news) on the morning shows. It was out of the blue; she’d been sick, but they thought she was gonna come home…. I got my flowers that afternoon.”

Here’s a picture of the two redheaded clowns performing their classic number “Chutzpah,” from the Carol + 2 special.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz remain one of America’s favorite couples, as evidenced by their making No. 4 on Entertainment Weekly‘s recent list of Greatest TV Couples (see my April 24th post)….without any kind of grassroots media persence or push. What some may not know is that even though both had long and successful second marriages, Lucy and Desi remained the loves of each other’s lives, through Desi’s death in 1986 and Lucille’s own passing three years later. Once all the principals in all the marriages had passed, even Lucie Arnaz admitted what many people had thought for a long time: that Lucy and Desi never stopped loving each other. You can see their affection vividly as they play with their grandchildren [in the 1980s] in Lucie’s 1993 Emmy-winning documentary, “Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie.” In fact, Gary Morton, Lucy’s second husband, often referred to Desi as his “husband-in-law.” Here’s a shot of Lucy and Desi on set during the 1950s, coupled with the animated stick figures that introduced and ended the original episodes of I Love Lucy. When Lucy was given the Kennedy Center Honor in 1986, Desi was too ill to attend, so he sent a love letter which was read via Robert Stack, the star of one of Desilu’s biggest hits, The Untouchables; Desi’s letter ended with, “P.S…. I Love Lucy was never just a title.”

For those of you wondering, I do have other interests besides the Lucyverse (!), and here’s another place I express my opinions  about our lives  our pop culture, and our politics  among other topics. I call it The Media Circus, and you can get there from here.