Fans who have read Geoffrey Mark Fidelman's exhaustive The Lucy Book
or Jess Oppenheimer's Laughs, Luck... and Lucy
won't find much new material here. The lure of this volume is its amiable and knowledgeable authors: Davis and her longtime writing partner Carroll co-wrote virtually every episode of I Love Lucy
and continued to write on all of Lucille Ball's sitcoms through 1986's Life with Lucy
. The duo gently clarifies tales that have become exaggerated over the years (e.g., Vivian Vance's contract did not stipulate she weigh 20 pounds more than Ball) and offers amusing examples of script shorthand (e.g., "SPIDER" meant Lucy should make her "eeuh!" sound). They praise Desi Arnaz as a staunch defender of his writers and an unsung behind-the-scenes innovator. Ball was "a beautiful clown" and a perfectionist, but, they cryptically note, "everyone is complicated, and Lucy was more complicated than most." Although tales of working with Ball take up the majority of the book, Davis also offers a fascinating look at being one of the few female comedy writers working on radio and TV in the 1940s and '50s, and lightly touches on her post-Lucy
successes writing/producing Alice
. (Sept. 30)
