Fifty-five years ago, a sitcom called I Love Lucy transformed the television landscape and made its leading lady, Lucille Ball, a superstar. No one could have known that Ball, formerly a showgirl, B-movie queen, and radio actress, would become one of the world's most beloved performers, and take her place in a rare pantheon reserved for the likes of Elvis, Marilyn, and Chaplin. This book, by acclaimed Lucy author Michael Karol-Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, The Lucille Ball Quiz Book, Lucy in Print-examines Ball's impact and dissects what it was, and is, that makes Lucy not only an icon of laughter, but a powerful tonic in a troubled world.
Fifty-five years ago, a sitcom called I Love Lucy transformed the television landscape and made its leading lady, Lucille Ball, a superstar. No one could have known that Ball, formerly a showgirl, B-movie queen, and radio actress, would become one of the world's most beloved performers, and take her place in a rare pantheon reserved for the likes of Elvis, Marilyn, and Chaplin. This book, by acclaimed Lucy author Michael Karol-Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, The Lucille Ball Quiz Book, Lucy in Print-examines Ball's impact and dissects what it was, and is, that makes Lucy not only an icon of laughter, but a powerful tonic in a troubled world.
Praise for the updated 2012 Kindle edition of Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia "Very important. Fresh insights. The most detailed-and most enjoyable-book available on Lucille Ball. A must-have." -Laura Wagner, Classic Images "As we are producing the I Love Lucy 50th Anniversary Special, [Lucy A to Z] has been a godsend." -Lucie Arnaz, 2001 letter to author "[Lucy A to Z is a] compound of insight, fact, and trivia." -Stefan Kanfer, author, Ball of Fire "This new Fourth Edition of Lucy A to Z is a wonderful read and I'm very pleased to recommend it to everyone." -Wanda Clark, Lucille Ball's personal secretary "If you need any 'splainin' about Lucy' life and career, you'll find it here!" -Craig Hamrick, author, The TV Tidbits Classic Television Trivia Quiz Book
Best-selling author Michael Karol (Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia) is at it again, with a book of lists honoring Lucy’s 100th birthday and the 60th anniversary of I Love Lucy — both of which occur in 2011! Chapter titles include Headline News, Lucy by the Numbers, The Lucy Show Mystery, Mam’selle Mame, and many more...with an exclusive list by Lucille Ball’s and Desi Arnaz’s good friend, comedian Kaye Ballard (The Mothers-In-Law). You’ll laugh, learn and love this unique peek into the Lucyverse.
Whether it was Lucy and Ethel (Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance) or Eve Arden as Miss Brooks, Gale Storm as her dad's "little" Margie, always interfering but with the best of intentions, or the more modern Bea Arthur as Maude, flaunting the conventions of how a woman was supposed to behave, we all have our favorite funny ladies who brought us laughter every week, and, for a half-hour at least, took us away from our daily problems. Classic TV expert Michael Karol, in a series of original essays, examines the roles these Sitcom Queens played on TV, and how they became the beloved TV icons of generation after generation of TV fans. With a sitcom timeline and a Top 10!
She was capricious, outspoken, madcap, and never embarrassed. And we loved her for it. Thirty years after the death of one of TV's legends, LIFE remembers the life and career of Lucille Ball, the hilarious comic actress whose iconic sitcom, I Love Lucy (which she created and starred in with her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz) was so popular that the episode featuring the birth of their characters' son, Little Ricky, attracted more viewers than the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower. A Hollywood giant who blazed a trail for women in front of and behind the camera, Ball was the first female to run a major television production studio, and she green-lighted such classic broadcasts as Star Trek and Mission Impossible. A former showgirl on Broadway stage, Ball was known as one of the hardest-working actresses in Tinseltown before conquering radio and then TV. With her unique brand of fearless, physical comedy, she paved the way for funny folks like Mary Tyler Moore, Penny Marshall, and Robin Williams. As Will and Grace's Debra Messing writes in the heartfelt foreword to this LIFE Special Edition, “It's fair to say that I have my career because Lucy paved the way. She and Desi in
Movies made for television were in their infancy when ABC came up with a novel idea: a weekly series of films made exclusively for the small screen. The ABC Movie of the Week became a great success and a cultural touchstone for a generation of Americans. In this loving tribute to the classic series of TV films, more than two hundred films in the series are reviewed, including well-remembered titles such as Duel, Tribes, The Six Million Dollar Man, Go Ask Alice, Brian's Song, The Night Stalker, Bad Ronald, Starsky and Hutch, Trilogy of Terror, That Certain Summer, and Killdozer. In addition, choice bits of trivia about the actors and films and exclusive pictures are sprinkled throughout the book. So bit back, relax, and return to a time when the counterculture was in full swing and you could tune in every week for one or more original films made just for you.
Ray Abreu just met his forever guy: a handsome New York detective who's a cool, hot piece of man candy. But someone - or something - else is after Ray, and he's not used to losing. He's killer. And he'll redefine the meaning of forever.
For everybody "raised on radio"—and that's everybody brought up in the thirties, forties, and early fifties—this is the ultimate book, combining nostalgia, history, judgment, and fun, as it reminds us of just how wonderful (and sometimes just how silly) this vanished medium was. Of course, radio still exists—but not the radio of The Lone Ranger and One Man's Family, of Our Gal Sunday and Life Can Be Beautiful, of The Goldbergs and Amos 'n' Andy, of Easy Aces, Vic and Sade, and Bob and Ray, of The Shadow and The Green Hornet, of Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, and Baby Snooks, of the great comics, announcers, sound-effects men, sponsors, and tycoons. In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do twenty-five years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years—as a boy he did his homework to the sound of Jack Benny and Our Miss Brooks—takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and not-great-at-all. Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio deployed or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen, while pulling back to an overview that manages to be both comprehensive and seductively specific. Here is a book that is generous, instructive, and sinfully readable—and that brings an era alive as it salutes an extraordinary American phenomenon.
