The Mertzes
As with My Favorite Husband, Lucy writers decided that the Ricardos needed an older couple to play off of. While doing Husband, veteran character actors Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet had played Rudolph and Iris Atterbury, an older, more financially stable couple as Mr. Atterbury was George Cooper's (Lucy's radio husband's) boss. Ball had initially wanted both actors to reprise their roles on television, however, both were unavailable at the time the show went into production as Benaderet was already playing Blanche Morton on Burns and Allen, and Gordon was under contract by CBS to play Mr. Conklin on the radio and television versions of Our Miss Brooks.
Casting the Mertzes, as they were now called (the surname taken from a doctor Lucy scribe Madelyn Pugh knew as a child in Indianapolis), proved to be a challenge. Ball had initially wanted character actor James Gleason, with whom she appeared in Columbia Pictures 1949 movie Miss Grant Takes Richmond, to play Fred Mertz. However, Gleason wanted nearly $3,500 per episode to play the role, a price that was far too steep. Sixty-four-year-old Bill Frawley, a seasoned vaudevillian and movie character actor with nearly 100 film credits to his name, was a long shot to play Fred Mertz and only came into consideration after he telephoned Ball personally to ask if there was a role for him on her new show. Ball, who had only briefly known Frawley from her days at RKO, suggested him to both Arnaz and CBS. The network balked at the idea of Frawley, fearing that his excessive drinking—which was well known in Hollywood—would interfere with his doing a live show. Arnaz nonetheless liked Frawley and lobbied hard for him to have the role, even to the point of having Lucy scribes re-tailor the role of Fred Mertz to be a less financially successful and more curmudgeonly (in contrast to Gale Gordon's Mr. Atterbury) character to fit Frawley's persona. CBS relented only after Arnaz contractually bound Frawley to complete sobriety during the production of the show, and reportedly told the veteran actor that if he ever appeared on-set more than once in an intoxicated state he would be fired. Not once during Lucy's nine seasons did Frawley's drinking ever interfere with his performance, and over time Arnaz became one of Frawley's few close friends.
Casting the Ethel Mertz character was also some work. One choice was actress Barbara Pepper, who was a close friend of Lucy's. The two had a long history together, as Pepper had been of the Goldwyn Girls who came to Hollywood with Lucy in 1933. Pepper was favored by Lucy herself, however, CBS refused on the grounds that Pepper suffered from a drinking problem that was far more severe than Frawley's. Nonetheless Pepper did appear in several bit parts during the run of the show. Vivian Vance became a consideration on the recommendation of Lucy director Marc Daniels. Daniels had worked with Vance in New York on Broadway in the early 1940s. Vance had already been a successful stage star performing on Broadway for nearly 20 years in variety of plays and in addition, after relocating to Hollywood in the late 1940s, had two film roles to her credit. Nonetheless, by 1951, she was still a relatively unknown actress in Hollywood. Vance was performing in a revival of the play The Voice of the Turtle in La Jolla, California. Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer went to see her in the play and hired her on the spot. Vance was reluctant about giving up her film and stage work for a television show, yet was convinced by Daniels that it would be a big break in her career. Ball, however, had many misgivings about hiring Vance, who was around the same age as she, and far more attractive than the concept of Ethel as an older, somewhat homely woman. Ball was also a believer in the Hollywood adage at the time that there should be only one pretty woman on the set and Ball, being the star of the show, was it. Arnaz, however, was impressed by Vance's work and hired her. The decision was then made to dress Vance in frumpier clothing to tone down her attractiveness. Ball and Vance's relationship during the series' early beginnings were lukewarm to say the least. Eventually realizing that Vance was no threat and was very professional, Ball began to warm to her. In 1954, Vance would become the first actress to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress. Vance and Ball would develop a lifelong close friendship. Ball would go on to ask Vance to co-star in Ball's new series The Lucy Show after the end of I Love Lucy.
Vance and Frawley's off-screen relationship was less successful. In spite of this, they were always professional and exhibited exceptional chemistry while performing on the show. In fact, their acrimonious personal relationship may have helped their onscreen marriage be that much funnier. Frawley derisively described Vance's appearance as "a sack of doorknobs." It was reported that Vance, who was 22 years younger than Frawley, was not really keen on the idea that her character Ethel was married to a man that was old enough to be her father. Vance also complained that Frawley's song-and-dance skills were not what they once were. Frawley and Vance would have an adversarial relationship during the entire run of the show.
In 1957, I Love Lucy was re-tailored into an hour-long show originally titled The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show that was to be part of an anthology series called the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. The hour-long Lucy-Desi show was to alternate on a monthly basis with other hour long Playhouse shows. The new series put a much heavier emphasis on big name guest stars as being part of the plot and although the Mertz characters continued into the new series, their roles became somewhat diminished. Although a lighter workload was welcomed by Frawley, Vance came to somewhat resent the change. In an effort to please Vance, whom he had much respect for, Arnaz proposed doing a spin-off from I Love Lucy called The Mertzes to star Vivian Vance and William Frawley. Seeing a lucrative opportunity and the chance to star in his own show, Frawley was enthused. Vance, however, declined for a number of reasons, the biggest factor being that she felt she and Frawley could barely work together on the ensemble show they were doing at the time, so it would be much less likely the two could work together on their own series. Vance also felt that the Mertz characters would not be as successful without the Ricardos to play off of, and despite being her biggest success, she was becoming interested in doing more glamorous roles instead of playing Ethel. In fact, during the thirteen episode run of the Lucy-Desi hour-long shows, Vance was given a lot more latitude to look more attractive as Ethel Mertz, something she had been denied during the run of the I Love Lucy episodes. Frawley's resentment of Vance intensified after she declined to do the spin-off show and the two rarely talked to each other outside of their characters dialogue with one another.
Years later, when Vance was on The Lucy Show and Frawley was on My Three Sons, Frawley would often bribe the eponymous sons to play practical jokes on Vance when she was rehearsing, as the two shows filmed on neighboring soundstages.
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