Professor Edith Hall on Lucille Ball

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2014

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matthew Parris discovers that Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at King’s College, London, has a surprising nomination for a Great Life. She's chosen Lucille Ball, the vivacious redhead, who in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the best-known and best-loved actresses on TV, both in the United States and here. What makes a professor of Greek and Roman writing such a great fan of a zany American actress? What was Lucy like behind the TV persona? Matthew finds out in the company of Carole Cook, Lucy’s long-time friend and protégée. Producer: Christine Hall First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2014.

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0:46.0	On October 15, 1951, American TV viewers were startled and seduced by something which felt entirely new, a comedy show charting
0:56.5	the small domestic ups and downs of American family life things they could identify with, but featuring right at its centre an outrageously vivacious
1:05.9	leading lady. The public immediately took to their hearts the zenie redhead Lucille Ball. Time magazinehead, Lucille Ball.
1:13.0	Time magazine wrote,
1:14.0	Lucille submits enthusiastically to being hit with pies,
1:18.0	she falls over furniture, gets locked in home freezers,
1:21.0	is chased by knife-wielding fanatics, her mobile rubbery face reflects
1:25.4	a limitless variety of emotions from maniacal pleasure to sepulchral gloom.
1:31.3	Even on a flickering pallid TV screen, her wide-set saucer eyes beam with the
1:36.8	masked candle power of a lighthouse on a dark night.
1:41.6	Lucilleball quickly became one of the best-known women in America and along with her
1:46.0	on and off-screen husband Desi Arnaz, she stayed in the public's hearts for the best part of 40 years. But we now know that much that the public thought
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