Madelyn Pugh Davis, Writer for ‘I Love Lucy,’ Dies at 90
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: April 21, 2011
Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with her writing partners for the classic sitcom “I Love Lucy“ concocted zany scenes in which the harebrained Lucy dangles from a hotel balcony, poses as a sculpture or stomps and wrestles in a vat full of grapes, died Wednesday at her home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. She was 90.
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Her death was confirmed by her son, Michael Quinn Martin.
Clever turns of the phrase were not grist for the comedy mill that Ms. Davis, along with Bob Carroll Jr. and the producer Jess Oppenheimer, began running out of a studio back office in 1951. With Ms. Davis clacking away at the typewriter and her partners pacing around her, the basic premise was to come up with ludicrous physical predicaments for the show’s star, Lucille Ball, to get herself into — to the eternal consternation of her husband, played by her real-life husband, the bandleader Desi Arnaz, who was also one of the show’s producers. Lucy would be plopped in a bucket of cement, scampering about a bull ring, coated by ice after being locked in a meat freezer — all of which she escaped with clownish glee.
In one famous scene, Lucy’s oversized bread loaf swells from the oven and backs her across her kitchen. In another, she guzzles a 46-proof health tonic, Vitameatavegamin, in a commercial, and is soon mumbling and stumbling.
Visual comedy is what the team, joined by Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf 1n 1955, considered their playful work. “We weren’t doing joke jokes or funny word jokes as much as we were setting up physical situations for her,” Ms. Davis said in a 1993 interview for the Archive of American Television. Often it was Ms. Davis who first rode a unicycle or tried out other stunts to see if they would work for Ms. Ball.
“On set, these stunts became known as the ‘Black Stuff,’ since Ms. Davis would type these zany feats in all caps on the script so Lucy would know exactly what she was getting herself into,” according to a profile of Ms. Davis by the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio), which honored her in 2006.
“During the formative years of television, when few women were working behind the screen, Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote one of the most popular shows of all time,” the Paley Center said. She “not only made her mark as a writer, but also opened the door for other women to follow in her footsteps.”
Viewers certainly loved Lucy, and still do. For four of its six seasons, “I Love Lucy” was the most popular show on television; it never ranked lower than third in any of those seasons. It received two Emmy Awards for best situation comedy and two nominations for best comedy writing. The show’s 179 episodes — all of which Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll were involved in writing — remain rerun regulars.
“It’s still hard for me to grasp it when people tell me, ‘I’ve seen every episode dozens of times,’ “ Ms. Davis said in 1993.
Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll went on to write for all of Ms. Ball’s later television endeavors: “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” (1957-60), a series of specials, and the three series she made after she and Mr. Arnaz divorced: “The Lucy Show” (1962-68), “Here’s Lucy” (1968-74) and the short-lived “Life With Lucy” (1986).
Born in Indianapolis on March 15, 1921, Madelyn Pugh was the youngest of three daughters of Isaac and Louise Hupp Pugh. A three-act play she wrote when she was 10 set her career path. At Shortridge High, she wrote for the school newspaper and, with her classmate Kurt Vonnegut, joined the school’s fiction club. She graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism in 1942.
Her first professional writing job was at the Indianapolis radio station WIRE. She moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and was soon working for CBS. There she met Mr. Carroll, with whom she wrote scripts for “My Favorite Husband,” a radio show about a ditzy wife and her banker husband. It starred Lucille Ball.
By 1951, “My Favorite Husband” had evolved into “I Love Lucy,” chronicling the loony lives of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Their best friends, Ethel and Fred Mertz, were played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley.
Madelyn Pugh married Quinn Martin, one of television’s most successful producers, in 1955; they divorced six years later. Her second husband, Richard Davis, died in 2009. In addition to her son, she is survived by four stepchildren from her second marriage, Brian, Charlotte, Lisa and Ned Davis; nine step-grandchildren; and one step-great-grandson.
Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll, who died in 2007, wrote together for more than 50 years. Among the other shows they worked on were “The Mothers-in-Law” and “Alice.” They also wrote the story for the 1968 film “Yours, Mine and Ours,” starring Ms. Ball andHenry Fonda. They collaborated on a memoir, “Laughing With Lucy,” in 2005.
In an interview last year for this obituary, Ms. Davis recalled some of the many wacky situations she helped devise for Ms. Ball: standing on stilts, coping with a house overrun by baby chicks, wearing a beard and — a classic — overwhelmed by a warp-speed conveyor belt in a chocolate factory.
“Lucy would do anything we suggested,” Ms. Davis said.
Really?
“The only time she ever said she didn’t want to do something was when she saw an elephant on the set and ran up to her office,” Ms. Davis recalled.
The script called for her to retrieve $500 from under the elephant’s foot.
“Then the phone rang and it was Vivian Vance,” Ms. Davis said. “Vivian said, ‘It’s O.K., I told Lucy that if she didn’t want to do that funny thing, I’ll do it.’ And Lucy said, ‘O.K., I’ll do it.’ So she talked into the elephant’s trunk and got it to lift its foot.”
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