"I'm gonna learn to love that bitch."

Hehe... I'm enjoying a biography of Lucille Ball, and there's a great story about how awful she was to Vivian Vance when the show first started. Ball didn't think Vance was right for the role, but Desi Arnaz insisted on her.

One day, she ripped Vance's false eyelashes off, yelling "I'm the only one who can wear false eyelashes on this show!".

Another day, Ball was just being terrible to Vance, when an assistant quietly approached Vance and asked her "What are you going to do about her? Vance replied: "If by any chance this thing actually becomes a hit and goes anywhere, I'm gonna learn to love that bitch."

Well, the show DID take off, and Vance and Ball became lifelong friends.

And she's a sweety.

I adore shepherds.

very much. He was 22 years older than her, and she thought he should be playing her father, not her husband.

Frawley was rude, crude and treated her very badly. He liked to fart around her on the set.

When the "Lucy" variants were all over, they were offered their own "Fred & Ethel" show. Frawley was all gung-ho to do it, but Vance refused.

The talent was so, on average, so much better back then because they were all being taken from Vaudeville and other live theatrical venues.

I didn't realize those two got off to a bad start, but I'm glad they got it together and became friends! Good inspiration.

and their friendship and admiration was real.

Later in life, Ball talked about how when she watched "I Love Lucy" reruns*, all she could keep her on eye was on Vance. She said she was busy at the time, she failed to recognize just HOW talented Vance was.

But she must've recognized it at some level, as she brought Vance onto her subsequent shows. Trivia: Vance's character, "Vivian Bagley" in "The Lucy Show" was the first divorcee ever to appear on a weekly TV show.


* Desi Arnaz invented the rerun. He very shrewdly made a deal with CBS to have Desilu pay for the actual filming of "I Love Lucy" (all other shows used kinescopes) in exchange for DesiLu owning the rights to the films. Nobody then imagined that a TV show could be re-aired and still have an audience.

cuz I love this story.