Lucille Ball's 100th Birthday Celebrated With 'Lucy' Google Doodle

Lucille Ball's 100th Birthday Celebrated With 'Lucy' Google Doodle

Lucille Ball's 100th Birthday Celebrated With 'Lucy' Google Doodle. Google on Saturday celebrated what would have been actress Lucille Ball's 100th birthday with a homepage doodle that incorporated footage from her iconic I Love Lucy TV show.

The Google doodle was replaced with a vintage TV set that drew the Google logo in a manner similar to the I Love Lucy opening credits. A "Play" button appeared and clicking it brought up a few seconds of various Lucy episodes, including the famous scene featuring Lucy and Ethel working in a candy factory. Flip the "channels" for six Lucy moments, powered by YouTube.

"What else to say except 'We Love Lucy'? Happy 100th Birthday to Lucille Ball!" Google tweeted today.

Five-time Emmy winner Lucille Ball died in 1989 in Los Angeles, but her legend lives on, most famously via her iconic TV show, I Love Lucy. The show ran from 1951 to 1957, but can be seen in syndication around the world, introducing generation after generation to Ball's comic stylings.

Ball started her career as a contract player, or Goldwyn Girl, for Hollywood movie studio MGM. She starred in a variety of "B" movies for nearly 20 years before switching to TV, making the transition from "a platinum blonde sex symbol to a wise-cracking redhead," according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

When I Love Lucy debuted in 1951, it was a hit, reaching number one after just a few months and remaining there for four out of its six seasons. As the museum notes, the show was unique in that it was the first to be produced live on film, using several cameras in front of a live studio audience. This allowed Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz, to profit handsomely from re-runs, syndication, and foreign distribution.

Ball's popularity forced CBS to allow her real-life pregnancy to be written in to season two of the show, something that was unheard of at the time. Executives required that the word "expectant" be used instead of "pregnant," but seven episodes basically mirrored Ball's real-life pregnancy and a pre-taped episode featuring the birth of Lucy's child coincided with the actual delivery of Ball's baby. That episode had a record number of viewers, beating out the inauguration of President Eisenhower, the museum said.

That popularity also helped her successfully fight the Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee, after a 1953 Walter Winchell program threatened her career. Ball was also the first woman to head a major Hollywood studio, dubbed Desilu, which produced Star Trek, Our Miss Brooks, Mission Impossible, The Untouchables, The Andy Griffith Show, My Favorite Martian, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Make Room for Daddy, among others. She sold Desilu to Gulf and Western for $17 million in the 1960s and founded Lucille Ball Productions with second husband Gary Morton.

After I Love Lucy, Ball starred in a number of TV shows, including The Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Show, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, and Life With Lucy. She was the first woman inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame.

"For all her impact upon the very nature of television production, Ball is most vividly recalled as a series of black and white images," the museum noted. "To remember Lucille Ball is to recall a profusion of universal images of magical mayhem—a losing battle with a candy conveyor belt, a flaming nose, a slippery vat of grapes—images which, contrary to most American situation comedy, transcend nationalities and generations, in an absolute paradigm of side-splitting laughter."

In honor of Ball's 100th birthday, the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Center for Comedy is looking to raise $100,000, which will be used for the center's comedic arts program and provide educational and performance opportunities for "today's under-served class clowns."

The center, meanwhile, is currently in the midst of a Lucy Comedy Fest in her hometown of Jamestown, NY, which runs until tomorrow. Among the events today will be an attempt to set a world record for the most people dressed as Lucy Ricardo in one place at one time.

What's your favorite Lucy moment? Let us know in the comments below.

For more on Google's doodles, meanwhile, see the slideshow below. One of the company's last popular doodle was a playable image in honor of musician Les Paul, which eventually got its own standalone site. The search giant also celebrated the year's first total lunar eclipse with a doodle that included a live feed of the event.

Recently, it was revealed that Google obtained a patent for its popular homepage doodles, covering "systems and methods for enticing users to access a Web site."

Source:pcmag