The Great Desilu Series of the 1960s

Nearly 600 pages / For comments on reviews, click on 'see all reviews'

Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's imprint is all over television history. The Desilu company that was formed by Lucy and Desi to produce and market Lucy's TV series I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show was later sold to Paramount, handing them three of the biggest cash cows in television history--for it was Desilu that produced and financed The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek, three of the most admired and respected television series ever made.

All three would never have made it to air without the power, influence and support of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. It was Lucy who took television out of New York theaterland to Hollywood; she financed the pilot for I Love Lucy with her own money; she was the first to film before a live audience; her show pioneered the three camera system of filming sit-coms; her onscreen pregnancy forced American television to grow up a little when it was written into her series. It was Desi who protected The Untouchables; it was Lucy who bullied Star Trek and Mission: Impossible onto the air.

This book examines the four major Desilu legacies of the 1960s in detail--The Untouchables, The Lucy Show, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek.

Controversial mob show The Untouchables ran for four seasons (1959 to 1963) until TV's censors and professional complainers finally finished it off. It set the bar so high and created such controversy (albeit media-manufactured) that it was twenty five years before gangster shows of comparable quality appeared, and to this day there has not been a gangland show as successful. It was a pulp paperback brought to life, the American trash magazine as live action TV. The slam-bang rapid pace, the justifiable but shameless voyeuristic violence, and the staccato machine-gun-like narration was unique and exciting in the more slower-paced environment of early-'60s TV, and the list of guest stars giving top-rate performances of mostly first-rate scripts is as long as it is distinguished.

The Lucy Show ran for six seasons, featured wonderful physical comedy, numerous staple sit-com formula plots, and dozens of celebrity guest stars as a significant and popular part of Lucille Ball's twenty year TV career. Her co-stars, Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon (as Mr. Mooney) achieved career highs.

Mission: Impossible was the longest running and most parodied spy show of the 1960s, and is today a major movie franchise. With its dazzling theme, self-destructing taped messages, convoluted schemes, drop-jawed disbelieving villains, and iconic characters, it became a genuine pop culture item.

Star Trek, also a major movie franchise, presented pure science-fiction concepts to a mature and wide-ranging mass audience for the first time in television's history, by brilliantly transposing the western formula to futuristic space adventure, and becoming one of the most significant and revered television series in the history of the medium. Desi and Lucy were barely aware they were producing it, but Lucy got it on the air by securing another television first--a second pilot.

The Great Desilu Series of the 1960s is a fascinating, fun-filled, fact-filled story of four famously loved television series--related in the context of each other and discussed together for what I believe to be the first time.