The Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the National Comedy Center in Jamestown are celebrating because she is one of the newly announced inductees into the Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
Emily and Mercedes spoke with Journey Gunderson, the executive director for the National Comedy Center in Jamestown. She says most people know her as a very successful sitcom star from ‘I Love Lucy,” but they may not know that she revolutionized entertainment. Journey goes on to say, “She and Desi took creative control and flipped the entertainment model on its head when CBS offered her, her own show, the career opportunity of a lifetime and she said we want to produce it ourselves out of pocket and sell it to you, so that was already innovative. Then, they made decisions like filming ‘I Love Lucy’ on 35mm film versus kinescope, which deteriorates very quickly.” She says the reason they made that decision was to be able to ship the canisters of film from coast to coast because most programs were produced in the east at that time. That’s why, she said we can still watch ‘I Love Lucy’in such good quality.
Journey says they also infused things into the process that are still used today like the multi-camera shoot and editing process but later, what is so remarkable about Lucille Ball is that she became the first female head of a major Hollywood studio, Desilu. Other projects that the studio produced included Star Trek, Mission Impossible, The Untouchables, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lucy Show and more. Journey says, “Lucy’s impact in terms of broadcasting and entertainment is truly unmatched.”
For more information visit comedycenter.org or give them a call at
716-484-2222
