Spend Lucille Ball’s Birthday Watching Her Hilarious ‘Lucy Show’ Team-Up with Carol Burnett

There is so much praise you can heap upon Lucille Ball on her birthday. With I Love Lucy, Ball and Desilu Productions cemented the sitcom formula, established the multi-camera filming setup, and practically invented the rerun. On top of that, she put an interracial marriage on TV in the 1950s, became the first pregnant person on television, and went on to star in two more long-lived sitcoms that kept her signature brand of aggressive physical comedy on TV until she was in her ’60s. Lucille Ball is TV comedy—and, unlike nearly every other sitcom from the 1950s, her first is still funny today.

We also often talk about how Ball, as a woman with her name in the titles of three consecutive hit sitcoms, paved the way for women to be fearlessly, ferociously funny on TV. You don’t get a Julia Louis-Dreyfus or a Jackée Harry or a Kaitlin Olson without Lucille Ball. What we don’t often talk about is how Lucille Ball directly paved the way for other women to assert themselves on TV—not metaphorically, but literally face-to-face. Ball knew talent when she saw it, and she made sure to let those up-and-coming women know it.

Three examples: first, Barbara Eden. Years before Eden landed the lead role on I Dream of Jeannie, one of her very first roles was a bit part in a 1957 episode of I Love Lucy. As Eden detailed in her memoir Jeannie Out of the Bottle, she was paired to dance with Ball’s husband Desi Arnaz. During rehearsal, Ball confronted Eden telling her—as Eden recalled—”You’re good, Barbara. You don’t usually find a pretty girl who can project and be funny at the same time. But make sure to put that pretty little face of yours out there. Let the camera love your face. Don’t look away from it.” This tip becomes even more notable when you learn that Arnaz had a way of making passes at all the “pretty little faces” that passed through the I Love Lucy set. She didn’t let her husband’s wandering eye deter her, though; she requested that Eden be put in the most scene-stealing, sparkly dress wardrobe could find.

Fast forward a few years to the second example: Mary Tyler Moore. As this icon recounted in a 2010 interview, Ball would sometimes watch early rehearsals of The Dick Van Dyke Show—which was Moore’s major TV break. The Dick Van Dyke Show was produced by Ball’s production company, which made Ball (as Moore called her) the show’s landlord. Moore—as a relative newbie paired with extremely seasoned performers like Dick Van Dyke, Rose Marie, and Morey Amsterdam on a show overseen by Carl Reiner—was justifiably nervous as the new kid on the block. All that changed when, after a rehearsal, Ball left the studio and then made a point to turn around and come back in. She walked right up to Moore, looked her right in the eyes, and said, “You’re very good,” and then continued on her way. That, Moore said, was the greatest gift she could’ve received at that moment.

The third example is one you can actually see play out in an actual episode of television: Carol Burnett, in her first guest appearance on The Lucy Show. Now, Burnett was considerably further along in her career and definitely more confident in her soon-to-be-legendary comedic prowess when she first appeared on The Lucy Show. Burnett had already been a fan favorite performer for five seasons on the variety program The Garry Moore Show, but her TV presence died down considerably for a couple years before she was brought on for a guest spot on the Lucy Show episode “Lucy Gets a Roommate.” And when Burnett, the redheaded spitfire of the new generation, showed up on Lucy’s show, Lucy let her shine.

The less you know going into the episode the better. I want to do whatever I can to recreate for you the powerful TV magic I felt when I stumbled across this episode completely unaware of what I was about to see. This isn’t The Lucy Show; it’s The Lucy Show Starring Carol Burnett, and to watch it unfold is a thing of beauty and TV history. Absolutely no one would fault Ball for bringing Burnett onto The Lucy Show show and making her play backup. It was Lucy’s show. But Ball, the same Ball that supported Barbara Eden and literally went out of her way to praise Mary Tyler Moore, put Carol Burnett on the biggest sitcom stage of the season and got out of her way. It’s a marvel to watch. When Carol Burnett got her own groundbreaking sketch show just a year later, Ball would be a frequent guest.

Regrettably, it’s logistically hard to watch! “Lucy Gets a Roommate” is one of the select episodes of The Lucy Show not available to stream on Hulu. In order to watch the episode, you have to settle for an un-remastered version that’s only available as the first chunk of a big compilation on Prime Video, or as part of Prime Video’s Best TV Ever channel (it’s only $0.99/month and there’s a free trial, though). But trust me: there’s no better way to celebrate Lucille Ball on her birthday than by watching her celebrate the other iconic TV redhead, Carol Burnett.

Stream The Lucy Show on Prime Video

Stream "Lucy Gets a Roommate" on Prime Video via the Best TV Ever channel