Series Description

The Life With Lucy TV show was a 30 minute comedy series on ABC about a grandmother who lived with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren and found herself in one mess after another.

Life With Lucy Cast

Lucille Ball .... Lucy Barker
Gale Gordon .... Curtis McGibbon
Ann Dusenberry .... Margo Barker McGibbon
Larry Anderson .... Ted McGibbon
Jenny Lewis .... Becky McGibbon
Philip Amelio .... Kevin McGibbon
Donovan Scott .... Leonard Stoner

Life With Lucy Trivia

There were six episodes of the Life With Lucy TV show that were produced but were not broadcast. Their titles were: "Lucy and the Guard Goose", "Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree", "Lucy's Green Thumb", "Breaking Up is Hard to Do", "World's Greatest Grandma", and "Twas the Flight Before Christmas".

Unsurprisingly, the situations that Lucy Barker found herself in were pretty identical to the ones that another TV character named Lucy Ricardo used to find herself involved in and they affected Barker's family and friends pretty identically to the way Lucy Ricardo's husband and friends were affected by her mishaps. There's no denying the comic genius of Lucille Ball but everything gets tiring eventually when it becomes repetitive.

Audrey Meadows ("The Honeymooners") appeared on the last aired episode, "Mother of the Bride". She was brought in as a new regular cast member in an attempt to boost viewership and to give Lucille Ball another classic comedienne to work with but Life With Lucy just couldn't hold on long enough to see if that would have worked.

On the very day that the final (unaired) episode of Life With Lucy was being filmed, series executive producer Aaron Spelling told Lucille Ball's husband (Gary Morton who was also an executive producer) that he had heard of the series' cancellation. Morton could not bring himself to tell his wife that her 53-year-old career as a movie and TV star was coming to an end. He finally gave her the bad news after the end of the day. Lucille never acted on the big or small screen again and passed away a mere three years later at 77 years of age.

It was actually due to the huge success of the Cosby Show which had dominated the ratings during the previous season that gave the producers of Life With Lucy the idea of rejeuvenating Lucille's career. After all, Cosby had also been a former huge comedy star who hit newly found success! It simply wasn't to be for Lucy though, probably because she refused to "age" her character sufficiently to be believable. Lucille sadly took the failure of Life With Lucy personally. She felt that her fans who had once adored her had now abandoned her. She couldn't, of course, been further from the truth. We just didn't want to see her attempting to play the nearly exact same role at 74 that she had played at age 40 on "I Love Lucy".

Episodes List With Original Air Dates

1. One Good Grandparent Deserves Another (9/20/1986)
2. Lucy Makes a Hit with John Ritter (9/27/1986)
3. Love Among the Two-by Fours (10/4/1986)
4. Lucy Gets Her Wires Crossed 10/18/1986)
5. Lucy Is a Sax Symbol (10/25/1986)
6. Lucy Makes Curtis Byte the Dust (11/1/1986)
7. Lucy, Legal Beagle (11/8/1986)
8. Mother of the Bride (11/15/1986)