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how did Lucy pick her guest stars?


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did they go to the Desilu offices and give their resumes? Or did she actually see them in something and say "they'd be perfect!" 

 

Like Alan Reed playing the waiter in the coffee shop in Lucy Visits the White House. Her kids must have watched the Flintstones, but what made her think he'd be a good fit to play the waiter? His tone of voice? And Phil Harris was in an ep of TLS and HL, so did he ask to be on or did she actually see The Jungle Book and Robin Hood? (He was the voice of Baloo the Bear and Little John in both movies) 

 

And she must have been so impressed by Paul Winchell's ventriloquist skills that she wanted him on her show. This was nearly a year before he started voicing Tigger in the Pooh series. 

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This is a very good question!  She probably had little to do with the casting of small parts except to recommend friends, Carole, Mary, Sid and Vanda. But In reference to her actual guest STARS as the series wound down, her guest stars were less current.  They got exchange guest shots like Dinah Shore, Jack Benny, Carol Burnett, and Ann-Margaret.(I'm sure there were more)  You had Flip Wilson, Sammy Davis, Johnny Carson and Joe Namath,  hot at the time, but then you had a lot of stars whose careers had peaked.   Did they pick from a cheap pool that would work for post-Burton money?  (By the way, does anyone know how much the Burtons got, besides those bank-breaking perks?  Did they actually go after RUDY VALLEE (who, other than "Havana" I had no idea who he was), Bob Cummings twice, Dan Dailey, Frankie Avalon, Milton Berle twice, Art Linkletter who no longer had his long-running House Party, and LAWRENCE WELK?

I wonder if they had a standard guest star fee that was beneath a lot of big stars.

 

I wonder if there's any significance to the fact that after the Burton season, neither Carol Burnett nor Jack Benny who had guested on one each year, never did a full guest spot again (I know Benny did a cameo in "Rich Little")

 

The lower caliber of guest stars applied to the supporting players too.  Gone were the dependable TV regulars they had used in the past, for the most part.  Herb Vigran, Kathleen Freeman, Frank Nelson and the like.  Some of those supporting players could barely ACT!

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Very good question and I'd love to get the answer to that.  I'm sure once Lucy loved working with anybody, they got asked a lot more afterwards.  I'm sure they had an amount they usually paid BUT, most stars would do her show for the exposure of being on a top rated show and working with her.

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The guest star fee on Here's Lucy was $5,000. The only one who got more than that was Rudy Vallee, of all people. He demanded double that and they were too far along to say no to him. Who else could have played that role? If they paid him $10,000, they would have established a new guest star fee. To get around this, they paid him the standard $5,000 as guest star and an additional $5,000 as a "1920s period consultant."

 

I don't know how much the Burtons were actually paid. It could have been the standard $5,000. But then there were the perks, which included bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the trailers, Elisabeth's hair, makeup, and champagne, the many sweaters Richard bought, the after party, and the highly expensive insurance and guards for the ring.

 

Not sure about Carol, but I would think that Jack Benny did not appear during the last two seasons of the show because Milt Josefsberg was no longer involved.

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