RIP Madelyn Pugh Davis

[mikidiki]

I apologise

 

All good I would and could never think a Lucy fan would make something up like that.

[MONALISAISMONALUCY]

This is so sad and so close to the date that Lucy passed away.

 

Everyday on television we hear the words she wrote for Lucy, Ethel, and the other characters that were on "I Love Lucy". Plus the characters on "The Lucy Show","Here's Lucy", "The Mothers-In Laws" and "Alice". The writers are what we celebrate on here when we make quotes from those legendary characters that we loved. Madelyn, made us love them along with Jess and Bob. Madelyn rest in peace, and thank you.

[Brock]

 

Everyday on television we hear the words she wrote for Lucy, Ethel, and the other characters that were on "I Love Lucy". Plus the characters on "The Lucy Show","Here's Lucy", "The Mothers-In Laws" and "Alice". The writers are what we celebrate on here when we make quotes from those legendary characters that we loved. Madelyn, made us love them along with Jess and Bob. Madelyn rest in peace, and thank you.

 

Beautiful tribute.

[Brock]

Obituary from the Los Angeles Times:

 

Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with her writing partner Bob Carroll Jr. made television history in the 1950s writing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's landmark situation comedy "I Love Lucy," has died. She was 90.

 

Davis, a pioneering female radio and TV comedy writer whose work with the red-haired queen of TV comedy spanned four decades, died Wednesday at her home in Bel-Air after a brief illness, said her son, Michael Quinn Martin.

 

The team of Davis and Carroll was writing Ball's CBS radio comedy "My Favorite Husband," co-starring Richard Denning, when they and their colleague, writer-producer Jess Oppenheimer, wrote the pilot episode for "I Love Lucy."

 

The Emmy Award-winning series about a wacky New York City housewife and her Cuban bandleader husband ran on CBS from 1951 to 1957. It was ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four of its six seasons and was never out of the top three.

 

"I Love Lucy" has been playing around the world continuously ever since.

 

When interviewers asked Ball, who died in 1989, what she thought was the secret of her show's enduring popularity, she had a stock answer: "My writers."

 

"My mother never accepted an award where she didn't immediately say, 'I could not have done this without my writers.' She always put them first," Lucie Arnaz told The Times on Thursday.

 

"Madelyn was such a class act," Arnaz said. "She was a very private person, very soft-spoken, genteel, feminine — all those lovely words you associate with great ladies. And yet she had the ability to write this wacky, insane comedy for my mother.

 

"She and Bob together were just such a wonderful team, a great match-up. They complemented each other's zaniness."

 

Davis and Carroll, who were along for the "I Love Lucy" show's entire ride, wrote a string of classic episodes such as the ones in which Lucy and Ethel ( Vivian Vance) are chocolate candy dippers trying to contend with a fast-moving conveyor belt, Lucy stomps grapes in Italy, and she gets increasingly drunk doing a TV commercial for the health tonic Vitameatavegamin.

 

Davis, Carroll and producer-writer Oppenheimer wrote the first four seasons together — more than 125 episodes. Writers Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf joined them in 1955 and, after Oppenheimer left the show in 1956, Davis, Carroll, Schiller and Weiskopf wrote the remaining episodes.

 

Davis often said that no one involved with "I Love Lucy" had any idea that it would still be watched around the world more than a half-century later.

 

"In those days, we were mostly hoping we had an idea for the next show," she told the Sarasota [Fla.] Herald-Tribune in 2001.

 

Of course, with "I Love Lucy" the story lines had to have their share of slapstick stunts for its star. And Ball never balked at the physical gags her writers dreamed up.

 

"Lucy was willing to do anything if it was funny," Davis told U.S. News & World Report in 2001. "She'd black out her teeth, wear funny wigs. She never said, 'What do you mean setting fire to my nose?' And she didn't care how dangerous it was. It was very freeing to write anything in the world and know she had the nerve to do it."

 

Whatever the writers came up with for Lucy, they would try it out on Davis first to see if it would work and was safe to do.

 

"Madelyn always said she's more expendable than Lucy, but not for me she wasn't," Carroll told "CBS This Morning" during a joint appearance in 1990. "So we'd wrap Madelyn in rugs and strap her into swivel chairs and hang her out of windows, and she came through nicely. So I said, 'If it works for Madelyn, it will work for Lucy.' "

 

In an interview with The Times in 2007 after Carroll's death Davis said she and her writing partner were not much alike, personally — "Bob was strong on jokes and very funny" — but they shared the same comic sensibility.

 

"One time, we were reading a script at the table," she recalled. "I felt that a joke could be funnier if we added a certain word. I wrote it in the margin of my script, and I looked over and Bob had written the same word.

"So we thought alike and thought the same things were funny."

 

One thing she was proud of was that "Bob and I never had any arguments, which with teams is very rare. Neither one of us liked fussing and fighting."

 

After writing "I Love Lucy", Davis and Carroll wrote for "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour," "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy." They also were on board for Ball's short-lived comeback series, "Life with Lucy," in 1986. And they wrote the story for "Yours, Mine and Ours," the 1968 family comedy starring Ball and Henry Fonda.

 

Davis and Carroll received two Emmy nominations for their work on "I Love Lucy" and one for "Here's Lucy."

 

Among their other TV credits: They created "The Mothers-in-Law," a 1967-69 sitcom starring Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard and were producers on the 1970s and '80s sitcom "Alice."

 

Born Madelyn Pugh in Indianapolis on March, 15, 1921, Davis knew at an early age that she wanted to become a writer.

 

She majored in journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington. But, unable to land a newspaper job after graduating in 1942, she found work as a staff writer at WIRE, the NBC radio station in Indianapolis, where she wrote commercials and patter for the disc jockeys, among other things.

 

A year later she headed to Los Angeles and immediately was hired as a staff writer for the NBC radio network. Six months after that, in 1944, she was hired by CBS, which owned radio station KNX and had a large staff of writers.

 

Davis was the second woman hired on the writing staff — Kathleen Hite was the first. As Davis wrote in "Laughing with Lucy: My Life with America's Leading Lady of Comedy," her 2005 memoir" "No one actually wanted to hire women in 1944," but with so many men away at war, "what else was there?"

 

During her third year at KNX, she was teamed with Carroll to write a half-hour show about a newlywed couple, "The Couple Next Door."

 

After working on that show, Davis and Carroll wrote comedy sketches for a half-hour Pacific Network show called "It's a Great Life," starring a young comedian named Steve Allen. They left the Allen show to write for Ball on "My Favorite Husband."

 

In 1992, Carroll and Davis received the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for achievement in television writing from the Writers Guild of America. And in 2001, the UCLA Film School honored them for lifetime achievement in television writing.

 

Davis, whose first marriage to producer Quinn Martin ended in divorce, married Dr. Richard Davis, her former college sweetheart, in 1964. He died in 2009.

 

In addition to her son, Davis is survived by four stepchildren, Brian Davis, Charlotte Davis, Lisa Davis and Ned Davis; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

 

Services will be private.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-madelyn-pugh-davis-20110422,0,4201375,full.story

 

[JoeySanJoaquin]

Obituary from the Los Angeles Times:

 

 

 

http://www.latimes.c...1375,full.story

 

I keep tearing up thinking about the loss of this great lady. Now to read she got to marry her "college sweetheart" REALLY got me, not sure why. She obviously had a great life and I guess we should be glad instead of sad, as a run to 90 isn't too shabby.

 

It sure must be getting crowded up there!

 

 

[Brock]

Madelyn's New York Times obituary.

 

Madelyn Pugh Davis, Writer for ‘I Love Lucy,’ Dies at 90

By DENNIS HEVESI

 

Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with her writing partners for the classic sitcom “I Love Lucy” concocted zany scenes in which the harebrained Lucy dangles from a hotel balcony, poses as a sculpture or stomps and wrestles in a vat full of grapes, died Wednesday at her home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. She was 90.

 

Her death was confirmed by her son, Michael Quinn Martin.

 

Clever turns of the phrase were not grist for the comedy mill that Ms. Davis, along with Bob Carroll Jr. and the producer Jess Oppenheimer, began running out of a studio back office in 1951. With Ms. Davis clacking away at the typewriter and her partners pacing around her, the basic premise was to come up with ludicrous physical predicaments for the show’s star, Lucille Ball, to get herself into — to the eternal consternation of her husband, played by her real-life husband, the bandleader Desi Arnaz, who was also one of the show’s producers. Lucy would be plopped in a bucket of cement, scampering about a bull ring, coated by ice after being locked in a meat freezer — all of which she escaped with clownish glee.

 

In one famous scene, Lucy’s oversized bread loaf swells from the oven and backs her across her kitchen. In another, she guzzles a 46-proof health tonic, Vitameatavegamin, in a commercial, and is soon mumbling and stumbling.

 

Visual comedy is what the team, joined by Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf 1n 1955, considered their playful work. “We weren’t doing joke jokes or funny word jokes as much as we were setting up physical situations for her,” Ms. Davis said in a 1993 interview for the Archive of American Television. Often it was Ms. Davis who first rode a unicycle or tried out other stunts to see if they would work for Ms. Ball.

 

“On set, these stunts became known as the ‘Black Stuff,’ since Ms. Davis would type these zany feats in all caps on the script so Lucy would know exactly what she was getting herself into,” according to a profile of Ms. Davis by the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television and Radio), which honored her in 2006.

 

“During the formative years of television, when few women were working behind the screen, Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote one of the most popular shows of all time,” the Paley Center said. She “not only made her mark as a writer, but also opened the door for other women to follow in her footsteps.”

 

Viewers certainly loved Lucy, and still do. For four of its six seasons, “I Love Lucy” was the most popular show on television; it never ranked lower than third in any of those seasons. It received two Emmy Awards for best situation comedy and two nominations for best comedy writing. The show’s 179 episodes — all of which Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll were involved in writing — remain rerun regulars.

 

“It’s still hard for me to grasp it when people tell me, ‘I’ve seen every episode dozens of times,’ ” Ms. Davis said in 1993.

 

Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll went on to write for all of Ms. Ball’s later television endeavors: “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” (1957-60), a series of specials, and the three series she made after she and Mr. Arnaz divorced: “The Lucy Show” (1962-68), “Here’s Lucy” (1968-74) and the short-lived “Life With Lucy” (1986).

 

Born in Indianapolis on March 15, 1921, Madelyn Pugh was the youngest of three daughters of Isaac and Louise Hupp Pugh. A three-act play she wrote when she was 10 set her career path. At Shortridge High, she wrote for the school newspaper and, with her classmate Kurt Vonnegut, joined the school’s fiction club. She graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism in 1942.

 

Her first professional writing job was at the Indianapolis radio station WIRE. She moved to Los Angeles in 1943 and was soon working for CBS. There she met Mr. Carroll, with whom she wrote scripts for “My Favorite Husband,” a radio show about a ditzy wife and her banker husband. It starred Lucille Ball.

 

By 1951, “My Favorite Husband” had evolved into “I Love Lucy,” chronicling the loony lives of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Their best friends, Ethel and Fred Mertz, were played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley.

 

Madelyn Pugh married Quinn Martin, one of television’s most successful producers, in 1955; they divorced six years later. Her second husband, Richard Davis, died in 2009. In addition to her son, she is survived by four stepchildren from her second marriage, Brian, Charlotte, Lisa and Ned Davis; nine step-grandchildren; and one step-great-grandson.

 

Ms. Davis and Mr. Carroll, who died in 2007, wrote together for more than 50 years. Among the other shows they worked on were “The Mothers-in-Law” and “Alice.” They also wrote the story for the 1968 film “Yours, Mine and Ours,” starring Ms. Ball and Henry Fonda. They collaborated on a memoir, “Laughing With Lucy,” in 2005.

 

In an interview last year for this obituary, Ms. Davis recalled some of the many wacky situations she helped devise for Ms. Ball: standing on stilts, coping with a house overrun by baby chicks, wearing a beard and — a classic — overwhelmed by a warp-speed conveyor belt in a chocolate factory.

 

“Lucy would do anything we suggested,” Ms. Davis said.

 

Really?

 

“The only time she ever said she didn’t want to do something was when she saw an elephant on the set and ran up to her office,” Ms. Davis recalled.

 

The script called for her to retrieve $500 from under the elephant’s foot.

 

“Then the phone rang and it was Vivian Vance,” Ms. Davis said. “Vivian said, ‘It’s O.K., I told Lucy that if she didn’t want to do that funny thing, I’ll do it.’ And Lucy said, ‘O.K., I’ll do it.’ So she talked into the elephant’s trunk and got it to lift its foot.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/arts/television/madelyn-pugh-davis-writer-for-i-love-lucy-dies-at-90.html

[Mister Hepburn]

Sad, sad day. :-(

[Mmadluv7]

oh I was just thinking about her-

 

I'm a little sad, but she lived a great life.

 

http://thelucyartblog.tumblr.com/post/4825101486/

[Neil]

The classiest lady I ever met.

I will be forever in her debt.

For many things, not the least of which was uttering this sentence to me:

"Come with me and meet Lucy."

[Harrison]

Rest In Peace, Madelyn. You answered your call in this life on earth and have made it a better place because of it. You are an inspiration to many - those who have passed on, those who are living, and those who have yet to live. The legacy which you have left behind is something to be proud of and admired. You are truly a legend.

[leenorman]

Sorry to be the bearer of this news. It has just been reported that one of Lucy's best known writers has passed away aged 90.

 

Have, this date, added the sad news to our chronology. I'll bet she's got 'em rockin' with laughter, in heaven!!!! Now that the majority of 'them' are 'up there', wonder what wonderful thing they can 'cook up' for the 60th and 100th!!!! Looking forward to it!

 

Love, JK

[C L A U D E]

At least we did not find out about Madelyn's passing weeks later as sometimes happens with lesser known people in show business, i also think her long and glowing obits everywhere are a real tribute to her many contributions in the television industry. She might have been cheated by the Emmys but at least was treated better in death.

[Joker10]

Rest in peace.

[vivfantoo*]

You all have written such beautiful tributes to Madelyn, & I agree with every word. Yesterday this was the first thread I saw & I got so sad when I read the news I couldn't even finish it & left.

 

Now I'm back & I'm surprised that it is happening again -- I feel really blue about her passing.

 

Thank you so much, Madelyn, & a big (((hug)))for all the hours of fun & laughter you gave us through your writing. God bless you.

[Lucy's Aussie Fan]

Wow, such sad sad news.

One of the Mastermind's behind the greatest show ever created! Without Madelyn, ILL would not have been the success it was.

RIP Madelyn. You will never be forgotton. Your hard work and commitment will forever be appreciated.

[Neil]

In person, Madelyn exuded such incredible warmth. She had a lovely, soothing voice and one of the most wonderful laughs I've ever heard. She would open her mouth and tilt her head back and let out this hearty sound. (This is hard to put into words). She was one of those rare people that made you feel good just being in her presence. What a wonderful quality. Very few people I've ever known has had it. Intelligent, beautiful, classy and sincere, she was one of a kind, especially in show business.

[Brock]

Entertainment Weekly devoted a half-page to Madelyn in their current issue (Twilight cover). I am amazed and thrilled that she wasn't relegated to just a brief paragraph.

[Lucy's Aussie Fan]

That is great! I wonder if you can read it online anywhere??

[Brock]

I will scan it for tomorrow.

[Lucy's Aussie Fan]

That would be great! Thanks Brock !

[Brock]

[C L A U D E]

Nice, thank you for that, yes Madelyn sure is getting lots of recognition for her great work, thanks again for putting it up here and saving us the cost of an issue of EW, LOL!

[Lucy's Aussie Fan]

Wonderful article! Thanks for sharing Brock!

[MONALISAISMONALUCY]

Madelyn's work is so relevant for us today. I hope that they return "Alice" to the airwaves in the near future. Brock, thanks for posting that article.