The black-and-white comedy nearly looked very different. According to the National Women’s History Museum, CBS executives worried viewers would reject Arnaz because of his Cuban background and accent. Ball pushed back, and she and Arnaz took their act on the road, drawing crowds and convincing the network that audiences wanted to see them together.
Reviews of the show's debut were enthusiastic. The Hollywood Reporter called the show “a comic triumph of the first order” and predicted it would quickly rise to the top of the ratings. The publication praised Ball as “America’s No. 1 comedienne.”
Indeed, the show quickly became a hit. According to Time, by early 1952, “I Love Lucy” ranked among the country’s most-watched programs, and a few months later, it had climbed to the top spot. The Lucy Desi Museum adds that it became the first comedy to reach the top of the Nielsen ratings in 1952 and remained there for four of its six seasons. It won four Emmy Awards from 20 nominations during its run.
As Ball helped broaden the kinds of women viewers saw on TV, she and Arnaz also transformed how TV shows were produced and distributed. The “I Love Lucy” stars were also its producers, and they successfully fought to film the series in Hollywood rather than broadcast it live from New York. In California, the production crew used not one, but multiple cameras in front of a studio audience, a technique that remains standard for sitcoms today. And because “I Love Lucy” was preserved on film, it’s believed to be the first TV series widely broadcast in reruns, starting in 1955. This helped establish the TV syndication model that followed.
As of 2014, the series has been dubbed into 21 languages and seen in 80 countries. It continues to attract millions of viewers each year through reruns and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1991.
