David's Reviews > The Forgotten Desi and Lucy TV Projects: The Desilu Series and Specials that Might Have Been

Just finished reading “The Forgotten Desi and Lucy TV Projects: The Desilu Series and Specials That Might Have Been” by Richard Irvin (2020). An excellent reference book on all of the (known) television projects Desi Arnaz and/or Lucille Ball—both through their Desilu Studios and then later under their individual separate production companies—considered making (or actually did shoot “pilot” episodes of which then didn’t get made into television series).

Broken down into projects under Desi Arnaz’s running of Desilu from 1950 to 1962 Desilu first, then, after Desi’s resignation from the company in 1962, under Lucy’s term as president of Desilu from 1962 to 1967 (when she sold Desilu to Gulf + Western).

Each of these periods are then further divided out by “funny lady” comedy pilots, “funny guys”, “couples comedies”, “dramas”, “anthologies”, proposed spin-offs of successful Desilu series like “I Love Lucy”, “Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse”, “The Untouchables”, etc.

The length of each project/pilot entry varies from only a paragraph or two in cases where nothing was made and little information still exists to several pages about pilots that were actually shot.

There are also chapters detailing the Gene Roddenberry produced Desilu pilots and proposed projects including the original “Star Trek” pilot episode, “The Cage”*, and precursors to Desilu’s successful “Mission: Impossible” series.

(* It is in the Gene Roddenberry chapter that I found a glaring error, though. It might just be a poorly written sentence but it says that the second pilot episode of Star Trek, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, with William Shatner taking over as lead of the series from Jeffrey Hunter, “became the first episode of Star Trek to be aired with an entirely new cast except for Leonard Nimoy” (153). Any one who knows the original Star Trek series well at all knows that the first episode aired was “The Man Trap”. “Where No Man” was aired as the third episode of the first season.)

Still, this is an excellent reference book for those interested in early television production (a look into the *many* projects a studio used to make—or consider making—of pilots of in hopes of a television network buying them to turn into a regular weekly series), the early history of television in general (such as the 1950s when the television anthology series was prevalent), and/or just in learning more about Lucille Ball’s and Desi Arnaz’s careers. (One project considered by Desi Arnaz was a Fred and Ethel Mertz spinoff series after “I Love Lucy” but Vivian Vance refused to work with William Frawley on any project without also Lucy and Desi.)