They Love Lucy Fans Rally To Feed Their Enthusiasm For The TV, Film Character Made Famous By Lucille Ball
Kiley Majeski started watching “I Love Lucy” when she was 5. But it was only last year that the 13-year-old became obsessed.
Now, her room is covered with Lucy memorabilia, and she carries a portable television around so she won’t miss any episodes.
“I’d rather her be into Lucy than drugs,” Kiley’s mother, Kathy, said Saturday at the first Loving Lucy ‘96 convention.
Kathy, Kiley, her sister Ashley and her friend Jenni Hoder, also a Lucy fanatic, were among the 1,000 people registered for the three-day event by Saturday afternoon.
“She was just a strong woman of the ‘50s at a time when women were pushed down,” Kiley said after a panel discussion with former supporting cast members at the Burbank Airport Hilton. “She stood up to Ricky. She’s a role model for me.
“She was so excited all the time. One of my friends calls me Lucy because I get the same gleam in my eye, and I have all these crazy ideas.”
Loving Lucy ‘96 was organized by the We Love Lucy fan club, founded in 1977 by Thomas Watson, a Van Nuys advertising researcher who is still president. Watson, 48, had doubts about whether fans would support a convention.
“We wondered if anybody would show up,” he said outside a hall where Lucy’s gowns were being auctioned to benefit a Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz museum in Jamestown, N.Y., Lucy’s hometown. They did, in droves.
The response was so overwhelming that the club ran out of printed tickets Saturday. Watson said one female fan came from Switzerland.
Martine Ehrenclov of Santa Monica showed up with her husband, Jamie, and their baby daughter, Lucy, who was named after the actress.
“I watched her every night as a kid, and she made me laugh,” Ehrenclov said.
The Lucycon began Friday night at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with a screening of early TV appearances by Lucy, bloopers from her shows, backstage footage and a new 35mm print of her 1960 film, “The Facts of Life.”
Saturday in Burbank, vendors were hawking everything from old photos, books, magazines, record albums, comics, posters, dolls and board games to a new CD-ROM produced by Luci Arnaz and a new line of collector trading cards.
Discussions were held with writers and former cast members from Lucy’s four series, including Keith “Little Ricky” Thibodeaux, Shirley “Marion Strong” Mitchell and Mary Jane Croft, who played Betty Ramsey and Mary Jane Lewis.
Also on hand were the Borden twins, Marilyn and Rosalyn, who played Teensy and Weensy in the famous 1955 episode where Lucy and Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) got stuck in Bent Fork, Tenn., on their way to California. Every time a particular episode or star was mentioned during the panels, the audience would either break into applause or let out loving sighs.
The Lucycon concluded Sunday with a tour at Universal City Studios. In the meantime, Kiley Majeski was looking for Lucy wallpaper.