The Real Story Behind the ‘I Love Lucy’ Feud Between Fred and Ethel
William Frawley and Vivian Vance were not Lucille Ball‘s first choices for the characters of Fred and Ethel Mertz on the classic TV show I Love Lucy, but it goes without saying that after they got the roles, it didn’t take long for everybody involved with the show to understand what a tremendous comedic duo they had found.
However, while Frawley, Ball, and Ball’s husband Desi Arnaz (who played Ricky on the show) were all very tickled with the way that things were developing, there were a couple of things that really bothered Vance.
Case in point: Because Ball was the star of the show, Vance was required to tone down her looks quite a bit. Bottom line: When it came to beauty, Ball wanted to be second banana to no one.
The other thing that really just got her goat was the disparity in age between her and Frawley. According to Geoffrey Mark, author of The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television, when Arnaz told Vance that Frawley was going to play her husband, she replied, “Husband?! He could play my grandfather!”
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Because of the age difference and because of their very distinct personalities, the comedic chemistry that is seen onscreen between these two, well, it’s the only chemistry that there ever really was. In fact, when the two weren’t filming together, they made every effort to be nowhere near each other.
Despite their differences, both Frawley and Vance were professionals dedicated to their craft, so they made it work. Watching I Love Lucy, one would have no idea about the offscreen turmoil that was going on.
Frawley didn’t seem to care much about the fact that neither of them really had any true affection for the other. The only thing that really seemed to bother him was that Vance was so darn unhappy when she was around him. According to this Fox News article by Stephanie Nolasco, while talking to his My Three Sons costar Tim Considine about Vance, he did not mince words. He referred to her as a profoundly miserable person, using an incredibly crude and vulgar word in reference to her that made it clear that things were not good between them.
The contentiousness continued as I Love Lucy morphed from a half-hour show into The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Sadly, behind the smiles, behind the laughter, there was a real chill.
When The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour ended and Ball began work in earnest on her next project, one of her first requests was for Vance to join her as a cast member. While she readily agreed, she also made it clear that she did not want to work with Frawley again.
Everett Collection
Vance’s final appearance with longtime friend Ball was on the 1977 TV special Lucy Calls the President. And then a couple of years later, she would be gone. Cancer was the culprit.
Frawley wasn’t around to be glad or sad about Vance’s death. He’d passed away more than a decade earlier. And although Vance allegedly had made a joke about breaking open champagne upon hearing about Frawley’s demise, that story may be more Hollywood folklore than factual because she had said enough nice things about the man as an actor. In fact, a United Press International article written shortly after Frawley’s death included a quote from Vance where she said losing her I Love Lucy costar meant that “there’s a great, big, funny and amusing light gone out of the world.”
End of the day, while they may not have liked each other much, it would seem that they had a decent amount of respect for each other as professionals in the business of entertainment.
To call what they had a feud is probably not the right way to categorize what Vance and Frawley were bitter about, because there really was no one thing that either of them could point to. It’s just that their relationship, or better put, their lack of one, was what it was because they were truly very different people who ended up being coworkers, but never friends.
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Classic Comedy Duos
March 2021
Chuckle at television & films funniest comic duos.
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