Line #6 Creator/DesiluStudios


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/desilu_logo.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:The studio logo, first used in 1952. This image is from the "Merging Circles" variant, used for the VanityPlate featured in all Desilu series from 1966-68, including, most famously, ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Star Trek]]''.]]
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4	This seminal television production company was founded by Creator/DesiArnaz and Creator/LucilleBall in 1951 to produce their new sitcom, ''Series/ILoveLucy''. Because they owned the rights to ''I Love Lucy'' (which Creator/{{CBS}} had allowed them to keep in exchange for bearing the costs of filming the episodes - the network had wanted the show to be broadcast live from New York, as was the usual practice for most television programs in the early [[TheFifties 1950s]], but Arnaz and Ball insisted on filming in Hollywood), the studio's fortunes rose rapidly, especially once the {{rerun}} (traditionally held to have been invented by Arnaz, who made the decision to re-air old episodes to tide audiences over during a break in production for Ball's maternity leave) made it clear that holding those rights was an extremely lucrative prospect for them. Organizationally, Desilu spent most of TheFifties buying up studio space all over Hollywood; since this was the era of the MediaNotes/FallOfTheStudioSystem, there was plenty to be had, often at fire-sale prices. ''I Love Lucy'' moved from the one-stage Desilu Playhouse (a converted proscenium theatre space) to the more lavish Cahuenga facility (a dedicated film studio), with multiple stages, as early as 1953, and this enabled the studio to begin producing ''other'' shows for television, most notably ''Series/OurMissBrooks'' and ''Make Room for Daddy'', later renamed, and better-remembered as, ''The Danny Thomas Show''.
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6	Desilu cemented itself (and its chosen medium of television) as a major player in Hollywood when, in 1958, it purchased the studio and backlot space of Creator/{{RKO}}, which had been one of the Big 5 major studios during MediaNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood, not even a decade earlier. This included prime Hollywood real estate at Gower and Melrose (directly adjacent to the Paramount Pictures studios), where Arnaz and Ball promptly relocated their offices, and the famous Forty Acres backlot in Culver City, immortalized in scenes from ''[[Film/{{KingKong1933}} King Kong]]'', ''Film/GoneWithTheWind'', and ''Film/CitizenKane''. These extravagant buyouts were funded by selling the rights to ''I Love Lucy'' (which had ceased production in 1957, though the ''Series/LucyDesiComedyHour'' specials continued until 1960) to CBS, and indeed that series has never gone off the air in all the years since. The lion's share of the credit for the studio's great success during this period has always been attributed to Arnaz, whose remarkable business savvy belied the "Cuban bandleader" stereotype and image he made famous as his character, Ricky Ricardo. Lucille Ball, despite holding the official title of Vice President, had virtually no active role in the studio's day-to-day affairs at this time. Although their marriage was falling apart as TheFifties came to a close (they would divorce in 1960), the studio began producing two more classic series, Prohibition-era crime drama ''Series/TheUntouchables'' and family sitcom ''Series/MyThreeSons'', which initially co-starred William Frawley from ''I Love Lucy''. They also began renting out their ample studio space to other producers, thus resulting in a great many classic TV shows from TheSixties having been filmed at Desilu despite not necessarily having been produced by them.
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8	Desilu also attempted to branch out into other media intermittently throughout its history, rarely with much success. In 1953, three episodes of ''I Love Lucy'' were cobbled together into a feature-length film; a framing device showing a couple arriving at the Desilu Playhouse to watch a filming of the show was added after sound engineers proved unable to remove the audience laughter from the soundtrack. Although the ''I Love Lucy'' movie tested well, it was never released because Creator/{{MGM}}, which was releasing the Arnaz-Ball vehicle ''The Long, Long Trailer'', demanded that it be shelved for fear of competition; they were already dubious of the film's prospects since they reasoned that audiences wouldn't pay to see stars they could now watch at home for free. To their surprise, ''The Long, Long Trailer'' was a big hit, and as a follow-up Desilu decided to produce their own star vehicle for Arnaz and Ball, ''Forever, Darling'', in 1956. (MGM would again distribute the film.) However, ''that'' movie flopped. Undeterred, the studio tried its hand in the Great White Way in 1960, as the sole backer of Ball's equally unsuccessful Broadway debut in the musical ''Wildcat''.
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10	Arnaz initially attempted to stay on as President after the divorce, but once CBS convinced Ball to return to weekly series television in 1962 with ''Series/TheLucyShow'', it soon became clear that one of them would have to leave. In the end it was Arnaz, who sold his half of the studio to Ball in 1963, making her the first female head of a Hollywood studio in history. This forced her to take a more active role in the studio's management, although by all accounts she was quite happy running ''The Lucy Show'' as her own personal fiefdom, leaving the studio's operations to the capable underlings that Arnaz had hired, and who had stayed on after he left. Although she took advantage of her newfound role as "the woman in charge" at Desilu for publicity purposes, and was actually a perfectly competent executive in her own right, she disliked running the studio and wanted nothing more than to continue playing "Lucy". Still, she soldiered on with the job for a few years, and those talented underlings her ex-husband had hired showed remarkable willingness to take risks on unproven formats, including a WagonTrainToTheStars concept by ex-cop and ''Series/HaveGunWillTravel'' writer Creator/GeneRoddenberry, which he called ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Star Trek]]''. Not to be outdone, they also bought a concept by ''another'' former ''Have Gun -- Will Travel'' writer, Bruce Geller, called ''Series/MissionImpossible''. Both shows made it to the air in the 1966-67 season, and although both would go on to become all-time classics of popular culture, it was too little, too late for Ball. She and [[Creator/{{Paramount}} Gulf+Western]] chief executive Charles Bluhdorn announced on February 15, 1967 that his company had bought her out, effective at the end of the year. Gulf+Western had just bought out Paramount Pictures the year before, and it was the last remaining movie studio ''without'' a television production division; these had been very lucrative for other studios, particularly Creator/{{MGM}} and Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox, helping them get through some ''very'' lean years at the box office, and Bluhdorn, one of the earliest practitioners of the conglomeration trend which would dominate Corporate America in the late-20th century, felt it would be cheaper and easier to just buy out an independent TV studio than to start one from scratch. (This would later be proven wrong after he finally got a look at the production budget for ''Star Trek'', marking an ominous start to Paramount's ambivalent relationship with what would become one of its most famous - and lucrative - properties.)
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12	The last series to be created and produced by Desilu was the PrivateDetective drama ''Series/{{Mannix}}'', in the 1967-68 season. Desilu itself was folded into Creator/{{Paramount}} Pictures (and renamed '''Paramount Television''') in 1968. Most of the staff from Desilu either left or was let go around this time, most notably Herbert F. Solow, the Vice President in Charge of Production. Of the four shows Desilu was producing at the time of the sale to Gulf+Western, three continued as Paramount Television series until they were cancelled: ''Star Trek'' in 1969, ''Mission: Impossible'' in 1973, and ''Mannix'' in 1975. The fourth, ''The Lucy Show'', ceased production but was effectively retooled and continued as ''Here's Lucy'', produced by Ball's newly-formed and independent Lucille Ball Productions in cooperation with Paramount. The studio space which comprised the bulk of Desilu's physical assets were largely divested by Paramount in the mid-[[TheSeventies 1970s]]. The Cahuenga lot remains a television studio today, first renamed Ren-Mar Studios but currently known as Red Studios Hollywood. The Forty Acres lot, however, was demolished and is today occupied by an industrial park. The Gower studio is today part of the Paramount Pictures complex, the wall formerly separating the two studios having been taken down followed by an elaborate ribbon-cutting ceremony performed by Ball and Bluhdorn. Ironically, Desilu finally had a hit ''movie'' after it had effectively ceased to exist in ''Film/YoursMineAndOurs'', a blended-family comedy which starred Ball and Creator/HenryFonda, and whose success paved the way for ''Series/TheBradyBunch'' (produced by Paramount Television) to reach the airwaves.
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14	Given its primacy as one of the first and largest studios exclusively dedicated to production for the new medium of television, its vast and diverse library of programming (the studio even dabbled in ''game shows'', including ''Series/ByTheNumbers'' and the 1963-69 ''Series/YouDontSay''), and its consistent willingness to take chances on new and unusual formats, Desilu was responsible for a whole raft of [[TropeMaker Trope Making]] or [[TropeCodifier Codifying]] shows and is direly under-appreciated by many modern television viewers (if they even know of the name- Paramount for many years had a bad habit of removing the Desilu logos and putting their logos on the ends of shows). If you consider yourself any kind of student of media history, you'll want to get very familiar with their shows.
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16	The entire Desilu library (with one exception) is currently owned by CBS Studios, currently a division of Creator/ParamountGlobal. However, the copyright holder varies from series to series as follows: the shows it produced for CBS that ended prior to 1960, plus ''The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour'' (which aired its last episode in 1960), are under copyright to CBS Broadcasting, Inc.; the series Desilu co-produced with National Telefilm Associates are copyrighted to Republic Entertainment, LLC (most of the copyrights to these series were renewed by NTA after it had become Creator/RepublicPictures in 1985, subsequently merging with [[Creator/AaronSpelling Spelling Entertainment Group]] in 1994); ''Whirlybirds'' was co-produced by CBS Films which became the original Viacom (the parent of Spelling from 1999 onward), whose Viacom International division renewed the copyrights in the 1980s and are now held by CBS Operations; and the remaining shows that aired in the 1960s have been copyrighted to CBS Studios since 2006 (with the exception of 30 episodes of ''The Lucy Show'' that have fallen into the public domain), after nearly four decades with Paramount Pictures as the copyright holder. The one exception is ''The Ann Sothern Show'', which the titular star kept the rights to after it ended - prior to 1980, it was distributed at various times by Creator/UnitedArtists Television and Paramount Television. Metromedia acquired the rights to the series in 1980, and these rights were subsequently acquired by [[Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios 20th Century Fox]] and Creator/{{Disney}}.
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18	!! Television series produced by and/or filmed at Desilu:
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20	[[index]]
21	* ''Series/ILoveLucy'' (1951–57)
22	** ''Series/LucyDesiComedyHour'' (1957–60)
23	* ''Series/OurMissBrooks'' (1952–56)
24	* ''Make Room for Daddy'', aka ''The Danny Thomas Show'' (1953–65)
25	* ''Series/YancyDerringer'' (1958–59)
26	* ''Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse'' (1958–60)
27	* ''Series/TheUntouchables'' (1959–63)
28	* ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'' (1960–68)
29	* ''Series/MyThreeSons'' (1960–72)
30	* ''Series/TheDickVanDykeShow'' (1961–66)
31	* ''Series/TheLucyShow'' (1962–68)
32	* ''Series/GomerPyleUSMC'' (1964–69)
33	* ''Series/ISpy'' (1965–68)
34	* ''Series/HogansHeroes'' (1965–71)
35	* ''Series/ThatGirl'' (1966–71)
36	* ''Series/FamilyAffair'' (1966–71)
37	* ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Star Trek]]'' (1966–69)
38	* ''Series/MissionImpossible'' (1966–73)
39	* ''Series/{{Mannix}}'' (1967–75)
40	* ''Series/HeresLucy'' (1968-1974)
41	[[/index]]
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43	!! Theatrical films produced by Desilu:
44	* ''I Love Lucy'' (1953; unreleased)
45	* ''Forever, Darling'' (1956; distributed by MGM)
46	* ''Film/YoursMineAndOurs'' (1968; distributed by Creator/UnitedArtists)
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48	!! Desilu in fiction:
49	* The story ''Literature/ThatWackyRedhead'' centers on Desilu, in an AlternateHistory where Ball doesn't sell it to Paramount.

Context Creator / DesiluStudios