pioneer "Girl Writer" made us love Lucy

I’d never heard of Madelyn Pugh Davis until this week when a friend posted a memorial tribute to “the genius behind two of my favorite TV scenes ever: Lucy and the chocolate conveyor belt scene, and Lucy and Ethel raising chickens.” (See below.) Oh! All those years I spent rushing through homework on Monday nights to catch “The Lucy Show” (remember when TV was appointment only?), it never occurred to me that a writer was behind the redhead’s comic genius. Ball, however, was always quick to attribute credit. According to Ball's daughter, Lucie Arnaz, whenever her mother was asked what she thought was the secret of her show's enduring popularity, she said: "My writers." One of them, Madelyn Pugh Davis, passed away this week at 90.

Davis always knew she wanted to be a writer. She was editor of her high school newspaper in Indianapolis and member of the school's fiction club, along with her classmate Kurt Vonnegut. She majored in journalism at Indiana University and hoped to be a foreign correspondent after graduating in 1942. She couldn’t land a job at a newspaper, and so settled (like many of us do) for advertising, writing commercials and copy for a local radio station. According to an extensive tribute to Davis in the Atlantic, her break came during World War II, as it did for many women of her generation. Her family moved to Los Angeles and she got a job as staff writer for NBC radio, and then six months later she was writing for CBS. "No one actually wanted to hire women in 1944," Davis said in her memoir. “But with so many men away at war, what else was there?"

At CBS, she teamed up with Bob Carroll in a partnership that would last 50 years. At first, they produced comedy sketches for radio, including Lucille Ball’s radio show “My Favorite Husband.” When Ball decided to launch a television series co-starring her real-life husband Desi Arnaz, Davis and Carroll and colleague Jess Oppenheimer wrote the pilot for it. The show premiered on October 15, 1951 and ran until May 6, 1957. It was ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four of its six seasons and was never out of the top three.

Unlike much comedy of the day, the writing wasn’t just sight gags and easy one-liners. The writers had to come up with ludicrous physical predicaments for Ball to get herself into. Often, they got their ideas from phone books. One day they came across “Candy Maker” which inspired the script for one of my favorite episodes titled “Job Switching” in which Lucy and Ethel become breadwinners, working in a chocolate factory. I’m convinced the 50s episode wouldn’t have elevated housework to “real” work without influence of the “Girl Writer”, as Davis was known.



Then there was the hilarious episode where Lucy does a live commercial for a liquid vitamin supplement which turns out to consist largely of alcohol.



“I Love Lucy” was one of the first scripted TV shows to be shot on 35mm film in front of a television audience. It is said that Desi Arnaz (the co-star was also producer) was not a believer in retakes so that flubs, bloopers and prop mistakes were all left in the episodes. Which gave shows a freshness you don't find in today's sitcoms where all dialogue is rehearsed and supposedly perfect. One of show's most famous bloopers was when Desi messed up a line and blurted the F word, which he changed to  "Fine" at the last, saving second.



Because the show was filmed live, laugh tracks weren’t canned, they were actual recorded reactions. One scene is said to have gotten the longest laugh in recorded television history: the one where she and Ethel hide eggs in their clothes, but the jig is up when Lucy has to dance the tango with Desi. Talk about far-fetched premises that would never fare well in concept testing.

RIP, Davis and writing based on gut instinct.

memories of mothering before it was a verb

Work has always been important to me. Here I am at age three, helping my mother and grandmother do dishes. We are also packing provisions for a road trip. See slices of white bread already mayonaisse-d, on wax paper? My dad's parents lived in Atlanta and my parents, sister and I had driven to visit them from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That trip, and the one to my mother's folks in Chicago were the only vacations my parents indulged in for years. We never stopped along the way, to "squander money" at roadside restaurants. My mother packed whatever we needed in a cooler. If we were making good time, we'd stop at a rest area where my mother would shake out a freshly ironed floral cloth to cover a picnic table. More often, we'd make do with meals in the barreling car, even though this inevitably meant one of us kids would get carsick, which my engineer father considered a small price to pay for making good time.

I'm struck by how dressed up my mom and grandma are to do housework. Perhaps it was a Sunday and we'd been to church that morning. But I recall my mother looking well groomed just about every day, even when there were eight of us kids to take care of. I get tired just thinking about how much work that must have been: finding stockings that matched (no pantyhose then), making sure seams were straight, pulling on heavy foundations, ironing dresses, even aprons. (Not much was dry cleaned. My mother ironed even my father's shirts.)

Dress-wise, my mother had a lot in common with Betty Draper which I guess is one reason I chose to play that character on Twitter. But the resemblance stopped at appearance, luckily for me and my siblings. (Although I do recall hearing that "Only boring people are bored.") She liked to keep up with fashions, but didn't want to shell out for department store prices. She sewed her own clothes and ours. She took us on shopping trips in which we wouldn't buy anything; they were scouting trips for latest trends. I recall a few bouts of embarrassment when she'd pull out a tape measure and surreptitiously place it against outfits on mannequins. But I was always pleased to put on a perfectly fitted new dress with smart buttons and stylish collar. She still dresses well, though she doesn't sew anymore. She keeps a figure that can fit into petites at Talbots.

Unlike Betty, my mother enjoyed being a stay at home mom. She'd gone to Chicago Teacher's College because she liked working with children. But she was always encouraging of my sisters and me to pursue passions that would lead to other kinds of work, too.

My mother and many of her generation wouldn't call themselves feminists. But their quiet work and steady support gave their daughters confidence to claim a stake in the workplace. And paved the way for their granddaughters to consider that stake an inalienable right. This Memorial Day, I'd like to acknowledge them.

the business world is no place for ladies

I took my millennial daughter to the Clio Awards last night, which was a splendid affair. Non-recessionary menu (quail eggs and tartar), flowing bar, great work, fun crowd. She still can't get over having been in the same room with Pharrell Williams. But, perhaps because I was seeing things through her eyes, I couldn't help noting how lopsided the awards acceptances were. Virtually all who took the stage to receive them were men. What bothered me more than this was--my daughter didn't notice.

How acclimated we all are to the role of women applauding others. Barbara Lippert (Adweek) and Penny Baldwin (Yahoo) did a swell job presenting well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Awards to Rich Silverstein and Jeff Goodby. But only two women were lauded as winners themselves. The first approached the stage accompanied by a male teammate. She hung in the shadows as he delivered a few words, then he gestured for her step up to the mic. But she was as hesitant to comply as if he'd asked her to give it a blow job. She kept her distance, leaned forward and said only, "Thank you." Later, another woman was honored, but instead of accepting her due, she apologized for it. "I don't want to take up your time. Enjoy your evening," she said, hurrying away.

It's true that the world isn't fair, that the playing field is tilted, that the world's default setting still seems to be Male. Clio jury committees average 9 men to 1 woman. But women tend to worsen the odds by refusing to get comfortable with putting themselves forward. By adhering to vestigial mandates to act like a "lady."

In the lobby, while waiting for the awards ceremony to begin, I met a young guy who'd flown in from Stockholm. "Guess that means you've won something," I said. "A Silver," he nodded. "But I feel a bit sad. They won't let me on stage to accept it." Unfortunately for him, there were too many Clios and not enough time to publicly award them. I asked to take his picture and said I would blog him. His name is Carl Jannerfeldt. He was a copywriter at now-defunct Farfar. He and his team won for building the World's Biggest Signpost. And because he was forthright about his achievement, I know about him and now so do you.

why we're unbalanced

Jack Welch's words hit a nerve for me, and for you, too, judging by the number and thoughtfulness of the comments. I've been mulling them over ever since hitting "publish." Hope you'll indulge me in an addendum.

Work-life balance is something no one expected to achieve years ago. Mad Men didn't ponder the problem when they put on their fedoras and left for the train. Nor did most housewives waving goodbye to them angst about combining cake-baking with a career. I assume they, like most humans, yearned for greater fulfillment. But they never expected to have it all. No one had suggested that such a thing would be possible.

Enter the 60s. (Which, FYI younger readers, technically didn't hit until 1968.) The Age of Aquarius. Era of first generation Mood-Enhancers. Rock n Roll. The Pill. Suddenly, caveats long in place disappeared. You could engage in sex without getting pregnant. Guzzle soda pop without adding calories. Wear your hair long no matter what sex you were. We came to expect that anything was made possible by a combination of modern technology and old fashioned ingenuity.

Now, fast forward to the era of niche-marketing and customization. When everything from carry-out coffee to the new car you're ordering to heck, even your kid's education, can be customized to suit, retrofitted to your particular needs and individual desires. When we get what we want, we're used to getting it exactly, or at least asking for it. So it's a rude shock to encounter a situation where that just isn't viable, one in which the tough choices Welch talked about need to be made.

"At our company, we do everything we can to be correct," said a partner at a management consulting firm I was seated next to at a dinner party. "We put in 10 years training women just like we do men. Then, just when they hit their peak professionally, around 40, they drop out. They have to. They're pregnant or they have small children and can't keep up the pace. No one can put in the hours, time, travel it takes in this business and also raise small children."

Like Welch, he was forgetting that while women are the only employees who get pregnant, they're not the only ones who have children. Fathers have to make tough choices, too.

But what about the choices companies have to make?



For over a century, American corporate culture has chosen to reward most handsomely one type of employee: the workaholic with a stay at home spouse. If we are to reap the benefits of contributions by other workers, we must somehow change this model to accommodate them.

Of course, we've come a long way since the days of Don Draper. Family leaves (not just maternity leaves) are in place in most companies. Flex times and home-based offices are often allowed for. A bill signed into law recently in Colorado allows parents who work for big companies time off to attend school conferences.

But if real change is to be effected, shifts in policies and laws must be accompanied by shifts in attitudes on the part of top management. They must reshape orthodox notions of work to include alternative workstyles and schedules. And condone these alternatives by reassuring employees that temporarily taking advantage of them won't permanently relegate them to the B team.

Not long ago, a man felt obliged to confess to me that he went back to work before his paternity leave was up. He admitted that he was anxious to get back to work because staying home with a newborn wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Besides, he pointed out, his absence was hard on his co-workers and he felt a sense of responsibility to return. But what about his co-worker at home?

If we are to solve the work-life dilemma, we can't continue to subordinate the job of childcare. Raising the next generation of employees has to begin to be seen as important work. Study after study documents the connection between parental involvement and a child's success. Let's groom top management to see that connection. Let's stop referring to women and men home taking care of kids as people "who don't work." Let's expect managers, male and female, to recognize that parenting is not a spectator sport.

Jack Welch on women's work

Former GE CEO Jack Welch is in the hospital today, reportedly for a minor infection. But I wonder if his sudden internment has anything to do with the backlash coming at him after his speech to an HR conference recently.

Bad news for young women working their way up the ladder.

"There's no such thing as a work-life balance," Welch announced. "We'd love to have more women moving up faster, but they've got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one."

He explained that taking time off for family can offer a nice life, but the chances of rising to the top on that path are...nil.

He tried to cushion the blow.

"That doesn't mean you can't have a nice career," he smiled.

A similarly provocative statement was made a few years ago by former WPP creative chief Neil French who contended that women can't head ad agencies because their roles as caregivers and childbearers prevent them from putting in the long hours.

It's not that I necessarily disagree. A work-life balance IS an impossible feat, an inconvenient fact that came as a rude surprise to lots of boomer women who'd been led to believe otherwise. The "have it all" promise, unfortunately, is a crock. Sometimes, lots of times, you have to choose between your kids and your job, the playdate or the client, the school play or the important pitch.

But the balance is impossible for anyone to achieve, whether or not you've got a vagina.

In Welch and French's generation, men had the choice of outsourcing the job of tending kids and home to a wife conditioned not to make him feel guilty for it. In fact, to feel grateful that she herself "didn't have to work."



But sons raised by those dads have a different outlook. Many want to be around for their kids as they'd wished their dads had been around for them. (Some may want to be around a little too much--see alpha dads.) Childraising, with all its joys and vicissitudes, is no longer a topic verboten in conference rooms as it seemed to be when I got into the business. The other day, I rode an elevator with two guys who spent 34 floors debating the merits of cloth versus disposable. Men are taking parental leaves. Going on school trips. Coming in late after drop-off. These men don't consider work-life balance a problem their wives must grapple with alone if they want to go out and pursue a career. Unfortunately, most of these men don't run companies yet.

The real disservice Welch and French did was to use their stature to reinforce longheld convictions many men in senior management still harbor privately. And by doing so, helping ensure that women remain less likely to make it to the top.

If a male [boss]...is convinced that [a female worker] s extremely limited in her ability and value...would you expect him to offer the same support and guidance and consideration he gives the men? Might that woman keep herself down on the farm when her leader conveys in countless ways she's not as good as the boys? Might she respond with less than her best effort when the leader expects little of her? Might she want to leave, not to have babies but because the conditions for her to succeed don't exist and the message she can't succeed is too discouraging?

--Nancy Vonk, CCO, Ogilvy, Toronto responding to French

 in a blog post that ostensibly got him fired

Twenty years ago, Business Week coined "The Mommy Track" to describe the "nice career" Welch says is the only one available to women with kids. If things are to change finally, more men have to speak up about their own need for work-life balance.

Ironically, the recession may help. Apparently, it's hitting men harder than women, creating a greater number of stay-at-home dads. Men who are coming to value the work done by women "who don't work." So that once they return to the 9 to 5, they'll be apt to shoulder more of it, understanding the necessity of doing so if their wives are to compete meaningfully for that promotion.