“I Love Lucy” Scribe Madelyn Pugh Davis Has Passed Away
Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with her writing partner Bob Carroll Jr. made television history in the 1950s writing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s landmark situation comedy “I Love Lucy,” has died, according to the Los Angeles Times. She was 90.
Davis, a pioneering female radio and TV comedy writer whose work with the red-haired queen of TV comedy spanned four decades, died Wednesday at her home in Bel-Air after a brief illness.
The Emmy Award-winning series about a wacky New York City housewife and her Cuban bandleader husband ran on CBS from 1951 to 1957. It was ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four of its six seasons and was never out of the top three.
When interviewers asked Ball, who died in 1989, what she thought was the secret of her show’s enduring popularity, she had a stock answer: “My writers.”
“My mother never accepted an award where she didn’t immediately say, ‘I could not have done this without my writers.’ She always put them first,” Lucie Arnaz told The Times on Thursday.
“Madelyn was such a class act,” Arnaz said. “She was a very private person, very soft-spoken, genteel, feminine — all those lovely words you associate with great ladies. And yet she had the ability to write this wacky, insane comedy for my mother.
“She and Bob together were just such a wonderful team, a great match-up. They complemented each other’s zaniness.”
Davis and Carroll, who were along for the “I Love Lucy” show’s entire ride, wrote a string of classic episodes such as the ones in which Lucy and Ethel are chocolate candy dippers trying to contend with a fast-moving conveyor belt, Lucy stomps grapes in Italy, and she gets increasingly drunk doing a TV commercial for the health tonic Vitameatavegamin.
In 1992, Carroll and Davis received the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for achievement in television writing from the Writers Guild of America. And in 2001, the UCLA Film School honored them for lifetime achievement in television writing.
Davis, whose first marriage to producer Quinn Martin ended in divorce, married Dr. Richard Davis, her former college sweetheart, in 1964. He died in 2009.
In addition to her son, Davis is survived by four stepchildren, Brian Davis, Charlotte Davis, Lisa Davis and Ned Davis; nine grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Written by dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
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