LUCY AND LEE IN LAGUNA

Lee will be doing a couple of I LOVED LUCY book signings coming up this month; On September 19, Lee will be reading from and signing copies of his memoir at Laguna Beach Books at 5PM-7PM, and on Sunday, September 26 Lee will be appearing at Just Fabulous (Gotta love that name) in Palm Springs from 3PM-5PM. Stop by for some of LUCY'S favorite foods--grilled pimento cheese, thin and cut in thirds, iced tea with two, two sweet and lows, and if you're lucky you'll get a helping of Waldorf Salad with real canned mandarin oranges and miniature marshmallows. It's so tasty too. If you're hungry for fun and food, stop by.

First preview of I LOVED LUCY begins in just 35 days. Get your tickets now lagunaplayhouse.com

LAGUNA LUCY

Lee Tannen http://losangeles.broadwayworld.com/article/Laguna_Playhouse_Presents_I_LOVED_LUCY_10531_20100818

Laguna Playhouse Presents I LOVED LUCY, 10/5-31 2010/08/18

SEE YOU ON THE RADIO

Hey, beginning in just a few days, you'll be able to listen to an hour long interview I had with Donna Linn at showmetalkradio.com. It's all about LUCY and I LOVED LUCY and Donna is one terrific interviewer and a big fan of the memoir and now the play. I am very grateful for all the time and play she's given my play. Check it out, of course LUCY would chide me that talking about LUCY for an hour is ridiculous. " JEEEEESUS You wanna bore them to death???"...Well you get the picture of LUCY by now. She'd have rather talked about anybody or anything else but herself. Will let you know when you could take a listen. In the meantime you might want to check out showmetalkradio.com for some other really interesting interviews and stuff!

By the way, just a reminder brand new trade paperback copies of the book are available, just click on the link to your right. Christmas is only 130 days away. And the first performance of I LOVED LUCY at The Laguna Playhouse is only 50 days away!

See you on the radio. LFT

LUCY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

When I knew LUCY very well, in the 1980's she still had rotary dial phones in all her homes--Beverly Hills, Palm Springs, Snowmass, Colorado, even New York City. I remember her personally ordering phones for that apartment which she got circa 1985: "I want three white rotary phones, and none of that 'princess' stuff." I had to use of those contraptions that you put up to the mouthpiece of the phone in order to convert the rotary dial clickety sound to touchtone pulses. So I can't help but wonder how LUCY would take to email and texting and tweets and blogs and the ultimate social network facebook. I mean, after all CBS was basically the only network she loved. I wonder how many facebook friends she might have had--if allowed? Two hundred million worldwide? I could see her face now if I would have thrown my iphone on the table each morning as we started to play endless hours of backgammon. "What the hell is this? You talk on that? You've got to be kidding? I wonder what else would have drove LUCY nuts in the 21st century? Thoughts?

We start rehearsals in Laguna for I LOVED LUCY exactly one month from today. Searching for rotary dial phones now for the set.

LUCY AND THE STEWARDESS

Yes, that's what they called them then. Stewardesses. I remember. In the days of TWA and PanAm and Northeast Yellowbirds. In thinking about Steven Slater (The now infamous/famous Jet Blue flight attendant) I started thinking about the story that went around decades ago, and still does I guess in some circles about Lucy warning flight attendants, oops, sorry, stewardesses never to look her in the eye when she spoke to them. Of course they would be looking in her eye when she told them, but the point of the pejorative story was that Lucy was a temperamental traveller who considered airline personnel beneath her in some way. I flew with Lucy many many times, ironically mostly on one class commuter plains and she could not have been sweeter to everybody from the ground personnel to those in then the "friendly skies". Lucy herself was pretty much a white knuckle traveller--would almost squeeze my hand off at takeoff and landing, but that's another blog. Rehearsals for I LOVED LUCY start on September 14 in Laguna, California.

I CAN FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT

I am constantly amazed, almost awe struck by the outpouring of love from Lucy fans for this journey called I LOVED LUCY that I am on. The emails, the texts, the facebook postings all rooting me on, as if they knew me personally. Maybe, hopefully my story has touched them in a way to make them feel they do. I have been on this "joy ride" for the better part of a decade ever since I started writing the memoir, which actually just started out as a journal so that I would ALWAYS remember the incredible decade I had with Lucy from 1980-1989. Now, with the play 55 days from first preview in Laguna, the excitement builds daily. As does the blessing, and the fear, and the fright and the sheer marvelous madness of it all. To be able to share my story with so many has truly been one of the great joys of my life. To have it come alive from the page to the stage is almost indescribable. We have a great cast; Jeffry Denman as LEE, Diane J. Findlay as LUCY and an incredibly talented, sensitive, smart director named Todd Weeks. The Laguna Playhouse has been wonderful to me in taking a leap of faith in these tough times with a new American play and I am very grateful. OK, gotta do some re-writes. Love to all.

VIVIAN VANCE AND PATRICIA NEAL

Yesterday, in one of the many heartfelt obituaries about Patricia Neal, I read that Pat replaced Vivian Vance in the road tour of The Voice of the Turtle. I was wondering if this was the same company and production that Vivian Vance was in when Desi came down to The La Jolla Playhouse to see her work and plucked her right out to play Ethel Mertz in I Loved Lucy. Lucy had just given birth to Lucie so she stayed behind in Los Angeles and when Desi returned home he announced to her that they had indeed found their Ethel Mertz. Knowing Lucy as I did (not then but decades later) I wonder how she reacted to the news since she in fact had NOT seen her in the play. My sense is she intuitively trusted Desi's instincts as she always did when it came to "Lucy", and of course the rest is TV comedy history. As far as Vivian Vance was concerned Lucy thought she was brilliant. When I'd watch an episode of I Loved Lucy at the house in Beverly Hills, (which in and of itself was surreal) with Lucy, unannounced peering over my shoulder she would invariably say, "If you want to learn about comedy baby, don't watch me, watch Viv". Yeah, well...

55 days until first performance of I LOVED LUCY at The Laguna Playhouse.