Quote of the Day (Lucille Ball, on the Effect of Her Show)

“I Love Lucy has been called the most popular television show of all time. Such national devotion to one show can never happen again; there are too many shows, on many more channels, now. But in 1951-1952, our show changed the Monday-night habits of America. Between nine and nine-thirty, taxis disappeared from the streets of New York. Marshall Fields department store in Chicago hung up a sign: ‘We love Lucy, too, so from now on we will be open Thursday nights instead of Monday.’ Telephone calls across the nation dropped sharply during the half hour, as well as the water flush rate, as whole families sat glued to their seats.”--Lucille Ball with Betty Hannah Hoffman, Love, Lucy (1996)

Today marks the centennial of the birth of America’s favorite TV redhead. Lucille Ball has been featured twice on my blog already: once, commemorating the birth of the show’s “Little Ricky”; the second, featuring a lovely photograph of (and an even lovelier quote from) the peerless comedienne. Naturally, it would please me no end to have you check those out.

But if you would like to learn even more about her, I’d recommend that you take a look at some prime pictures of Lucy up right now on the Huffington Post, as well as visit the Web site for the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, N.Y. (Ball’s hometown).

(By the way, I just had to pick this shot of Lucy for this post. The star was usually game for putting her character into every kind of predicament, but this especially looked wild!)