13 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Vivian Vance
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1) Vivian Vance
The I Love Lucy star hated the man who played her husband, for one.
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2) She was a rebellious teen.
Growing up in Independence, Kansas, Vivian Jones's love of acting offended her mother's religious sensibilities. As a teenager she began sneaking out of the house after curfew.
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3) She was in the Albuquerque Little Theatre's first-ever show.
After changing her last name to Vance and moving to New Mexico, she performed in the Albuquerque Little Theatre's very first show in 1930, at age 21.
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4) She trained under Ethel Merman.
After moving to New York in 1932, Vance understudied Ethel Merman (pictured above with Frank Sinatra and Moss Hart) in the hit musical Anything Goes co-starring Bing Crosby and Charlie Ruggles.
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5) Lucy disliked her at first.
The leading lady thought Vance, then 42, was "too pretty" to play a landlord and believed only the main character should be attractive.
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6) She had thick skin.
After Lucille Ball's initially cold reception, one of the show's staff asked Vance how she could work "for such a bitch." She replied, "If this show's a success then I'm going to learn to love that 'female dog'."
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7) She and Lucy quickly became friends, however.
They were so close, in fact, Vance's first husband was apparently jealous of their relationship. "'People are talking about you two,' he'd say. 'You ought to be careful about the hugging and kissing you do on the show,'" Vance wrote.
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8) She thought Fred and Ethel's marriage was unrealistic.
On the first day on set, Vance told Lucy and Desi she couldn't play wife to William Frawley, then 66: "No one will believe I'm married to that old coot." Frawley overheard and never forgave her.
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9) She celebrated when 'Fred' died.
The fictional husband and wife hated each other from day one, and when Vance heard of Frawley's death in 1966 while dining in a restaurant, she reportedly said, "Champagne, for everyone!"
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10) She resented being called 'Ethel.'
Her time on I Love Lucy was her defining role, and fans had a hard time distinguishing between the person and the character. When giving advice to actress Kaye Ballard, she said, "You must use your own first name because I go through life just being called Ethel Mertz. No one even knows who Vivian Vance was."
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11) She had one stipulation before joining 'The Lucy Show.'
When Lucy began planning her return to TV on The Lucy Show in 1962, she wanted her favorite sidekick onboard as well. Vance agreed on the condition that her character be called "Vivian."
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12) She left 'The Lucy Show' because of the commute.
After three years of commuting from Connecticut, where Vance moved with her fourth husband, to Hollywood, where The Lucy Show was filmed, Vance grew tired of the long-distance commute and only made guest appearances until the show's end in 1968.
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13) She played a medium in 1969.
Vance, shown here dressed in stereotypical fortune-teller garb opposite George Gobel, starred in the episode "Love and the Medium" on the anthology comedy series Love, American Style.
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14) She wrote an autobiography that was discovered years after her death.
When Vance died in 1979 of bone cancer, her assets transferred to her fourth husband and widower, John Dodds. He willed the Dodds/Vance estate to a family friend named Serge, who found the autobiography after Dodd's death in 1986.
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The I Love Lucy star hated the man who played her husband, for one.
