A Private Peek Inside My Office, Lucille Ball’s Private Bungalow On The Lot At Paramount Pictures
I am the first person to silence anyone who thinks my career as a costume designer is somehow full of non-stop glamour.
While it has some seriously fun, creative moments, the truth is that part of my job still entails picking up my actor’s dirty socks. But right now, things are indeed sort of special, magic, and glam.
You see, my costume office on the lot at Paramount Pictures is currently none other than Lucille Ball’s personal bungalow, which she used all throughout the 1960s—and which is attached to ‘lucky’ Stage 25, home of wildly successful shows like Cheers, Frasier, and Lucy’s own, I Love Lucy.
Here’s a fun fact about Stage 25: it comes equipped with a very special, super powerful A/C system, and I have it on good authority that it was installed due to a particular Cheers and Frasier star who would sweat under the stage lights like a whore in church. (I’m not one to name names, but his or her initials are indeed K.G.)
If you’ve taken the studio tour at Paramount recently and wondered whose ridiculous pink Hello Kitty Bike that was parked in front of the Lucy Bungalow, guess what? It’s mine!
The Paramount lot was actually Desilu Gower Studios from 1957–1967, and I Love Lucy was filmed on stage 25 from 1962–1968. Owners Desi Arnaz and Ball sold Desilu in 1967, and it quickly became Paramount Television.
Here’s a little known fact: Lucy bought Desi out after their 1960 divorce, and ran the studio by herself for the next seven years!
The tour guides at Paramount are thrilled that I’m working in the Lucy Bungalow right now, because I have the doors wide open all the time, so they can give the endless tours that traipse across the lot a tiny peek at what it looks like inside. (I guess past occupants have always kept the windows and doors sealed up tight, but a great perk of living in Southern California is being able to keep them open all January long!)
I love it when I’m busy working on my mood boards for an episode and suddenly hear the click of a tourist’s camera. I’m glad it’s getting seen, used and loved! I’m not so pleased about how many people have likely taken unflattering photos of me with my ‘concentrating face’, but whatevs.
I’m not really sure how much of the space I’m even allowed to show you, but here’s a quick little mini-tour I actually made with my iPhone for my mother to show her that I have, in fact, made it big in Hollywood. I’ve never had such an amazing workspace before, and I doubt I will again. (I’ve already seen the office for my next show, and it’s a horrible basement affair with no windows.)
This little bungalow previously belonged to a star as big as Lucy herself. Katherine Hepburn was signed to a long-term contract at RKO Pictures, and was the star in residence in our cozy bungalow before Desilu took over the property.
Lucy’s bungalow has two separate rooms (plus a bathroom and plenty of closets) which are connected by a mini-kitchen. Paramount’s resident historian, Gary DeVaughn, tells me that the main room (where I sit and where we hold all our costume fittings) was actually the living room, where Lucy would entertain visitors and give interviews to the press.
The little kitchen still has its original Westinghouse appliances, as Westinghouse was a sponsor of Desilu at the time. The gas oven still works beautifully, and I sometimes bake cookies for the cast in it like the happy homemaker Lucy herself played.
I tend to put the female actors on our show in lots of skirts and dresses (it’s my default signature style), and sometimes they balk — saying that they can’t perform the comedy bits written for them in a skirt. I like to remind them that we are standing on hallowed ground here in Lucille Ball’s private bungalow, and that she did EVERYTHING in a skirt so women could be taken seriously as comedic actresses. (They always cave and wear what I want them to.)
My assistant costume designer and our production assistant sit in the room that was once Lucy’s bedroom and dressing room. This room used to have a door that led directly onto Stage 25 so Lucy never had to walk outside if she didn’t want to.
But the sad, sadder, saddest part of the whole Lucy Bungalow experience is that prior to my moving in, the original pastel pink, late 1950’s bathroom fixtures were removed to make the offices more modern. Alas, I never got to pee in Lucy’s toilet.
All sorts of crazy junk goes on in our suite of offices. We once made an inflatable tuxedo, because it’s best to be prepared for anything that life may throw your way.
We also have a little buddy who shares the office with us—a beautiful black kitty that we feed and who we named, DUH, Lucy.
Right before I started working in the Lucy Bungalow, I was perusing a back issue of The Costume Designer’s Guild magazine—and on the very last page was a flashback photo of legendary costume designer Edward Stevenson, who was Lucy’s costume designer for 18 years.
He made many of her clothes on the show, most memorably the burlap dresses in the ‘Lucy Gets a Gown’ episode. I promptly ripped the page out and had it framed. It now hangs happily in Lucy’s little bungalow.
Sometimes, just for a little while, life is so very grand.
**A footnote: I wrote this post some time ago, while actually working in the bungalow. I waited to publish it until my non-disclosure clause finally ran out.
