Read it in the WGF Library: I LOVE LUCY
The Writers Guild Foundation Library holds a collection of over 50,000 items, including film and TV scripts, development materials, pitches, outlines and even oral history interviews with legendary screenwriters. Want to see some of the treasures of our collection? Follow along as we blog and remember: the WGF Library is open to both the public and to WGA members. To visit and be inspired, all you need is an appointment.
I’m Lauren O’Connor, one of the librarians at the WGF and in this post, I’ll tell you about one of my favorite shows in our collection: I Love Lucy.
I Love Lucy is credited with popularizing and establishing the rules for television sitcoms, especially in multi-cam form. Starting in 1951 and for most of its six seasons, the show was written by only three writers. This means that the written words of Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh Davis, Bob Carroll, Jr and (later) Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf, are the formative words of American television comedy.
And you can study these words at the Writers Guild Foundation, where we have scripts for 154 of 180 produced episodes of I Love Lucy.
Here’s what you need to know about these scripts and how to access them:
These I Love Lucy scripts were donated to the WGF Library by Gregg Oppenheimer (son of I Love Lucy’s creator Jess Oppenheimer) in 2012 along with scripts and materials from other radio and television shows his father produced such as My Favorite Husband, The Jack Benny Program and Texaco Star Theater.
Our Collection also includes the written idea for I Love Lucy that Jess Oppenheimer registered with the Screen Writers’ Guild (as it was known then) in 1951.
The real treat of this collection is that a fair amount of the scripts have hand-written annotations in them, which is invaluable to ANYONE studying comedy and joke-writing. Want to make your writing funnier? These annotations prove that the best way to do it is to remove as much clunky, extra stuff in the dialogue (and frankly the descriptions) as possible.
A hand-annotated page from the script for I Love Lucy - “Lucy is Enceinte” Season 2, Episode 10.
Fun fact: If you read the pilot script, you’ll see that Ricky Ricardo’s initial name was Larry Lopez:
The hand-annotated first page of the pilot script for I Love Lucy.
While the scripts are a masterclass in punchlines and in brevity, the great contribution of Lucy’s writers was to invent the most hilarious situations they could put their central gang of Lucy, Ethel, Ricky, Fred into... They knew they were working with one of the most gifted comediennes (and supporting casts) on earth who could make even the littlest scenarios a riot:
An image from the script for I Love Lucy - “Lucy is Enceinte” Season 2, Episode 10.
One of the best-known episodes of I Love Lucy is “Job Switching,” which aired as the first episode of season 2 in 1952. In her memoir “Laughing with Lucy: My Life with America’s Leading Lady of Comedy,” writer Madelyn Pugh Davis describes coming up with the comedic premise of this episode, which (if you don’t know) is that Ricky and Fred attempt to do housework, while Lucy and Ethel go out and get jobs... at a candy factory.
A page from the script for “Job Switching” I Love Lucy, season 2, episode 1.
Davis writes:
“The way we came up with the candy idea is much more prosaic. (It’s like when I found out that Stephen Sondheim, the Broadway lyricist and composer, used a rhyming dictionary.) Jess and Bob and I were working out the story line for the script, and we wanted a funny job for Lucy and Ethel to end up doing, so we got out the phone book and looked in the Yellow Pages. When we got to “C,” we said ‘Aha! Candy making!’ Then Bob and I went to the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax Avenue and watched a woman dipping chocolates to see how she did it.”
The Farmers’ Market that Davis refers to is the one right across from the Writers Guild Foundation Library at 3rd and Fairfax. Littlejohn’s English Toffee House & Fine Candies opened at that location in 1946 and is STILL THERE. Javier and I walked over and were delighted to find that they still hand roll their chocolates just like on I Love Lucy!
Javier gives a thumbs up to Littlejohn’s at the Farmers’ Market/Third and Fairfax.
An image from the script for I Love Lucy “Job Switching,” season 2, episode 1.
After you read the script for “Job Switching” you can walk over to Littlejohn’s yourself and take in a bit of casual television history. Maybe you can even bring some chocolate back to the WGF Librarians. No pressure.
The 154 scripts in our collection cover every episode of the show from seasons 1 through 4, most episodes from season 5 and a small handful from season 6. To find out if we have YOUR favorite Lucy script in advance of your library visit, you can search our catalog by series or episode title. (My personal favorite is “The Freezer” from season 1, where Lucy and Ethel accidentally buy 700 pounds of beef and Lucy gets locked in a giant meat freezer. I was overjoyed to find it in this collection.)
The scripts are primarily scans in PDF form. A few are hard copies. This means when you come to the library to read I Love Lucy, you’ll most likely be given an iPad on which to view the scripts.
Finally, if you’re interested in I Love Lucy and television comedy, here are some further sources:
On the Writers Guild Foundation website -- TV Format Fundamentals blog post about the on-page act structure of multi-cam sitcoms, which references I Love Lucy scripts
On the WGF YouTube -- The Writer Speaks: Bob Carroll, Jr. And Madelyn Pugh Davis, an oral history interview recorded by the Writers Guild Foundation in 1996, in which they talk about writing I Love Lucy and working together: https://youtu.be/-4falE-WVQY?si=SMAnOJNu84D_U8Y3
In the WGF Library --
Oppenheimer, Jess & Oppenheimer, Gregg. Laughs, Luck... And Lucy: How I Came to Create The Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Pugh Davis, Madelyn. Laughing with Lucy: My Life with America’s Leading Lady of Comedy. Clerisy Press, 2007.
On the WGF TikTok -- Writers Guild Foundation [@WGFoundation]. (2025, July 24). Quick comedy writing lesson with I LOVE LUCY and Librarian Lauren O’Connor! [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@wgfoundation/video/7530733158950505758
Libraries aren’t just for research and reading — they’re centers for community. Help us continue to preserve the work of film and TV writers and uplift the next generation by making a donation today.