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Who is 'Scary Lucy'?

Writer's picture: Penny ColmanPenny Colman

This is my third post about my recent women’s history road trip to western New York, April 28-31.

After breakfast at Liscandra’s restaurant ,we went to Celoron, a village near Jamestown, and on the southwestside of Lake Chautauqua. There are two statues of a historic woman there that I was eager to see. One was unveiled in 2009, the other in 2016. The first image is a headline from a Santa Fe, New Mexico newspaper, April 8, 2015, about a worldwide brouhaha. Similar headlines appeared in newspapers across American and abroad. So, who is "Scary Lucy"? Can you tell from the second image of the

"Scary Lucy" statue with me looking askance?

It's Lucille Ball, the pioneering comedian, actor, producer and studio executive. Unveiled in 2009, the statue is located in Lucille Ball Memorial Park. The sculptor, David Poulin, represented Lucy as she appeared in an episode from the television show"I Love Lucy." The episode,"Lucy Does a TV Commercial," aired on May 5, 1952. Lucille Ball's character Lucy Ricardo gets a job advertising a patent medicine, Vitameatavegamin, that contained alcohol. Sampling the medicine, Lucy got tipsy, tipsier, and tipsiest!

In 2015, a photograph “Scary Lucy” on Facebook, sparked a “We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue” world-wide campaign.

A year later, on August 6, 2016, sculptor Carolyn Palmer’s depiction of Lucille Ball was unveiled, the "New Lucy" also known as "Lovely Lucy." Palmer said “I not only wanted to portray the playful, animated and spontaneous Lucy, but also the glamorous Hollywood icon.” Palmer who attended the unveiling, recalled that the more than a thousand spectators were chanting “‘Lucy! Lucy!' Then it was unveiled, and they were all going, 'Oh, my God!' and they all started clapping and screaming. I was so happy. It’s every artist’s nightmare not to be accepted.”

Note the man in the background of the next image: He was marking out a soccer field while I was photographing the statue. Stopping his work, he approached me and simply said, "She put a platform for people to stand on." The "she" I inferred meant Carolyn Palmer, the sculptor. So, stood on the platform for Linda, my "official" photographer, to take a picture. A little later an older couple with an adult daughter stopped by. I offered to take their picture and told them about the platform. The woman stood next to Lucy's left side, slipped her arm around her waist and said, more to her awe-struck self than the rest of us, "I just hugged Lucy.”



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