10 TV Shows You Never Knew Were Blatant Rip-Offs
10. I Love Lucy (1951-57)
It may be hard to believe, but the greatest American sitcom of all time, I Love Lucy, was not originally made for television. It was actually adapted from a CBS 1948-51 radio sitcom called My Favorite Husband, which also starred Lucille Ball as a leading character not unlike Lucy Ricardo. The show was also Ball's training ground for Lucy Ricardo's famous mannerisms, facial expressions and character tics. My Favorite Husband even featured the same writers as I Love LucyJess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll, Jr.and they reworked many of their My Favorite Husband scripts into I Love Lucy episodes, primarily in the first two seasons. I Love Lucy is not the only television program with radio roots. In fact, many popular '50s showslike Amos 'n' Andy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Dragnet, Father Knows Best, The Jack Benny Program, and You Bet Your Lifewere originally radio programs too, and they became television shows in order hold on to their audiences as they drifted to the new home entertainment medium. Both I Love Lucy and My Favorite Husband share the same premise about a zany housewife and her screwball schemes, but the similarities end there. On the radio program, Ball's proto-Lucy is actually named Liz Cooper, and she is married to a white, middle-class businessman named George Cooper (played by Richard Denning). There are no Mertzes in My Favorite Husband, but George's boss, Mr. Rudolph Atterbury (Gale Gordon), and his wife, Mrs. Iris Atterbury (Bea Benadert), serve as their equivalents. 
How did My Favorite Husband become I Love Lucy? When CBS decided to turn My Favorite Husband into a TV show, Ball agreed to reprise her role, on one major conditionher on-screen husband had to be played by her real-life husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. The CBS executives were hesitant to put an inter-racial couple on the embryonic small screen and they still insisted on Richard Denning (or another white actor) to play Ball's on-screen husband. Refusing to bow down to executive demand, Ball and Arnaz created a stage double-act and did a summer tour. Much to CBS's surprise, the couple's act was a success, and the executives had no choice but sign on Desi Arnaz for the show. Once Desi was on board, the Atterburys became the landlords/friends Fred and Ethel Mertz (played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance), and Liz and George Cooper became Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, the iconic television couple you all know and love. If anybody is curious where to find My Favorite Husband episodes to listen, you can find them on YouTube and public domain Internet sites. In fact, some of these radio episodes are available on the I Love Lucy DVDs, so you can listen to them first and then watch the episodes they inspired, or vice versa. Either way, I Love Lucy is sanctified rip-off at its finest.