Vivian Vance

Vivian Vance was the first person to win an Emmy Award in the Best Supporting Actress category.

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Vance and co-star William Frawley were offered the Ethel and Fred spin-off of I Love Lucy (1951). Despite their intense dislike of each other, Frawley was quite game, but Vivian wasted no time in turning it down. Producer Jess Oppenheimer was reported to have said that the notorious feud between Vance and William Frawley was exaggerated. Though television's favorite neighbors were not "chummy" in real life, they were mostly respectful professionals toward each other during rehearsals and filming.

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In the 1970s, with a three-year, $250,000 contract, she discovered that commercials were a lucrative way to capitalize on fame. She became known as Maxine in Maxwell House commercials.

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In the late 1960s and early 1970s she returned to Broadway, usually earning $2,500 a week. When she returned to her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, she accepted no more than $250 a week for small theater productions.

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Legend has it that a clause in her television contract required her to stay 10 kilos heavier than star/producer Lucille Ball. In fact, no such contract ever existed, at least not in any legal and binding form. It was a fake contract given to Vance by Ball as a gag gift, which fueled the myth that it was a real contract.

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Miss Vance was honored by the Connecticut State Department of Mental Health for her contributions on behalf of the mentally ill.

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In the Early Television Memories issue, she appears with Lucille Ball on a 44¢ US commemorative postage stamp, as Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz in a scene from Job Switching (1952). The stamp was issued on August 11, 2009.

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In 1965 she left The Lucy Show (1962) as a regular because the weekly commuting between Connecticut and Los Angeles was straining her marriage to publishing executive John Dodds. She asked the series for a $500,000 advance, more creative and directorial control, and a raise in her weekly salary. These demands were partly intended to convince Lucille Ball not to try to talk her out of retirement. She would go on to appear as a guest star alongside Lucy in future projects.

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She wrote her autobiography planning to publish it before she died but never did. It was discovered by her widower ten years after her death.

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After marrying publisher John Dodds in 1961, she left Los Angeles entirely. The couple spent the next several years living in various places. In 1961 they bought an old white farmhouse in Stamford, Connecticut. They also bought a 200-year-old schoolhouse in Westchester County, New York, to use as a retreat for the two of them after her years on The Lucy Show (1962). As John's career rose, they lived in a penthouse on Beekman Place in Manhattan. Tiring of big-city life, they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the late 1960s, where she owned and ran a travel agency. In 1974, after her first battle with cancer, they decided to sell the business, along with property she owned in Solvang, California, to finance a publishing job of John's in San Francisco. She would spend the rest of her life in Belvedere, California, near her sister, in a shingle-style house by the shore.

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She divorced Philip Ober in 1959 over allegations of mistreatment of his wife. Because most of the fortune was earned during the success of I Love Lucy (1951), she had to turn over half of $160,000 to community property, including among other things the ranch in Cubero, New Mexico, and the house in California.

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Vance began acting when she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she took the surname "Vance" from a drama teacher who supported her acting career.

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She donated her Emmy Awards to the Little Theatre in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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She was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7030 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, on February 14, 1991.

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She made her film debut in the silent film The Patent Leather Pug (1925), which appears to be lost today.

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One of her closest childhood friends was silent film star Louise Brooks, her neighbor in Cherryvale, Kansas.

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She was the godmother of John Sebastian. His mother, Jane Sebastian, was her best friend, and she mentioned her name in many episodes of I Love Lucy (1951).

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Before she was approved to play Ethel Mertz on television, she appeared in nine Broadway shows, including playing Babe in the original production of "Anything Goes."

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She attended and graduated from Independence High School in Independence, Kansas.

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Vivian Vance's second husband, George Nathan Koch, was a musician.

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In 1959, Vivian Vance and her husband Philip Ober were living at 629 Frontera Drive in Pacific Palisades, California.

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Like Peggy Wood, Vivian Vance helped promote the opening of the Playhouse-on-the-Mall in Paramus, New Jersey, years before its founder and producer, Robert Ludlam, made his name as a novelist.

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