1. Jessurun James Oppenheimer was an American radio and television writer, producer, and director.
20 Facts About Jess Oppenheimer
1. 2.
Jess Oppenheimer was the producer and head writer of the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy.
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Jess Oppenheimer presided over all the meetings, and ran the whole show.
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Jess Oppenheimer was born into a secular Jewish family in San Francisco, where in the third grade he was chosen as a subject of Stanford University professor Lewis Terman's study of gifted children.
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Jess Oppenheimer made his broadcast debut performing a comedy sketch he'd written on the station's popular coast-to-coast comedy-variety radio program, Blue Monday Jamboree.
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In 1936, Jess Oppenheimer moved to Hollywood, where in his first week he was hired as a comedy writer on Fred Astaire's radio program.
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Stark immediately hired Jess Oppenheimer to write for the popular radio program, The Baby Snooks Show, which starred Brice as a wise-beyond-her-years little girl who constantly drove her daddy crazy.
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In 1948, shortly after The Baby Snooks Show went off the air, CBS asked Jess Oppenheimer to write a script for a new unsponsored radio sitcom, My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball.
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Jess Oppenheimer was hesitant to accept the position after being warned by his friends against working with Ball, but he decided to accept anyway after seeing her brilliant performance of his script.
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Jess Oppenheimer remained as producer and head writer of the series for five of its six seasons, writing the pilot and 153 episodes with Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr.
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Jess Oppenheimer left I Love Lucy in 1956 to take an executive post at NBC, where he produced a series of TV specials, including the General Motors 50th Anniversary Show, Ford Startime, The Ten Commandments, and the 1959 Emmy Awards.
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Jess Oppenheimer received two Emmy Awards and seven other Emmy nominations, a Sylvania Award, and the Writers' Guild of America's Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.
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Jess Oppenheimer was not involved with The Lucy Show, Ball's 1962 return to television.
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Jess Oppenheimer claimed that in that show her new character, Lucy Carmichael, was essentially the Lucy Ricardo character he had created.
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Jess Oppenheimer received a financial settlement and storylines were changed, but this ended his relationship with Ball.
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Jess Oppenheimer met his future wife, Estelle, in 1942 while she was working as the manager of the Popular Records Department at Wallichs Music City, on the corner of Sunset and Vine in Hollywood.
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Jess Oppenheimer was an inventor, holding 18 patents covering a variety of devices, including the in-the-lens teleprompter, first used on television by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz for a filmed Philip Morris cigarette commercial which aired on I Love Lucy on December 14,1953.
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Jess Oppenheimer died of heart failure on December 27,1988, following complications after being hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for intestinal surgery.
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Jess Oppenheimer was survived by his wife, Estelle, his son, Gregg, and his daughter, Jo Oppenheimer Davis.
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That memoir inspired the younger Jess Oppenheimer to write the play I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, which had its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 12,2018, starring Seamus Dever as Jess Oppenheimer, Sarah Drew as Lucille Ball, and Oscar Nunez as Desi Arnaz.