Madelyn Pugh Davis

(Mar. 15, 1921-Apr. 20, 2011) Madelyn Pugh Martin Davis is best-known as one of two principal writers for I Love Lucy, which starred husband-and-wife-team Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnaz. The show aired on CBS television from 1951 to 1957. It became the most-watched television program of its era and in 2012 was voted the “Best TV show of all time.” I Love Lucy won five Emmy awards. It was the first to feature an ensemble cast and the first scripted television show filmed before a live studio audience.

Pugh was born in Indianapolis to I. Watt Pugh and Louise Huff Pugh. Her father was a banker. She had two older sisters, Audrey and Rosalind. Davis began writing early in life. As a child, she wrote plays and poetry. As a teenager, she became co-editor of the Shortridge Daily Echo, the Shortridge High School newspaper, and belonged to the school’s fiction club with author Kurt Vonnegut. At Indiana University (I.U.), she became a reporter for the Indiana Daily Student. She studied journalism with the goal of becoming a foreign correspondent.

After Davis graduated from I.U. in 1942, she was unable to secure a job in journalism. She worked instead as a radio writer at Indianapolis station WIRE. At the time few women worked behind the scenes in radio. Pugh later attributed this opportunity to World War II labor conditions.

When she moved to California in 1943, her boss at WIRE wrote letters of recommendation for her to the national radio networks–NBC, CBS, and ABC. Davis contacted NBC the day she arrived and continued writing for radio. Later Davis worked for CBS, where she met Bob Carroll Jr., with whom she partnered for over 50 years.

Her most influential radio show was My Favorite Husband starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning. It later became the basis for the television show, I Love Lucy. After the show ended, Davis and Carroll continued writing several other Lucy spin-offs over the next 30 years.

Davis also wrote for “non-Lucy” shows such as The Mothers-in-Law and Sanford and Son. Eventually, Davis became executive producer of the television series Alice. For her television and radio work, Davis received 3 Emmy award nominations and 12 awards, including a Golden Globe. She was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1990.

On Christmas Eve 1955, Davis married Quinn Martin (changed from Irwin Martin Cohn), a television producer, and had a son, Michael Quinn Martin. In 1964 she married Dr. Richard Davis, a widower with four children. Davis died of natural causes at her home in Bel Air, California.

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