I Love Lucy
A satin heart on a cigarette-brand backdrop — a title card that exists because the sponsor paid for it, and which outlived the sponsor by seventy years.
I Love Lucy opens with a main title sequence of 22 seconds.
At 22 seconds, it opens well under the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on CBS in 1951, when Candid Camera, Truth or Consequences and Search for Tomorrow were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
22sThe animated heart-and-satin title card.
More comedy opening titles from the 1950s
1 sequenceThe Honeymooners
A moon over Brooklyn and an orchestra — the sitcom that most American sitcoms since are a variation on, in thirty-nine episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
A real family playing themselves for fourteen years, which is the longest-running live-action sitcom in American television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Knows Best
The Anderson family of Springfield, and the series the phrase came from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Danny Thomas Show
Eleven years of a nightclub comedian's home life, and the series The Andy Griffith Show was spun out of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRomper Room
A franchised preschool programme licensed to local stations, each with its own hostess and the same magic mirror.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Donna Reed Show
A sitcom its star produced herself, which is why the mother in it has a job the plot takes seriously.
- Season 8