Ball and Arnaz tested their vaudeville act for CBS in Newburgh, New York.
CBS executives doubted that audiences would accept a romantic television partnership between an American actress and a Cuban bandleader. To demonstrate that their marriage and contrasting performance styles could work, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz developed a vaudeville routine with help from writers Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh.
They performed the act at Newburgh’s historic Ritz Theater, accompanied by Arnaz’s orchestra. The response was strong enough to persuade CBS executive Harry Ackerman that a Ball–Arnaz series was commercially viable. That experiment became a crucial step toward the creation of I Love Lucy.
Newburgh is sometimes confused with larger upstate New York cities such as Buffalo, Rochester or Syracuse. Those cities are plausible-sounding alternatives, but the documented test performance took place in Newburgh, on the Hudson River. The success also helped the couple overcome network resistance and eventually led to a television format filmed before a live studio audience.