Marshall became a writer for "The Lucy Show," and he and another writer, Jerry Belson, wrote scripts in which a plotline led up to a big comedy scene, a style Marshall said Ball particularly liked. Once, he and Belson wrote an episode in which Ball was at a banquet wearing roller skates, which she couldn't get off – but during a rehearsal, Ball lost control and slammed into a line of waiters. "The sight of this threw Jerry and me into a complete panic," Marshall writes. "He said, 'Do you think we've killed Lucy?' But she quickly got up.... 'No. No. I'm fine,' she said. 'It was my fault. Keep writing this kind of script and I'll keep going at it.'"
