During contractual negotiations for another season of The Lucy Show, Lucille Ball signed to co-star in a Lucille Ball Comedy Hour to be aired in the spring of 1964 for $30,000.  After looking through available properties, Lucy hired Jess Oppenheimer to adapt Sherwood Schwartz's play, Mr. and Mrs., for the small screen.  She and Oppenheimer had not worked together since he left I Love Lucy in 1956.  Bob Hope signed on to co-star, and Jack Donohue was assigned to direct.  The hour-long special had Lucy portraying a fictional woman television studio boss who wants Hope to star in a TV show about the perfect married couple.  Filming went fairly well, although Lucy continued her habit of virtually directing the entire production which drove directors nuts on The Lucy Show.  At one point, Hope wandered to near a camera and Jack Donohue asked him to move away.  Lucy took matters into her own hands and roughly pushed Hope into his proper position.  "Lucy," cooed Donohue, "please don't touch the actors -- you don't know where they've been."  (This story appeared in Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.)  Backstage matters aside, Lucy enjoyed this new, sophisticated format so much she wanted to replace the current Lucy Show format with this new one, keeping Gale Gordon and Vivian Vance on (that is, unless Vivian quit the series to stay in Connecticut full-time).