There are classic TV shows and then there are epic classic TV shows, and I Love Lucy episodes definitely fall into the latter category. It’s never been off the air since its original 1951 to 1957 run, and the vast majority of its 180 episodes would indeed fall into the category of — here’s that word again — classic. And so much of that has to do with the writers, directors and, of course, the comic chemistry between Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Lucy, Ricky, Ethel and Fred, respectively.
While there have been many lists of Top 10 funniest episodes compiled, this is a different tact as we turn to Lucille Ball friend and author of the critically-acclaimed The Lucy Book, Geoffrey Mark. to go behind the scenes of 10 hand-picked episodes for which he has intriguing anecdotes to share. As he wryly notes, “I have anecdotes on 180 episodes of I Love Lucy.”
1. ‘Be a Pal’
Ethel convinces Lucy that her marriage is growing stale and that Lucy needs to glamorize herself. When that doesn’t work, she needs to learn about some of Ricky’s pastimes and tries playing poker with him, which, not surprisingly, is a disaster. Then, reading out of a book, she’s told that she needs to remind him of his childhood.
“And that,” says Geoffrey Mark, “leads to the whole rest of the show with Ms. Ball miming to a Carmen Miranda record singing ‘Mama Eu Quero.’ But then the record’s slowing down and she’s trying to follow it. It’s very funny, but what makes it seem more amazing is that Carmen Miranda herself was in the audience watching her do this. She was brought in on purpose to watch this. Rosalyn Russell was in the audience; I think Eve Arden was in the audience. It was not unusual for I Love Lucy to have celebrities in the audience, especially the first few years where it was new and getting such great ratings.
Lucy does her best Carmen Miranda to put the spice back in her and Ricky’s marriage in the 1951 episode “Be a Pal.”“Other people came to the show to see how they were doing it,” he adds, “but in this case it was because she was doing this bit. And you can hear the audience go crazy, but that’s partially because there’s Carmen Miranda in the audience watching Lucille Ball brilliantly imitate her so brilliantly, both in how well she does it and how well she does not do it. And the audience’s reaction just heightens Ms. Ball’s performance level.”
2. ‘The Audition’
In many ways, Lucille Ball’s radio show My Favorite Husband was a forerunner — or a pilot of sorts — for the I Love Lucy television series. But when CBS expressed interest in bringing the show to TV, Lucy wanted to replace radio husband Richard Denning with real-life husband, Desi Arnaz. The problem was that the network didn’t want what they considered a “mixed marriage,” believing the television audience would never go for it. In response, the couple created a vaudeville live comedy/music act that they would perform between films in movie theaters.
“Pepito was a brilliant Spanish-speaking clown, very popular back then,” says Geoffrey, “and he helped them put together the physical aspects of this act. If you remember, she’s dressed in a kind of old-fashioned professor’s outfit and has a big bass fiddle and hat, and, again, the physical comedy was worked out with Pepito. So they took what they were doing in the vaudeville act and wrote a script around it and that was the pilot for I Love Lucy. It was never aired until the late eighties and was not rerun constantly, but they did want to use that script as part of the series, so they rewrote and filmed it with three cameras and the live audience.
“But what’s interesting to know,” Mark elaborates, “is that that pilot is what convinced CBS that he could play her husband successfully, because audiences in the live theaters loved them and loved the act. They probably could have become big time stage and nightclub performers doing that, but Ms. Ball got pregnant. In fact, she’s pregnant in the pilot. In any case, CBS decided that America would accept Desi Arnaz as Lucille Ball’s husband, even though they’d already been married for 10 years.”
3. ‘Pioneer Women’
In a nutshell, Lucy and Ethel met Ricky and Fred that they can live the same kind of existence that that their ancestors did, which culminates hilariously when the ladies try baking a loaf of bread that gets out of control.
Reflects Geoffrey, “Part of the episode has Ethel and Lucy baking their own bread. The gimmick is that they misread the cookbook and instead of putting in two cups of yeast, they put in 12 cups of yeast. This didn’t occur to me until I was a grown man and really began researching the first Lucy Book: I don’t care how much yeast you put into dough, or how big the dough is when you put it in the oven and it cooks, it does not come out of the oven three times longer than the oven is deep. Nor does the oven rack grow that long because of the yeast. But this is not a trick, it’s art. It’s an actor really being an artist.”
“It’s most true in this episode,” Mark explains, “but it applies to almost every episode: Lucille Ball so believed that this could actually happen, that nobody ever questions where this giant oven rack came from. Or that Ethel somehow on their back porch actually has a saw they use to saw through it. There just happens to be a saw outside the back door of a New York City apartment waiting for that moment. Lucille taught Vivian, and tangentially taught Desi and Bill, that all of this silliness won’t make sense unless we as our characters believe that it’s possible. If we believe it’s possible, so will the audience. And this is the best demonstration of that.”
4. ‘Ricky Thinks He’s Getting Bald’
A comment from Lucy about getting older triggers paranoia in Ricky that he’s going bald, so Lucy decides to hold a “bald party” to show him what bald men really look like. But when Ricky doesn’t show because he’s stuck at the club, she reverts to using terrible smelling solutions and a device to rub it all in — the comic highlight of the episode.
“It’s the only episode of I Love Lucy where they shot it one way and had to recut it and do some inserts,” reveals Geoffrey. “The problem was that the original script had it backwards where she goes to the store, they do all the hair restorative things and then they had the bald men’s party. So what they had was a hysterical second act that wore the audience out, so the bald men’s party onky got some nice little chuckles instead of laughs. What they realized was that they had to put the bald men’s party in the middle and save the hair restorative scene for the end. Then Vivian and Lucille had to reshoot the ins and outs of those scenes so that it made sense.”
Vivian Vance, Desiz Arnas and Lucille Ball
Original Caption: I Love Lucy gained an Emmy as the best situation comedy. Showing their joys are Vivian Vance, (L), who got an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the show, which included Lucille Ball. That’s Desi Arnaz in the happy middle. This all took place at the Palladium Theater as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded “Emmys” at the annual award dinner.
“If you watch the show very carefully, it looks like she’s about to do the hair restorative things, but doesn’t and Ethel asks, ‘What happened?’ ‘Oh, I didn’t have the heart to do it’ — that was a new piece they put in. Then they put in the bald men’s party that Ricky doesn’t show up for and a new insert moment has Lucy saying, ‘Well, Lucy Ricardo’s torture system, here we come.’”
And they cut that into what had been the middle scene and made it the last. In rehearsals, although they used the machinery, the goop never was, so Desi Anraz is reacting honestly to what’s going on. The script says he needed to react, but he took it further than the script did and it’s a brilliant piece of comedy for both of them.”
5. ‘Job Switching’
When Ricky and Fred grow annoyed at the spending habits of Lucy and Ethel, the ladies decide to work in a candy factory while the guys do the housework. This episode has one of the show’s most famous scenes, with Lucy, Ethel, an overzealous forelady and a conveyor belt of chocolate.
At the candy factory, the forewoman sternly instructs Lucy in the candy-dipping department. Lucy watches the woman next to her as she deftly picks up a cream center, drops it into a puddle of chocolate, rolls it, covers it with chocolate and sets it aside, making a swirl design on top. With a big smile, Lucy tries to imitate the woman and smears her fingers in the chocolate on the slab of marble with the abandon of a child making mud pies.
Lucy finally manages to complete one and drops it into the finishing tray with a flourish. It’s a misshapen mess. “Hey, this is fun!” she says. A fly then lands on the other woman’s face, and Lucy, her hand covered with chocolate, takes a swipe at it, leaving a brown splat on the woman’s face. Her coworker promptly smacks Lucy back, leaving her face completely covered with chocolate. All of this before the conveyor belt bit.
“Back in the days of the Farmer’s Market on Fairfax Boulevard in Hollywood, it was even bigger and more popular than it is now,” says Mark. “And in Southern California, the big candy company was called See’s Candies, and at the Farmer’s Market they actually had candy dippers doing it in a window for you watch them, and then they would sell you boxes of See’s Candies.”
So they got this candy dipper, her name was Amanda Milligan, and hired her to play the woman that Lucy Ricardo works next to. “She wasn’t an actress, she didn’t understand the mechanics of acting or the fact that she wasn’t supposed to hurt Ms. Ball doing it,” Mark explains. “But she ended up slapping her right across the face; Ms. Ball took a wallop from that woman.
“They recut it with a couple of camera angles so you get twice the laughs as it looks like she’s slapping Lucy twice. It hurt, but Ms. Ball was an incredible professional who understood that the cameras are rolling, and unless there’s an earthquake or someone drops dead, you keep going,” Mark explains. “And if there’s any problem, they can edit it out later. She understood that there was an amateur on the set.”