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.
“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.”
