Housewife Lucy Ricardo is a frustrated performer always looking for a chance to shine, despite her limited abilities. She’s married to Ricky, a Cuban-American singer and bandleader who tries and fails to keep her feet on the ground. Their best friends are their landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz. And in every episode, Lucy gets caught up in a farcical misunderstanding, or attempts some hare-brained scheme to get famous – like infiltrating Ricky’s act with her newly acquired clowning skills, which include beating a dancer with a pig’s bladder.
It might not sound like the template for one of the most successful and groundbreaking sitcoms of all time, yet not only was I Love Lucy hugely popular – with 67.3 million viewers at the peak of its six-season run – it was also the first programme to broadcast repeats and to record on film in front of a live studio audience. The show, which debuted in 1951, pushed the envelope on screen, too. TV executives initially blanched at the idea of their heroine being married to a Cuban-American. Lucille Ball, who played Lucy, had to fight hard for her real-life husband Desi Arnaz to be cast as Ricky.
The timidity of these execs also explains the title of the season two episode Lucy is Enceinte. This was one of the first times in TV history that a woman had been shown pregnant and CBS deemed the idea so racy they banned the writers from using the word “pregnant”, plumping instead for “expecting” and having a “blessed event”. Similarly, the episode in which she gives birth is called Lucy Goes to the Hospital. As all this might suggest, I Love Lucy often seems old-fashioned: on three occasions, Ricky actually spanks Lucy for disobeying him. It is, however, all laughably cartoonish and there’s no doubt Lucy is the one who really has the upper hand – sometimes literally, as she’s not afraid to wallop him in return.
Six seasons of this antagonistic dynamic would probably feel like overkill. Fortunately, this new box set has cherry-picked 18 of the strongest episodes. In Job Switching, Lucy and Ethel have to wrap sweets in a factory but can’t keep up with the conveyor belt, so they stuff chocolates anywhere they can – into their mouths, under their hats, down their uniforms. Not only is it a classic moment of physical comedy, it’s a great example of a fine double act in action, Vivian Vance as Ethel being one of nature’s most accomplished foils. The same could be said of our heroine’s attempt to stomp grapes into wine in Lucy’s Italian Movie, in which she goes to Rome as research for an audition. When Lucy gets bored and tries to take a rest, her new supervisor berates her in Italian. Before long, Lucy and the supervisor are brawling in a tubful of grapes in one of the messiest food fights ever filmed.
Perhaps most entertaining of all is Lucy Does a TV Commercial. Lucy is picked to advertise Vitametavegamin, a nutrient drink that also has a high alcohol content. The more Lucy samples the product, the more her performance suffers. By the end of the day her eyes are glazed over, her smile is lopsided and she’s mixing up her words while swigging Vitametavegamin from the bottle.
It’s not all clowning around. The moment Ricky discovers Lucy is pregnant – sorry, expecting – is genuinely moving. She’s been trying to fill him in all day, but he’s preparing for his nightclub act. That night, he gets a request to sing We’re Having a Baby because someone in his audience wants to surprise her husband with the good news. As he moves through the audience singing and looking for the mystery woman, he realises it’s Lucy. Given that Lucille was pregnant in real life, it’s hard not to interpret his tears of joy as real.While Lucille was slapstick on screen, she was anything but silly when it came to business. She was one of the first female producers, owning 80% of the show alongside Desi, with whom she set up Desilu Productions, a company she ran on her own after their divorce, a rarity at the time.
It’s heavily rumoured that Aaron Sorkin’s next project will be a Lucille Ball biopic with Cate Blanchett as the lead. No doubt she’ll be charismatic, moving and funny. But if you want to see a uniquely talented woman fool audiences into thinking making people laugh is easy, stick with this box set. It’s a masterclass.
