Tag: I Love Lucy

Lydster: messages from my daughter

homework

Lucy comic booksSometime between 2016 and 2020, my daughter gave me several strips of paper with messages on them. I rediscovered them when I was in the (lengthy) process of straightening my office.

They reminded me of a similar present I received from my friends for – I believe – my 16th birthday. I think they’re still in this house somewhere.

My daughter wrote:

We watch the news. I think the watching, but also conversing about both the stories and the coverage choices, helped inform her social conscience.

You help me leave for school. First, I made sure she was awake. I used to take her on the bus to preschool before I went to work. Later, I made sure she had food, money, and homework, especially in the lower grades.

When she first went to middle school, I helped her navigate how to take alternate buses so she could avoid the rowdies on the designated buses. But by eighth grade, she decided that the loud bus was more tolerable than spending the extra time to take two buses.

You help me with my homework. In particular, history and math. As I recall, math was complicated even in fourth grade because of the wording of some of the questions. While I remembered a lot of AP American history, there were details that I had never heard. I tried to help her with AP Statistics, but I couldn’t recall it well enough, so I got her a tutor.

Hey, Ricky!

You and I Love Lucy. In 2016, my wife, my daughter, and I went to the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, NY. She took a bunch of photos, a few of which showed up in my blog post. She got a Lucy cup. Subsequently, we bought the box set of I Love Lucy episodes, which she watched for several months.

You tolerate your life. I’m not positive what this meant. It’s true that I was unhappy and dissatisfied at work in the latter years but needed to get to retirement age so that I could quit. I didn’t often directly tell her, I don’t think, but indeed she overheard conversations I had with her mother.

I was delighted to come across these messages.

Favorite single episode of a sitcom?

a shammy

Greg Burgas, the scoundrel, asked: What’s your favorite single episode of a sitcom?

I find this exercise difficult. There may be bits of a story that I remember. Think of the turkey episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. It may be that Les Nessman’s reportage is enough. But I don’t specifically recall the rest of the show. Ditto the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the mass movement to the tissues. Or Jim taking a driving test on Taxi. Or the last few minutes of the Newhart finale.

Lots of shows may have a great A story, but the B story, not so much. I’ll admit there are certain elements I’m always a sucker for. One is the inclusion of game shows that I like. JEOPARDY on Cheers. Password on The Odd Couple.

But I don’t rewatch enough sitcoms to be sure, with two exceptions. That said, I picked these.

Sammy’s visit episode of All In The Family, with Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy sits in Archie’s chair, and Arch says nothing.

The Tuttle episode of MASH (1973). “Throughout his childhood, Hawkeye had an imaginary friend, Tuttle, who knocked over garbage, broke windows, and wet the bed. When Hawkeye resurrects ‘Captain Tuttle’ to requisition food and supplies for Sister Theresa and the orphanage, he stirs up a mare’s nest.”

The Car episode of Barney Miller (1981). “A car thief’s conscience haunts him twenty-five years after the fact.” Two things stand out forty years later. When the original owner saw the vehicle, she complained, “It’s so PINK.” And the thief said that he wiped the car clean regularly with a shammy.

Three Valentines episode of Frasier (1999). “Three different stories following Frasier, Daphne, Niles, and Martin on Valentine’s Day.” Specifically Niles ironing. Valentine’s Day can suck.

The exceptions

I watched I Love Lucy. A lot. I’ve picked the Harpo Marx episode of I Love Lucy (1955). I could have selected Vitameatavegamin or the one with the stomping grapes. Now we have a boxed set, though my daughter had commandeered it after we bought it at the Lucy-Desi Museum.

The other is The Dick Van Dyke Show. Even before getting the DVDS DVD, there were lots of bits (walnuts, a Christmas show, and anything involving Laura in capri pants) I recall. But I’ll pick three episodes that have stuck in my mind since I was a kid.

One was probably BECAUSE I was a child when I saw it. What’s In A Middle Name? (1962) “Ritchie finds his birth certificate and wants an explanation for his middle name being Rosebud.” And I remembered all of the components. There’s something fundamental about the kid’s identity crisis.

Coast To Coast Big Mouth (1965) “Laura accidentally spills the beans on a nationally televised talk show that Alan Brady is bald.” Carl Reiner talking to toupees was classic.

But the #1 episode has to be That’s My Boy?? (1963) “During a flashback about his early days as a parent, Rob recounts why he believed Laura and he brought home a baby belonging to someone else.” When the punchline came, I laughed hysterically, as did the audience.

Movie review: Being The Ricardos

Aaron Sorkin

Being the RicardosWhen she co-hosted the Oscars recently, Amy Schumer “took a swing at Aaron Sorkin’s Being The Ricardos, the Nicole Kidman-Javier Bardem film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. ‘Aaron Sorkin: a genius! Truly, right? I mean, the innovation to make a movie about Lucille Ball without even a moment that’s funny? Not your fault, Nicole.'”

But Sorkin was not making a comedy. “This is no more a comedy than the ‘King of Comedy’ or ‘Joker’ is a comedy.”

I read all of this after I saw the movie, which I watched just before the Oscars. The harsh criticism I’d read about how Nicole’s face was stiff whereas Lucy’s was rubbery had made me wary about even viewing it.

I should note that I’m a big fan of Ball and Arnaz. It’s less about the I Love Lucy series, which of course I had seen many times. It was more about WHY I was able to watch it over and over. Desilu essentially invented the rerun at a time when the general perception was “We already saw that episode. Why would we watch it AGAIN?”

I’m enough of a devotee that our family stopped at the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, NY in 2016, which was very much worth visiting. We bought the I Love Lucy DVD box set there, which my daughter has watched in its entirety. Also, in 2019, I read her autobiography, Love, Lucy. It was written in 1964, but not published until 1996, after both Desi and Lucy had died.

The vision thing

So I think that Sorkin achieved what he was going for, although he consolidated certain elements that took place over a few weeks into one week of shooting an episode of I Love Lucy. We see the Red Scare stuff, discussed in her book; this has to do with her grandfather, who helped raise her. The couple wanted to include Lucille’s pregnancy in I Love Lucy, but the network and sponsors thought it was a terrible idea; we now know how it turned into comedy gold.

Was Desi unfaithful to Lucille? The bitter relationship between Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and the much older William Frawley (J. K. Simmons), who played the neighbors Ethel and Fred Mertz, was on full display. We see the plan to fatten up Ethel/Vivian.

Ultimately, I mostly enjoyed it. There’s latitude in the biopic genre that I allow for. I do agree with the assessment by Ken Levine that the writers on the show were perhaps treated more shabbily than necessary.

The film received The Women Film Critics Circle Awards’ Hall of Shame “For taking a beloved female icon and turning her intelligence, talent, and work ethic against her as a harping shrew, and the deeply flawed men around her as downtrodden male saviors.” I think this is a bit harsh. Lucille Ball was one tough woman.

Bardem, Kidman, and Simmons were all nominated for Oscars, though they did not win. Kidman did get the Golden Globe, though no one cares anymore. I was actually most intrigued by the performance of Nina Arianda’s Viv. About 2/3s of the critics liked Being The Ricardos.

If you are looking for great recreations of I Love Lucy bits, this is not the film for you. If not, you might like it.

Slowly I turned, step by step…

Niagara Falls

Slowly I turnedHere’s an odd stream of consciousness piece, I suppose. Back in the mid-1970s, I was in a local production of Godspell in New Paltz. At some point in the dialogue, much of the cast is chanting: “Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch, until…” I knew it had to be a reference to something, but I had no idea what. I didn’t bother to search YouTube or Google, since they didn’t exist at the time. So I forgot about it…

…until I was reading Arthur’s recent stories about the COVID protocols in New Zealand, specifically The next steps have been announced. “Critics, as the Prime Minister pointed out today, will complain that the government didn’t move fast enough, or that it’s moving too fast.” And somehow, my mind conflated the “next steps” and “too fast” into “Slowly I turn, step by step…” What IS that a reference to?

As it turns out, it’s a bit by the Three Stooges called Niagara Falls, which you can see here. It’s part of the 1944 short film Gents Without Cents. But the routine has been used for decades, going back to vaudeville. See the variation on I Love Lucy.

I was never a big fan of the Three Stooges. Their comedy seemed mean-spirited when I’d occasionally see them on Saturday afternoons growing up.

Where everybody knows your name

But they are the punchline to one of the most memorable pieces of dialogue on the sitcom Cheers. It’s from the episode entitled What’s Up, Doc? which I have not seen since it aired in March of 1989. A therapist says to Sam Malone (Ted Danson), “You’re an aging lothario who uses sex to cover up massive insecurity, a fear of true intimacy, fear of a relationship…”

Sam believes the diagnosis. “Come on, answer the question. What do I have in my life that isn’t women or sex?” His friend Rebecca notes his job bartending, his car, and sailing, but Sam notes these are all ways to meet women.

At the end is this dialogue:

Rebecca: What about the Three Stooges?
Sam: Oh, yeah, great. I like the Three Stooges. That helps a lot.
Rebecca: Wait a minute, Sam. Think about this. Do women like the Three Stooges?
Sam: No, they hate them.
Rebecca: All right. Are women impressed that you like the Three Stooges?
Sam: No, some of them even think they’re stupid.
Rebecca: When you’re watching the Three Stooges, do you think they’re sexy?
Sam: No, when you watch the Three Stooges, nobody has time to think about sex or women. Hey, wait a minute. That means I do have another interest in my life. I like the Stooges for themselves. Hey, whoa, I’m okay. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

It’s funnier in full context.

Book review: Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball

Ginger Rogers’ mother Lela became a stage mom to Lucy and many other aspiring actresses.

The book Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball I actually read last summer, on a transcontinental flight from Newark to San Diego. I meant to write about it then, but forgot. Now it’s nearly thirty years since Lucy died, so I guess it’s time.

If you don’t know, Lucy was the star of the most popular situation comedy in the US in the 1950s, I Love Lucy. She had successful programs in the 1960s as well, The Lucy Show/Here’s Lucy.

The existence of the book is a tale of its own. After Lucy died on April 26, 1989, her children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr., were tasked with wading through artifacts. Lucie came across a 300-page manuscript written by her mother c. 1964.

Most people, including Lucy’s closest friends, didn’t know about the existence of this work at all. Perhaps she didn’t want to share it because her portrayals would hurt her then-ex-husband Desi Arnaz. But he had died in 1986, so the book was published in 1996 and became a best-seller.

The details were astonishingly precise, starting with her birth on August 6, 1911, in her grandparents’ apartment in Jamestown, NY, in the southwest corner of the state. She had many challenges growing up, including her father dying at age 28 when she was not quite four.

She was raised by an extended family, including her beloved grandfather, who everyone called Daddy. Later, there was an what she thought was a legal injustice borne by Daddy which affected Lucy’s viewpoint throughout his life.

Lucy took almost any job in New York City: showgirl, extra in Broadway and road shows, modeling coats and dresses, posing for illustrators. It was as a “Chesterfield (cigarette) girl” that first got her to Hollywood.

Ginger Rogers’ mother Lela became a stage mom to Lucy and many other aspiring actresses. “Lela was the first person to see me as a clown with glamour.”

Many more tales were shared before she met this Cuban musician and band leader named Desi. They fell hard for each other, and married rather quickly after they met.

Keeping their marriage together, though, was challenging, as they were both on the road separately a lot. I Love Lucy, in part, was born from addressing that need.

If Lucille Ball, or her TV roles are interesting to you, or if you’re just trying how one young woman worked hard to make it in show biz, I highly recommend Love, Lucy.

Ken Levine: The History of Sitcoms podcast.

What’s My Line? game show (1954), Lucille Ball as mystery guest.

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