Most of the Lucy-Ricky hour-long episodes are painful to watch.

Wasn't this the series that Bob Cummings appeared in? I just remember he looked hot in the bathtub and then being surprised at how much older he really was than he looked.

Yes that was the Japan episode in which Lucy and Ethel dressed geisha girls. I think it was the only hour episode that Katherine Card (Mrs McGillicuddy) appeared in.

Milton is hilarious in drag walking out of and on the sides of his heels and saying with exaggerated lips "I love you". He probably copied Marilyn saying that as he was fucking her.

That would have been the very last Lucy-Desi show together. People witnessed Lucy crying during the filming, wearing that white Kabuki make-up, and her eyes being all red. They said the contrast was bizzare.

Most of the hour shows left me cringing. I do think Berle doing his kissy-mouth-shoe-flop routine (familiar as it was) was very funny.

I also agree that the Lupino/Duff episode was horrid. Lupino herself was creepy in just about any venue once middle age and her directorial career took off - like a tiny, sullen doll wanting to move your furniture.

Lucy showed her bitterness in these episodes. It was sad to watch because you knew it was the end and that it was not ending well.

The very last Lucy/Desi show was the one with Edie Adams and Ernie Kovacs.

Lucy filed for divorce the day after it aired.

The Ernie Kovacs episode is just awful too.

But the contrast is interesting: you get the feeling that Kovacs and Adams were on top of the world, while Lucy and Ricky come across as strained.

I remember as a child my mother said the show made her look like an awful person. Lying, conniving and whining about stupid things. My mother felt sorry for Ricky - the character not Desi the person.

Lucy, herself, said the Lupino-Duff episode did not work because Lupino had no comic timing. I read it in one of the Lucy bios. Lucy told this to someone on the set and she thought Ida overheard her, causing even more strain. Another thing that not everyone knows, none of the hour shows were filmed before a live audience. They were all done on tape, on set. This destroyed all the spontaneity, the very thing that made Lucy "come alive." She needed an audience. The others did, too. You can see in those shows where the edits and cuts were done. It looks fake as shit. And Lucy's wierd short hairdo made her look old. She already had enough bags and circles and wrinkles from the strain of her crumbing marriage.

The episode with Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams was the last one. Desi and Lucy weren't speaking to each other. Edie Adams said how terrible doing the show was for her. They divorce shortly afterwards.

The episode where Lucy and Viv put on a production of Ibsen's "Ghosts" was never aired, probably due to the low ratings of the other episodes.

It has been rumored for years that Desi ordered the tape destroyed after Viv (as the maid, natch) stole every scene from Lucy's Mrs. Alving.

Bad Lucy is better than no Lucy at all.

That's what I used to think when I was a kid.

The gossip surrounding the Tallulah Bankhead episode is legendary. She was drunk/high the entire week of filming, and this is really apparent as you watch the show. Lucy and Desi had to literally bathe her and feed her regularly. She called Vivian "Cunty", she would strip nude during story meetings, and claimed she had triple pneumonia. (triple, Lucy said, in all three lungs). When other actresses were involved Tallulah would deliberatly screw up during rehearsals, throwing them off, then delivering a perfect performance during filming. Overall the episode is by far the best of the hour episodes, the beginning when Lucy and Ethel insult her furniture when they do not know she is standing right behind them is hilarious. Lastly, the episode was written for Bette Davis, but she broke a bone and was unavailable for the part of the actress next door, unless she lived next to Marcus Welby, I guess.

RE 14 - Wow...can only imagine the difficulty the cast and crew must have had on " Batman" almost 10 years later. Going by this, she must have progressed to peeing in her costumes during takes, and shooting ping-pong balls out out of her twat, at Robin.

Bankhead was a terror during rehearsals but letter perfect on tape night. It shocked everyone.

One other factor to consider: These shows were broadcast over three seasons and were never meant to be watched the way they are being shown now. In those days, the viewing audience probably salivated over any new "Lucy," even a bad one, because they were used to seeing her on a weekly basis until ILL ended.

Ida Lupino was one of the main directors for the show "Gilligan's Island" which I think is hilarious. How could Lucy think she had no comic timing!?

Read somewhere that when they were shooting the Fred MacMurray show(involving a car chase), and were filming in the desert outside of Vegas (where the episode was set), Desi got pissed that a stuntman wasn't driving the car (I think it was a classic T-Bird)fast enough over some dip in the road - he wanted the car to hit the dip, and really fly off the ground. After a couple failed takes, Desi said "Out of the car amigo - I'll do it". He told the cameraman to gear up, drove the car up the road, u-turned it, and sped back over the dip, getting the perfect shot. I just remember reading that it was an extremely hot, & tense set. Don't know if that had anything to do with Desi grabbing the reins, so to speak, and getting the job done. (Book might have been an old Lucy bio).

I'm very old and fondly remember Ida Lupino and Howard Duff as the stars of their own short-lived sitcom called Mr. Adams and Eve about the Ricardo-like adventures of a married Hollywood actor couple. And I remember Ida being pretty funny on it. Howard was very hot!

You're all forgetting the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour with Ann Sothern, Cesar Romero and Rudy Vallee that is a flashback of how the Ricardos met. That was a good one, certainly better than the Fred MacMurray, Danny Thomas, Bob Cummings and Milton Berle hours. But perhaps it was a special that was shot while I Love Lucy was still running?

Just what we needed, another fucking Lucy thread.

You elderly cunts are driving this place into the ground.

Jackass at R21, In case you haven't heard.... Everybody loves Lucy! It's the most popular TV show of all time and appeals to people from 4 years old to 100. Get over yourself.

RE 21 What would YOU like to talk about, you youthful sprite ? Justin Bieber, Jay Z,"Gossip Girl",Fun, "Girls", Taylor Lautner,D Squared....

Please - what youthful,facinating subjects do you want to discuss ?

YOU TWIT

[quote]Ida Lupino was one of the main directors for the show "Gilligan's Island" which I think is hilarious. How could Lucy think she had no comic timing!?

Acting and directing are two different things. Lucy probably felt that Ida couldn't play comedy in the broadly presentational style that Lucy favored. Lupino was a superb film actress because she was a master at underplaying. Lucy belonged to the Eddie Cantor school of acting: face front, plant your feet, speak out, keep it bright and pick up your cues!

The strange thing about the Bob Cummings hour is that Bob was also in a Shirley MacLaine movie called My Geisha in which Shirley played a housewife lving in Japan who disguises herself as a geisha girl to test her husband's fidelity. I think Robert Mitchum played her husband but Bob was the best friend.

So it has virtually the same gimmick as the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour set in Japan.

I don't know which one came first. Who stole from who?

The film shoot must have been the only 4 weeks that Shirley actually lived in Japan with neglected daughter Sachi.

I thought Howard Duff was fucking hot!

He shows up in a Golden Girls episode as a guy who jilted Sophia and she put a couple of curses on him. One curse is that his socks would keep falling down.

R18, have you ever SEEN Ida Lupino in that episode? Or in ANY comedy? As talented an actress as she was, she was NO belly laugh.

Lucille Ball wanted to continue with the show, but Gary Morton talked her out of it.

I think it is hilarious that we have a "Gary talked her out of it" troll. LOL

R23, any of those topics would be better than this old hag.

Why must you live 50-plus years in the past? You elderly assholes are ruining DL.

r30, you do realize you are typing into cyberspace and have zero idea of the age of any of these posters...don't you?

I would say that feeble assclowns such as yourself are ruining DL. Most of these posts are fun and interesting. Your contributions? Not so much.

[quote]R23,any of those topics would be better than this old hag.

Perhaps a compromise thread, such as SHOULD JUSTIN BIEBER PLAY "MAME?" is in order?

The Fernando Lamas episode isn't half bad either. Neither was the Red Skelton one. Concur that the Duff/Lupino and Paul Douglas episodes were the worst, along with the Maurice Chevalier episode, which I almost forgot about. The Ernie Kovacas one was no great shakes, but it is interesting to watch because of Edie's observations about Lucy/Desi's deteriorating relationship during filming.

[quote]you do realize you are typing into cyberspace and have zero idea of the age of any of these posters...don't you?

I don't know who you think you are kidding here, grampa.

R1, I agree, always thought Bob Cummings looked super hot in that bathtub in the Japanese episode. That ep is not bad and has lots of funny lines.

Here's the clip from the Japanese ep:

A couple of comments:

Lucy filed for divorce the day after the Kovacs/Adams episode was FILMED not aired. By the time it was aired, the divorce was old news. In fact she filed on Desi's 43rd birthday, March 2, 1960. Filing earlier would have violated their contract with their sponsor.

And when Desi drove the car himself and did it perfectly....since he was director, no one had called for a take so the camera wasn't turning when he did his drive....it had to be done again.

R33, yes, Edie said that she chose to sing the worst possible song "That's All," a tender love song, in that episode not knowing how bad things were with the Arnazes. She said that Lucy cried all the time and that the atmosphere on the set was like a funeral.

I'm 20 years old and I Love Lucy. I've watched her ever since I was kid. Anyway, I liked the TB, FM and DT episodes the best.

Edie Adams also said that Lucy made her change her dress and hairdo a half dozen times until she was satisfied with Edie's look.

I love how the OP said, the show is so bad and than lists like 90% of the episodes which he said are good.

I love that song "That's All."

The lyrics are particularly apt:

(By alan brandt, bob haymes)

I can only give you love that lasts forever

And a promise to be near each time you call,

And the only heart I own

For you and you alone,

That's all, that's all.

***

I can only give you country walks in springtime

And a hand to hold when leaves begin to fall, And a love whose burning light

Will warm the winter night,

That's all, that's all.

***

There are those, I am sure, that have told you

They would give you the world for a toy.

All I have are these arms to enfold you

And a love time can never destroy.

***

If you're wondering what I'm asking in return, dear,

You'll be glad to know that my demands are small.

Say it's me that you'll adore

For now and ever more,

That's all, that's all.

Lupino directed a boatload of drama sitcom shows in her time. The Luci-Desi hours were part of a Desilu anthology show that included the pilot for "The Untouchables" and other Desilu series. It ended shortly after the marriage. When Ball took over Deslilu the studio mostly functioned as a rental lot for independent producers like Sheldon Leonard & Danny Thomas. The studio may have become profitable under her, but it did so by investing in very little until Star Trek & Mission Impossible which she didn't "get". Gene Roddenberry hated dealing with her.

You don't like them? Well fuck you.

[quote]Lucie Aranaz Jr.

¡Ay, que barbaridad!

r46

Fuck you as well.

Bob Cummings is smoking hot in that bathtub. He looks better there than he does in MOON OVER MIAMI (1941).

Cummings for known for looking great for decades. Here he is at age 70 in 1979.

R48=Ann B. Davis

Cummings was an early advocate of natural, unprocessed healthy foods and daily exercise. His book STAY YOUNG AND VITAL (1960) is still relevant today.

I loved the Danny Thomas episode. Gale Gordon's slow burn as the judge in the dispute between Lucy and Danny is the funniest thing in the episode.

Nobody could do a reaction like Gale Gordon when he was at his peak.

But, he would have been a lousy Fred Mertz.

He was barely an OK Mr. Mooney.

Desi was so big and strong and handsome in the early days of I Love Lucy. On the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour he was so bloated and his looks were totally gone.

Another lousy hour long episode starred Betty Grable and Harry James.

And Fernando Lamas was especially hot in his episode! Didn't he have a prolonged lathered-up shower scene in it?

I think we've mentioned them all now.

But I truly loved them all when I was a kid, especially the Tallulah and Ann Sothern/Cesar Romero shows.

Edie Adams' rendition of "That's All" is quite lovely--and poignant, given the episode was the end of Lucy and Desi on screen together.

After guest-starring, Fred MacMurray couldn't wait to snatch Bill Frawley away to costar with him on the first season of My Three Sons.

Please do not use "Bill Frawley" and "snatch" in the same sentence ever again.

The Fred MacMurray episode is also the last time his wife June Haver appeared in anything.

The Grable episode is disappointing. Lucy & Betty were friends since the mid-30s when both were contract players at RKO. You'd think their friendship would show up on camera but they have no chemistry together at all.

r58, that lack of chemistry was no doubt due to Desi's letching after Betty at every possible moment.

I agree with the 4 that most people say are weak, but the others are good.

When I first saw these I was very young, not even in school yet, and they seemed very unique, larger than life.

I think the Ann Sothern/meeting Ricky the first time one was the first of these. It originally ran about 70 minutes, and Desi got CBS to shorten some show so LDCH could air in its' entirety.

Viv looked a lot younger than Bill in the first few seasons of ILL. By the time the hour-long episodes were winding down, they looked around the same age. He pretty much looked the same from day 1 of ILL to the final hour-long episode more than a decade later.

r61 I would so disagree with you!

I think Viv looked like she was firmly in her 60s in the first few years of ILL but in her early 50s by the time they had all moved to Westport, CT.

Initially her makeup was minimal, her air was harsh and her wardrobe consisted of a few drab house dresses. In CT she looked quite sporty.

You could always tell Lucy and Vivian were close in age, no matter how hard they tried to make Vivian more drab. And besides, Vivian didn't have the face of a worn-out road map, as did the so-called "Queen of Comedy."

Lucy looked so hard and haggard by the last season of ILL. When she got that awful new hairdo (I think she debuted it on the Fred MacMurray hour-long), it made her look even rougher. Desi aged horribly too. I can't believe he was only 43 when the hour-longs ended. He looked a good 10 years older than that. Viv looked her best during the final couple of seasons of ILL, but she started looking all jowely by the hour-longs and was starting to show her age, though she never even approached Lucy's level of crone.

The hairstyle Lucy wore for the ILL episodes and a few of the hour-long shows had the effect of pulling her face back. When she went with the new do it didn't do the same trick.

I think it was during the first season of The Lucy Show when she started wearing the face-lifting wigs.

Lucy's Level of Crone. I think I'll start using that for my S/N.

Whenever I see the Cesar Romero/Ann Sothern episode about Ricky and Lucy meeting for the first time, the first thing that pops into my demented head is: I wonder if this is about the time that Desi let Cesar suck him off to "get it over with."

Yes, I wonder that, too, when I watch the Cesar Romero episode. In the dressing room? In a mens room? After work? On a break? Was Desi drunk at the time (probably, since he was heavily drinking then...)

Anything to get away from Lucy at that point, no?

I think he sucked off Desi in Desi's office at Desilu. Sounds incredibly hot. Desi just seemed totally sexual, and I doubt that Cesar was his only M2M experience.

Mary Tyler Moore was on ILL. She didn't get any credit but it is so her.

What episode do you think MTM was on?

Anything with Lucy is fucking torture to watch.

From Burns and Allen (radio)

Gracie) Frank Sinatra sings OK but George is a better torch singer.

Bill Goodwin) He is?

Gracie) We had a party and Frank and George had a singing contest and everyone agreed of the two singers, George was the torture.

I love Lucy, but Gracie Allen is a goddess.

Not all of them were filmed without an audience. The Tallullah one definitely had an audience, I think there are a couple of others, too. It depended on the nature of the show. But by the time they got to the last few, it wasn't filmed before an audience because of the enmity between Lucy and Desi.

I agree r74. In fact, as I was reading that post at r73, Gracie was in my head and I could hear how she would say those lines and see her facial expressions. She died way too soon.

r70 are you confusing MTM with Barbara Eden?

If I'm not mistaken, MTM played the young wife who, with her husband, rented out the Ricardos' apartment when the Ricardos moved to Westport. Gene Reynolds, who went on to create and produce MASH, played the husband.

You're mistaken.

The actress's name was Mary Ellen Kay. You were right about Gene Reynolds, however.

So then who the hell did MTM play? I kind of recall her being on the show too, maybe in one of the hour-long episodes?

Gee, if only there were a place you could research it. Oh, wait -- there is.

MTM was not in "I Love Lucy." Nor was she in any of Ball's other series.

I did catch MTM on an old "Bachelor Father" episode recently.

Lucy wanted Mary to play Diana Jordan in the country club episode, but Grant talked her out of it.

Didn't Desi produce the first season of The Lucy Show. If there was so much tension between them, she must have forgiven him at some point.

Next you'll be telling us that David Tyler Muir played Little Ricky.

No, but I think Agens Moorehead played Mrs. Trumbull.

The last regular episode of I Love Lucy was broadcast May 6, 1957.

The last of the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour was shown on April 1, 1960.

Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.

Ball and Morton were married on November 19, 1961.

The first episode of The Lucy Show was aired October 1, 1962.

What year was the first hour long episode broadcast? I assume that it was the one with Ann Sothern and Cesar Romero?

I believe it was aired before ILL was over? Was Ann Sothern still playing Susie McNamara on her series Private Secretary?

Was that the only one to air before ILL finished?

Actually the first Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (with Sothern & Romero) was broadcast in Nov. 1957. ILL had ended the previous season in May.

And Private Secretary had also ended the previous season in Feb. 1957.

It's so funny, the flashback on the cruise is supposed to take place nearly 20 years earlier, but Lucy is even older and harder looking with her hair down pretending to be in her early/mid 20s. Someone upthread was spot on in regard to the fact that the hairdo she wore all throughout ILL had the effect of pulling her face back and making her look younger.

Why did Lucy and Gary marry so quickly? A little over a year after she divorced Desi, which by all accounts, was a painful and bitter separation and divorce.

R92, Lucy was pregnant by Gary.

She didn't want to marry so quickly, but Gary made her...aw, you know the rest.

R83, do you watch the BF episodes on Antenna TV between 5 & 6 am? If so, I thought I was the only one up at that hour watching BF. I have horrible insomnia and while I go to bed a midnight and get maybe an hour to 90 minutes sleep I'm always up at 5 and catch those great BF episodes, (I especially adore housekeeper Peter) and then watch Father Knows Best. BF seems much more modern of the two. I love the kitchen. It could pass for a great kitchen today. No one else had double wall ovens in those days.

Me no housekeeper! Me houseBOY! Now I go see Niece Kelly!

Despite being so ambitious and strong-willed, Lucy was very co-dependent and prudish IIRC.

Didn't Lucy completely uproot her life after the demise of her marriage and the death of Lucy Ricardo by moving with little Desi and Lucie to NYC and plunging into a taxing starring role in the Broadway show Wildcat?

Marriage to the dull and predictable Gary Morton back in sunny Beverly Hills must have seemed quite welcoming to Lucy who was exhausted from an unforgiving 8 show-a-week schedule through one of NYC's harshest winters on record.

And once she was settled in with Gary, the idea of revisiting a sitcom, but this time under her control, was the ultimate goal for Lucy.

Bob Cummings' shoulders are so hot in that bath tub scene!

The final Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour was the one that starred Ernie Kovaks and Edie Adams.

MTM appeared as Happy Hotpoint in commercials on Ozzie and Harriet in the 1950s.

LOL, R96, that's one of the parts of Bachelor Father that does seem dated. Peter is written in a stereotype racist way. Still I love him and niece Kelly was so pretty. I'll bet her hair was red. By today's standards she'd be considered a little chubby but what a pretty face.

The girl who plays Kelly's friend Ginger seems so familiar. I think she might have done a lot of TV back in the day.

Yes, Lucy was not ready to live like a nun when she on Broadway in "Wildcat." She was savvy and must have known that doing eight performances a week required no time for anything else. Too bad because she would have been right for shows like "Hello, Dolly" on Broadway and several others.

It's too bad the Bob Cummings sitcom Love That Bob! hasn't gotten much play on those TV Land type revivals channels. I have some of the DVDs and it's one of the few shows from the 1950s which still hold up.

The casting of Bob, Rosemary deCamp, Dwayne Hickman, Ann B. Davis and Jane Kulp, among many of the smaller roles (King Donovan, Joi Lansing, Rose Marie, Kathleen Freeman, et. al.), is impeccable and the scripts are often hilarious.

And I love the milieu of 50s Southern California, downtown LA, Mulholland Drive, etc.

I watch it once a week on channel 14, an obscure Hamptons NY indie station. It's on like at 2am but I dvr it, and it holds up pretty well.

Bob Cummings show is owned by Dobie Gillis and he won't release the rights. Dobie and Sheila Khruel who played Maynard were at odds for years.

[quote]Sheila Khruel who played Maynard were at odds for years.

I know Sheila Kuehl is butch, but Maynard was an actual male played by Bob Denver. Sheila K. played Zelda Gilroy.

[quote]The casting of Bob, Rosemary deCamp, Dwayne Hickman, Ann B. Davis and Jane Kulp,

You mean Nancy Kulp. She played Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies.

r106, do you mean that Dwayne Hickman, who played Bob Cummings' nephew Chuck on Love That Bob (as well as Dobie Gillis), now owns the rights to the series?

Why in the world would he withhold them when there is money to be made, pleasure to be given to us oldsters and nothing to be embarrassed about?

Character description from the Wikipedia entry on the Bob Cummings Show:

"Dwayne Hickman – Chuck MacDonald – Margaret's son and Bob's nephew, who was a crazy-driven teenager vying in turn for his uncle's action"

Vying for his uncle's action? HOT!

r58: Did June Haver retire from show biz after appearing with hubby Fred Mac Murray or did she just keel over and die?

June Haver was terrible in her tiny little guest spot. She spent the entire three minutes looking like she was trying to stifle a laugh.

I remember the tulips melting, the baby chicks and the barbeque Lucy and Ethel tried to build that ended up looking like the Matterhorn.

r112, those were from the half-hour ILL's. Wake up, dear.

Gary brought something into Lucy's life that she never had with Desi....boredom.

r110: Haver retired and outlived Fred.

She did all-right for herself. MacMurray was one of the wealthiest Hollywood stars, having bought California real estate as early as the late '30s.

r114 thinks she still on the dais at the Dean Martin roast.

MacMurray was a staunch right-wing republican.

Lucy and Desi might have been Republicans, too. Or at least, they certainly made a point out of letting everyone know they had voted for Ike when Lucy had her Red scare.

Alas, r118 is correct. Lucy & Desi were Republicans.

Like Doris Day.

Breaks my heart.

Lucy may have been a cunt-bitch Republican, but at least she was gay-friendly.

Lol at r114. I have gotten the feeling Vivian wasn't overly fond of Gary Morton.

Being a Republican then was much different than being a Republican nowadays. Back then, the Dems and Repubs differed more on economic issues and not so much on social/moral issues. The loony, anti-progressive fundamental Christians didn't take over the Repub party until the Reagan era.

You do realize that democrats back in those days were pro segregation regressives, don't you?

Yes, I know that, but they didn't dominate the Democratic party the way the fundies dominate the Repubs nowadays. They were considered fringe.

She was fond of Gary, R120, but Phil Ober talked her out it.

r122 is a 20-something whose school never taught history past 1962, and he decided that was enough history education for him.

Um r125, what was incorrect in that statement?

More like punched it out of her, r124.

So did Cesar fellate Desi during the filming of the first hour-long episode, or was that another time?

Alert to R122 and R126, the national Democratic Party of the 1940s and 1950s was not pro-segregation or regressive.

The Southern states were that way (as always) and had a virtually separate Democratic party. In 1948 these Southern segregationists formed the Dixiecrat party which supported Strom Thurmond for president (because of their disgust at Truman's integrationist policies).

In the 1960s and 1970s those people were wooed into the Republican party in what was frankly called "the Southern strategy."

Thank you for proving my point about context-less 20 year olds, r126.

Some of you are too wedded to this party nonsense. Both parties have changed many times. Don't hate Lucy because she was a republican. Read you history books and stop with this knee jerk nonsense. I'm looking at you r125.

Well you're looking at the wrong person. I have no issue with Lucy, and my post at r125 was in direct opposition to the ignorant party freaks. I have already had to RE-educate people here on this very issue in a Clark Gable thread.

R131, There was nothing "knee-jerk" or "wedded to party nonsense" said by R125.

Where are you getting that from?

[quote]The casting of Bob, Rosemary deCamp, Dwayne Hickman, Ann B. Davis and Jane Kulp, among many of the smaller roles (King Donovan, Joi Lansing, Rose Marie, Kathleen Freeman, et. al.), is impeccable and the scripts are often hilarious.

Did you mean Nancy Culp?

And Davis won two Emmys playing "Schultzy" on the show.

In 1950s America, it was all about I LIKE IKE!

Not so much about being Republican, as embracing a war hero who represented all the values that post-WWII Americans craved. And there was a very real, if unfounded, fear of Communism overtaking the world.

Ike's Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was a liberal intellectual bachelor who could not connect to most of the voters.

The change in hair altered the whole dynamic.

The hour long format changed the whole dynamic. 30 minutes of Lucy was sufficient. An hour of Lucy and her scheming was intolerable.

And the adding of guest stars threw the focus off of Lucy and Ricky, which was the whole point of the show.

It was the HAIR.

People weren't ready to accept that Little Ricky was going through puberty.

I'd had sufficient.

He was only 43 at that time? Yikes.

[quote]He was only 43 at that time? Yikes.

Meanness aged William Frawley terribly. What else can I say?

Only an AIDS infested weirdo would hate those episodes

The Bob Cummings bathtub scene is something of a letdown when you can see a quick flash of his dark bathing suit.

But his grabbing Lucy's hand and wiping it off "If you don't mind, I'll do my OWN peal diving." is pretty racy.

THe one with Fred MacMurray was classic, of course some people may disagree with me, but those people are clearly homosexual.

{quote]June Haver was terrible in her tiny little guest spot. She spent the entire three minutes looking like she was trying to stifle a laugh.

They should've fired her ass for that

[quote]Ida Lupino was one of the main directors for the show "Gilligan's Island"

She only did three or four episodes

[quote]After guest-starring, Fred MacMurray couldn't wait to snatch Bill Frawley away to costar with him on the first season of My Three Sons.

He had 13 inches. REAL inches not internet inches

There are several really good ones. The Bankhead episode is a deserved classic, but the Japan episode, the Alaska episode, the Uranium episode and the Danny Thomas episode are very fun. What's the most significant is that the dynamic between Desi and Lucy significantly changed. You can see she's now in charge. And she became something of a shrew. It worked to the writers advantage when they did The Lucy Show as there were several jokes and situations that made light of the situation.

Lucy: That container has too big a mouth. Viv: That makes two of you.

Why isn't the hour-long episodes available for streaming? I can find "I Love Lucy," "The Lucy Show," and "Here's Lucy." I want to watch these again.

[quote]Cummings was an early advocate of natural, unprocessed healthy foods and daily exercise. His book STAY YOUNG AND VITAL (1960) is still relevant today.

Bob Cummings stayed so young and vital mainly because of his severe methamphetamine addiction of more than 35 years, so I'd take his health and wellness advice with a grain of salt.

I have always read that Lucy was not funny in real life. She came alive during the actual filming of the shows after she had been told exactly what to do and when to do it. For some reason it worked spectacularly.

But, to me the info that she was not naturally funny, definitely explained her long marriage to Gary Morton. He was also spectacularly unfunny even though he was considered a comedian. But then a lot of "comedians" from that era were terrible. Buddy Hackett and Jack Carter led the list.

Lucy was not a comedienne, she was an actress who did comedy. I think she was capable of being funny and charming in her early days but like so many people, men and women who did comedy, showed their tiredness and bitterness later in life.

Gary was absolutely brilliant as Milton Berle in Fosse's "Lenny". Check it out.

When she appeared on I Love Lucy Lucille Ball always looked ten years younger than her actual age. When she was 44 years old she looked 34 , but by the time The Lucy Desi Comedy Hour went on the air in the late 1950's time caught up with her. She looked at LEAST her age and perhaps a bit older.

[quote]The gossip surrounding the Tallulah Bankhead episode is legendary. She was drunk/high the entire week of filming, and this is really apparent as you watch the show. Lucy and Desi had to literally bathe her and feed her regularly. She called Vivian "Cunty", she would strip nude during story meetings, and claimed she had triple pneumonia. (triple, Lucy said, in all three lungs). When other actresses were involved Tallulah would deliberatly screw up during rehearsals, throwing them off, then delivering a perfect performance during filming. Overall the episode is by far the best of the hour episodes, the beginning when Lucy and Ethel insult her furniture when they do not know she is standing right behind them is hilarious.

"Cunty" was just Tallu's pet name for anyone whose name she couldn't bother to remember.

[quote]When she appeared on I Love Lucy Lucille Ball always looked ten years younger than her actual age. When she was 44 years old she looked 34 , but by the time The Lucy Desi Comedy Hour went on the air in the late 1950's time caught up with her. She looked at LEAST her age and perhaps a bit older.

She was a chain smoker at a time when cigarettes were super-strong and celebrities were literally paid to smoke by tobacco companies.

R149. They have been “ lost” again.

Bankhead was probably drunk during the taping but I couldn't see it. She hit all her lines, all her marks and was spectacularly funny.