Please pardon the brief interruption in Halloween content...
Seventy-five years ago this past Monday, October 15, 1951, CBS aired the very first episode of "I Love Lucy." If you've been reading this site for any amount of time, you already know that "I Love Lucy" is my favorite show of all time. While I may be a few days late posting this, I wasn't going to let this anniversary go by without a celebration!
Over the years, I've written about the Ricardos and the Mertzes many times, from Santa Claus, Christmas, and I Love Lucy to The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour to the Lucy tributes at the Florida studio theme parks. But I've never sat down and put pen (or keys) to my favorite episodes. Picking just five out of 180 was not easy, but I did it (with a little help from two honorable mentions).
First, like always, a little history...
"I Love Lucy" starred Lucille Ball and her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, along with Vivian Vance and William Frawley as their best friends (and landlords), Ethel and Fred Mertz.
Lucy was a New York City housewife who would do almost anything to get into show business, much to her bandleader husband's frustration.
The show ran on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, for 180 half-hour episodes over six seasons.
It was the most-watched show in the country in four of its six seasons and the first show to end its run at #1 in the Nielsen ratings. When Lucy Ricardo gave birth to Little Ricky in "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" on January 19, 1953, timed to coincide with Lucille Ball's real-life delivery of Desi Jr., the episode drew a then-record 71.7 rating, the equivalent of about 44 million viewers.
The series won five Emmy Awards, and in 2012 it was voted the "Best TV Show of All Time" in a survey by ABC News and People magazine.
So much of what we take for granted in any old sitcom today started with Lucy and Desi. They, and the people they hired, were truly pioneers.
"I Love Lucy" was the first scripted television program shot on 35mm film in front of a studio audience, about 300 people per taping, with Desi warming up the crowd beforehand. Legendary cinematographer Karl Freund figured out how to light the set evenly so all three cameras would capture the same-quality picture, and the show's use of three cameras became the standard way to film a sitcom in front of an audience.
Filming the show was more expensive than doing it live, so Lucy and Desi agreed to take a $1,000-a-week pay cut. In exchange, they got 80% ownership of the "I Love Lucy" films. Their company, Desilu Productions, filmed the first two seasons at General Service Studios in Hollywood, then leased the Motion Picture Center on Cahuenga Boulevard in 1953 and renamed it Desilu Studios, where they filmed seasons 3 through 6. Desilu would go on to produce and lease space to many other shows over the years. Fans of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Mission: Impossible," and "Star Trek," among many others, have Desilu to thank.
Here's my favorite piece of Lucy and TV history:
When Lucille Ball became pregnant during the second season, the show couldn't film all 39 episodes it had committed to. So Desi and producer Jess Oppenheimer decided to rebroadcast popular first-season episodes to give Lucy time to rest after the baby was born. Those rebroadcasts became ratings winners, effectively giving birth to the rerun, and eventually the whole rerun syndication business.
And thank goodness for that, because reruns are exactly how I found Lucy, some 40 years later.
Reruns of "I Love Lucy" aired nationally on TBS in the 1980s and 90s, Nick at Nite from 1994 to 2001, and TV Land from 2001 to 2008. The show also aired irregularly on Hallmark from 2009 to 2021 and has since appeared on several syndicated nostalgia channels, including MeTV. As of this writing, you can find full episodes on Paramount+.
But for me, it will always be home on Nick at Nite. As I wrote in my Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour post, my Dad introduced me to the show during what I consider the "Golden Years" of Nick at Nite. Between the "Whole Lotta Lucy" marathons and "Lucy Tuesdays" during the Block Party Summer, Lucy was a staple of our TV.
I had an early bedtime as a kid, so most nights I only got to see the 9 PM episode (or the 9:30 if I was lucky). Dad would record the rest on VHS, and I'd watch them the next morning before heading outside for a day of summer fun. As I wrote in Nick at Nite and Me in 1993, our living room was full of laughter during those years, so much so that Granny next door would sometimes tell us the next morning she heard us through the open windows. (For even more Nick at Nite history, check out A Look at 35 Years of Nick at Nite.)
I've always said the Hollywood episodes were my favorite, since I've always had a touch of the wanderlust and love a good vacation story. So it probably won't surprise anyone that a lot of my favorites involve the Ricardos and the Mertzes hitting the road.
Without further ado, here are my top 5 "I Love Lucy" episodes!
MY TOP 5 EPISODES
1. "The Great Train Robbery"
Season 5, Episode 5 (Episode #132 overall).
Originally aired October 31, 1955.
After a long stay in Hollywood, the Ricardos and Mertzes take the train back to New York. With Lucy being Lucy, things go off the rails (pun intended). It starts at the station, when Lucy forgets her purse and pulls the emergency brake so Ricky can go back and get it. From there, she gets mixed up with a jewel thief on board and develops quite a reputation for pulling that emergency brake over and over again.
The great Frank Nelson guest stars as the exasperated train conductor. Frank Nelson is one of those faces that pops up all over "I Love Lucy," including as quiz show host Freddy Fillmore, and in season 6 he played the Ricardos' new Connecticut neighbor, Ralph Ramsey. (He appeared as 10 different characters over the show's six seasons!)
It was the first (and only) stop on the way back home from California. In the next episode, "Homecoming," the story picks up as they arrive home to a hero's welcome back in New York.
Getting on that train was an adventure in itself. In the episode right before this one, "Ricky Sells the Car," Ricky sells the car and buys train tickets home, but forgets all about Fred and Ethel. Once that gets straightened out (and Lucy worries that the Mertzes' tickets are a lower class than theirs), the gang is finally on board. From there, the emergency brake becomes the episode's running gag, and every time Lucy gets near that cord, you know the whole train is about to screech to a halt... and the Mertz' dinner is going flying.
Before television, Frank Nelson was best known as the put-upon foil to Jack Benny on Benny's radio show in the 1940s and 50s, famous for his drawn-out "Eee-yeeeesss?" catchphrase. He brought that same exasperated energy to "I Love Lucy," where he appeared in various roles across all six seasons. Later, he lent his voice to cartoons like "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons" and appeared on shows like "The Addams Family" and "Sanford and Son." He also voices the hotel clerk in Garfield in Paradise...
Dad always said this one was his favorite, and it quickly became mine too, for good reason... It's downright hysterical. Just a few days ago, I shared it with my daughter, who recently told me she decided Lucy isn't so bad after all. She loved it!
Passing this episode along from my Dad to me to her feels pretty special.
2. "California, Here We Come!"
Season 4, Episode 13 (episode #110 overall).
Originally aired January 10, 1955.
Ricky's screen test paid off, and he's headed to Hollywood to make a movie, with the whole gang tagging along! Lucy is busy mapping out a zig-zagged route to Los Angeles that includes every sight everyone wants to see. A letter arrives from her mother, Mrs. McGillicuddy (Kathryn Card), saying she wants to come along and is on her way. Ricky isn't thrilled about the extra passengers (including the Mertzes, which Ethel overhears), and soon nobody is going. Of course, they sort it all out, but when the boys start packing the car the next morning, they realize not everything will fit. When Mother learns the drive will take two weeks, she decides that she and Little Ricky should fly instead.
Mrs. McGillicuddy steals a lot of this one, especially with her habit of calling Ricky "Mickey." One of those odd "pops up in my head frequently" things is how Lucy yells "HELLO, MOTHER!" during an argument about Ricky when she suddenly realizes Mrs. McGillicuddy has arrived and Ricky is still yelling in Spanish.
The episode also features Desi, Lucy, Vivian, and William singing "California, Here I Come," and kicked off the run of road trip and Hollywood episodes that took up most of seasons 4 and 5.
This episode was a long time coming. Over the previous few weeks, the gang waited on pins and needles for news about Ricky's screen test, and in "Ricky's Contract," Fred even wrote a fake note saying Ricky got the job before the call came. In "Getting Ready," Lucy went back and forth between flying, the train, and the bus before settling on driving so they could see the sights, and Fred bought a dilapidated antique car that literally fell apart. Then, in "Lucy Learns to Drive," Ricky buys a beautiful, brand-new Pontiac for the trip, but Lucy gets into an accident in the Holland Tunnel. By the time "California, Here We Come!" rolled around, everyone (including those of us at home) was more than ready to hit the road.
Kathryn Card was a radio and film veteran before she became Lucy's mother. She had actually appeared on "I Love Lucy" once before, as a slatternly woman named Minnie Finch in "Fan Magazine Interview," before she was cast as Mrs. McGillicuddy the following year. Card played the character in five episodes during the 1954-55 season and three more during the next season's European trip, and she reprised the role one last time in "The Ricardos Go to Japan" on the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.
I still remember the excitement of the California episodes when I first watched them on Nick at Nite as a kid. I absolutely love the California episodes and have made special trips (yes, more than one) to Jamestown, New York, just to see the Lucy-Desi Museum. There, among many items, they have a recreation of that beautiful hotel room at the fictional Beverly Palms. For a kid who already loved a good trip, this one was the start of the best part of the series.
3. "Off to Florida"
Season 6, Episode 6 (episode #159 overall).
Originally aired November 12, 1956.
Ricky's band is booked in Miami, Florida, at the fictional Eden Rock Hotel. Ricky, Fred, and Little Ricky head south for a few days of fishing before the gig, and Lucy and Ethel are supposed to follow on the train days later. When Lucy loses their train tickets, the girls hitch a ride to Miami, sharing the drive with a strange lady played by Elsa Lanchester, whom they become convinced is an axe murderer. Strother Martin also appears as a soda jerk (waiter) at a roadside diner.
This episode includes other great scenes such as Lucy and Ethel changing a tire, and has the honor of introducing me (and many others) to watercress. "I like buttered grass!"
On a recent viewing of a colorized version of this episode, I wondered to myself if this car was the same one used in Lucy and Desi's "Long, Long Trailer" film.
It is not.
In the film, they used a 1953 Mercury Monterey (along with a disguised 1953 Lincoln Capri for the steep mountain towing scenes. In "Off to Florida," Mrs. Gundy's car is a 1949 Dodge Wayfarer (for actual outdoor footage), and for the studio interior scenes, they used a 1951 Dodge Coronet.
If Elsa Lanchester looks familiar, she was a British actress with a long career on stage, in film, and on television. She was married to actor Charles Laughton. She's best remembered for playing the title role in "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), and she was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for "Come to the Stable" (1949) and "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957). Later, she appeared in Disney films like "Mary Poppins" and "That Darn Cat!" Casting the Bride of Frankenstein as a possible axe murderer? That's a pretty inspired choice.
Also keep an eye out for Strother Martin, who later delivered one of the most famous lines in movie history as the prison captain in 1967's "Cool Hand Luke": "What we've got here is failure to communicate."
The Florida trip became a four-episode adventure, each with a fun premise. In "Deep-Sea Fishing," the boys bet the girls that they'll catch bigger fish, and both sides secretly buy giant tunas to pass off as their catch (the only problem is hiding them from each other). In "Desert Island," Lucy and Ethel's scheme to keep the boys from judging a bathing beauty contest leaves all four of them marooned, with Claude Akins guest-starring as himself. Then it's off to Havana in "The Ricardos Visit Cuba," where Lucy is determined to impress Ricky's family but can't seem to say or do anything right. It always annoyed me that there wasn't an episode featuring the return from Florida... they rolled right into my absolute least favorite episode, "Little Ricky's School Pageant."
Why is this one on the list? It's a road trip to Florida. Duh!
4. "Lucy Hates to Leave"
Season 6, Episode 16 (episode #169 overall).
Originally aired February 4, 1957.
In the previous episode, "Lucy Wants to Move to the Country," Ricky surprised Lucy with an old Colonial house in Westport, Connecticut, for their anniversary. Now that it's time to move, the Mertzes rent the Ricardos' apartment to a young newlywed couple, the Taylors. Lucy and Ricky decide to sell the Taylors their furniture and buy new furniture in Connecticut, but when Lucy finds out the Taylors plan to make changes, she buys it all back. Then the title search on the Connecticut house is delayed for two weeks, and the Ricardos and all of their belongings end up living with the Mertzes until they can move. Lucy's furniture suddenly takes over Fred and Ethel's apartment.
For six seasons, the Ricardos lived in an apartment in the Mertzes' building at the fictional 623 East 68th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side (in real life, addresses on that street only go up to the 500s before it hits the East River). They started in apartment 4A and moved upstairs to a bigger one after Little Ricky was born, in "The Ricardos Change Apartments."
Moving meant saying goodbye, and that was a big deal. And while Lucy was the one who was fed up with city life and wanted to move to the country in the first place, this episode shows she has a hard time letting go.
"Lucy Hates to Leave" is part of the terrific run of Connecticut episodes that closes out the series. Right after this, the Ricardos move in (see "Lucy Misses the Mertzes" in the honorable mentions below). In "Lucy Gets Chummy with the Neighbors," Lucy meets Betty and Ralph Ramsey, played by Mary Jane Croft and Frank Nelson, and gets talked into buying over three thousand dollars' worth of new furniture. Then in "Lucy Raises Chickens," the Ricardos hire the Mertzes to help with their new egg business and let them live in the guest house. Mary Jane Croft, who earlier played other characters (like Frank Nelson), later became a regular on Lucille Ball's shows "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy."
I remember seeing this one for the first time on a rainy summer morning in reruns at Granny's house when I was maybe 9 or 10. As Lucy, Fred, and Ethel maneuvered through the maze of boxes and furniture, I always thought it would be fun to shuttle through those pathways myself. Little did I know how stressful moving can be... When the episode ended, I moved some of their furniture and used Granny's pillows to make a little maze for myself, complete with Little Ricky's "shortcut to the kitchen!"
5. "First Stop"
Season 4, Episode 14 (episode #111 overall).
Originally aired January 17, 1955.
It's the episode immediately after "California, Here We Come!" After a long day of non-stop driving, the Ricardos and Mertzes are starving when they pull into the run-down "One Oak Cabins and Cafe" near Cincinnati. The proprietor, George Skinner (Olin Howland), has nothing to eat but cheese sandwiches, and they're stale and expensive. Lucy takes over the driving and follows signs to another motel, only to wind up right back at the same place. Too tired to go on, they spend the night in Skinner's shabby one-room cabin, right next to the train tracks. Every time a train passes, the whole cabin shakes, and the bed slides around the room.
When they finally try to leave, Skinner pulls a few more tricks, including a car alarm and a missing steering wheel (which he "sells" back to them for the price of the room).
"First Stop" is the second leg of the cross-country trip, and the road only gets bumpier from there. Next, Lucy gets lost while driving and lands the gang in Tennessee in "Tennessee Bound," where Ricky gets fined for speeding through Bent Fork, and Tennessee Ernie Ford guest-stars again as Cousin Ernie. Then they stop in Ethel's hometown of Albuquerque in "Ethel's Home Town," before finally arriving in Hollywood in "L.A. at Last!" That's the one where Lucy goes star-hunting at the Brown Derby and annoys William Holden.
Olin Howland was a familiar face to moviegoers, even if they didn't know his name. He appeared in Broadway musicals from 1909 to 1927 before moving into film, and he appeared in nearly 200 movies. He usually played eccentric, rural characters, including Mr. Dobbins, the teacher, in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1938) and a carpetbagger in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). Mr. Skinner, with his stale cheese sandwiches and "missing" steering wheel, fits right in.
I remember my Dad howling at this one, too. And I think it's become one of my daughter's favorites!
HONORABLE MENTIONS
"Lucy Misses the Mertzes"
Season 6, Episode 17 (episode #170 overall).
Originally aired February 11, 1957.
The Ricardos finally move into their new Connecticut home. With Little Ricky away at a sleepover, Lucy and Ricky miss the city (and their best friends) and decide to take the train into New York to surprise the Mertzes. But Fred and Ethel have the exact same idea and are already on their way to Connecticut, where they sneak into the house. It's a sweet one, and a reminder that these four just couldn't be apart for long.
This was the first episode set in the new Connecticut house, after two episodes building up to the move. The fun of it is the mix-up. Both couples are so busy missing each other that they cross paths, with the Ricardos heading into the city while the Mertzes head out to the country with the same idea. It's a perfect example of how the move changed the show. For the first time, the Ricardos and Mertzes weren't just a flight of stairs apart, and the writers got a lot of mileage out of that. As Desi put it, they had used up every storyline the old apartment could offer, and Connecticut gave them a fresh start. The Connecticut era was short but sweet, too. This episode aired less than three months before the series finale on May 6, 1957.
"The Marriage License"
Season 1, Episode 26 (episode #26 overall).
Originally aired April 7, 1952.
While cleaning out the desk, Lucy finds their marriage license and notices a spelling error in Ricky's name. Afraid they're not legally married, she insists they remarry and do everything exactly as they did the first time, starting with the proposal. Ricky and Fred pull a prank on her along the way, but it backfires on them. So they head to Connecticut, where Ricky first proposed, and after running out of gas near a small hotel, they meet the owner, Mr. Willoughby (Irving Bacon), who also happens to be a justice of the peace. He marries them, while his wife, Mrs. Willoughby (Elizabeth Patterson), sings "I Love You Truly."
Elizabeth Patterson would later become a familiar face as the Ricardos' neighbor and babysitter, Mrs. Trumbull.
Fun fact: In real life, Lucy and Desi eloped in Greenwich, Connecticut, in November 1940.
The Willoughbys' hotel is in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the trip details are half the fun. Lucy makes sure they have separate rooms (they're not married until they remarry, after all), Ricky confesses the prank, but Lucy doesn't believe him, and it turns out he doesn't have his wallet.
Mrs. Willoughby's off-key rendition of "I Love You Truly" during the ceremony is the cherry on top.
Elizabeth Patterson was 77 when she first appeared on "I Love Lucy." The next year, she played Mrs. Matilda Trumbull in "No Children Allowed," starting as an ornery neighbor who softens when she holds Little Ricky for the first time. She was so popular with viewers that she stayed in the role for three more years. Irving Bacon was a character actor who appeared in almost 500 films, including as Mr. Beazley, the weary mailman, in the "Blondie" movies. He appeared in two episodes of "I Love Lucy," including one as Ethel's father in Albuquerque. In real life, Lucy and Desi fell in love while making the RKO movie "Too Many Girls" and eloped on November 30, 1940.
For years, I've sung "I Love You Truly" off-key to annoy my wife, in the "voice" (that we used to speak for) our dog, Rocky. I heard it as a kid on "I Love Lucy," and it's another of those odd things that sticks in your head. Now my daughter knows it, too, and even sings it at random times just like I do.
I couldn't be prouder.
HAPPY 75TH, LUCY!
Seventy-five years later, "I Love Lucy" is still making new generations laugh, including in my house. I started out watching it on Nick at Nite with my Dad, and now I get to watch it with my daughter on Pluto or Paramount. That's the magic of Lucy, and the magic of the rerun she helped invent.
What are your favorite "I Love Lucy" episodes? Did I leave yours off the list? Let me know in the comments below!
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