Well, you can't bring much more joy to the world than this!
The "I Love Lucy" show ran for 181 episodes from 1951 to 1957, and is at least, and probably even more popular today than it was back then!
It's kind of funny when you think about it, but Lucille Ball sounds so natural, while Lucille Arnez, Lucille Ricardo, Lucy Ball, Lucy Arnez, or Lucy Ricardo all sound so weird!
I don't want to know about their private lifes, on the screen they were a great couple!
Co-stars William Frawley and Vivian Vance as Fred and Ethyl Mertz never cease to make me laugh! I don't really know how many episodes they had where just the four of them were basically the entire cast, but they pull it off, time and time again! Most of the time it really wouldn't have mattered if there was a story or not, it was always just fun to watch the four of them interact!
Ricky explains to Little Ricky how Santa can come down the chiminey. Lucy is just as entralled with the story as Little Ricky! The Little Ricky you see is not really their son, but actually an actor named Richard Keith! In the "Just A Little Weird" department, the real Little Ricky or Desi Arnez Jr., never played himself on any of the Lucy shows, but he did later make 5 appearances as Billy, or Billy Simmons on "The Lucy Show" in the 1960's.
I'm old but this is a Christmas tradition that I am totally unfamilar with! They wait until Little Ricky goes to bed before not only bringing out the presents, but also the Christmas tree! So it wasn't bad enough that Santa had to bring presents to every boy and girl in the world, but he also has to deliver and decorate Christmas trees for each family too? That's just a little too much for me to believe!
As TV specials have want to do, a good portion of the show is flashbacks to better days like the time when Lucy made a surprise announcement at the club that she was pregnant with Little Ricky!
Fred does an excellent job of trimming up the tree!!
In another flashback, you can hardly recognize Ethyl, Ricky, and Fred as this trio of barbershop quartet singers!
There were no microwaves back then, so you still had to boil the water, so you might have just made real coffee, because it would only take about 5 minutes longer, and is the coffee supposed to put him back to sleep or wake him up, I don't get it!
Ethyl is feeling kind of frisky with the mistletoe!
So they didn't plan it very well, and all four of them show up as Santa Claus on Christmas morning!
Richard Keith started playing drums at the age of two. He went on to be a singer and drummer in a Christian rock band called "David and the Giants!" Check out that giant robot!!
The real Little Ricky, Desi Arnez Jr., was also a drummer in the band Dino, Desi, and Billy, who had the top 40 song in 1965, "I'm A Fool!" The other two members of the band were Dino Martin (Dean Martin's son) and bassist Billy Hinsche. Desi was 12 years old when the band was formed!
As the magic of Christmas tends to go, out of nowhere, a fifth Santa appears, and then disappears just as quick! He stays just long enough to..........
.......get a reaction, and this freakin' great shot of this fantastic foursome!!
The funniest thing about Lucille Ball is that she was so good at being goofy, that we have a tendency to forget about how beautiful she actually was!
And me too!!
5 comments:
A great episode. apart from the colourisation which I hate. And you have prompted me to get out my Dino, Desi and Billy CD, which is playing as I type this.
Merry Christmas guys and keep up the great work!
best regards,
Paul from Downunda
Thanx for hanging with us Paul because that's the exact reason I do this, basically just as a reminder of cool stuff from the past that you, and I too, might have forgotten about. I don't know why, but I kind of like the colourization, but then, I'm weird! Merry Christmas to you and all your friends and family down under!
I didn't know that Desi Jr. ever appeared on The Lucy Show in the 1960's. I do remember him and Lucie Arnaz on Here's Lucy in the early 1970's. They weren't literally playing themselves, since the characters had fictional names, but they played the son and daughter of the lead character, who was played by their real-life mother. (That sounds more complicated than it really is.)
In the movie Murderer's Row, Matt Helm (Dean Martin) is dancing in a discotheque with the heroine (Ann-Margret). Dino, Desi, and Billy are the band playing onstage. Dino leans over and says, "Now you're swinging, Dad!"
Helm: "'Dad'!?"
Ann-Margret giggles. "He calls everybody 'Dad.'"
Helm: "Don't he know?"
A-M: "It's a wise son that knows his own father."
Helm: "The way they're wearing their hair these days, it's a wise father who knows his own son!"
quite a good article, however there's a new colourised version by west wing studios which is sourced from an HD scan of the original negative. you can see a comparison here: https://vimeo.com/194524181
Thanx WWB, I'll have to check it out!
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