(S5;E17 ~ February 20, 1956) Directed by James V. Kern. Written by Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller, and Bob Weiskopf. Filmed January 6, 1956 at Ren-Mar Studios.
The
title of the episode is a bit misleading. Although they are in the
United Kingdom, Lucy only dreams of going to Scotland, but never
actually goes there.
Lucie Arnaz has said that this was the first episode that she was allowed to attend the filming. She would have been four years old at the time.
The
inspiration for this episode is clearly Lerner and Loewe’s 1947
musical Brigadoon. Lucy’s dream of Scotland is also in musical
comedy form; the name of the village in the musical is the similarly-sounding
Kildoonan; and the two-headed dragon appears once every 30 years,
just as the village of Brigadoon appears once every 100 years. Both
also feature a sword dance and bagpipes. Although
the show had closed in London several years earlier, the film
version was released in 1954, a little over a year before this
episode’s filming. It was produced by MGM (the Arnazes studio of choice) and featured Van Johnson, who Lucy danced with in “The Dancing Star” (S4;E27).
Immediately after this episode was aired for the first time (February 20, 1956), Desi Arnaz played himself on “December Bride,” a sitcom produced by Desilu and aired on CBS Monday evenings at 9:30pm. The episode was titled “The Sunken Den” (S2;E20). Desi Arnaz appears as a neighbor whose house begins to sink due to a construction error.
The series starred Verna Felton who had played Lucy’s intimidating maid Mrs. Porter as well as the woman without electricity to whom Lucy tries to sell a Handy Dandy vacuum cleaner. The episode also featured Joseph Kearns (”The Kleptomaniac” and “Lucy’s Night in Town”) and Richard Deacon (”The Celebrity Next Door” and Desi’s series “The Mothers-in-Law.”) as Lucy and Desi’s butler.
Lucy
and Ricky return to the (fictional) Hotel Wimbelshire from an evening of
theatre-going in London’s West End. Fred
gives Lucy a toy dragon that he bought for Little Ricky. This
plants the seed for her dream that Fred and Ethel are a two-headed
dragon.
In fact, the dragon toy is of Chinese origin, not from Scotland. The toy is an articulated Chinese dragon made of bamboo that has a hole in the base to insert a bamboo stick as seen on the show, similar to the vintage example pictured here.
Ricky
says that Lucy wants to go to Scotland to look up some of her
mother’s relatives. But since McGillicuddy is her mother’s married
name, she would actually need to be looking for her father’s clan.
Lucy says that her
great-great-great-grandfather, Angus MacGillicuddy, lived in the town
of Kildoonan in Northern Scotland, located between Golspie and
Ullapool. Although there is no real Kildoonan, the latter two are
actual Scottish towns. There is, however, a town named Kildonan (one
‘o’), located due North of Golspie.
Plans
originally called for this episode to be broadcast in color, but it
proved too expensive. However, color photos and home movies by Desi
Arnaz still exist. In 2007 they served as a visual guide for the
episode to be digitally colorized. The colorized version was only
released as a bonus feature on DVD and
is the only one of the colorized episodes not aired on
broadcast television.
Larry
Orenstein,
who plays Mr. Ferguson, the mayor of Kildoonan, also wrote the
songs. When he played Lucy and Desi the first song he wrote, Desi
said that he should play the role himself because nobody would be
able to sing it better than he had. During rehearsal of “The
Dragon Waltz,” Desi asked for the chorus to sing. Orenstein
explained that in the printed music the “chorus” meant the
main section of the song, not a group of people singing. He was
surprised that an experienced musician like Desi Arnaz wouldn’t know
the difference. Orenstein jokingly said, “If
I had written ‘refrain’ instead of ‘chorus,’ would you have stopped
singing altogether?” Desi didn’t think the remark was funny and an actual chorus did end
up singing the song’s chorus. In season six, Orenstein wrote
“Nobody Loves the Ump” for “Lucy and Bob Hope” (S6;E1).
The
five original songs have music by Eliott Daniel:
- “’Tis Nae a Braw Bricht Nicht”
- “A McGillicuddy Is Here"
- "I’m in Love with a
Dragon’s Dinner" - "Two Heads Are Nae Better Than One”
- “The Dragon Waltz”
During “The Dragon Waltz”
Lucy pulls a long-playing record out of her blouse. Ricky reads the
label which says ‘Xavier McCugat’ and tosses it away in disgust.
This is yet another in a long line of references to Latin American
bandleader Xavier Cugat, Desi’s former employer and colleague, and
Ricky’s rival.
When
the terrible two-headed dragon senses Lucy entering its cave, it
says “Fee-fi-fo-fuddy,
I smell the blood of a McGillicuddy!”
This is a riff on lines from the nursery rhyme Jack in the
Beanstalk, “Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,”
which dates back to 1596.
Considering that Vivian Vance and William
Frawley were incompatible off-screen, it must have been fairly uncomfortable for the pair to share the same song, let alone the
same costume.
The Townspeople of Kildoonan
- Betty
Allen
makes her only appearance on the series.
She was only the second African-American performer on the series,
after Sam McDaniel, who played Sam the Porter in “The Great Train
Robbery” (S5;E5). Coincidentally, she was a background singer for
the 1954 film of Brigadoon and was also seen in the film Singin’ in the Rain (1952). - Betty
Noyes was
also in the Singin’ in the Rain, dubbing Debbie Reynolds’ voice
for the song “Would You?” In 1941 she sang “Baby Mine” in
Disney’s Dumbo. - Norma
Zimmer
was also in Singin’ in the Rain as a chorus girl. Years
later, she would become famous as Lawrence Welk’s Champagne Lady. - The town of Kildoonan was also populated with singers John
Gustafson, John Hynd, Robert E. Hamlin, Ann Ellen Walker, Dick Byron,
and
Chuck
Schrouder.
The choreography was by Jack Baker, who worked on future “Lucy” sitcoms.
In
the original script, the episode ended with Lucy waking up and
getting a reply to her telegram to Kildoonan which said that there
are no McGillicuddys left in town but offering to prepare a
special dinner if she ever came to visit. Still reeling from her dream,
Lucy says “I’ll be the
main course!” The
filmed ending has Lucy waking up and hitting Ricky with her pillow,
calling him a coward for not saving her from the dragon.
“Lucy
Goes to Scotland” joins other show-within-a-show episodes:
- “The
Pleasant Peasant” in “The Operetta” (S2;E5); - “The Perils of
Pamela” / “A Tree Grows in Havana” in “Lucy Writes a Play”
(S1;E17); - “The Enchanted Forest” in “Little Ricky’s School
Pageant” (S6;E10).
Lucy would again don kilts (with Vivian Vance)
in a 1964 episode of “The Lucy Show” when she forgets to book a
bagpipe band for a political rally.
The “I Love Lucy” collectible bear for this episode!
Papermoon Loves Lucy 
Leave a comment