“No Children Allowed”

(S2;E22 ~ April 20, 1953) Directed by William Asher. Written by

Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll, Jr. Filmed on March 20, 1953 at General Service Studios. Rating 68.3 / 89

Synopsis ~ Little Ricky’s crying is keeping the building awake. When Mrs. Trumbull says that the lease forbids children, Ethel insists that the Ricardos can stay.  Somehow Ethel’s breaking the rule causes a rift!

This was Lucille Ball’s first episode back after her pregnancy leave, which began in mid-September 1952. It was, however, the fifth episode aired since Lucy Ricardo had given birth. 

For some reason, Lucy’s hair is styled differently here but it returned to its classic bun style the very next episode.

This is the first appearance of Mrs. Trumbull. While at first adversarial, by the end of the episode she has been established as a caring figure and Little Ricky’s regular babysitter. The character is played by Elizabeth Patterson, who returns to the series after playing Mrs. Willoughby in “The Marriage License” (S1;E26). Patterson (or Patty, as she was known on the set) would play Mrs. Trumbull in nine more episodes until 1956. 

Oops!  Vivian Vance makes a rare flub and calls the new character “Mrs. Trimble who lives upstairs.”  In “Vacation from Marriage” (S2;E6) and several other episodes,

it is established that the Ricardos live on the fourth and top floor of 623 East 68th Street. Yet now, Mrs. Trumbull lives directly over them on the fifth floor. 

Little Ricky’s crib bolster has the Lucy and Desi cartoon stick figure drawings on it. The scenes with the actual baby were shot after the audience went home while a doll stood in for him during filming with the audience. Almost all of the crying heard in the episode was done off-screen by Jerry Hausner, who usually played Jerry the Agent. 

This is the first episode where Little Ricky is played by the Simmons Twins, Richard and Ronald Lee, who would share the role for the rest of season two. They received $25 each per episode!  

A Westclox Big Ben alarm clock is used for the opening establishing shot. In the close-up, the name can be clearly seen just below the center of the clock. 

Later, when Fred is doing his mockingbird imitation to soothe his crying godson, the Westclox logo has disappeared!

Ethel allows the Ricardos to stay in their apartment despite a clause in the lease forbidding children. She later repeatedly brags about her good deed. “My friendship with the Ricardos means more to me than all the money in the world…”  She repeats the speech so often that Lucy quips: “That scene has had more performances than ‘South Pacific’!“ By the time the episode aired, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein was in the 4th year of its 1,925 performances and just about to move from the Majestic to the Broadway Theatre to finish its run. It is currently the 34th longest running show in Broadway history.

If there were two people in the entertainment industry more powerful and popular than Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, it was Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. In "Redecorating” (S2;E8) Ricky claims to have tickets for the opening of a new Rodgers and Hammerstein show. In “Ricky Needs an Agent” (S4;E29), Lucy pretends to be Ricky’s agent bragging to studio head Dore Schary “Of course, I can’t reveal their names, but Oscar and Dick are just wild about the boy.” In the 1950s even the average American knew that she was referring to Rodgers and Hammerstein.

After Ethel’s ‘performances,’ Lucy calls her ‘Tallulah’ Mertz, a reference to stage and screen star Tallulah Bankhead. Lucy impersonated Bankhead in “Lucy’s Fake Illness” (S1;E16) and then quickly imitated her husky voice in “Ricky Asks for a Raise” (S1;E35). 

The star herself would make a guest appearance as “The Celebrity Next Door,” a 1957 episode of “The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour.”

This episode will serve as the model for “Little Ricky Gets a Dog” (S6;E14) in which new tenant Mr. Stewart threatens to move out due to Fred the dog’s incessant yelping. In both episodes, stipulations in the lease are points of contention. Although it is not brought up, Mrs. Trumbull has a cat, so she is in violation of the lease prohibiting pets!  

Lucy and Ethel are both having friends over for bridge, requiring six actors to play the bridge players, all of whom were (or would become) regular day players on the show:

• Vivi Janiss makes her first appearance on the series. She would later play Louanne Hall in “The Charm School” (S3;E15). 
• Margie Liszt makes her third and final appearance on the series. In “The Club Election” (S2;E19) her character name was Marion Strong. Although Marion Strong appeared in future episodes, she was played by Shirley Mitchell. 
• Peggy Rea appears in her third of four episodes. In “The Club Election” (S2;E19) her character name was Pauline Lopus. Here Ethel calls her Dorothy. 
• June Whitley Taylor will return as one of the club members in her only other episode “The Camping Trip” (S2;E29). 
• Kay Wiley appears for the second of four times on the series. She is probably best remembered as Martha, the Kansas tourist facing women from Mars atop of the Empire State Building in “Lucy Is Envious” (S3;E23).
• Charlotte Lawrence (below) only appeared in one other episode, “The Homecoming” (S5;E6) where her character name was Marge. 

George J. Van Dorp, water commissioner of Toledo, Ohio, in 1953, contended that there was a correlation between the popularity of a television show and the amount of water his constituency used.

While “I Love Lucy” was on, water pressure was consistently high. As soon as a commercial came on, the pressure dropped because people used the bathroom, flushing the toilet and running the taps. Van Dorp reported that on April 20, 1953, when “No Children Allowed” went on the air, use of water in Toledo dropped thirteen percent, and at the end of the episode it shot up by twenty-one percent. 

Ricky croons a bit of “Rock-a-bye Baby” to his son, a song he sung at the Tropicana just before learning that “Lucy is Enceinte” (S2;E10).  

After the evening’s filming, Lucille Ball was presented with a special award from the editors of TV Guide magazine – a New York-based publication that was about to go national. The magazine’s readership had selected Lucy as TV’s “Best Comedienne.”

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FAST FORWARD

In 1985, the sitcom “Kate & Allie” did an episode titled

“If She Goes, I Go” (S2;E14) which shared the same basic plot of “No Children Allowed”. Two years later, “Kate & Allie” did a Lucy & Ethel dream sequence, with stars Jane Curtain (Allie) as Lucy and Susan St. James (Kate) as Ethel.