“Men Are Messy”

(S1;E8 ~ December 3, 1951) Directed by Marc Daniels. Written by Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr. Filmed October 25, 1951 at General Service Studios.

Rating: 42.1/65

Synopsis ~ Tired of Ricky’s messy habits, Lucy divides the apartment in half – he can be a slob in his half, but not hers. Unfortunately, Ricky is going to appear in a magazine spread, and the photographer is coming to the divided apartment!

This episode is based on Lucy’s radio show, “My Favorite Husband” (episode #91) “George is Messy” broadcast June 5, 1950.  The episode included the voice talents of Lucille Ball’s future “I Love Lucy” cast co-stars Eleanor Audley, Mary Jane Croft, and Harry Bartell.  

It’s no wonder that Ricky peels off his jacket and sweater vest as soon as he comes home; he is sweating profusely! In reality, the intense heat of the studio lighting required for filming created a great deal of stifling heat on set. In the 1950s, men’s deodorant was usually pitched by sports figures. 

Before Lucy tosses his jacket on his head, Ricky is reading the New York Times. The headline and photo are about college football with mentions of Harvard, Cornell, Navy, and Columbia. This is most likely from October 21, 1951.  

For more about the newspapers seen on “I Love Lucy” ~ Click Here! 

Lucy is fed up with Ricky’s mess, so she divides the apartment in half with a white ribbon. At one point Lucy tears the last cigarette in the pack in half. 

LUCY: ”I’ll have Philip, you can have Morris.“ 

When Philip Morris was no longer a sponsor, the brief scene was cut and not seen again until the DVD release. 

When Fred and Ethel come over, Fred (William Frawley) is dressed in a fancy suit and even fancier tie. He looks like a gambler from a Damon Runyon novel!  This gives the actor something to transition to when he joins Ricky on the ‘slum’ side of the apartment and removes his jacket, tie, and shoes.  

When Lucy and Ricky BOTH answer the phone (it is on the line!) Ricky has to listen, while Lucy has to repeat his words into the mouthpiece to convey the message to Kenny, his press agent. Desi Arnaz stumbles over the words, struggling to remember that for the show, Down Beat has been changed to Half Beat. Lucille Ball imitates his broken English (Febreeary and ‘splain) but does not repeat his bloopers! When Desi has to say the name of the magazine again later in the episode, he also momentarily trips over his words. 

When Lucy learns that a photographer is coming over she assumes he is from Half Beat Magazine, a musician’s rag. Half Beat is actually a veiled reference to the popular Down Beat Magazine (est. 1934). Unfortunately, the photographer is not from Half Beat, but from LOOK magazine. Two years later, Lucy and Desi would make the covers of both LOOK and DownBeat in real life!

Perusing Half Beat, Lucy notices an article about Tommy Dorsey. The famous bandleader and his orchestra had been featured with Lucille Ball in the 1943 film Du Barry Was A Lady. 

RICKY: “My press agent told me I was going to get the next spread. It was going to be ‘Ricky Ricardo at Home’.”
LUCY: “What magazine was it supposed to be in? Better Homes and Garbage?”

Although many magazines were mentioned on “I Love Lucy” this is the only implied mention of Better Homes and Gardens. 

For the final shot, the props department mocked up a cover using the actual August 14, 1951 edition of Look Magazine. Look will be prominently featured in “Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio” (S1;E32) and “Ricky Loses His Temper” (S3;E19).  From 1952 to 1971 Lucille Ball appeared on the cover of Look nine times!  

To really make her point, Lucy turns the apartment into a slum, saying "Welcome to Tobacco Road!"  Tobacco Road was a the title of a 1941 film as well as a long-running Broadway play concerning poverty-stricken Georgia sharecroppers. Irving Bacon, who would go on to play Ethel Mertz’s father, Will Potter, had a small role in the film. 

The episode features fine support by Hazel ‘Sunny’ Boyne as Maggie, the Tropicana’s Irish cleaning woman, dancing with Ricky during his rehearsal. She would go on to play one of Minnie Finch’s neighbors ("Fan Magazine” S3;E17) and a passenger on “The Great Train Robbery” (S5;E5). A former dancer, Boyne was born on Independence Day 1883 and was 68 years old when this episode was filmed. 

This musical moment is often considered one of the sweetest and most endearing of the series. The studio audience starts to applaud after the dance break, before the song slows down for its big finish. 

Ricky sings “The Straw Hat Song”, a song Desi Arnaz wrote and was introduced by him in the 1949 film Holiday in Havanna. Ricky actually starts the episode whistling the song when he comes home from the club in the opening scene. Arnaz later performed the song in the 1955 film Forever Darling, as well as in a 1967 episode of his sitcom “The Mothers-in-Law” (above photo) with his son Desi Arnaz Jr. playing the drums. 

Ricky’s press agent Kenny was played by Desilu’s actual press agent, Kenny Morgan (above right), who also was Lucille Ball’s cousin-in-law! The Look Magazine photographer was Harry Shannon. Musical fans will probably remember Shannon as Rosalind Russell’s father (“You ain’t getting eight cents from me, Rose!”) in the 1962 musical film Gypsy.

When Ricky tries to call Lucy and warn her about the Look Magazine photographer, Lucy is gabbing on the phone to Marge, Lucy’s favorite phone-a-friend. Lucy is chatting with Marge at the start of “The Gossip” (S1;E24), “Redecorating the Mertzes’ Apartment” (S3;E8), and 

“Ricky’s Screen Test” (S4;E7). We finally get to meet Marge, one of Lucy’s club friends, in “No Children Allowed” (S2;E22) and 

“The Homecoming” (S5;E6) where she is played by Charlotte Lawrence (above inset photo).  The character may be a hold-over from Lucy’s radio show “My Favorite Husband,” which had a character named Marge Van Tassle. 

On the desk in front of Lucy is a neatly stacked spread of magazines including Look and Life. 

For more about the magazines seen on “I Love Lucy” – Click Here! 

When Ethel delivers the message that a magazine photographer is coming home with Ricky, Lucy thinks it is just for Half Beat Magazine, not the nationally prestigious Look, so she conspires to get even with ‘messcat’ Ricky by turning the apartment into a regular pig pen! 

LUCY: “Oh, it ain’t a regular one, but it’ll do.”

There are metal garbage cans, laundry lines of long underwear, a spare tire, and live chickens!  Among the hanging laundry, Ethel turns up as ‘Grandma’! 

‘GRANDMA’ ETHEL: “I didn’t mind the washing machine, but I durn near passed out coming through the wringer!” 

FAST FORWARD!

This episode was re-aired during Lucille Ball’s maternity leave, with an added "flashback” intro. Ethel and Fred are all excited because there’s an article about Ricky in the new issue of Look. Ricky acts like it’s no big deal. When looking for scissors to cut out the article, Ethel finds a whole stack of copies that Ricky bought, blowing his cover. Ricky said that he bought so many copies to make up for the last time he got an article in Look. This leads in to the threesome reminiscing about how Lucy ruined the last Look photo shoot.

The ‘white line’ showed up again when the Ricardos and the Mertzes fought about “The Diner” they had purchased. This line divided “A Little Bit of Cuba” (the Ricardo side) from “Big Hunk of America” (the Mertz side), with one stool bisected down the middle!

On April 7, 1966 “The Munsters” did an episode titled “A
House Divided” in which an argument between Herman (Fred Gwynn) and Grandpa (Al Lewis) causes them to paint a line down the middle of the house.  

On a 1995 episode of “The Simpsons”, messy Homer divides the house in two after a disagreement with his wife, Marge. He compared it to this episode of “I Love Lucy”!  

In the 1991 film Thick as Thieves, Al (Gerry Quigley) divides his apartment in half, with one half for him and the other for Lisa (Carolyn Dunn), after finding out that Lisa is dating Hal (Karl Pruner).

In a 1998 episode of the sitcom “The Jamie Foxx Show”, Jamie divides the apartment after a disagreement with roommate Braxton (Christopher B. Duncan). Their tastes in “I Love Lucy” episodes differs.  

In 2001, a Polish remake loosely based on “I Love Lucy” titled “Kocham Klara” (”I Love Clara”), presented “Men Are Messy People” loosely based on this episode and co-written with the cooperation of the original “I Love Lucy” writers. 

Klara cleans the apartment, and Kuba, after returning home, makes a terrible mess in five minutes. An argument breaks out between the spouses, as a result of which, a desperate Clara draws a line dividing their apartment into two halves. She will keep her half perfectly clean and Kuba can live in dirt and mess. The next day, a photographer appears in the club where Kuba performs and wants to take some photos of him for a popular magazine. He would like to photograph him in his own apartment. Kuba, aware of the mess he left behind, calls home, but unfortunately the phone is busy all the time.