“The Kleptomaniac”

(S1;E27 ~ April 14, 1952) Directed by Marc Daniels. Written by

Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll, Jr. Filmed on March 7, 1952 at General Service Studios. Rating: 63.3/85

Synopsis ~ Ricky assumes Lucy is a compulsive thief when she is discovered secretly collecting items for a club bazaar and having a huge roll of cash. 

LUCY: “It’s my mad money." 
RICKY: "There’s two hundred dollars here." 
LUCY: "I get awfully mad.”

The final act of the show has the girls pretending to be gangsters – ‘Lucy the Lip’ and ‘Babyface Ethel’.

The show opens with Lucy trying to flip pancakes “like they do in restaurants”.  One falls off the ceiling onto Ethel’s head!  Ricky sees his pancake breakfast and thinks they are tortillas. Or are they called hotjacks? Or flapcakes?  They settle on hotcakes. 

Lucy says “I made them with Aunt Jemima Tortilla Mix.”  Lucy is joking about Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix first marketed in 1889. The Quaker Oats Company first registered the Aunt Jemima trademark in April 1937. In 2021, Aunt Jemima rebranded their products as the Pearl Milling Company. 

Lucy and Ethel share an outrageous memory of what could have made a hilarious episode of the series, had it not happened the summer before the show aired! 

LUCY: “After what happened at the Fourth of July carnival last year Ricky made me promise that I wouldn’t get mixed up in any more club affairs.” 
ETHEL: “You weren’t very bright throwing all those skyrockets and Roman candles in a fireplace.” 
LUCY: “Well, who uses a fireplace in July? He should have looked before he threw that match in there.” 
ETHEL: “Poor Ricky. His eyebrows didn’t grow in for a month.” 
LUCY: “You remember those little baby toupees he wore over each eye?”

Lucy shows Ethel wear she’s hidden the items she’s gotten donated. The camera gives us a unique angle from the end of the hallway, near the bedrooms. Notice that the framed print of Degas “The Star” on the right, which later moved to the end of the hallway when the Ricardo’s moved apartments, where it turned up in most every living room scene. 

Ethel schemes with Lucy to get rid of Fred’s favorite cuckoo clock, something he won at Coney Island, a beach and boardwalk summer destination in Brooklyn featuring rides (such as the Wonder Wheel), food (like Nathan’s famous hot dogs), and games of chance.  Note the pack of Philip-Morris cigarettes on the table in front of the clock. In this case, the sponsor’s product is merely setting dressing – nobody smokes in the scene. 

Lucy hides the clock under a voluminous overcoat. When caught in the act by Ricky and Fred, the clock signals that Lucy has something to hide. This scene contains a prime example of Lucille Ball’s brilliant comic timing as she tries to justify the kooky cuckoo!

When Ethel informs Lucy that Ricky has hired a ‘fee-suh-key-a-tryst’ (Ricky’s pronunciation of ‘psychiatrist’), Lucy and Ethel are determined to teach him a lesson by pretending to have become wanton criminals. [In the above publicity photo, Vivian Vance’s sweater pulls up revealing her belly. As an actress who still thought herself glamorous, I wonder if Vance minded this revealing shot? Since it was season one of this new show, perhaps she did not feel empowered to request it be reshot?  The reveal is also in the episode itself.]  

Believing his wife has embarked on a life of crime, Ricky brings home psychiatrist Dr. Tom Robinson (Joseph Kearns). Kearns later played the theatre manager in “Lucy’s Night in Town” (S6;E22). He went on to play Mr. Wilson on TV’s “Dennis the Menace” (1959). When he passed away during the show’s final season, Lucy regular Gale Gordon took over for him, playing his brother.

Before ‘Lucy the Lip’ and ‘Babyface Ethel’ return from their heist, Fred discovers a ground plan of the Chase Manhattan Bank – 72nd Street branch.  Now simply known as Chase Bank, there are currently three branches on 72nd Street, just four streets north of where the Ricardo’s lived.  

LUCY: “I got two of ‘em – a flatfoot and a private eye. I got the flat in the foot and the foot in the eye!”

Lucy confesses to Dr. Robinson that her life of crime includes robbery….

purse snatching….

LUCY: “I grabbed this one quicker than I thought!”

and picking pockets.

LUCY: “I picked a peck ‘a pockets!” 

Under hypnosis (and with a knowing wink to Ethel), Lucy reverts to childhood, with a story and a voice doubtlessly influenced by Ginger Rogers in the 1942 film The Major and the Minor. 

“It all started when I was a little girl. I was riding on the streetcar one day and I looked up and I saw a box and it said, ‘take one.’ So I took one. From then on, I took anything that came into my pretty head even though it didn’t say ‘take one.’  I took a bright new penny. I took a bicycle. I took a little boy. But my mother made me give him back.” 

She reveals her biggest caper was a burglary from the Clyde Beatty Circus. Clyde Beatty and his lion taming act was featured in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), a film released just a few months before this episode aired. Lucy was cast in the film, but had to withdraw when she became pregnant.Gloria Grahame assumed her role. 

Oops!  When the camera pulls back, viewers can see that the coffee table is on blocks to give it added height for the actors. 

Lucy reveals her circus haul – a live baby elephant! The series had just featured a horse two weeks ago in “Pioneer Women” (S1;E25) – clearly nothing would stand in the way of a good laugh – even the unpredictability of working with live animals!

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FAST FORWARD!

Lucy flipping pancakes that get stuck to the ceiling is similar to when Lucy learns to toss pizza in “Visitor from Italy” (S6;E5). In this case, the dough is sucked up through the vent and lands on the sidewalk outside the pizzeria! 

Lucy and Ethel again pretend to be gun-wielding gangsters in “Lucy Wants to Move to the Country” (S6; E15). Once again they brag about a crime spree that includes an attempt on the Chase National Bank.  In “The Kleptomaniac” ‘Babyface Ethel’ refers to Lucy as ‘Brain’. In “Lucy Wants to Move To The Country” is is Ricky (an unwitting accomplice) who is referred to as ‘The Brains’. 

Lucy Carmichael and Viv Bagley would go under hypnosis in a 1965 episode of “The Lucy Show” titled “Lucy Stockholder” (TLS S3;E25).

Lucy went ‘under’ again when she encountered Pat Collins, dubbed the “hip hypnotist” in a 1966 episode. 

During the first season of “The Lucy Show” Lucille and Vivian worked again worked with an elephant – this time a fully grown one named Jumbo! 

In 1965, Lucille Ball rode down a NYC street atop an elephant for the premiere episode of “The Steve Lawrence Show.” Clearly missing out on playing Angel the elephant trainer meant Ball had something to prove. 

In “The Kleptomaniac,” When Dr. Robinson takes Lucy’s Tommy gun away from her, he says “Let’s put little Tommy to bed, shall we?” Hearing Kearns say “Little Tommy” is reminiscent of his role as George Wilson on “Dennis the Menace” where he played opposite Jay North as Dennis Mitchell and Billy Booth as little Tommy Anderson, Dennis’s best friend. 

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

Klara is preparing an auction for poor children and collects items that will be auctioned. She does so in secret from Kuba, who forbade her to organize the auction after auctioning his golf clubs without his knowledge a year earlier. Kuba discovers items buried in kitchen cabinets and becomes suspicious that his wife is a kleptomaniac. He decides to seek the help of a specialist.

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