(S6;E20 ~ March 11, 1957) Directed by William Asher. Written by Madelyn Martin, Bob Carroll Jr., Bob Schiller, and Bob Weiskopf. Filmed February 5, 1957 at Ren-Mar Studios. Rating: 35.4/47
Synopsis ~ When the chickens are not laying, Ricky threatens to get out of the egg business, meaning the Mertzes would have to move back to the city. To avoid losing her best friend, Lucy boosts egg production by buying several dozen eggs and pretending they are homegrown. But her plan to hide them in her blouse goes awry when Ricky asks her to help him rehearse a tango number for the PTA show.
Lucy stuffs the eggs down her blouse and Ethel stashes a few dozen in her back pockets. Lucy tells her, “Whatever you do don’t try to walk like Marilyn Monroe,” continuing the show’s many references to the sex symbol movie star.
When Ricky pulls Lucy in for the final clinch… the result is the longest laugh in “I Love Lucy” history: 65 seconds (although IMDb clocks it at 67).
This was the show’s 173rd episode, with only six to go, so the laugh was hard-earned and would not be surpassed. For broadcast, the record-breaking reaction was cut in half, although the edit is fairly seamless and nearly impossible to detect.
Ricky has traded in the 500 baby chicks Lucy and Ethel bought during “Lucy Raises Chickens” (S6;E19) for chicks for 200 laying hens.
As the laughter continues in the studio, Desi has a hard time not breaking character and the camera mostly remains on Lucy. Skilled at listening to her audience, as the laugh starts to crest, Lucy milks it by crossing her arms on her egg-soaked belly.
When the laugh finally subsides, it is topped by Fred’s sudden entrance from behind Ethel, the door hitting her squarely in her egg-filled pockets.
Lucille Ball was a stickler for rehearsals and meticulously practiced all of her physical comedy, but on a couple of occasions she wanted to save the genuine reaction for the cameras. During rehearsals for this bit hard boiled eggs were used instead of raw. Lucy also didn’t practice with real grapes in her famous grape stomping routine in “Lucy’s Italian Movie” (S5;E23).
Interestingly, this comedy highlight is not saved for the end of the episode, but takes place halfway through the story.
So that audiences would nervously anticipate the comic payoff, the episode opens with Lucy and Ricky doing a dry run of the tango, long before the egg plot is hatched. Ethel says that Lucy and Ricky “look just like Vilma Bánky and Rudolph Valentino.”
Oops! It was actually Beatrice Dominguez, not Banky, who danced the tango that made Valentino famous in 1921’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Thanks to performers like Desi Arnaz and Xavier Cugat, Latin music was at its most popular in the US. Tangos were not only played in nightclubs, but on TV, records, and radio.
Tango is a popular partner dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay.
The tango then spread to the rest of the world.
The tune Lucy and Ricky dance to is called “La Cumparsita,” probably the world’s most famous tango tune. Desi Arnaz included the song on his 1954 album titled “Babalu!”
In the remaining storyline, the gang plans to sell the eggs for 60 cents a dozen. They are not doubt inflating their cost based on being fresh, farm eggs, rather than supermarket eggs, which in March 1957 were going for between 39 and 49 cents a dozen. Ricky breaks down the cost of breakfast:
“With the cost of the feed, the money that I spent fixing the hen house, the extra heat and electricity and the money lost by switching the 500 baby chickens for the 200 hens, I figured out each one of those breakfasts is costing $18 apiece.”
That’s a pretty pricey brunch, even in today’s dollars. Speaking of brunch…
When Lucy thinks Ethel may have to return to NYC she tearfully says, “We can meet secretly for lunch at Schraftt’s.” Nearly forgotten today, Schrafft’s was a chain of moderately priced New York restaurants which often attracted ladies who were out for shopping trips. Schrafft’s was one of the first restaurants to allow un-escorted females on a routine basis. In 1981, the Boston-based candy company that owned the chain ceased operations, leaving just a few remaining restaurants in private hands.
When Little Ricky (Keith Thibodeaux) and Bruce Ramsey (Ray Farrell) get the idea to hide the chickens to prevent their being sold, Ricky accuses Fred of being a chicken thief!
RICKY: “You got some friends around here?”
While the previous episode featured lots of real baby chicks, this incorporated nearly two dozen live chickens!
This was the second of three appearances for Ray Farrell as Little Ricky’s pal and neighbor Bruce Ramsey. Ray and his brother Todd were child actors who also appeared on “Lassie.” Ray left show business at age 11 and died at the age of 57 in 2006.
You’ve Got To Break a Lot of Eggs…
Before the big move, Lucy admires the fresh eggs given to her by Grace Munson laid by her own hens.
This is not the first time raw eggs were used for comic effect on “I Love Lucy.” In “Men Are Messy” (S1;E8), Ricky sits on a raw egg that is between the sofa cushions!
Raw eggs were also part of Lucy’s hair restoration regimen when “Ricky Thinks He’s Going Bald” (S1;E34) in 1952.
Turnabout is fair play at the end of 1954′s “Ricky’s Hawaiian Vacation” (S3;E22) when Lucy gets raw eggs dropped on her head as part of the TV quiz show “Be A Good Neighbor.”
Lucy cracks eggs in time to Little Ricky’s incessant practicing when “Little Ricky Learns to Play the Drums” (S6;E2) in 1956. One shell misses the garbage bin and lands on the floor!
In 1964, when Lucy Carmichael says to Viv “I’ll show you how to handle eggs” during “Lucy, the Camp Cook” (TLS S3;E6), the studio audience audibly gasps in expectation of what is to come, perhaps recalling Lucy Ricardo’s ‘eggs-alent’ tango! This is perhaps the most raw eggs used in a “Lucy” show gag since “Lucy Does the Tango.”
Trying to do exercises while making breakfast, Lucy breaks a few eggs in “Lucy the Stockholder” (TLS S3;E25) in 1965.
Clearly someone is not a fan of banker Theodore J. Mooney! His portrait has been ‘egged’ in a 1966 episode of “The Lucy Show.”
Lucy Carter teaches her daughter Kim how to shop for the best eggs in “Lucy, the Shopping Expert” (HL S1;E20).
A ‘horny’ Harry examines an ostrich egg in “Lucy in the Jungle” (HL S4;E13) in 1971.
FAST FORWARD
This was the first, but not the last time that the gang put on a show for the Westport PTA. In “The Celebrity Next Door,” the second episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour,” Tallulah Bankhead is recruited to act in a play for the group.
In 1972′s “Lucy’s Punctured Romance” (HL S4;E22), Lucy Carter says that her new beau, Bob Collins (Robert Cummings), tangos better than Rudolph Valentino.
On an unaired episode of “Life With Lucy” in 1986, Lucy’s daughter Margo (Ann Dusenberry) has a recurring dream about dancing the tango with Tip O’Neill, speaker of the house at the time.
Another unaired “Life With Lucy” episode opens with Leonard (Donovan Scott) in the hardware store listening to a tango on the radio and dancing with a feather duster. Lucy Barker struts in with a box of supplies and the two tango. The song playing is called “La Cumparsita,” the same song playing on the phonograph in the Ricardo living room when Lucy tangos with her pockets full of contraband eggs.
art by Aireen Arellano
Papermoon Loves Lucy 
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