“Lucy’s Italian Movie”

(S5;E23 ~ April 16, 1956) Directed by James V. Kern. Written by

Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf. Filmed March 8, 1956 at Ren-Mar Studios. Rating: 47.1/63

Synopsis ~ When traveling through Italy, Lucy meets a movie director and is bound and determined to land a role in his new picture, Bitter Grapes.

To research the movie, she goes to a nearby vineyard to “soak up some local color.”

In 1997, TV Guide ranked this episode #18 on its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

Next to “Job Switching” (S2;E1) and “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” (S1;E30), this is considered one of the best-loved episodes of the entire series. All three concern Lucy dealing with food and drink with disastrous (but hilarious) results.

Coincidentally, the same night this episode was filmed (March 8, 1956) CBS aired “Red Wine,” an installment of “Four Star Playhouse”, a series that was promoted during “Lucy Meets Charles Boyer” (S5;E19). “Red Wine” starred David Niven and John Banner, who would do a cameo in “Lucy and Bob Crane” (HL S4;E22) in 1966.

This is the second time that a scene takes place on a train. The first was “The Great Train Robbery” (S5;E5). A New York subway train will feature several scenes during “Lucy and the Loving Cup” (S6;E12). In Italy, budget-conscious Fred has only booked one compartment for four people.

When Lucy is approached by director Vittorio Felipe she tries to impress him, reciting: “The calla lilies are in bloom again.”

This is a quote from Stage Door (1937), which Lucille Ball always called her ‘big break’. It was Katherine Hepburn’s first line in the play within the film, and was repeated throughout the movie. Ball always admired Hepburn, and it is possible the writers included the line as an homage to her.

Franco Corsaro (Vittorio Felipe) was born in New York City in 1900 into an immigrant family and spoke Italian fluently. Corsaro had been in the 1945 film Without Love with Lucille Ball. He played the role of Genco Abbandando in The Godfather, but his scene was cut and only reinstated in the television version, “The Godfather Saga."

To learn his lines, Corsaro memorized all the lines including the other actors. When the other actors yell "Has she ever considered acting?!” Coraso can be seen mouthing their lines in order to stay on track.

Lucy looks over Teatro, an Italian-language movie magazine.

Oops! Ricky tells Lucy that they’re in Rome for 10 days. Lucy tells Ethel they’ve been in Italy for a week. Before the trip began it was only for 3 weeks of one-night stands!

Saverio LoMedio played the hotel bellboy. He, too, was born in New York City to an Italian-American family.

The only actor actually born in Italy was the vineyard boss played by Ernesto Molinari. Like LoMedio, this was his first TV appearance. From 1961 to 1972 he was regularly seen on “Gunsmoke,” appearing in 29 episodes.

Rosa Barbato (uncredited) has been identified as one of the vineyard workers. She is probably the one who gossips with Tirelli about Lucy. The others go uncredited and have not been identified.

Lucy’s conversational Italian is limited to a few phrases, mostly influenced by her skill at charades.

Because the episode is set in Italy, “pizza” is a popular punchline.

When home in New York, Mario – a “Visitor from Italy” (above) – gets Lucy involved in actually making pizza!

California grape farmers gladly donated the grapes, as long as the script mentioned that wine was now made in modern factories, not by stomping out the juice by foot. Despite lines of dialogue to make good on that promise, the episode became so famous that many viewers still thought wine was made by stomping in vats despite the industry’s numerous technological advances by that time. “They set back the vision of the Italian wine industry 100 years,” wrote author Thomas Pellechia in his 2008 book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Winery.

The grapes that weren’t used during filming were taken home by the cast and crew to eat, much like the huge loaf of bread baked especially for “Pioneer Women” (S1;E25).

Lucille Ball didn’t rehearse with real grapes until the day of filming. She wanted her on-camera reaction to be genuine. She later said it felt like “stepping on eyeballs.” She also waited for the cameras to roll work with the raw eggs in “Lucy Does the Tango” (S6;E20), which resulted in the longest laugh ever on the show.

“Since we hadn’t worked with the grapes in the vat during rehearsals, I had no idea what I was in store for. Once the fight started, the lady was bent on drowning me. At one point, she literally held my head under water, and I had to fight to get my breath back. A lot of that was edited out of the final print. Looking back, of course, I’m glad it happened that way because the scene was so good.” ~ Lucille Ball

On various talk shows Lucille Ball sometimes exaggerated the danger she was in during the grape-stomping scene. She sometimes said that Teresa started a fight during filming and that the fight in the grape vat wasn’t scripted. Lucy sometimes said that Teresa almost drowned her in the grapes, and that she got grapes up her nose.

Fun Fact! The bottom of the grape vat was lined with a rubberized form of horse hair to cushion Lucy and Teresa’s falls.

Turo, the location of the vineyard, is a fictional Italian village.

Ingrid Bergman (1915-85) was a three-time Oscar-winning actress who was known for her serious roles. In 1954 she starred in Journey To Italy, set in Naples.

In 1959, Bergman met Lucy and Desi at a Hollywood party. The two were overwhelmed to meet each other. They worked together in the 1982 Bob Hope special “Women I Love: Beautiful But Funny”.

Although there was a persistent rumor that the other actress in the vat was a real grape stomper from Napa Valley, she was actually Teresa Tirelli D’Amico, an opera singer and motion picture actress. Born in Croatia in 1907, she moved to the United States in the early 1920s and performed in opera and was the hostess of a local radio program devoted to Italian-American music. She appeared as a midwife in The Godfather Part II.

Writer Bob Schiller says that the original script had Lucy lose one of her dangly earrings in the grape vat, and when she was bent down looking for it, Tirelli would push her down. The scene was changed because it didn’t seem realistic. Other sources report that the original script had Teresa stepping on Lucy’s lost earring, her pain causing her to be angry at Lucy.

Hairstylist Irma Kusely had to take extra care in how she tinted Lucy’s hair purple in the scene after the grape stomping. She was already dying and perming Lucy’s hair, and Lucy had sensitive skin, so they needed something gentle. Irma ended up using a very light lavender color.

FAST FORWARD!

On “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1974, Lucy recounts (and slightly embellishes) the plot of this show, which she claims to be one of her favorite episodes of “I Love Lucy.” She talks about casting the ‘stocky’ Italian women to play Lucy Ricardo’s fellow grape stompers. According to Lucy, the women spoke no English and had to be directed via a translator.

It is in this interview that Lucy puts forward the inaccurate idea that the other actress in the vat was a real grape stomper from Napa Valley when she was actually an opera singer and motion picture actress. Lucille Ball also mentions the episode in interviews with Phil Donohue (1974) and on “America Alive”!

In “Lucy’s Italian Movie” Lucy Ricardo meets an Italian and ends up turning purple from a vat of grapes. In “Lucy Meets a Millionaire” (TLS S2;E24) Lucy Carmichael meets an Italian and ends up turning green from a vat of dye.

In a 1970 episode of “Here’s Lucy”, Kim Carter does the same movie line from Stage Door that Lucy Ricardo does in “Lucy’s Italian Movie.”

A clip from this episode was included when Lucille Ball was honored at the “33rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards” (1981).

In 1982, Lucille Ball directed her first (and only!) original sitcom pilot for NBC titled “Bungle Abbey” about the comical escapades of a monks in a monastery. The pilot was not picked up for series, but it began with the monks stomping grapes in a big vat – their feet covered in purple dye.

In the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Vivian (Julia Roberts) watches this episode in the penthouse. Director Garry Marshall had written 18 episodes of “The Lucy Show.”

In 2008, this episode was mentioned on CBS by an “Amazing Race” contestant tasked with stomping kiwis in New Zealand.

The episode was mentioned in the animated short film “Lily and Jim” (1997) by Don Hertzfeldt.

This is one of two episodes colorized for a 2013 Christmas Special on CBS entitled the “I Love Lucy Christmas Special,” the other being “The ‘I Love Lucy’ Christmas Show”.