“The Audition”

(S1;E6 ~ November 19, 1951) Directed by Marc Daniels. Written by

Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr.

 Filmed October 12, 1951 at General Service Studios. Rating: 41.9/62

Synopsis ~ Ricky has an audition for a new TV program, and he knows all too well that Lucy will want to get into the act. When Buffo the clown is hurt at rehearsals – Lucy decides to replace him. 

This episode was filmed just three days before the series premiered on television on October 15, 1951. Lucy and Desi still had no idea if they had a hit on their hands or not.  

Also on filming day, stage and screen actor Leon Errol died at age 70. He and (a blonde) Lucille Ball had appeared in the comedy shorts Perfectly Mismatched (1934) and One Live Ghost (1936, above). 

Also on that date, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz appeared on the cover of the pre-National TV Guide. They were joined by such celebrities as Abbott & Costello, Bob Hope, and Danny Thomas, all comedy legends that Lucille Ball had worked with. After the birth of Little Ricky / Desi Arnaz Jr., Lucy and Desi Jr. will be featured on the very first National edition of TV Guide. 

Almost the entire episode (dialogue and all) was taken from the (then) un-aired pilot. The major change is that Jerry the Agent’s lines have been given to Fred Mertz. 

The characters now bear little resemblance to the pilot’s Lucy and Larry Lopez or Liz and George Cooper from Lucy’s radio show

“My Favorite Husband”. A minor subplot of the episode (sending Lucy on an errand to deliver their wills to a downtown lawyer) was borrowed from the radio episode titled “The Wills” broadcast in March 1950.

This is the first episode to mention that Lucy dyes her hair, something Lucille Ball first did to set herself apart from all the other girls vying for roles at the studio.

Lucy’s “Professor” act was taken directly from Lucy and Desi’s 1950 live stage tour designed to convince CBS and a sponsor that America would believe Lucy as wife to a Cuban bandleader. 

When Lucy did the Professor routine in the pilot, the baggy costume worked perfectly to hide the fact that she was six months pregnant.

Pepito the Clown originally taught Lucy and Desi the “Professor” routine but was not available for the filming, so the character was re-named Buffo and played by Pat Moran.

An actor with some circus skills, Moran played a clown again in the 1953 Bob Hope film Here Comes the Girls and the 1958 Cary Grant movie Houseboat. 

Pepito later appeared in “Lucy’s Show-Biz Swan Song” (S2;E19) and supplied the off-stage cry of infant Little Ricky during season 2. 

The ‘loaded’ cello (with plunger stand and bow launcher) was created by Pepito Perez. When it was finally re-discovered in 2005, it was discovered that inside the cello Pepito had safely stored a telegram from Lucy and Desi, thanking him for his help “We love you very much and appreciate you even more. Lucy & Desi.”  The cello (and its contents) is now in the collection of the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, New York. 

This is one of the few times we see the Ricardo bathroom. The pilot also had a scene set in the bathroom, so this episode followed suit.  Their bathroom will be seen again in “Breaking the Lease” (S1;E18). The only thing missing from the bathroom?  The toilet, naturally!  

Since there were no neighbors in the pilot, Vivian Vance does not appear at all – one of only five episodes in the series. Fred, however, does at least mention Ethel. 

Oops! When Lucy has the brilliant ‘light bulb’ idea to take the frilly lampshade off the bedroom lamp for her Ziegfeldian hat – there is no bulb in the lamp!  

As a showgirl, Lucy accents her lampshade with the same fur stole she wore at the end of “The Girls Want To Go To A Nightclub” (S1;E1).

Lucy ironically says “I’ll bet if Ziegfeld or Earl Carroll had seen me, they’d sign me up like that!” She then puts a lampshade on her head and struts about the room humming “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody,” the signature song of the Ziegfeld Follies. The song was written by Irving Berlin in 1919 and became the theme song of Broadway’s Ziegfeld Follies. However, the song was not included in the 1946 MGM film Ziegfeld Follies, which starred Lucille Ball. Instead, it ended up in Paramount’s Blue Skies starring Fred Astaire, also in 1946.

While Buffo rehearses his bicycle handstand, the Ricky Ricardo orchestra plays “Entry of the Gladiators” (aka “Thunder and Blazes”) written around 1899 by Julius

Fučík, a popular Czech composer.  In circuses, it is often used to introduce clowns and today is known mainly by this association.

When she was a struggling chorus girl in New York City (using the name Diane Belmont), Lucille Ball was reportedly cast in shows by Earl Carroll and Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. – but she never performed in them. When she got to Hollywood, she appeared in the film Murder at the Vanities, which was based on the Broadway revue Earl Carroll’s Vanities. 

The tune Lucy / The Professor honks out on the saxavibratronophonovitch is “How Dry I Am” (aka “The Near Future”) which was written by Irving Berlin in 1919. The tune has its roots in prohibition (a time when alcohol was illegal in the USA) and the word “dry” refers to “sober”.  

This is the first episode in which Desi Arnaz sings “Babalu”.  Ironically, it is Lucy who actually sings it first, when she bangs out an off-key wake-up call (complete with conga drum) to get Ricky out of bed.  The song will become Ricky’s signature song throughout the series. 

“Babalu” is a legendary Cuban folk song that is about the Afro-Cuban deity Babalú Ayé, the god of illness and disease. In 1939, Miguelito Valdés made the song famous worldwide. Desi Arnaz and Valdés became friends in the 1940s after they left Cuba and both worked with Xavier Cugat. Desi never denied he was inspired by the original Señor Babalu, Miguelito Valdés. Desi paid tribute to both Cugat and Valdés by naming his successor “Xavier Valdez” (above poster) in “Ricky asks for a Raise” (S1;E35). 

The grim-faced sponsors at the club are real-life CBS executives Jess Oppenheimer, Harry Ackerman, and Hal Hudson, adding to the episode’s self-referential tone. 

RICKY: “They don’t look too happy.”
FRED: ”Are you kidding? For them, that’s hilarious.” 

In reality, once CBS was on board, the pilot was used primarily to convince a company to sponsor the show. Phillip Morris was the first to step up.  Essentially, the pilot was an “audition” to woo sponsors. 

In fact, part of the scene in the bathroom was deleted in syndication because Lucy holds up a pack of cigarettes when telling Ricky how a pretty girl can help sell a sponsor’s product. The DVD restores this part of the episode. As was common at the time, Lucy and Desi frequently did product promotions before and after the episodes.

Lucy refers to “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” which ran on CBS from 1950 to 1958. 

LUCY: “George Burns uses his wife on the show. Why don’t you?”
RICKY: “I’d love to. You think she would leave George?”
LUCY: “Oh! Well, I know one thing – you’ll never be a success on television.”

In 1951, Lucy could have no way of knowing that they would become television’s ultimate success story. Above Desi poses with an original figurine based on Lucy’s professor character. 

At the end of the episode, Lucy is offered a contract herself based on her comedic routine. This is ironic, since it was always comedienne Lucy, and not musician Desi, that the network wanted. 

The episode ends with “Risky Riskerdo” (as the Professor calls him) mistakenly thinking Lucy might be pregnant but the only thing in her ‘oven’ is his favorite pie!. 

When she said the same lines in the pilot she actually was! 

Unbeknownst to producers, someone took 8mm color video footage from the studio audience during the filming of this episode. Here it is above, edited alongside the original black and white film. 

Jess Oppenheimer, and the famous cinematographer Karl Freund, are seen briefly.

FAST FORWARD!  ‘Seal’ of Approval

Lucy revived her ‘trained seal’ impersonation again on “The Bob Hope Chevy Show” (October 1956) where the ‘saxavibratronophonovitch’ is renamed a ‘gramasousaxylophonovitch’.

Lucille Ball brought back her Professor character for a 1964 “Jack Benny Program” doing much of the same comic business she created in 1950,

even getting on her knees pretending to be a trained seal.

Lucille Ball’s ability to imitate a seal came in handy during “Lucy [Carmichael] Meets the [Milton] Berles” (TLS S6;E1) and with real seals in “Lucy at Marineland” (TLS S4;E1). 

“A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody” is the song in the background when Lucy struts down the staircase wearing the unwieldy headdress in “Lucy Gets Into Pictures” (S4;E18). Lucy Carter will do an impromptu fashion show to the song on an episode of "Here’s Lucy” in 1968. 

SELLING THE AUDITION!