“Lucy is Matchmaker”

(S2;E27 ~ May 25, 1953) Directed by William Asher. Written by

Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, Jr. Filmed April 25, 1953 at General Service Studios. 

Synopsis ~ The girls are tired of Sylvia Collins flirting with their husbands so when Fred’s bachelor pal Eddie Grant arrives in town, Lucy plots to get Sylvia and Eddie together, although he somehow thinks it is Lucy who is interested.

The episode is based on Lucy’s radio show “My Favorite Husband” “Trying to Marry Off Peggy Martin,” broadcast December 2, 1950. The Peggy Martin character was re-named Sylvia Collins for television. 

The date this episode first aired was also the date the first public television station in the United States officially began broadcasting – KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston. 

That same day, Life Magazine devoted its cover to the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. “I Love Lucy” would borrow heavily from the plot of the film in 1956 with “Second Honeymoon” (S5;E14). Russell was mentioned once on the series, while Monroe scored four mentions. Russell appeared on several TV specials with Lucille Ball, mostly due to their mutual friend and co-star Bob Hope. 

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This is another title with poor grammar. Bear in mind that viewers never saw titles on screen. The original script shows that the title was first “Lucy is A Matchmaker” and that it was the 62nd episode shot. The early script (before casting was complete) also lists a character of “Desk Clerk” which was not in the final cut. Curiously, the Maître d’ stand is listed as a set needed, but the character of the Maître d’ is not on the cast list.  The word “Flat” before the set descriptions indicates that this would be a static shot with little or no camera movements so a full, three-dimensional set was not needed – just a background ‘flat’ wall.  The “Two Women” extras turned out to be the same actors who had previously played Pauline Lopus and Caroline Appleby. The name “Tony” handwritten at the top could refer to trumpet player Tony Terran, although there is no reason he would require a script. It is more likely the first name of an actor reading a yet uncast role – possible Tony Michaels, who had already played Charlie in “Be a Pal” (S1;E2) and will return to play the Laundryman in “Bonus Bucks” (S3;E21). The final cast did not include anyone named Tony or Anthony. 

Over a game of Bridge, Lucy, Ethel, Caroline and Pauline talk about the previous nights party and how their husbands paid more attention to sexy Sylvia Collins than to them. Their attention to Sylvia is compared to the Olympic games.  When Sylvia need a light for her cigarette, the boys raced across the room in the “indoor cigarette lighting sprint”.  Ethel says she never knew her “little fat torchbearer” could run that fast.  Lucy adds that Cuba seemed to be taking the most first prizes. Although there were no Olympic Games in 1953, Lucy and Desi were supporters of the US Olympic Fund for the 1956 Olympics, doing a post-show PSA (public service announcement) after “The Hedda Hopper Story” (S4;E20). 

Lucy also says that Ricky taught Sylvia how to play “Babalu” on an upturned waste paper basket. Although not sung here, it had already been heard on the series a half dozen times by April 1953, and would be heard many more times before the series concluded. 

Eddie is staying at the fictional Sherry-Plaza Hotel. The name is a amalgamation of the The Sherry-Netherland and The Plaza Hotels in New York City. 

The Mertzes’ phone number in this episode is Circle 7-2099 although both the Ricardos’ and Mertzes’ telephone numbers changed often throughout the series. This is the same number Ethel will hold up on a placard when pitching Aunt Martha’s Old Fashioned Salad Dressing in “The Million Dollar Idea” (S3;E13). This episode features quite a lot of telephone conversations and cigarette smoking – sometimes simultaneously! It also off-handedly deals with marital infidelity with Eddie’s casual assumption that Lucy is looking to cheat on Ricky.

The scene with Lucy putting the baby to bed was cut from the syndicated version. Lucy coos to the crying baby that “you’ve got your own little bed in your own little room” referring to the nursery. At this point baby Little Ricky is played by the Simmons Twins, Richard and Ronald Lee. The Ricardos switched apartments in the previous episode, so this is the very first time we see the elaborately decorated nursery.

According to their long-gone website, Dolly Toy Company products were featured on “I Love Lucy, thus making their Mother Goose Wall Pin-Ups part of ‘The World’s Most Famous Nursery’. You can spot the Pin-Ups in Little Ricky’s nursery — there’s Jack Jumping Over The Candlestick and what appears to be Mary and Her Little Lamb.

Hal March (Eddie Grant) first appeared on the show in “Lucy Fakes Illness” (S1;E16) using his own name to play an actor posing as a doctor who diagnoses Lucy with ‘golbloots.’ March got his first big break when he was cast as Harry Morton on “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” in 1950. He eventually lost the part to Fred Clark who the producers felt was better paired with Bea Benaderet, who played Blanche. He stayed with the show in other roles, the last airing just two weeks before this appearance here as Eddie Grant. In 1966 he was seen on “The Lucy Show.”

Eddie reveals that his uncle was in show business. He was a magician who sawed a girl in half. Hinting at matrimony, Lucy wonders if Eddie wouldn’t like his own girl to saw in half! 

Ricky is seen sitting on the sofa reading the May 3, 1953 issue of American Weekly Magazine, which just happens to to contain an article titled “It Happened To Us – The Story of Desi and Me” by Lucille Ball. This is not the the first time that Lucy and Desi have given screen time to magazines that have promoted them or the show. It happened with Look Magazine in “Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio” (S1;E22) and with McCall’s Magazine in “Ricky Has Labor Pains” (S2;E14).

In the hotel, Fred passes a magazine stand with copies of “Showmen’s Trade Review”, a magazine about film production that published from 1933 to 1957.  A May 7, 1949 editorial said,

“Television is competition, just as is anything that bids for the time people have to devote to entertainment. But with video’s competition comes a new medium possessing a great potential for advertising the attractions of a picture through trailers shown right in the home.“

The magazine stand also has copies of:

• American Magazine
• Collier’s
• Cosmopolitan
• Good Housekeeping
• House & Garden
• Liz Taylor
• McCall’s
• Newsweek (3 editions)
• Sunset
• True Crime
• True Love Stories
• True Stories
• Vogue
• Woman’s Home Companion

The magazine stand also prominently displays advertising for the show’s sponsor, Philip Morris cigarettes, featuring their living mascot Johnny Roventini. 

For more about magazines seen on “I Love Lucy”, click here! 

Doris Singleton and Peggy Rea repeat their roles as Caroline Appleby and Pauline Lopus, Lucy and Ethel’s friends from The Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League. This will be Rea’s last appearance, while Singleton will be seen in eight more episodes. 

William Hamel briefly reprises his role as the Tropicana Maitre d’, a part he’d played three times before. In this episode, however, he gets no screen credit or announcer mention. Phil Arnold plays the man in the hotel corridor who invites Lucy and Ethel to his room. He was last seen as fur salon owner Harry Henderson in “Lucy Changes Her Mind” (S2;E21). Phil Arnold encounters Lucy and Ethel banging on Eddie’s hotel room door. He pauses just long enough to invite them to HIS room, intimating that he thinks Lucy and Ethel might be ‘working girls’ or (at the very least) dangles the idea of a ménage au trois!  

Desi’s camera and lighting stand-in Bennett Green can be glimpsed at the very beginning of the hotel lobby scene, plopping a stack of magazines on an end table. He operates the new stand and takes the coin Fred lays down for the newspaper. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss him!  Same goes for Joan Carey, a frequent background performer and Lucille Ball’s stand-in from the fourth season of “The Lucy Show” through “Here’s Lucy”.  [Thanks to the Lucy Lounge for this siting!]

Although we hear quite a bit about Sylvia Collins (most of it negative), viewers never get to see the blonde bombshell that caused all the trouble. Also talked about but not seen on camera is Marion Strong (Lucy is talking to her on the phone) and Mrs. Trumbull, who Lucy gets to mind the baby while she gets into trouble!

Geoffrey Mark Fidelman, author of The Lucy Book, says it best: 

"For the staid 1950s, there certainly are a lot of ‘I Love Lucy’ episodes of suspected marital infidelity.”

Lucy’s negligee costs $139.50. Adjusted for inflation, that same negligee would cost more than $1,200 today! This is more than double what Lucy usually spends on her dresses. 

The interior of Eddie’s hotel room (925) is actually the same set that will become the Ricardos’ new bedroom. It hasn’t been seen yet by viewers since they just switched apartments in the previous episode.

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FAST FORWARD – MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER!

This was not the first nor the last time matchmaking would be part of a “Lucy” sitcom. 

During season one, Lucy tried to play matchmaker between Mr. Ritter and Miss Lewis in 

“Lucy Plays Cupid” (S1;E15). Like with Eddie Grant, Mr. Ritter thought it was Lucy who was interested in him.

Just a year later, Lucy is trying to fix up Dorothy and Sam in the similarly titled “The Matchmaker” (S4;E4). The same analogy of the ‘spider and the fly’ used in this episode about Eddie and Sylvia, is used about Sam and Dorothy.  

In a 1959 cross-over episode of Desilu’s “The Ann Sothern Show” (S1;E1), Lucille Ball guest stars as Lucy Ricardo, who finds out that her old friend Katy (Sothern) is unmarried and plays matchmaker to fix her up with her boss, Mr. Devry, using herself as bait. 

Lucy Carmichael served as matchmaker for her teenage daughter Chris when she meets Mr. Mooney’s son, Ted, in a 1964 episode of “The Lucy Show.”

In 1965, Lucy Carmichael went undercover as the world’s most famous matchmaker, Dolly Levi from the musical Hello, Dolly! The play that the musical was based was titled The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder.  Perhaps the world’s second most famous matchmaker, Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof, was originally played on stage by Lucy’s Mame co-star, Beatrice Arthur. 

During the first season of “Here’s Lucy” Lucy Carter tried computer matchmaking to fix up her brother-in-law Harry, but ended up pairing him with her old friend Vivian Jones in “Lucy, the Matchmaker” (HL S1;E12).