“Lucy Goes to Sun Valley”

(LDCH S1;E5 ~ April 14, 1958) Directed by Jerry Thorpe. Written by Madelyn Davis, Bob Carroll Jr., and Bob Schiller. Filmed in February 1958 at Sun Valley, Idaho, and Ren-Mar Studios, Hollywood.   

Synopsis ~ Lucy and Ethel go to Sun Valley, at first without Ricky and Fred. While at the resort, the girls meet Fernando Lamas.

This is the fifth and final episode of season one (of three) of “The Lucille-Ball Desi Arnaz Show” (aka “The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour” in syndication). The show was sponsored by Ford. 

After completing this episode, writers Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis quit, feeling that they had exhausted the “Lucy” premise. Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf wrote the remaining eight episodes of the series with help by a third writer for the first two episodes of season two.

The episode opens in Westport with Lucy searching the living room closet for Ricky’s guitar strings. While doing so, she runs across Little Ricky’s teddy bear which seen in previous episodes and actually sold in stores. She also finds a pressed corsage of violets that Ricky gave to her during their courtship in “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” the first episode of the “Comedy Hour” format.

Discovering a broken record tied with ribbon, Lucy says that Ricky proposed to her at Christmastime, so their ‘song’ is "Jingle Bells,” or – as Ricky pronounces it – “Yingle Bells.” This varies from their past proposal stories. In “The Marriage License” (ILL S1;E26) the couple re-enacted Ricky’s proposal, on a bench embedded in a tree at the Byram River Beagle Club in Greenwich, Connecticut. Lucy and Desi were married there in real-life, on November 30, 1940. “Jingle Bells” was heard annually on the show as part of the Christmas Tag and then “The ‘I Love Lucy’ Christmas Show” (1956). 

A teary-eyed Lucy says that “Our marriage used to be romantic and now it’s just plain stale.” The scene has added poignancy knowing that the romance had also gone out of Lucy and Desi’s relationship. Ricky promises her a trip to Sun Valley, a place they wanted to honeymoon when first married, but couldn’t afford.

When shopping for Sun Valley, Lucy returns with a variety of boxes, but a couple are definitely from Saks Fifth Avenue. Their distinctive beige thatched pattern boxes appear in many later episodes of “I Love Lucy.” 

Lucy wants this trip to be a ‘second honeymoon,’ but it would actually be her third, as she said the same thing about their transatlantic crossing to Europe in an episode titled “Second Honeymoon” (ILL S5;E14) less than two years earlier. 

When Ricky, Little Ricky and Fred have to stay home to work on a television show, Lucy reluctantly takes Ethel to Sun Valley.

Sun Valley was a favorite vacation spot for the Arnaz family. They spent part of their 1952 summer hiatus from “I Love Lucy” at the resort and later returned in 1959, after Lucy and Desi had separated, staying at Ann Sothern’s home. 

The “Comedy Hour” cast and crew traveled from California to Idaho by train. In Westport, Ricky mentions Union Pacific regarding changing their reservations to travel to Sun Valley. However, Union Pacific does not service the Eastern United States and a train trip to Idaho from Westport, Connecticut, would have taken nearly a week. Despite this, there is second unit footage of a Union Pacific train before Lucy and Ethel arrive in Idaho. This is the second time an episode has started with stock footage of a Union Pacific train. The first was “Lucy Hunts Uranium” (S1;E3). 

Coincidentally, the first time the gang was on the Union Pacific Railway in “The Great Train Robbery” (ILL S5;E5), the lounge car was decorated with posters for Sun Valley!  The Idaho resort town was built around its access to the railroad. 

During her career, Lucille Ball has worked with virtually every kind of animal, but this is the only time she has worked with a live antelope! Second unit footage also features horses. 

Sun Valley, Idaho, is a resort city where tourists can enjoy ice skating, golfing, hiking, trail riding, cycling, tennis and (of course) skiing on Bald (“Mount Baldy”) Mountain and Dollar Mountain. The world’s first chair lift was erected in Sun Valley in 1936. In the episode Fred calls it “a strung out Ferris Wheel.” Sun Valley was featured (and promoted) in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade, starring Sonja Henie, John Payne, Milton Berle, and bandleader Glenn Miller. Part of Abbott and Costello’s 1943 film Hit the Ice was shot in Sun Valley. In 1950 Esther Williams (Fernando Lamas’ future wife) played the Duchess of Idaho, in “MGM’s Technicolor Musical of Sun Valley Splendor”!  

In addition to the Arnazes, the resort was popular with such celebrities as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and Marilyn Monroe. Lucy’s friend and “Comedy Hour” co-star Ann Sothern had a home in Sun Valley and is buried in the Ketchum cemetery nearby. 

The centerpiece of the resort is the 220-room Sun Valley Lodge, which opened in December 1936 and is still in operation today. Ernest Hemingway completed his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls while staying in suite 206 in the fall of 1939.

Sun Valley, Idaho, should not be confused with Sun Valley, California, a neighborhood of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley where Desilu often hosted their annual staff picnics.  

Lucie and Desi Jr. accompanied their parents on location and the family stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge for the two-week shoot. Lucy’s brother Fred Hunt also went along. Although rumors persist that Arnaz children were extras in the episode, Lucie Arnaz denies that she ever appeared in the series. She and her brother Desi Jr. did, however, appear in a Ford commercial that aired during the episode.

Guest star Fernando Lamas was born on January 9, 1915, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he did more than 30 films before making his U.S. film debut in The Avengers (1950). In 1956 he went to Broadway to star with Ethel Merman in the musical Happy Hunting for which he was nominated for a 1957 Tony Award. It was his only Broadway show. 

He was married four times, having a son, Lorenzo Lamas, with his third wife, Arlene Dahl. His fourth wife was aqua-musical star Esther Williams. He died in 1982 of pancreatic cancer.

Lucy has a knack for interrupting celebrities in the bath.  It happened with Cornel Wilde in “The Star Upstairs” (ILL S4;E25) and it will happen again when “The Ricardos Go to Japan” (LDCH S3;E2) and meets Bob Cummings in the penultimate “Comedy Hour” in 1959. 

To establish that Ricky is at the television studio back in New York, a camera labeled CBS-TV is wheeled across the frame. 

At the television studio, Little Ricky rehearses his drum solo, giving Keith Thibodeaux a chance to do what he does best. 

When Fred and Ricky fly out to Sun Valley, it is said that Little Ricky is staying with Lucy’s mother.  Mrs. McGillicuddy (Kathryn Card) does not appear here but will be briefly seen in “The Ricardos Go To Japan” (LDCH S3;E2).

While Fred (William Frawley) is rehearsing "My Melancholy Baby,” Ricky sits nearby getting melancholy for his baby, Lucy. During a May 3, 1965 appearance on "I’ve Got a Secret” Frawley claimed he was the first person to perform the song publicly at the Mozart Cafe in Denver, Colorado in 1912. The music was written by Ernie Burnett with lyrics by George A. Norton.

The banjo player and guitarist for the number is Perry Botkin Sr.  He was a composer, songwriter, guitarist, accompanist associated with Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor on radio and recordings, and a guitarist with the orchestras of Paul Whiteman, John Scott Trotter, Victor Young, and Johnny Green. Botkin also appeared in previous “Comedy Hour” playing “The Bayamo” for Harry James and Betty Grable.  

Oops!  When Ricky decides to go to Sun Valley to see his wife, Fred asks him if he’s going UP there to see Lucy. Sun Valley is indeed north of Las Angeles, but if they were in New York City it would be west (”out there”) not north (”up there”).  

Lucille Ball had a stunt double, Jannette Burr Johnson, for the skiing scene with Fernando Lamas. Nelson Bennett, one of the first directors of the Sun Valley Ski Patrol, fondly remembers working with Lucille Ball during the location filming. Stunt skier Johnson was meant to film a scene involving the start of Ball and Lamas’ speedy ski down Mount Baldy, but she fell and broke her leg. 

So Bennett helped Ball prepare to do the shot herself, with several ski patrol members waiting to catch her 100 or so feet down slope. 

Before the scene could be shot, the zipper on Lucy’s jumpsuit got stuck so Bennett came to her rescue. "I have had a little experience with zippers, so I have a picture of me kneeling in front of Lucille, fiddling with her zipper.”

Lucy’s camera and lighting stand-in Hazel Pierce plays a waitress at the Sun Valley Lodge cafe. In this, her only credited appearance on the series after many episodes of “I Love Lucy,” she also has a line! She also played a waitress in “Fred and Ethel Fight” (ILL S1;E22). 

Oops!  When Lucy is photo-bombing Lamas, he is banging the back of the pepper shaker. He then throws some over his right shoulder into Lucy’s face causing her to sneeze and ruin Ethel’s snapshot. Perhaps they do it differently in Argentina, but the old superstition goes that when SALT is spilled to throw a dash over your LEFT shoulder to blind the devil who lurks there. Here Lamas tosses PEPPER over his RIGHT shoulder!  

After being labeled a “crazy redhead” Lucy goes undercover! Lucy is perusing Reader’s Digest, a magazine then in its 37th year. When Lamas recognizes her anyway, he says that he and Ricky worked together at MGM.

LAMAS: “When we left the studio the lion was roaring with a Spanish accent.”

Lamas is referring to Leo, the MGM lion who was their mascot and roared before every MGM film.  Lamas was with MGM from 1949 to 1954. 

When Ricky and Fernando argue in Spanish, Ricky accuses him of trying to win an Academy Award with his ‘performance’ of being sweet on his wife. 

Even though she was not injured doing the ski stunt, Lucille took a fall and slid on the ice during the skating rink scene. The trick skating scene was accomplished using actual footage of Lamas and Ball on the ice, stunt skaters for distance shots, and a process shot using rear projection back in the studio in Hollywood.

Although it is a quick cut, if you look closely the wires holding Lucy up in the spin are clearly visible. The location shots of this stunt were filmed using a double.

Fighting for Lucy’s honor, both Ricky and Fernando Lamas end up with black eyes. This is reminiscent of “The Black Eye” (ILL S2;E20) where everyone ends up with shiners!

As he leaves the Lodge, Lamas tells the Ricardos he is going to Europe to film a musical in which he will sing and dance.  In reality, his next motion picture was an action adventure fantasy called The Lost World (1960). The next time Lamas sang in a film was in 1964′s Magic Fountain with his wife, Esther Williams. It would be her final screen appearance.  

Another series regular, Louis Nicoletti, plays the front desk clerk at the Lodge. Robert S. Carson (Mr. Fairchild, the Lodge Manager) makes his first appearance with Desilu, but will go on to be seen in five episodes of “The Lucy how.”  The Director of the TV show is uncredited and unidentified. 

What most people remember about this episode is that when footage shot on location at the lodge was sent back to the Los Angeles studio for processing it disappeared. Two days later there was a frantic call from Desilu wondering why they hadn’t received the film. When it didn’t turn up, everything had to be re-shot. The original film showed up three months later in the back of a Desilu station wagon!

FAST FORWARD!

This episode was first re-broadcast on Christmas Eve 1958 with a new introduction. It opened with a scene of Lucy and Ricky decorating a Christmas tree. For Christmas, Lucy bought Little Ricky skis, which prompts the flashback of their Sun Valley vacation. Also in the episode, Keith Thibodeaux (Little Ricky) recited the poem “Once Upon A Christmas Star.” 

When the episode was repeated, the “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” was under the umbrella of “The Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse” instead of being sponsored by Ford.  

The day this episode was first aired (April 14, 1958) Desi Arnaz did a promo for the show on CBS’s daytime drama “Love of Life,” which that day went from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.  Lucille Ball did not appear. 

Snow was also a factor (albeit artificial snow) when “Lucy Goes to Alaska” (S2;E3) in 1959 to mark their statehood. 

In 1963, home movies of Lucille Ball vacationing in Sun Valley were part of Hollywood Without Make-Up, a collection of amateur movie footage of celebrities put together by Ken Murray. 

In a 1964 episode of “The Lucy Show” Lucy Carmichael prepares for a trip to Lake Placid by practicing her skiing in and around the house!  

Lucille Ball broke her leg in a skiing accident just before the fifth season of "Here’s Lucy” resulting in a full leg cast. It was feared that the series might be canceled, but Lucy had her ‘temporary disability’ written into the scripts so the show could go on!  The first episode began with home movie footage of Lucy / Lucille skiing in Snowmass, Colorado, before revealing her in a hospital bed. 

Her broken leg limited her future dance abilities, especially in the film Mame (1974).

Ironically, the season before, she had gone skiing on screen with Dinah Shore in a 1971 episode of “Here’s Lucy.”

1991 collector’s series comic book with an image from the episode on the cover.