Lucy Drives a Dump Truck

S1;E24
~ March 11, 1963

Synopsis

After
promising the Volunteer Fire Department that the town council will
pay for their new uniforms, the girls find that they will be stuck
for the cost themselves. They want to relieve Lucy as captain, until
she comes up with the idea of selling newspapers for salvage.
Everything goes wrong, and Lucy and Viv end up trucking the papers to
another town themselves.

Regular
Cast

Lucille
Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Vivian Vance (Vivian Bagley), Jimmy Garrett
(Jerry Carmichael), Ralph Hart (Sherman Bagley)

Candy
Moore (Chris Carmichael) does not appear in this episode

Guest
Cast

Ben
Welden
(Vin Cooper of Brewster Salvage Company) was seen in Sorrowful Jones
(1949) starring Lucille Ball and Bob Hope. He made one appearance on
“I Love Lucy” as the thief who breaks in to the Ricardo apartment
to steal “The Fur Coat” (ILL S1;E9). This is his only series
appearance.

Richard
Reeves (Brewster
Policeman) is a veteran of nine episodes of “I Love Lucy” from
1951 to 1954, including playing a policeman in “Equal Rights”
(ILL S3;E4). This is his only appearance on “The Lucy Show.”

Among
the members of the Danfield Volunteer Fire Department are:

Mary
Jane Croft
(Audrey Simmons, below left). This is the second series appearance for Croft, who
played Betty Ramsey during season six of “I Love Lucy.” She also
played Cynthia Harcourt in “Lucy
is Envious” (ILL S3;E23)
and
Evelyn Bigsby in “Return
Home from Europe” (ILL S5;E26).
She will play Audrey Simmons for seven more episodes but when Lucy
moves to California, she will play Mary Jane Lewis (the actor’s
married name) until the series finale. Her husband Elliott Lewis was
a producer of “The Lucy Show” from 1962 to 1964. She also played
a character named Mary Jane Lewis on “Here’s Lucy” from 1969 to
1974.

Carole
Cook (Thelma
Green, above right) makes the third of her four appearances playing Thelma Green,
although she will also play Mrs. Valance in three episodes, and a
variety of other characters in eleven others. Lucille Ball took Cook
as a protégé during the Desilu Playhouse years. Although she was born
as Mildred Cook, Ball suggested she take the name Carole, in honor of
Lucy’s great friend, Carole Lombard. Cook also went on to appear in
five episodes of “Here’s Lucy.”

Dorothy
Konrad (Dorothy
Boyer) makes her second and final appearance as Dorothy but will play a variety of other characters in four future episodes.

Bess
Flowers (Volunteer
Firefighter, uncredited) was dubbed ‘Queen of the Extras’ in
Hollywood and is credited with more than 700 film and TV appearances
from 1923 to 1964. She was seen in the audience of Over
the Teacups in
“Ethel’s
Birthday” (ILL S4;E8)
and
The
Most Happy Fella during “Lucy’s
Night in Town” (ILL S6;E22).
This is the fourth of her five uncredited appearances on “The Lucy
Show.” Not surprisingly, Flowers was a founding member of SEG, the
Screen Extras Guild (now part of SAG) in 1945.

Hazel
Pierce
(Volunteer Firefighter, uncredited) was Lucille Ball’s camera and
lighting stand-in throughout “I Love Lucy.” She also made
frequent appearances on the show, although only once did she speak,
when she won the television auctioned off by Ladies Overseas Aid in
“Ricky’s
European Booking” (ILL S5;E10)
and
she shouted “I
won!”.
This is the fourth of her 21 uncredited on-camera appearances on “The
Lucy Show.” In the opening of season two, “Lucy Plays Cleopatra”
(S2;E1), she received screen credit as Mary Lou. She was also an
uncredited extra in the film Forever
Darling (1956).

A
half dozen other uncredited women play the rest of the fire brigade.

On
or around this date Lucille Ball announced that she would return for
a second season of “The Lucy Show.”

We
learn that Dorothy Boyer’s husband is named Sherwood and that she has
six children. This is the second time Thelma has mentioned her
husband, Ernie. This is also the second time Audrey has mentioned
her husband, Harvey. Audrey claims her daughter is getting married
and she needs a new dress for the wedding. Unlike the other
characters, Audrey was not in the episode that established the fire
brigade “Lucy and Viv are Volunteer Firemen” (S1;E16).

Councilman
Bradley refuses to reimburse the firefighters for their new dress
uniforms. The new outfits cost $25 a piece – more than $200 today. In “Lucy is a Soda Jerk” (S1;E23)
Chris’s drum majorette uniform cost $40 ($340 today).

Desilu
prop man Ken Westcott rented 160,000 newspapers for $200, then paid
nearly $1,800 more have to have them fireproofed and stacked securely
so they would not fall on the actors.

Danfield’s
salvage man is Don
Sharpe, also the name of Lucille Ball’s long time agent.
His name was first used on “I Love Lucy” as Ricky’s agent in
“Lucy Meets Charles Boyer” (ILL S5;E19). Unfortunately for Lucy,
Sharpe is age 82 and retiring to St. Petersburg, Florida! Lucy
desperately tries to sell the papers to Ernie the fishmonger before she faces court-martial!

In
a last plea for clemency, Lucy reminds Thelma of the time they
rescued Grandma Sutton’s cat from a tree. This was also mentioned as
the brigade’s first assignment in “Lucy and Viv are Volunteer
Firemen” (S1;E16).

To
save Lucy from being unseated as captain, the newspapers have to be
transported to the town of Brewster, which is 23 miles away from
Danfield.
There is a real Brewster in New York state, located about an hour
north of New Rochelle, a town already established as in the vicinity
of fictional Danfield.

The
Ford dump truck has ‘Roy Long’s Rental’ written on the doors. In
reality, Roy Long
was Desilu’s construction superintendent. He once turned down a
nomination for a technical Oscar for a fabrication process he felt he
couldn’t take credit for.

This
is a huge production for the series, using more than a dozen extras,
160,000 newspapers, an enormous sound stage dressed as a city street,
and six vehicles…

…including an operational Ford dump truck…

….and a running police motorcycle.

At the end of this episode, Vivian Vance, Mary Jane Croft and Carole Cook do an in-character commercial for Jell-O pie filling. In it, Mary Jane reveals that their dress uniforms are red!

Callbacks!

The
closest “I Love Lucy” ever got to this amount of newsprint was in
“The Homecoming” (ILL S5;E6) when Mrs. Trumbull saved all the
papers during the Ricardos’ stay in Hollywood and stashed them away in
the closet!

The
characters navigating a maze of stacked newspapers is reminiscent to
“Lucy Hates to Leave” (ILL S6;E16) where the Ricardo’s moving
boxes turned the Mertzes apartment into a labyrinth that turned the
simplest daily task into an adventure!