Lucy Buys a Boat

S1;E30
~ April 29, 1963

Synopsis

Lucy
talks Viv into buying a boat that’s barely seaworthy. When they
finally get it on the lake, it slips away from its moorings,
trapping a seasick Viv and a bossy Lucy without a sail. Then the
leaks start springing up!

Regular
Cast

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

This
was the last episode of season one. It was also the last episode
filmed in black and white. It is, however, not the last episode
aired in black and white as CBS declined to air season two in color.

This
is the only episode this season to only feature the main cast.  

This
was intended to be the last episode of “The Lucy Show.” Lucy only
came back to TV because Desilu couldn’t sell their other shows
without a hit.
This series was used to leverage the sales of other Desilu programs.
Lucille Ball was also concerned that one season of shows would not
sell well in markets that showed daily repeats (“stripping”) as
the program would only be worth one month of daily viewings if shown
every weekday. “I Love Lucy” would last a station nine months
of daily stripping. 

The episode was filmed on March 28, 1963. 

The original airing included commercials for Lux soap, Pepsodent toothpaste, Wisk laundry detergent, and Jell-O gelatin. There was also voice over promo for “Password” (Lucille Ball’s favorite game show) which aired at 10pm Mondays. That evening, the guest was Arthur Godfrey. Coincidentally, during the early 1950s, “I Love Lucy” was promoted by “The Arthur Godfrey Show,” which aired in the time slot just before it. 

Ad
in The Danfield Tribune:

Answer
the call of the seven seas!  An unforgettable adventure for your
whole family! For sale: 26 foot sailboat, sleeps 5, large galley,
complete with trailer, only $100 down.  

Lucy
and Viv normally take a cottage by the lake during the summer. Lucy
says when she was a little girl she practically “lived on
boats.” Lucy may be referring to Chautauqua Lake, which is
adjacent to Jamestown, New York, Lucy Carmichael’s hometown.

Lucy
says she bought it with the hull in the water so she didn’t notice
the shape the boat was in.  She adds that she didn’t have Lloyd
Bridges with her. Lloyd
Bridges was
the star of “Sea Hunt” (1958-1961), a TV series about a scuba
diver which featured extensive underwater filming. Bridges played a
doctor on the season five opener of “Here’s Lucy” in 1972.
He was previously mentioned in “Lucy and Viv Put in a Shower”
(S1;E18).

Posing at the prow, Lucy insists she bought the boat from its original owner, Viv sarcastically says “I wonder if he was standing where you are when he discovered America?”  Viv is, of course, referring to Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), whose three ships are said to have been the first to travel to the ‘New World’ (aka the Americas) in 1492. Columbus’s legacy continues to be debated. He was widely venerated in the centuries after his death, but public perceptions have changed as recent scholars have given greater attention to negative aspects of his life, such as his enslavement of the indigenous population and his brutal subjugation of the Taíno people, as well as allegations of tyranny towards Spanish colonists. Lucy Carter talked extensively about Columbus in “Lucy Competes with Carol Burnett” (HL S2;E24, above) during the Secretary Beautiful Pageant. 

Viv
refers to a bossy Lucy as Captain Bligh. William Bligh was a
real-life British Admiral who was in charge of the HMS Bounty when a
mutiny set him adrift in 1789. His story was related in many films,
including one in 1962.  

Viv
references the fact that she was once a WAVE, a navy organization of
women during World War II. This was first established in “Lucy
Becomes an Astronaut” (S1;E6).  

Lucy
gets a telephone call from a Mr. Hussey at the marina. This may be a
reference to actress Ruth Hussey, who did the film The Facts of
Life (above) with Lucille Ball in 1960.  Along with Ethel Merman, Hussey
starred in a pilot aired as part of “Vacation Playhouse”, the
summer 1963 replacement for “The Lucy Show.”  

Lucy
says that Viv has brought enough seasickness pills for the Queen
Mary.

Lucy is referring to the RMS Queen Mary, an ocean liner
launched in 1934 for the Cunard Line. The ship was
officially retired from service in 1967 and is now permanently
berthed in Long Beach, California, serving as a tourist attraction,
museum, and hotel.

When
Viv dons her life jacket while still docked Lucy calls her “chicken
of the sea.” 

Chicken
of the Sea is
a provider of packaged seafood, primarily canned tuna. Their
television commercials were ubiquitous throughout the 1960s. In
1963, the year this episode aired, the company was sold to Ralston
Purina.

While preparing her dinner on board, Lucy sings a bit of “Sailing, Sailing (Over the Bounding Main)” a folk song first composed in 1880 by James Swift (aka Godfrey Marks). The music (sans lyrics) was extensively used as underscoring during “Bon Voyage” (ILL S5;E13) in 1956 when Lucy misses the SS Constitution headed for Europe.  

Once
again, faced with the boat’s tiny bunks Viv gets claustrophobic.
This was established in “Lucy Becomes an Astronaut” (S1;E6). In
real life, it was Lucille Ball who suffered from the condition.  

Nautical Vocabulary!

VIV: “I’m afraid I’m just a landlubber at heart.”

Landlubber ~ Lubber is an old word (dating from the 14th century) meaning a clumsy or stupid person. The term landlubber refers to an unseasoned sailor.

VIV: “I’ll bet this is the first time anybody’s been shanghaied on a lake.” 

Shanghaied ~ force someone to join a ship lacking a full crew by coercion or other underhanded means. 

JERRY (to LUCY): “You’d better give us a rest, or you are going to have your first mutiny.”

Mutiny ~ an open rebellion against the proper authorities, especially by soldiers or sailors against their officers. The most famous in popular culture was in Mutiny on the Bounty, so Jerry is continuing the analogy of Lucy to Captain Bligh. 

VIV (to LUCY): “Oh, go shiver yer timbers.” 

“Shiver Me Timbers” ~ is an exclamation usually attributed to the speech of pirates in works of fiction. The word ‘shiver’ means “to break into small fragments or splinters” while the ‘timbers’ refer to the wooden support frames of old sailing ships. So the saying was most likely alluding to the shock of a large wave or cannonball causing the hull to shudder or split asunder.

LUCY (into telephone): “We’ve been working on her for days and she’s really yar!”

Yar ~ When a boat is trim, responsive, and in all ways lively in handling. In The Philadelphia Story (1940), Kate Hepburn’s character famously says about a boat “My, she was yar!” 

Fast Forward!

A scene from this episode was included in “Lucy and Viv Reminisce” (S6;E16), the series’ only clips episode. 

In “Lucy in London” (1966) Lucy Carmichael’s leaky raft sinks her and her Captain (Anthony Newley) right in the middle of the River Thames.  Instead of being filmed on a soundstage, the special was done on location in the icy waters of the Thames in London. 

In “Lucy Runs The Rapids” (HL S2;E4), Lucy Carter’s sleeping bag gets dragged out into the middle of the Colorado River and slowly sinks under the weight of the water!  Again, this was filmed on location, not in a studio. 

Callbacks!

A leaky raft also sank Lucy and Desi in the feature film Forever Darling (1956).

A
leaky boat was part of the comic finale of “Lucy’s Summer
Vacation,” a 1959 episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” about
a visit to fictional Lake
Wotchasokapoo, Vermont.

The
Ricardos and the Mertzes were also seen on a boat in distress in “Desert Island”
(ILL S6;E8) where the group goes motor boating off the coast of
Florida but runs out of gas.

The set for the boat was constructed on a gimbal – an elevated platform that could be manipulated for back and forth motion. The same construction was used to shake the set of One Oak Cabins in “First Stop” (ILL S4;E14) to replicate the shaking of the building as the train passes by. 

Lucy
says “I don’t know what’s wrong with those bunks. We tried them
at home and they’re just fine.” This may be callback to “Lucy
and Her Electric Mattress” (S1:E12) where Lucy and Viv slept in
Sherman and Jerry’s bunk beds.  

Viv also had trouble with the bunks when they were quarantined in a space capsule simulator in “Lucy Becomes an Astronaut” (S1;E6).

Lucy
trying to fix dinner in a moving galley is reminiscent of a similar
sequence in the 1953 film The Long, Long Trailer.

In this episode, Viv takes too many sea sickness pills and gets drowsy. On the “Staten Island Ferry” (ILL S5;E12) it was Lucy who took too many pills – resulting in her almost missing out on getting her passport!  To assure this won’t happen on her transatlantic crossing,

during “Bon Voyage” (ILL S5;E13)

Lucy’s mother gives her a jumbo sized bottle of sea sickness pills! 

This
is yet another episode where Vivian Vance eats a banana!  Ethel Mertz also ate one during “Bon Voyage” (ILL S5;E13), snacking on the contents of Lucy’s fruit basket! 

Blooper
Alerts!

Timing is Every…{crash}…Thing! When
Lucy and Viv run the boat mast into a window in the French doors,
there’s obviously no glass in the window. The glass shattering sound
is a bit delayed.

Ripples v Waves! Lucy
says they are adrift on an inland lake, but unless there’s a violent
storm the severe pitching of the boat would be unusual for lake
waters. If you look closely, you can see that Lucy’s plate of meatballs is actually on tiny casters. Naturally, meatballs were chosen because they are round and would roll!  One of the meatballs does fall on the floor (see above photo) but Lucille Ball either doesn’t notice or decided it was not worth trying to rescue, let alone stop shooting. 

Hats Off to Lucy!  During
the stunt with the sliding deck chair, Lucy’s hat falls off.

“Lucy Buys a Boat” rates 5 Paper Hearts out of 5