Lucy’s Contact Lenses

S3;E10 ~ November 23, 1964

Synopsis

Lucy
is too vain to wear glasses, so she convinces Mr. Mooney to give her
the money for contact lenses. Baking a cake for Mrs. Mooney’s bake
sale, Lucy drops one of the lenses into the icing. After searching
through 15 similar cakes, Lucy and Viv discover that Mr. Mooney has
bought Lucy’s cake for his wife’s birthday. Lucy and Viv must break
into the Mooney home to steal the cake to retrieve the lost lens.

Regular
Cast

Lucille
Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Vivian Vance (Vivian Bagley),Gale Gordon
(Theodore J. Mooney), Jimmy Garrett (Jerry Carmichael), Ralph Hart
(Sherman Bagley)

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

Guest
Cast

Teddy
Eccles (Arnold Mooney, right) began his show business career at the age
of 4 and was 9 years old when he first appeared on “The Lucy Show.”
He will make two more appearances on the series as other characters.
He made his last screen appearance in 1977 and is now producing for
television.

Arnold
Mooney, Mr. Mooney’s youngest son, was previously played by Barry
Livingston (“My Three Sons”) in two episodes. Here the character
has no lines. There seems little reason to have the boy in the
episode, since Jerry and Sherman could easily take the cake to the
bank on their own.

Nelson
(Mr. Mooney’s Sheepdog) makes his second appearance on the series,
after debuting (uncredited) in “Lucy is Her Own Lawyer” (S2;E23).

Nelson’s
bark and whimper are provided by an offstage voice. In Nelson’s
previous appearance his bark was voiced by Disney’s Pinto Colvig,
although no voice artist is credited here.

Although
Lucille Ball sometimes wore reading glasses in real life, Lucy
Carmichael says she doesn’t have the face for glasses.

Viv has
occasionally worn white-framed eyeglasses since season one and wears
them in this episode.

Dr.
Kaufman’s ad in the paper:

“Contact Lenses – No money down, 52
weeks to pay, wear them before you buy, free trial offer.”

Contact
lenses will cost Lucy $200.
Adjusting for inflation, that is the equivalent of more than $1,670
today. Early
lenses of the 1950s and ‘60s were relatively expensive and fragile,
resulting in a market for contact lens insurance.

Mr.
Mooney tells Lucy “If
glasses were good enough for Benjamin Franklin, they’re good enough
for you!” American
founding father Benjamin
Franklin
(1706-90) is generally credited with the invention of bifocal
lenses. Lucy Ricardo pretended to talk to Benjamin Franklin on the
telephone in “Lucy Gets Homesick in Italy” (ILL S5;E22).

Mr.
Mooney’s (unseen) wife Irma shares a birthday with their dog Nelson.
Mr. Mooney says (perhaps jokingly) that Irma is a wrestler!

Lucy
and Viv are baking a chocolate fudge cake to donate to Mrs. Mooney’s
charity bake sale at the bank.

Convincing
the boys to deliver the cake to the bank, Viv calls Lucy “The
Dr. Spock of Danfield.”
Dr.
Benjamin
Spock
(1903-98) was a pediatrician whose 1946 book Dr.
Spock’s Baby and Child Care is
one of the best-sellers of all time.
Spock and his book were both mentioned by Lucy Ricardo in “Nursery
School” (ILL S5;E9).

The
Mooney’s dog door cost $50 to install. Adjusting for inflation,
that is more than $400 today.

Hearing
Nelson’s startling bark, Viv says “It ain’t The Beatles giving a
concert.” On the day this episode first aired, Capitol Records
issued a documentary album, The Beatles’ Story, featuring
interviews, press conferences and extracts of songs by The
Beatles. The album was four weeks at #7 on the Billboard charts.

Lucy
describes the lost contact lens as “Kind
of like a tiddly, but it doesn’t wink.”
Tiddlywinks
is
a child’s game in which players flip small discs into a central pot
for points. It was first developed as an adult parlor game in 1888.
The game experienced a resurgence in the 1950s and in the mid-60s
there were international Tiddlywink tournaments at ivy league
colleges across the US and UK.

Lucy
says that nobody ever locks their doors in Danfield, yet Mr. Mooney
has six locks on his kitchen door alone!

Callbacks!

Like
Lucy Carmichael, Lucy Ricardo’s had vision problems in “Lucy Has
Her Eyes Examined” (ILL S3;E11).

Cake
baking has been the source of humor in “Lucy’s Sister Visits”
(S1;E15) and “Lucy Enters a Baking Contest” (S2;E28).

Lucy
and Viv searching through the cakes for the lost contact lens is
reminiscent of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz pawing through wet cement
to find Lucy’s lost wedding ring in “Building a Bar-B-Q”
(ILL S6;E24).

Lucy
and Viv end the episode covered with chocolate fudge, which is how
Lucy Ricardo ends up at Kramer’s Candy Kitchen in “Job Switching”
(ILL S2;E4) and Lucy Carmichael in “Lucy and the Safe Cracker”
(S2;E5).

Blooper
Alerts!

Redacted Reading! Once
again, the magazine that Lucy reads has the masthead concealed by
gray masking tape.

Doctor Dilemma! In
previous episodes, Danfield’s eye doctor was Dr. Jacoby. He was
played by Herb Vigran in “Lucy and Viv Play Softball” (S2;E3) and
“Lucy and the Little League” (S1;E28).

Blue Ribbon Blooper! Mr.
Mooney says that he bought Lucy’s chocolate fudge cake because his
wife thinks Lucy is the best baker in town. In “Lucy Enters a
Baking Contest” (S2;E28) it was Viv who was the town’s championship
baker, not Lucy.

Never Work With… There’s
an obvious edit when Lucy is trying to slip out through Nelson’s dog
door. The dog must have been late on his cue to come into back inside
and some frames were edited out.

A Bake Shop By Any Other Name… Lucy
mentions that Hofstedder’s Bakery makes a good cake. In three
previous episodes Hoffstedder’s was a drug store, not a bakery. In
“Lucy Enters a Baking Contest” (S2;E28) the town bakery was
called Trumbull’s, after the Ricardo’s neighbor on “I Love Lucy.”

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