LUCY, THE AMERICAN MOTHER

S3;E7
~ October 26, 1970

Directed
by Jack Donohue ~ Written by Lou Derman and Larry Rhine

Synopsis

For
a class project, Craig is doing a documentary film about Lucy. When
Kim’s boyfriend wins a $100 cash prize at school, Lucy frantically
tracks it down to the local library where Craig and Harry are filming
her every move.

Regular
Cast

Lucille
Ball (Lucy
Carter), Gale
Gordon (Harrison
Otis Carter), Desi
Arnaz Jr. (Craig
Carter), Lucie
Arnaz (Kim
Carter)

Guest
Cast

Mary
Jane Croft (Mary
Jane) makes
her fifth series appearance as Mary Jane. Croft 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 played Audrey Simmons on “The Lucy Show” but when Lucy
Carmichael moved to California, she played Mary Jane Lewis, the
actor’s married name and the same one she uses on all 31 of her
episodes of “Here’s Lucy. Her final acting credit was playing
Midge Bowser on “Lucy Calls the President” (1977). She died in
1999 at the age of 83.

Don
Crichton
(Steve Bailey) makes
his third and final appearances on “Here’s Lucy.” He was
an Emmy nominated choreographer who worked on “The Carol Burnett
Show” and “The Love Boat,” among others.

Olive
Dunbar
(Librarian) played a high school biology teacher in “Lucy Gets Her
Diploma” (TLS S6;E5). This is her last appearances on a “Lucy”
sitcom. Dunbar
passed away in February 2017 at age 91.

Richard
Collier
(Library Assistant) was a character actor who played small roles in
the musical films Bells
Are Ringing (1960)
and Hello,
Dolly
(1970). He did two episodes of “Dennis the Menace” (1963) with
Gale Gordon. This is his only appearance with Lucille Ball.

Sid
Gould
(Man in Library #1) made
more than 45 appearances on “The Lucy Show,” and nearly as many
on “Here’s Lucy.” Gould (born Sydney Greenfader) was Lucille
Ball’s cousin by marriage to Gary Morton.

Boyd
‘Red’ Morgan
(Man in Library #2) is
an actor and stunt man who was seen in “Lucy
and John Wayne” (TLS S5;E10),
with whom he did eleven films. This is the second of his four
episodes of “Here’s Lucy.”

Morgan,
a veteran stunt performer, was cast because the character takes a
fall off of his chair.

Alma
Platt
(Old Lady) was born in 1891, so was 79 years old at the time of this
episode. Two weeks before this episode originally aired she was seen
on “Marcus Welby M.D.” on ABC and four days after this episode
originally aired she was seen on NBC’s “Adam 12” – meaning Platt
appeared on all three major networks in October 1970. She died in
1976.

The
character is only caught on screen for a moment when the camera pans
to the right during the final chase scene in the library. She has no
lines or business – she just sits and reads.

The
woman who loses her wig in the library scene is the only actor not
credited in the show.

After
directing all of season one, Jack Donohue returns to “Here’s Lucy”
and will direct four more season three installments before leaving
again only to reappear for the last six episodes of the series in
season six.

In his DVD introduction to this episode, Desi Arnaz Jr. says that his parents took hundreds of hours of home movies. In 1993 Lucie Arnaz collected some of them in “Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie.”

The
title of Craig’s movie will be “A Day in the Life of My Mother.”

When
Kim hears Craig is making a documentary about Lucy, she ‘auditions’
to get into the act:

She first imitates Katharine
Hepburn
in the 1937 film Stage
Door:
“The
calla lilies are in bloom again, such a strange flower.”
Coincidentally, Lucille Ball was also in Stage
Door.
The now-iconic line was actually taken from the play The
Lake,
one of Hepburn’s rare failures.

She
next imitates Maurice
Chevalier
singing “Louise,” a song by Leo Robin and Richard H. Whiting from
the 1929 film Innocents
of Paris.
The song became Chevalier’s signature song.

Lastly,
she mimics Bette
Davis
saying “Peetah!
Peetah! You read the letter, didn’t you?”
Although attributed to Davis and often spoken by Bette Davis
impersonators, this exact line is not found in any of her films. In
1941’s The
Great Lie she
does say the line “I
wish to leave Pete a letter marked personal” which
may be the source for the oft-imitated quote.

Lucy
tells Craig she doesn’t want to be filmed first thing in the morning,
when she looks like the Bride of Frankenstein. The
Bride of Frankenstein was
a 1935 sequel film to Universal’s Frankenstein
that starred Elsa Lanchester as the monster’s bride. Lanchester made
guest starring appearances on all three “Lucy” sitcoms and it was
common to use the name “bride of Frankenstein” as a punchline for
jokes in all three series.

Lucie
talks about having breakfast with Steve
Bailey
(Don Crichton). They’ve been out together five times. Don Crichton
also played Kim’s boyfriend Don in “Lucy, the Conclusion Jumper”
(S1;E5).

When
Craig calls “cut” on a real argument between Kim and Lucy, he
takes on an exaggerated German accent, feeding into the TV trope that
all directors were temperamental Germans in the style of Erich Von
Stroheim (1885-1957), who was actually Austrian.

When
Lucy can’t seem to act natural in front of Craig’s camera, she
suggests he get someone else to play his mother; someone like Raquel
Welch, Carol Burnett, or Don Knotts. Movie star Raquel
Welch
seems to be the show’s go-to name to drop when wanting to reference a
young female sex symbol. Carol
Burnett
was a great friend of Lucille Ball and the two made numerous guest
appearances on each other’s television programs. Don
Knotts,
the nervous Deputy Fife from “The Andy Griffith Show” (which
filmed on the Desilu back lot) will make a guest star appearances in
a 1973 episode of “Here’s Lucy.”

Instead
of Gale Gordon ending
the episode wet, he starts
it that way when he walks through the front door splattered with
water from Lucy’s front lawn sprinkler system.

Harry
says that Lucy’s daily misadventures make “Laurel
and Hardy look like Sears and Roebuck.” Stan
Laurel and Oliver Hardy
were a vaudeville and film comedy team. Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon
briefly imitated them when under a hypnotic suggestion in “Lucy and
Pat Collins” (TLS S5;E11). Richard
Sears and Alvah Roebuck
founded one of the world’s largest retailers (now simply known as
Sears) in 1886.

Steve
says that Spooky Brown and His Electric Goose Pimples is playing at
the Rock and Roll Palace.

The
book that Lucie puts the mended $100 bill into is titled Kiss
Me Stranger. Daphne
Du Maurier wrote a book titled Kiss
Me Again, Stranger
in 1951. This title was chosen to be provocative when spoken to the
unsuspecting patrons of the library.

After the birth of Little Ricky, the Ricardos were also avid home movie enthusiasts. Things came to a boil in “Home Movies” (ILL S3;E20).

Kim
imitates Katharine Hepburn saying “The
calla lilies are in bloom again.” In
“Lucy’s Italian Movie” (ILL S5;E23) Lucy Ricardo also imitated Hepburn saying
the line to impress movie director Vittorio Philippi.

Kim
also imitates Maurice Chevalier singing “Louise,” something Lucy
Ricardo (and the rest of the gang did) in “The French Revue” (ILL
S3;E7). Chevalier eventually appeared as himself in “Lucy Goes to
Mexico” a 1958 episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.” In that
episode Lucy
once again does her Chevalier impersonation singing “Louise.”

Lucy
is suspicious of Steve Bailey’s motives and wants to meet her “future
son-in-law.” Coincidentally, that is exactly what she thought of
Kim’s boyfriend Don (also played by Don Crichton) in “Lucy the
Conclusion Jumper” (S1;E5).

Lucy
Ricardo also tore a bill in half and went to great lengths to
retrieve it in “Bonus Bucks” (ILL S3;E21). The second half of this “Here’s Lucy” episode is based on “Bonus Bucks.”

Lucy
Carmichael went to great lengths to retrieve five $500 dollar bills
she lost at a carnival in “Lucy Misplaces $2,000” (TLS S1;E4).

The
red “SILENCE” sign on the librarian’s desk is the same one seen
in the dorm room in the previous episode “Lucy, the Co-Ed”
(S3;E5). Because the prop is used as part of a joke here, and only
serves as set decoration in the dorm room, this episode may have been
filmed first and aired out of sequence.

Make-up! Although
Lucy comes downstairs after rolling out of bed calling herself ‘the
bride of Frankenstein,’ she is wearing full eye make-up!

Shut the door! Harry
leaves the front door open when he comes in for the second time.

Fact Check! There
is no need to have a cello-taped bill “set” by placing it in a
book.

Sitcom Logic Alert! Why
is there a laundry cart in a library? It is clear that “Bonus
Bucks” (ILL S3;E21), which was set in a laundry and featured comic
business with a laundry cart, was very much on Lucille Ball’s mind
when filming this episode.