LUCY’S LUCKY DAY

S4;E15
~ December 20, 1971

Directed
by Coby Ruskin ~ Written by Fred S. Fox and Seaman Jacobs

Synopsis

To
capitalize on what seems to be a lucky streak, Lucy goes on a TV game
show and is challenged to teach an untrained chimpanzee to do a trick
in order to win a thousand dollars.  

Regular
Cast

Lucille
Ball (Lucy
Carter), Gale
Gordon (Harrison
Otis Carter), Lucie
Arnaz (Kim
Carter)

Guest
Cast

Dick
Patterson (Dick
Dunkirk) made
his Broadway debut in David Merrick’s Vintage
‘60,
and appeared in The
Billy Barnes People,
the national touring company of Bye
Bye Birdie, and
opposite Carol Burnett in Fade
Out, Fade In.
His last musical was Smile,
a spoof of beauty pageants. He was seen in “Lucy
Helps Danny Thomas” (TLS S4;E7).
This is the second of his four appearances on “Here’s Lucy.”  

Dick
Dunkirk is the host of “Milky Way to Riches” sponsored by the
Dover Dairy.

Billy
Sands
(Mr. Larson, the Milkman) began
his professional acting career in 1946 when he appeared on Broadway
with Spencer Tracy in Robert Sherwood’s Rugged
Path,
but he eventually became a television character actor who appeared
regularly as Dino Papparelli on “The Phil Silvers Show” and as  ‘Tinker’ Bell on “McHale’s Navy.” This is the first of his three appearances on
“Here’s Lucy.”

Sid
Gould
(Stage Hand, uncredited) 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. 

Jackie
the Chimpanzee is the seventh chimpanzee to work with Lucille Ball on television.

Uncredited
studio audience members at “The Milky Way to Riches”:

• Shirley
  Anthony
  makes
  the second of her 13 episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” 
• Sig
  Frohlich
  makes
  the second of his uncredited background appearances on the series.
• Robert
  Hitchcock was
  seen in “Lucy
  and Phil Harris” (TLS S6;E20) at
  the piano bar. This is the third of his four episodes of
  “Here’s Lucy.”
• Paul
  King
  makes
  the fifth and final background appearance on the series.  

The
other studio audience members are played by uncredited background
performers.

In
his DVD introduction to the episode, choreographer Jim
Bates
recalls that the chimpanzee only knew one trick – to cross its legs
– so the entire routine was built around that.  He also recalls
that when Gale Gordon took off the gorilla head in the presence of
the baby chimp, the chimp went into hysterics and had to be taken off
set to calm down.  

Lucy
has an overdue book at the library – Gone
With The Wind
– which she took out when it was first published. The novel by
Margaret Mitchell dates from 1936, which means Lucy has had the book
for 35 years!  The film adaptation of the book was a part of “Lucy
and Flip Go Legit” (S4;E1) and “Lucy and Carol Burnett aka The
Hollywood Unemployment Follies” (S3;E22).

When
Mr. Larson the milkman rushes in with good news, Lucy teases him by
guessing that Elsie the Cow had triplets. Elsie
was the cartoon cow mascot of the Bordon Dairy Company from 1936
until it went out of business in the mid-1990s. Elsie was one of the
most recognizable advertising symbols in the country. Larson tells Lucy that she has won Dover Dairy’s customer of the
year and will receive a free pint of raspberry apricot yogurt every
week for a year.

Kim
jokingly predicts that the person at the door is Howard
Hughes
with a basket full of money.  Hughes (1905-76) was one of the most
financially successful people in the world.  On “Here’s Lucy,”
whenever a joke was about great wealth, the punchline either featured
Howard Hughes or Fort Knox.

On
“The Milky Way To Riches” Lucy must answer three geography
questions to qualify to earn a chance to win $1,000:  

DICK: Where is the lowest point in the world below sea level?
LUCY: Oh,
boy.  I’m dead, see —
~Answer: The Dead
Sea
DICK: The Dead Sea is part of the border between Jordan and what other
country?
LUCY: Oh, boy.  That question is real tough –
~ Answer: Israel
DICK: It’s an autonomous region of China, bordered by China on the north
and east, by India on the south and Cashmere on the West. Name this
Chinese autonomous region.
LUCY: And I wanted to bet I’d win.
~Answer: Tibet

After
answering three questions, Lucy has to pick between three doors, just
like on the TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal.”  Lucy picks door #2, which is the gag prize, an untrained chimpanzee named Jackie. 

When
Jackie the chimp spins and Harry in a gorilla costume spin in circles
to the music on Kim’s transistor radio, Lucy dubs them Fred Astaire
and Ginger
Rogers.
The latter was the guest star on “Ginger Rogers Comes to
Tea” (S4;E11).  

Back
on “The Milky Way to Riches” program Kim, Harry, and Lucy (and
Jackie) sing and dance to “While
Strolling Through the Park One Day” which
is actually titled “The Fountain in the Park” and was written by
Ed Haley around 1880. In “Lucy’s Show-Biz Swan
Song” (ILL S2;E12) a pregnant Lucy Ricardo grabs a parasol and does
an impromptu chorus of the song to impress Ricky.

The trio (with Jackie) sings “Tell
Me, Pretty Maiden”
written in 1899 by Paul Rubens, Ernest Boyd Jones, and Leslie
Stuart for the musical Floradora.

Finally,
the foursome sing (and play on the bells) “Daisy
Bell / Bicycle Built for Two”
written
in 1892 by British songwriter Harry
Dacre.

At
the beginning of the episode, Kim reads Lucy her horoscope, but Lucy
scoffs at the idea of astrology. In “The Seance” (ILL S1;E7), it
is Lucy Ricardo who is a believer and Ricky is dubious.  

In
“Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio” (ILL S1;E32), the Ricardos must
answer questions on “Mr. and Mrs. Quiz” hosted by Freddy Fillmore.
On that 1952 episode, Ricky stumbles into the right answers quite
accidentally, just as Lucy Carter does here.  

Lucille
Ball got lots of practice walking on stilts in two episode of “The
Lucy Show”: “Lucy and Her Electric Mattress” (TLS S2;E12) and
“Lucy Bags a Bargain” (TLS S4;E17).  

Lucille
Ball showed her proficiency on roller skates in “The Million Dollar Idea” (ILL S3;E13), “Lucy and the Good
Skate” (TLS S3;E1), and in the motion picture Mame (1974).   

Lucille
Ball worked with chimpanzees in “Lucy
the Babysitter” (TLS S5;E16) which
featured Lucy Carmichael and three baby chimps.
In “Lucy
the Helpful Mother” (S2;E15),
the Carter living room is turned into a pet shop that also features a
chimpanzee (named Irving).
In “Lucy in the Jungle” (S4;E13) Lucy Carter dealt with a pair
of baby chimps named Fido and Rover.  

At
the end of “The Milky Way to Riches” “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built
for Two)” turns into a solo for bell ringers. The Ricardos and the
Mertzes were western bell ringers in “Lucy Goes to the Rodeo”
(ILL S5;E2) clanging out the tune of “Down by the Old Mill Stream.”

Lucy
Ricardo’s milkman also brought her some ‘news’ with her milk order in
“The Gossip” (ILL S1;E24).

Overdue
with the Wind!  Lucy’s library is still sending reminder
cards for books overdue for 35 years!  Surely the cover price would
have been paid many times over by the fines accrued!  To be precise,
in 1936 Lucy probably would have still been living in New York. In a
season one episode she stated that the family had moved from the East
Coast. This implies that she had married and had children, making
the move less than 20 years ago.

“Lucy’s Lucky Day” rates 4 Paper Hearts out of 5

This episode has a lot of callbacks to previous “Lucy” shows. In the end, however, it is another episode of Lucy working with live animals, especially chimps, which was just done two weeks earlier! It’s also typical that the final scene turns into a musical number – something Lucille Ball loved to do.