LUCY AND THE LITTLE OLD LADY

S4;E17
~ January 3, 1972

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

Synopsis

When
a kindly widow from out of town (Helen Hayes) comes to the Unique
Employment Agency looking for a part-time job, Lucy gives her a place
to stay and Harry buys some real estate from her. Kim becomes
suspicious that she may be running a con game so they plan to hold a
fake séance to get Harry’s money back.

Regular
Cast

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

Guest
Cast

Helen
Hayes
(Kathleen Brady) had a career that spanned over 80 years on stage and
screen. She was known as ‘The First Lady of the American Theatre’.
She was born in 1900 in Washington, DC, and was a child actress who
eventually worked on Broadway and Hollywood winning a 1932 Oscar for
The
Sin of Madelon
Claudet.
On Broadway, she won Tony Awards in 1947, 1958, and a special Tony
in 1980. She has had two Broadway Theatres named after her. The Helen
Hayes Awards for excellence in theater in the Washington DC area was
named in her honor. In 1928, Hayes married playwright Charles
MacArthur (The
Front Page)
and they adopted a son, actor James MacArthur (“Hawaii 5-0”). In
1970, she received her second Oscar for the film Airport.
In 1974 she teamed with Mildred Natwick on “The Snoop Sisters,”
a TV detective series. Helen Hayes died in 1993 at age 92. The
lights of Broadway were dimmed in her honor.

Mrs.
Brady is a widow from Dubuque, Iowa. Helen Hayes uses an Irish accent
for the character.

Hank
Brandt
(Johnny Muldoon) was
born in 1934 in New Jersey. He began his screen acting career
in 1961. He previously played one of the astronauts in “Lucy
and the Astronauts” (S4;E5). He will do one more episode in 1973.

Johnny
Muldoon is Mrs. Brady’s nephew, a detective with the Los Angeles
Police Department.

Sid
Gould (Luncheonette
Waiter, 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.

The
waiter merely walks by in the background and has no dialogue.

The
other diners and staff at the luncheonette and the guests at the
séance (Kim’s friends) are played by uncredited background
performers.

This
is the first episode of 1972, the start of Lucille Ball’s third
decade on television.

During
the late 1960s, after watching one of Helen Hayes’ performances,
Lucille Ball wrote the actress a letter to express her admiration.
Hayes wrote back and suggested the two might work together someday.
Lucy asked her secretary Wanda Clark to save the note in her
scrapbook, but chalked up the offer to collaborate as mere
politeness.

While
Helen Hayes was appearing in Long
Day’s Journey Into Night
in Washington, DC she got very ill and had to be hospitalized.
Doctors told her that she was allergic to the backstage dust and
should no longer work on the stage. Lucille Ball’s offer to play Mrs.
Brady came along at the perfect time. Television gave Hayes a new
direction and prolonged her career for many years.

Fun Fact: Eugene O’Neill’s drama Long Day’s Journey Into Night premiered in 1956 at the (now defunct) Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway. In 1958, Helen Hayes starred in Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet at the Helen Hayes Theatre.

Lucille
Ball later said of Hayes:

“I
can recommend a performance in company with Helen for giving any
actress a true perspective of things. If that experience doesn’t give
you a sense of humility, nothing will. I found myself devoting as
much attention to watching her perform as to actually performing with
her. She set the standard for the rest of us.”

Helen
Hayes plays Kathleen Brady, which is also the name of the biographer
who wrote Lucille:
The Life of Lucille Ball,
published in 1994 by Billboard Books.

The
character Hayes plays here capitalizes on her Oscar-winning role of
Ada Quonsett in Airport
(1970), a sweet little old lady who cons the airlines and stows away
to get free air travel. On “Here’s Lucy” the plot relies on the
premise that Mrs. Brady could be a con artist.

Mrs.
Brady receives ‘messages’ from her late husband Michael from her
guides in the spirit world, Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
was a French statesman and military
leader who
rose to prominence during the French Revolution and
led several successful campaigns during
the French Revolutionary Wars. He was Emperor of the
French from
1804 until 1814, and again briefly in 1815. Joséphine
de Beauharnais (1763–1814)
was the first wife of Napoleon and thus the first Empress
of the French.

Harry
theorizes that Mrs. Brady may be like the sweet little old ladies in
Arsenic
and Old Lace,
poisoning people with elderberry wine. That is the cue for Mrs.
Brady to serve Harry a glass of her late husband’s favorite drink –
elderberry wine! Lucie Arnaz ad libs the line “That
was just a play!” Arsenic
and Old Lace
by Joseph Kesselring opened on Broadway in 1939 and ran until 1944,
during which time
Helen Hayes starred in four other Broadway plays. It was made into a
film by Frank Capra in 1944. In
1969, Helen Hayes starred in a TV version with Lillian Gish (inset photo), Bob
Crane, Fred Gwynne, and David
Wayne. The play / film was previously mentioned was in “Lucy and the Ex-Con” (S1;E15).

When
Mrs. Brady comes to Harry for financial advice, he brags that “Dun
and Bradstreet don’t make a move without me!” Dun
and Bradstreet
is a financial analytics firm founded in 1841 in New York City. They
are still in business today, headquartered in Short Hills, New
Jersey.

Mrs.
Brady has some property she needs to sell located on the northeast
corner of Molby and Delaney Streets, in Dublin, Ireland. The Irish
consulate tells Harry it is worth $25,000. Harry manages to get Mrs.
Brady to part with it for $5,000.

When
Harry sees the opportunity to cash in on Mrs. Brady’s Dublin
property, he sings a bit of “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral
(That’s an Irish Lullaby)”
a
classic Irish-American song
originally written in 1913 by composer James Royce Shannon for
the Tin Pan Alley musical Shameen
Dhu.
The
song was brought back to prominence by Bing Crosby in
1944’s Going
My Way. Crosby’s single sold over a million copies and peaked at #4 on the Billboard charts.

When
Harry hears Lucy and Kim’s scheme about the fake séance, he says “If
this is the ship of fools, would you let me off at Catalina?”
Ship
of Fools
was an Oscar-winning film released in 1965 based on the 1962 novel of
the same name by Katherine Anne Porter. Catalina,
an island off the Los Angeles coast, has been the punchline of many
jokes on “Here’s Lucy.”

In
“The Seance” (ILL S1;E7) the Ricardos and the Mertzes fake
a seance to conjure up Tilly for Mr. Merriweather (Jay Novello) in
order to further Ricky’s career.

Lucille
Ball has played stereotypical ‘little old ladies’ many times. Lucy Carter went gray in “Lucy and the Ex-Con” (S1;E15) and in “Lucy and the Celebrities” (S4;E10, above).

Lucy Carmichael aged herself for “Lucy Helps the Countess” (TLS S4;E8), “Lucy and the Soap Opera” (TLS S4;E19) and “Little Old Lucy” (TLS S6;E7).

Lucy Ricardo donned
old age make-up in “The
Young Fans” (ILL S1;E20)
and in “The
Girls Go Into Business” (ILL S3;E2, above).

Kim Carter (Lucie Arnaz) took a page from her mother’s playbook and donned the Little Old Lady garb in “Meanwhile, Back at the Office” (S6;E16).

Elderly character actress Ruth McDevitt played an (even more) eccentric little old lady in “Lucy
and the Diamond Cutter” (S3;E10). McDevitt may have been considered
for the role of Mrs. Brady, but during her episode there was an
incident on set that resulted in McDevitt having to receive medical
care.

Sitcom
Logic Alert! Unlike
the classic ‘Ethel to Tilly’ séance on “I Love Lucy” this
séance seems a bit overly elaborate for a home-spun spirit raising.
It includes

pre-fabricated dummies for Lucy and Harry;
a quick change
with elaborate costumes for Harry and Lucy to play Napoleon and
Josephine;
a theatrical spotlight in the living room to heighten the
drama;
a huge dining room table that appears just for this episode;
three background performers (“Kim’s friends”) to fill out the
party.

Lucy and Harry do not disguise their voices (which Lucy
Ricardo and Fred Mertz did so memorably on “I Love Lucy”) and
Lucy’s bright red hair (that Mrs. Brady previously remarked on) is
not wigged. In short, Mrs. Brady would have to be a real con artist
or in the throes of dementia to think the séance was real! But
that’s the show biz!