LUCY AND DONNY OSMOND

S5;E11
~ November 20, 1972

Directed
by Coby Ruskin ~ Written by Bob O’Brien

Synopsis

Kim’s
young cousin Patricia (Eve Plumb) has a crush on teen superstar Donny
Osmond, but Donny has eyes for Kim. Complicating matters, Donny
thinks a love letter from Patricia is actually from Kim.

Regular
Cast

Lucille
Ball (Lucy
Carter), Lucie
Arnaz (Kim
Carter)

Gale
Gordon (Harrison
Otis Carter) does not appear in this episode, nor does he receive
opening title credit.

Guest
Cast

Donny
Osmond (Himself)
began his TV career on “The Andy Williams Show” in 1963 singing
with his brothers, The Osmonds. Osmond
became a teen
idol in
the early 1970s as a solo singer, while continuing to sing with his
older brothers.
His
first solo hit was a cover of Roy
Orbison’s
1958 recording of “Sweet
and Innocent".
Osmond’s follow-ups “Go
Away Little Girl", “Puppy
Love” and “Hey
Girl/I
Knew You When” vaulted him to international fame.
Later in his career, Donny Osmond acted on Broadway and in films.
He teamed with his sister Marie as a musical act and on television in
“Donny and Marie” (1976-79).

Osmond
was 14 years old when this episode was filmed. He turned 15 less than
three weeks after the episode first aired.

Eve
Plumb
(Patricia Carter) is probably best known as the middle daughter, Jan,
on TV’s “The Brady Bunch” (1969-74) and on subsequent “Brady”
spin-off series’. Plumb filmed this episode simultaneously with “The
Brady Bunch” which aired Friday nights on ABC. This is her only
time acting with Lucille Ball.

Jack
Manning
(Mr. Walters) makes the first of his two appearances on “Here’s
Lucy.”

Mr.
Walters is the manager of the hotel showroom where Donny Osmond is
performing.

Milton
Frome
(Henry, the Waiter) first appeared as Sam (the spider) who Lucy
Ricardo tries to fix up with Dorothy (the fly) in “The Matchmaker”
(ILL S4;E4) in 1954. He returned
in a 1965 episode of “The Lucy Show” starring Milton Berle. He is
one of the few character actors to have appeared in all three of
Ball’s sitcoms.

Henry
the Waiter was also the nearsighted server played by Frank Nelson (inset photo) in “Lucy
Changes Her Mind” (ILL S2;E21).
“Pork
chops, huh?”

Ivor
Barry (French
Chef) was
a Welsh-born character actor who began his film career in England in
bit parts; moved to Canada in 1953 where he wrote and adapted scripts
for radio and eventually appeared on American TV. He previously was
seen in “Lucy Helps David Frost Go Night-Night” (S4;E12).

Marl
Young (Donny
Osmond’s Pianist and Musical Director, uncredited) was also the
musical director of “Here’s Lucy.” He also appeared on
camera in “Lucy and Petula Clark” (S5;E8). Young later supplied
the DVD introductions for several of the musical episodes. The
other musicians are also uncredited.

Walter
Smith
(Audience Member, uncredited) made
14 mostly uncredited appearances on the series. He also did one
episode of “The
Lucy Show.”

The
other audience members are played by uncredited background
performers.

Gale
Gordon does not appear in this episode.
This is the second episode in a row where Harry is absent.

Lucy
mentions her “girlfriend Mary Jane” although she does not appear
in this episode. The role is played by Mary Jane Croft, but is not
seen every week.

In 1977, Lucille Ball appeared on “Donny and Marie” where she sang a song about show biz aspirations with lyrics that said “I could play Mame or Dolly…” Lucille Ball did play Mame on the big screen, and appeared as Dolly on “The Lucy Show,” albeit not in the musical itself.

“The
Brady Bunch” was based on the 1968 Lucille Ball / Henry
Fonda film Yours,
Mine and Ours.
At one point, Lucille Ball entertained the idea of turning the film
into a series, but opted to create “Here’s Lucy” instead. When
the movie was made into “The Brady Bunch,” Florence Henderson
played the mother and Eve Plumb was cast as her middle daughter.

Coincidentally, Jan’s older sister Marcia had a crush on Desi Arnaz
Jr. on a 1970 episode of “The Brady Bunch” and Arnaz
guest-starred as himself – at the same time as he was playing Craig
Carter on “Here’s Lucy.”

Osmond, Bobby Sherman, and David Cassidy were the biggest pop stars for Tiger Beat magazine in the early 1970s. Naturally this “Here’s Lucy” episode got lots of press in the teen magazines.

In
his DVD introduction to the episode (shared with Lucie Arnaz), Osmond
admits to having a crush on Lucie. Lucie then admits to having a
crush on one of Donny’s older brothers. At the time, Osmond and Lucie Arnaz had the same management team, Ray Katz and Sandy Gallen.

For
the first time in ten episodes, Lucy’s broken leg is not mentioned.
She is, however, still wearing he cast, which can occasionally be
glimpsed under her long dresses.

The
episode opens with Osmond on stage (appropriately) singing “Too
Young”
a song first written in 1951 by Sidney Lippman and Sylvia Dee and
first recorded by Nat King Cole. Osmond released the cover version
in 1972 on an album of the same name. It stayed on the charts for 8
weeks peaking at #13.

Bill Belew created costumes for Osmond, as well as Elvis Presley, The Carpenters, and The Captain and Tennille.

Kim
gets an autographed album for her cousin. The album is “Portrait
of Donny”
released in 1972. The
album reached number six on the Billboard Top LPs chart on July 22,
1972. It contained two hit singles: “Puppy Love” (#3) and “Hey
Girl” (#9). The album went gold a month after this episode first
aired.

Kim
says she belongs to the Sunrise Anti-Pollution League who are putting
on a show to raise money to clean up the beach.

Before
Donny Osmond rings her doorbell, Lucy is doing a crossword puzzle.
Word games were a favorite activity of Lucille Ball’s. In recent
episodes she was seen doing crosswords and playing Scrabble.

When
Kim realizes that it is her, not Patricia, that Donny Osmond has a
crush on, she says she feels like “the femme fatale of ‘Sesame
Street.‘” “Sesame
Street”
is a children’s television program on PBS that began broadcasting in
1969. As of this writing it is still on the air. Donny Osmond was
featured in the “My Favorite Sesame Street Moments”
segments taped for the show’s 35th season. Donny
sang “Anything
You Can Do”
with Sesame Street resident Elmo
on
the “Donny
& Marie” talk
show in the late 1999’s. In the “Sesame Street” feature film
Follow
That Bird
(1985) a singing duo is named Donny and Marie Dodo.

Kim
tells her mother to stop glaring at her like she’s been chosen as the
centerfold of Playboy
Magazine.
There have been several references (visual and verbal) to Playboy
Magazine in previous episodes, including the centerfold and the
iconic Playboy bunny. Donny Osmond was reportedly asked several times to pose for Playgirl magazine, but turned down all offers due to his religious beliefs!

For
the benefit, Kim and Donny perform “I’ll
Never Fall in Love Again,”
a song written by
Burt
Bacharach
and
Hal
David
written
for the 1968 musical
Promises,
Promises.
Several covers of the song were released in 1969, the most popular of
which was by Dionne
Warwick,
who took it to #6 on
Billboard’s
Hot
100. Embedded in the song are a few bars of “Falling
in Love Again”
from
the 1930 German film The
Blue Angel.
Lucy sang it in “Lucy and Carol Burnett” (S3;E22) dressed as
Marlene Dietrich, who performed it in the film.

The
concept of romantic crushes on celebrities was also explored in “Lucy
and Ann-Margret” (S2;E20) where Lucy’s teenage son Craig fell for
the sexy celebrity singer Ann-Margret and also got to perform with
her onstage, just as Kim does with Donny.

Lucy’s niece Patricia (Eve Plumb) has a crush on Donny Osmond. Kim says she used to feel the same way about Elvis Presley as Patricia does about Donny Osmond. Lucy says that with her it was Rudy Vallee. Later in the episode Kim says that when she was 11 she got a crush on Frank Sinatra.

Elvis was first mentioned on “I Love Lucy” by Ethel Mertz as “that Elvis what’s-his-name” on a 1957 episode.

Rudy Vallee guest-starred as himself in a 1957 episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” and a 1970 episode of “Here’s Lucy.” Frank Sinatra, though mentioned many times, never appeared with Lucille Ball on her sitcoms.

Who
Am I Anyway?
If Patricia is Lucy’s niece and she has the surname Carter, she must
be related to her late husband’s side of the family and would also be
Harry’s niece. Lucy’s single
brother Herb turned up for one episode in “Kim Cuts You-Know-Whose
Apron String” (S4;E24), another relative that shows up for the
convenience of the storyline. Harry has one sister, but she is a nun
(Mary Wickes) in “Lucy and the All Nun Band” (S4;E8). Adding to
the confusion, early episodes of the series mentioned that Harry was
Kim and Craig’s ONLY uncle.

Recycling!
The
waiter wears the same gold jacket worn by the waiter (actually
undercover detective) in the previous episode, “Dirty Gertie”
(S5;E10) and by Sam (Sid Gould), a waiter in two previous episodes.

Oops!

When Kim is putting on her coat, she accidentally knocks over the
sign she made. She picks it up off the floor and continues the
scene.

No
Place Like…?
The subject of where Kim is living has still not been definitively
established. Is she still living in Marina Del Rey or at the college
dorms? In this episode, it starts to feel like Kim is living at home
with Lucy again.