LUCY GIVES EDDIE ALBERT THE OLD SONG AND DANCE

S6;E6
~ October 15, 1973

Directed
by Coby Ruskin ~ Written by Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Davis

Synopsis

When
producing a charity show, Lucy asks Eddie Albert to star in it. At
the same time, a woman meeting Lucy’s description has been stalking
Albert.

Regular
Cast

Lucille
Ball (Lucy
Carter), Gale
Gordon (Harrison
Otis Carter)

Lucie
Arnaz (Kim
Carter) does
not appear in this episode, nor does she receive credit in the
opening titles. Despite her absence, the final credits do state
“Lucie Arnaz Wardrobe by Alroe.”

Guest
Cast

Eddie
Albert
(Himself) began his TV career years
before electronic television was introduced to the public. In June of
1936 Eddie appeared in RCA’s first private live performance for
their radio licensees in New York
City, a very early experimental television system. He first
worked with Lucille Ball in the 1950 movie The
Fuller Brush Girl. Today
he is perhaps best known for playing lawyer turned farmer Oliver
Douglas on CBS’s “Green Acres” (1965-71). He was nominated for
two Oscars as Supporting Actor, in 1954 for Roman
Holiday
and 1972 for The
Heartbreak Kid.
He died in 2005 at age 99.

Mary
Jane Croft (Mary
Jane Lewis, left) 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.

Vanda
Barra (Vanda Barra, right) makes one of over two dozen appearances on
“Here’s Lucy” as well as appearing in Ball’s two 1975 TV
movies “Lucy Gets Lucky” and “Three for Two”. She was seen in
half a dozen episodes of “The Lucy Show.” Barra was Lucille
Ball’s cousin-in-law by marriage to Sid Gould.

Doris
Singleton (Patty) created the role of Caroline Appleby on “I
Love Lucy,” although she was known as Lillian Appleby in the first
of her ten appearances. She made two appearances on “The Lucy
Show.” This is the second of her four appearances on “Here’s
Lucy.” She was originally intended to be a series regular but was
written out after the first episode.

The
character’s name is not used in the dialogue but is listed in the
final credits.

Jerry
Hausner
(Jimmy) was
featured as Jerry, Ricky’s agent in the
pilot and
first three seasons of “I Love Lucy.” He left the show
after a disagreement with Desi Arnaz. He
returned to work with Lucille Ball in “Lucy is a Soda Jerk” (TLS
S1;E23), shortly after Desi Arnaz resigned as Executive Producer and
President of Desilu. This is is his only “Here’s Lucy”
appearance and his last time on screen with Lucille Ball. He was
seen in three episodes of “Green Acres” with Eddie Albert.

“Green
Acres” is
mentioned in the dialogue of the episode. Eddie Albert’s co-star on
“Green Acres,”
Eva
Gabor, guest-starred in two episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” Many other
“Lucy” actors appeared in Hooterville. Among them, Barbara
Pepper (30 episodes), Eleanor Audley (19 episodes), Robert Foulk (16
episodes), Jonathan Hole (7 episodes), Shirley Mitchell (4 episodes),
Parley Baer (4 episodes), Jerry Hausner (3 episodes), Jesse White (2
episodes), John J. Fox (2 episodes), Roy Roberts (2 episodes),
Maurice Marsac, Lou Krugman, Bob Jellison, Norman Leavitt, Romo
Vincent, Elvia Allman, Gail Bonney, Ray Kellogg, Irwin Charone,
Bernie Kopell, Charles Lane, Alan Hale Jr., Robert Carson, Jerome
Cowan, William Lanteau, Paul Bradley, Leoda Richards, Hans Moebus,
and Rich Little.

An
office scene between Lucy and Harry was originally written for “Lucy,
the Peacemaker” (S5;E3) but deleted for time. It was re-staged for
this episode.

Lucille
begins to wear longer wigs again after having worn shorter styles
earlier in the season.

Lucy,
Mary Jane, and Vanda are having a lunch meeting to plan their annual
“Girl Friday Follies,” a show that raises money to send
underprivileged kids to camp. Taking
Lucy’s suggestion to find a “big name”, Mary Jane suggests
Engelbert Humperdinck – the ‘biggest’ name she’s ever heard. The
English singing sensation was previously mentioned on “Lucy and
Liberace” (S2;E16) and “Lucy and Ann-Margret” (S2;E20) where
Lucy mispronounced his name as ‘Pumpernickel’ and ‘Dumperhink.’

Looking at his desk, littered with food items from the girls’ lunch, Harry laments that he “missed the Iowa State Picnic.” The Iowa State Picnic is an annual event that started in 1900 and was held in Long Beach, California, which was nicknamed “Iowa by the Sea.” They were attended by Iowans who had transplanted to the area in order to share their common roots. With attendance dwindling, in 2014 the picnic moved from Long Beach to San Pedro where the USS Iowa is docked.

To
find a star, Lucy looks at Joyce Haber’s column in the newspaper.
Joyce
Haber was
the gossip columnist of the Los
Angeles Times.
She made an appearance (above) as a member of the Hollywood Press when “Lucy
Meets the Burtons” (S3;E1) in 1970.

Haber’s
column mentions that Frank
Sinatra is
coming out of retirement. In 1970, the singer went into a
self-imposed retirement that lasted until 1973 with the release of
the album “Ol’ Blue Eyes is Back.” Sinatra was first mentioned
on “I Love Lucy” in 1955 and his named has been dropped on both
“The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy.” Sinatra inadvertently
appeared on “I Love Lucy” when a clip of him in the film Guys
and Dolls
was inserted into the MGM Executives Show in “Lucy and the Dummy”
(ILL S5;E3) when it was running short. The clip has since been
removed and has never been seen in the context of the episode after
its initial broadcast.

Lucy
says she saw Eddie Albert in The
Music Man.
In
1959, Albert replaced Robert
Preston in
the Broadway production of The Music Man. Coincidentally,
the show’s author Meredith Willson was from Iowa, where the musical
is set, and attended the 1959 Iowa State Picnic to lead the Long
Beach Band playing the show’s rousing anthem “76 Trombones.”

When
a preoccupied Lucy is idle at her desk, she tells Harry she’s worried
about Eddie Albert. Harry tells her to get busy and let Margo worry
about Eddie Albert. Margo Albert was a Mexican-American actress born
as María Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y
O’Donnell – so she simply went by the singular moniker Margo.
Coincidentally, he
was related by marriage to band leader Xavier
Cugat,
as niece of his first marriage to Carmen Castillo.
Cugat was a mentor of Desi Arnaz’s and often mentioned as a rival of
Ricky Ricardo. Margo appeared in a 1958 installment of “The
Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse” with Eddie Albert which was hosted
by Desi Arnaz. The following year, she was seen in another
installment with Arnaz as a co-star.

Margo’s
black and white photo is behind the sofa of Albert’s living room.
Next to it is a photo of Albert’s son, Edward
Laurence Heimberger
(aka Eddie
Albert Jr.),
age 23. In 1972, he was launched to fame from his portrayal of blind
Don Baker in Butterflies
are Free,
for which he won a Golden Globe. He died of Alzheimer’s Disease in
2006, one year after his father’s passing.

When
Lucy unexpectedly arrives on Eddie Albert’s doorstep he believes her to be his stalker, so Patty is sent
to phone for the police. She rushes from the room saying “I
feel like I’m on ‘Mannix’!” “Mannix”
(1967-75)
was a Desilu-produced TV show that was saved from cancellation after its first season by
Lucille Ball. “Here’s Lucy” hosted a cross-over episode with
“Mannix” in 1971 that also featured Mary Jane Croft and Gale
Gordon. It, too, was written and directed by Ruskin, Davis, and
Carroll.

Trying
to convince Eddie to change his conflict date and do the show, Lucy
breaks into “There’s
a Long, Long Trail”
and then Albert joins in, harmonizing. At the end of the scene Harry,
Mary Jane, and Vanda all join in. The song was written by Stoddard
King and
Alonzo
Elliott
in
1913. In
an episode of “The
Lucy Show,”
Lucy Carmichael and Viv sing the first two lines of the chorus in a
failed attempt to entertain their kids after their TV set breaks
down. The song’s title may have also influenced the title of the Lucille Ball / Desi Arnaz film The Long, Long Trailer (1953).

“The Girl Friday Follies”

Mary Jane: “Nostalgia’s so old fashioned.”

The
Girl Friday Follies opens with Mary Jane and Vanda taking their bows
as the team of “Crime and Punishment”. We never see what the act consists of, but it is likely not connected to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1866 novel of the same name.

Eddie Albert: “To know Harry is to love him!”
Lucy: “I don’t think we’re talking about the same Harry.”

For the finale, Lucy and Eddie Albert
perform “Makin’
Whoopee” written
by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson. The song was first
popularized by Eddie
Cantor in
the 1928 musical Whoopee!
For the first time since her skiing accident, Lucy dances on
television.

In
her DVD introduction of the episode, Shirley Mitchell calls the show
“old home week.”

Aside from Lucy’s reunion with Eddie Albert from The Fuller Brush Girl,
she also shares the sound stage with three members of the cast of “I
Love Lucy”…

Shirley Mitchell (Carolyn Appleby)…

Mary Jane Croft
(Betty Ramsey)…

and Jerry Hausner (Jerry the Agent).

The episode is
written by the “I Love Lucy” scribes Madelyn (Pugh) Davis and Bob Carroll Jr.

Lucy
says she saw Eddie Albert’s house on a
tour of the movie stars
homes.
Mary Jane asks Lucy if that was the tour where she sneaked into Rock
Hudson’s backyard to steal an orange. This is a variation on when
Lucy Ricardo took a tour of the movie stars homes and sneaked over
Richard Widmark’s wall to steal a grapefruit in “The Tour” (ILL
S4;E30).

Rock Hudson played himself on an episode titled “In Palm
Springs” (ILL S4;E26). Rock Hudson is mentioned again later, when
Patty reveals that the same woman who has been stalking Eddie Albert
has also been bothering Rock Hudson.

Vanda
asks if it is the same tour where she saw Dean Martin in his bathrobe
dumping empty bottles in the trash? Although this even never
happened on screen, Lucy Carmichael did date Dean Martin on “The
Lucy Show.”

Where
the Floor Ends! In the office, the camera pulls back for a wide shot that exposes where the wall-to-wall carpet ends and the cement stage floor begins.