Lucille
Ball always prided herself on providing good, wholesome family
entertainment, but “I Love Lucy” sometimes pushed the boundaries
of what was allowed on the new and ever-growing medium. Some of the
below moments seem tame by comparison to today’s television, but in
the early 1950s, they raised some eyebrows!
1. WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!
Naturally
Lucy and Ricky never swore or used course language. In “Lucy’s
Italian Movie”
(S5;E23), a grape-soaked Lucy returns to her Rome hotel to
discover that Ethel has been cast in the Italian film she hoped to star in! She mutters something we cannot hear due to the theme music, and
a large subtitle says “CENSORED”! This was the writers’ little
joke, not actually CBS censoring anything, but the meta moment shows
how this was on the minds of the creators, even in 1956, the show’s
fifth season.
2. DON’T MENTION THE WAR!
In
“Ricky’s
Movie Offer”
(S4;E5) Ethel
mistakes talent scout Ben Benjamin (Frank Nelson) for an intruder and
Lucy conks him on the head with a vase. When they hear Ricky coming
up the stairs, Lucy
and Ethel then do a ‘Weekend at Bernies’ by sitting the
unconscious talent scout upright on the sofa like nothing had
happened. Ethel combs his hair, and for a few seconds puts the comb
under his nose making the lifeless Benjamin looks exactly like Adolf
Hitler! Lucy and Ethel crack up laughing, but it seems a dangerous
joke for Ball, who was accused of being a Communist less than a
year before. In 1954, World War II had ended less than a decade ago, so
making jokes about Hitler wasn’t considered taboo, but patriotic.
When
Lucille Ball announced that she was having a child and that it would
be written into the script, CBS got worried. The
original scripts used the word ‘pregnant’ a lot, but sponsor
Philip Morris found the word distasteful and asked the writers to
replace it with euphemisms like ‘expecting’ and ‘blessed event.’
The title
“Lucy is Enceinte”
(S2;E10) uses the French word
for ‘pregnant, although it was never spoken aloud. Ironically, the
word does appear in the title of the following episode, “Pregnant
Women are Unpredictable.”
Although it was 1952, Philip Morris (a tobacco company) still had
the good sense to ask that Lucy Ricardo not smoke while enceinte!
3. JIGGLE JIGGLE GIGGLE GIGGLE!
During
“The
Young Fans”
(S1;E20), teenagers Peggy (Janet Waldo) and Arthur (Richard
Crenna) find themselves head over heels in love – with the
Ricardos! To combat their infatuation, Lucy and Ricky pretend to be
senior citizens in their twilight years – with the help of lots of
theatrical make-up. When not at the
Tropicana, Ricky has stopped putting shoe black in his hair and
doesn’t put in his dentures. To fight his rheumatism, Ricky
instructs young Peggy to keep his legs moving:
Ricky:
“Keep
jiggling, Peggy!
You’re
a much better jiggler than Lucy.”
This
line nearly got cut by the censor for its double entendre, even by
1952 standards. But it made everyone laugh (and still does) so it
stayed in!
4. BACK OFF, BUTCHER!
When
“Lucy
Plays Cupid”
(S1;E15) between spinster neighbor Miss Lewis (Bea Benadaret) and
the local butcher Mr. Ritter (Edward Everett Horton) everyone is put
into a compromising positions. This is probably one of the hardest
episodes to watch in the 21st century, since it contains so many examples of political and social
incorrectness. Frankly, some of it was distasteful even by 1952
standards, but these scripts were adapted from radio, where
everything was in the listeners’ imaginations. First, Mr. Ritter, an
older bachelor, corners Lucy against a wall with protestations of
love – despite knowing that she is married. He comes dangerously
close to molesting Lucy, but she fights back and comes up with a plan
to dissuade him – one that involves hiding 25 children in her
bedroom. Someone
call social services!
The deal breaker is supposedly that she’s a lousy housekeeper. This
is also one of several episodes where Ricky spanks Lucy like a
naughty child. He ‘forbids’ her from passing along Miss Lewis’
dinner invitation to Mr. Ritter. This was the show’s first season,
so some allowances should be made for breaking new ground in the new
medium of television, but this is a low point.
5. THE MARRIAGE BED!
It
is well known that for most (but not all) seasons of “I Love Lucy”
Lucy and Ricky occupied single beds. In one episode, “Vacation
from Marriage” (S2;E6) we get our first and only glimpse of the Mertzes bedroom –
which (unsurprisingly) also has single beds.
When the gang travel to
California, however, the show creates a bit of history. Lucy and Desi
were married on screen and off, but in “First
Stop” (S4;E13), Ethel and Fred have to share the one saggy double bed.
Since Vivian Vance and William Frawley were not a real married couple (God
forbid!), this marked the first time two unmarried people shared one
bed on television. Considering the stories of how much the two
loathed one another, this is the ultimate irony!
6. LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT S-E-X!
Probably
one of the most controversial lines occurs during
1954’s “Fan
Magazine Interview” (S6;E17). Ricky’s agent Jerry (Jerry Hausner) thinks up a publicity
stunt to help boost attendance at the Tropicana. He sends out 3,000
postcards to former female guests that say:
“Dearest
______, how about a date Saturday night? Will you meet me at the
Tropicana Club? ~ Ricky Ricardo”
He accidentally fills out two postcards for a woman named Minnie
Finch. Ricky pockets the extra card and Lucy finds it thinking Ricky
is cheating. Lucy and Ethel go to Minnie’s run down apartment house
and bang on the door. When frumpy Minnie (Katheryn Card, who
would later play Lucy’s mother) answers the door, she says “Your
name ain’t Kinsey, is it?” In 1953, Alfred Kinsey published the book Sexual
Behavior in the Human Female,
which was
based on personal interviews with approximately 6,000 women.
The
book was immediately controversial and caused shock and outrage, both
because his findings challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality
and
because they discussed subjects that had previously been taboo.
On “I Love Lucy” sex was only mentioned in the context of gender!
7. RICKY COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET!
If
heterosexual sex was taboo, any hint of homosexuality was unheard of.
In the very first episode ever filmed (but the fourth aired) “Lucy
Thinks Ricky Is Trying To Murder Her” (S1;E4) in 1951, the ‘homo
hint’ manages to get a laugh. Insecure Lucy thinks Ricky is
getting bored with her and having an affair with one of the showgirls
at the club. She’s convinced herself that Ricky is going to kill her
in order to marry one of the girls! Searching for acts for his new show,
Ricky leaves a list of performers on the desk, which Lucy discovers. She reads
the list in horror:
Lucy (reading): “Helen,
Ann, Mary…. I’m not even dead yet and Ricky’s lining up girls to
take my place… Helen, Ann, Mary, Cynthia, Alice,
Theodore… Theodore?!?”
Lucy
rushes down to the Tropicana only to find that the woman on the list
are actually a dog act – even Theodore! For a moment, however,
1951 audiences are taken aback that Ricky might be having a
relationship with a man named Theodore!
8. THE OLDEST PROFESSION!
While
marital infidelity was fair game for comedy, prostitution was another
matter. In “Lucy
Is Matchmaker” (S2;E27), she tries to fix up Fred’s traveling salesman friend Eddie
Grant (Hal March) with flirty friend Sylvia Collins. When Sylvia
can’t make the date at a swanky hotel, Lucy and Ethel must go to
Eddie’s room to explain her absence. While knocking on Eddie’s door a
man (Phil Arnold) passes by and leers at Lucy and Ethel.
Man:
“Oh,
girls? I’m down in 914. If
Eddie won’t let you in, I will.”
Lucy:
“Oh,
go away. Fresh.”
Ethel:
“How do you like that? Fresh.”
In
addition, wolf Eddie Grant is sure that there is no such person as Sylvia Grant and that it is Lucy that wants to cheat on Ricky with him. He boasts to Fred that
he has a date with a married woman. Fred, not knowing that he means
Lucy, invites Ricky along to spy on Eddie and his gal pal. Just as
all seems like it might work out for the best, Ricky and Fred go up
to Eddie’s hotel room and find Lucy and Ethel wearing fancy
negligees! Turns out, Eddie is a traveling salesman – selling
ladies nightgowns. The episode is classic farce at its best – with
just enough sexual innuendo to make it interesting!
Papermoon Loves Lucy 
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