LUCY UNIVERSITY!

Classes, Lessons & Other Tutorials

The Lucy character was one of the most inquisitve characters on television. A basic education did not prevent Lucy from furthering her education.  Here are some lessons learned by Lucy!

HIGH SCHOOL

“Lucy Gets Her Diploma” (1967) ~ When Lucy Carmichael finds out the bank has a new policy of only employing high school graduates, she must go back to school to get her diploma in order to keep her job. 

Lucy takes the usual classes – with a fair amount of physical comedy for extra credit. Her teachers include Dave Willock (Math), Donald Randolph (History), Olive Dunbar (Biology), and Barbara Babcock (English). The principal of Wilshire High School is played by George E. Carey. 

MATH

“Liz Goes To Night School” (1950) ~ Liz’s arithmetic skills are so bad, George sends her to night school where she somehow winds up in a math contest.  

CHEMISTRY 

“Lucy and Viv Take Up Chemistry” (1963) ~ Viv regrets letting Lucy talk her into joining her for a night school chemistry class. Lucy gets carried away trying to invent a youth serum and develops a huge ego between explosions. The frustrated biology teacher is played by Lou Krugman. 

To teach her a lesson, Viv and the professor make her drink her own concoction. She’s horrified by the results of her youth formula.

AUTO MECHANICS

“The Not-So-Popular Mechanics” (1973) ~ Lucy Carter and Mary Jane take an adult school course in auto mechanics so they can change the oil on Harry’s vintage Rolls Royce. Their teacher is played by Robert Rockwell, who played biology teacher Mr. Boynton on “Our Miss Brooks” opposite Gale Gordon and Mary Jane Croft.

MUSIC

“Piano and Violin Lessons” (1949) ~ Liz takes up the piano to win a radio talent contest. To get even, George starts learning the violin. Who will win?

“The Benefit” (1952) ~ When Lucy wants to get into Ricky’s new act, she’s determined to improve her singing.  

Lucy Carmichael was given singing lessons by Dr. Gitterman (Hans Conried) in “Lucy’s Barbershop Quartet” (1963). She used those same techniques on Agnes Schmidlap (aka Ethel Merman) when “Lucy Teaches Ethel Merman to Sing” (1964). 

DANCE

“Lucy Helps Ken Berry (1968) ~ Ken Jones (Berry) teaches a course of tap and soft shoe for $25. Lucy signs up a dozen truck drivers to  participate – not your typical dance students! 

“Dance Lessons” (1950) ~ After a disastrous experience at a club dance, Liz and Iris send their husbands to Professor Crawford’s School of the Dance. Instead of being greeted by  a befuddled old Professor, they meet his daughter, a breathless sexpot who immediately agrees to be their instructress.

RUDOLPH: “I’ve seen those girls who teach at Arthur Murray’s.”

“Liz Teaches Samba” (1950) ~ George talks Liz into teaching Wally, the son of the bank’s newest director, how to dance the Samba, and Wally gets a crush on Liz. The radio show served as the basis for…

“The Young Fans” (1952) ~ Lucy gives private dance lessons to Arthur Morton (Richard Crenna) so he can better woo Peggy Dawson, but he turns out to be more attracted to Lucy.

“The Ballet” (1952) ~ Thinking Ricky’s new act requires ballet, Lucy attends a class led by Madame LeMonde (Mary Wickes). “Abbas!  Abbas!”

“The Adagio” (1952) ~ Fred teaches Lucy to do the Apache dance for Ricky’s new act. When Fred’s lessons prove unhelpful, Ethel suggests Jean Valjean Raymond (Shepard Menken), a Frenchman who is more interested in amour than apache. This episode was partly inspired by….

FRENCH

“The French Lessons” (1949) ~ Liz and Iris are humiliated when they can’t read the menu at a French restaurant, so they decide to take French lessons. The lessons lead to the prospect of a duel between her favorite husband George and her amorous French teacher, Jacques Duval (Rolfe Sedan). The radio episode inspired…

“The French Revue” (1953) ~ A trip to a French restaurant makes Lucy think she should take French lessons from the waiter Robert DuBois (Alberto Morin) so she can take part in Ricky’s new show. Lucy later taught herself French when preparing for her trip to Europe. 

DUBOIS: “In French, everything it is either masculine or feminine. You Americans don’t have that.” 

LUCY: “You haven’t been in this country very long, have you?”

ENGLISH

“The English Tutor” (1952) ~ So that her baby will be surrounded by proper elocation, diction and grammar, Lucy recruits tutor Percy Livermore (Hans Conried) to teach them how to speak properly – for free. Naturally, he has ulterior motives.

LIVERMORE (to Ricky): “In lieu of the remuneration for my tutelage, I am to be permitted to introduce my talents into your nocturnal bistro.“

ART

“Lucy Goes To Art Class” (1964) ~ To impress handsome bachelor John Brooks (Robert Alda) Lucy and Viv join him at an art class. The art teacher is played by John Carridine. 

BROOKS: “I do believe that all of us have some sort of creativity bottled up inside of us.”

LUCY: “I think this class might be just the thing to pop my cork!”

“Lucy and Uncle Harry’s Pot” (1973) ~ When Lucy breaks a vase which has great sentimental value to Harry, she goes to a ceramics class to make him a new one – with dubious results!  Her teacher is played by Roger Twedt, an actual high school art teacher from Palm Springs. 

ACTING

“Lucy Meets Mickey Rooney” (1966) ~ Mickey Rooney takes out a loan from Mr. Mooney’s bank to open an acting school. Lucy and Mooney each wangle free acting lessons.

EQUESTRIANISM

“Horseback Riding” (1949) ~ George’s female co-chair for his horseback riding club’s upcoming breakfast ride has Liz so jealous that she’s determined to overcome her fear of horses and learn to ride herself.

COLLEGE 

Fictional Pottawatomie College in New Mexico is the setting of Too Many Girls (1939), the film in which Lucille Ball first met Desi Arnaz, although their characters never meet on screen. 

“Lucy’s College Reunion” (1963) ~ Lucy Carmichael (nee Taylor) goes back to her alumnus, Milroy College. 

“Lucy and the Professor” (1973) ~ Lucy hears her daughter is dating an older man, so she goes to Kim’s college to see for herself. Unfortunately, Lucy mistakes an elderly professor (Murray Matheson) for the younger one (John Davidson) that Kim is actually dating!

PROFESSOR KLEINDORF: ”Thanks Professor Dietrich. You’re really groovy.”

PROFESSOR DIETRICH: (points to his frown lines) “These aren’t grooves. They’re wrinkles.”

At Desilu Studios, Lucy opened the Desilu Playhouse, recruiting promising young performers to practice their craft under her tutelage, much in the same way Lela Rogers taught her at RKO. Some of the more famous graduates were Robert Osborne, Carole Cook, and Majel Barrett. 

In the early 1980s Lucille Ball become Professor Ball, lecturing on comedy at UCLA.  

Grade school students listen to Lucie Arnaz talk during Lucy Lessons, educational modules built around episodes of “I Love Lucy.”