Any News on the Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour? (1 Viewer)

[Jeff#]

I once worked with a retired Army guy who said that in his branch of the military a "gun" was always referred to as a "weapon", but I will digress.

 

[george kaplan]

My memory may be fuzzy, but if I recall correctly, the CBS execs weren't saying that Denning would be great, they were saying that America wouldn't accept a Cuban actor in the role. And in that, it's very, very clear that the CBS execs were wrong.

 

[Jeff#]

The CBS execs were wrong about being hesitant to hire Arnaz because he was Hispanic, yet they did because Lucy already had a lot of clout with the network having done My Favorite Husband (as well as their sponsor's Jell-O commercials) for 3 years. However, I read that they wanted Denning for I Love Lucy initally and Ball said NO.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Most people can't tell if they're watching a tape or a film, whereas it's immediately obvious to me. But maybe I care about this stuff a little too much.

One thing for sure -- you can hold a film up to the light and see what's on there. I'd like to see someone do that with a tape!

 

[MikeMO]

I always find it interesting, in retrospect, to discover that certain stars who appeared as friends on TV had such disdain/indifference for one another. It's hard to believe that about Lucy and Vivian, though I have also heard about their relationship in the past. That's also interesting about William and Vivian, as well.

So do people here think "I Love Lucy" was the best TV show/sitcom of all time? Obviously it's a very subjective question, but I like to hear people's answers.

I've personally always found it an insult that people claim "Seinfeld" is the best show/sitcom of all time when that program ended a little less than ten years ago. And people were claiming this even five years ago. It seems disrespectful to the MANY great shows that came before it.

But I'm curious what others think.

 

[Gary OS]

I don't know if I can put "I Love Lucy" above either "The Andy Griffith Show" or "The Dick Van Dyke Show", but I can say that all three are better than "Seinfeld." Any discussion of the greatest sitcom of all time must include those three.

Gary "again, it's hard for me to place any one of those three above the other two - I think they were all fantastic and deserve consideration as 'all time best sitcom'" O.

 

[george kaplan]

I love I Love Lucy, but I'd vote The Dick Van Dyke Show as #1.

I don't have a problem with the Seinfeld thing. Seinfeld is great, though I don't put it at #1 (nor above I Love Lucy). But I don't think time is really an issue. I would have felt Dick Van Dyke was #1 in 1967 (if I'd been old enough at the point to have watched the entire run )

 

[Joe Lugoff]

I can say, unequivocally, that "I Love Lucy" is my FAVORITE TV show of all time, and no one can argue me on that!

However, as far as "greatest" goes, I like to organize shows by decades. I'd say the greatest sitcoms of the 1950s were "I Love Lucy" and "The Honeymooners" (including the sketches from "The Jackie Gleason Show.")

The 1960s: "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Andy Griffith Show."

The 1970s: "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "All in the Family." (I've never been a big fan of "M*A*S*H" -- it depresses more than amuses me.)

After the 1970s, I lost interest in television, so I have nothing to say about "Seinfeld."

 

[Jeff#]

Sure Dick Van Dyke and the various Lucy sitcoms were entertaining (The Lucy Show being her most outstanding work), but I don't go along with any of those being "The Best Show of All Time" at all. And the least funny of that bunch was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Yuck!

The best would have to be one that I would be proud to collect on DVD (and which I will be doing very soon), and that honor can only go to an action comedy that spoofed multiple genres within its spoof of the spy genre: GET SMART! Of course...that is the best SITCOM of all time. In this century My Name Is Earl is making me laugh every week.

The best series of all time? The Twilight Zone (Rod Serling original). Of course GUNSMOKE and many other shows can tie with that as well.

 

[PaulP]

Jeff, thanks for that link! What a treasure!

Now, are these aren't all the episodes, right? Some sites say there were 127, and some say 124. And any way to quickly know which ones are on Lucy DVDs?

 

[Jeff#]

No problem, Paul! It's always a pleasure to help with a link. I didn't even get into "old-time" radio shows until the beginning of this year thanks to my subscribing to Sirius Satellite Radio. The download sites I just happened to stumble onto, although I purposely held off on My Favorite Husband for months until I finished the more important ones that later moved to TV (Jack Benny, GUNSMOKE, The Life of Riley, etc).

Lucille Ball is one of the few to change the characters, format, and co-stars although you'll see that Liz Cooper really isn't all the different from all of the Lucy characters she would play on television. And those aren't all of the episodes as you said, but a majority of them. There was one site I more recently ran across in which the person running it must be a big Lucille Ball fan. She has a section listing all of the MFH episodes. It looks there are around 120 and the site owner is missing a number of them....including episodes that were in the link I gave you. Sorry I didn't save the link, but if you do a Google search for mp3+My+Favorite+Husband+radio+free+downloads , you should be able to find it.

 

[Jeff#]

I kind of doubt any My Favorite Husband episodes are on any I Love Lucy or Here's Lucy DVDs. But since I'm not a collector of any of Ms. Ball's work I really can't say for certain, Paul. You can find episodes of Mp3s for sale on both CDs and DVDs. And if they're on DVD's, there may be video appearances too (such as Ball's horrible 1970s remake of "Mame"). Those 103 you can get for free from the 154.ca download website are really not 103 but closer to 90 because there are easily a dozen duplicates (many of which were repeated by CBS during the radio series run).

OTR Cat normally has complete collections of radio shows for sale inexpensively, but they only have 48 of My Favorite Husband. I took a look on their site just now. This is a DVD collection of Lucille Ball's radio, TV, and film work that may interest you although it looks like the TV and film clips are audio-only (songs): www.otrcat.com/lucilleball.htm It also includes her guest appearances on other radio series (Jimmy Durante, and her dramatic roles on Suspense) plus the only episode of I Love Lucy produced for radio, months after the TV show had already started production! Not bad for just $5....

 

[PaulP]

Some episodes are used as bonuses on the I Love Lucy DVDs. I was just thinking if there'd be a quick way to check exactly which have appeared in this way.

By the way, 126 episodes (with the "pilot"), according to this link: http://www.lucylibrary.com/Pages/mfh-guide.1-13.html Now just a matter of time to see which episodes are missing and find them

And interestingly and sadly, the first four episodes on that site you linked to, Jeff, are the same episode. And the files listed under numbers 101, 102, and 103 are duplicates, it appears.

 

[PaulP]

Well, seems there are three additional episodes available here: http://cheezylu.com/audio/mfh/ (#67, #110, #111). And 25 episodes are still missing (#0, #1, #2, #6, #8, #16, #22, #36, #37, #47, #48, #53, #82, #84, #87, #89, #97, #98, #104, #105, #114, #119, #121, #123, #125).

 

[Jeff#]

I noticed that, Paul, but the good news is that it only applies to those first 4 and all 3 of the others that weren't what they should have been are included in that site later in the same listing (which probably were repeat broadcasts originally).

But it doesn't matter, because that CrazyLu site you found appears to be the most complete there is for My Favorite Husband. But how can you be sure that episodes are missing going only by episode # ? Titles are the only way to know. Do you have those? And what is Episode # 0?

The only thing is that it takes much longer to download episodes, as you can only do them one at a time Vs. the "get them all in 3 shots" approach that I used with the Old Time Radio site. I treat this series like any other I listen to. I'll download about 5 to 7 episodes of four different radio series and listen to them while at work and on the road to and from work every day. Then when I finish with them, I delete the folders containing the episodes since I don't save radio shows.

In this case of My Favorite Husband, I went through the entire series in just under a month....so it was easy to locate the very few episodes that were missing from that site you provided. Just from the episode "titles" / descriptions alone, I heard them recently enough to remember which I didn't hear previously. There were only two that the Crazy Lu site has that are new to me, and unfortunately both are Christmas shows from Dec. 16 and 23, 1950. Could it be that "Women's Rights" wasn't the only 2 parter? Well, I'll find out when I listen to these tomorrow.

 

[Michael Alden]

No list of greatest sitcoms would be complete without Bilko and The Odd Couple. Both should be in the Top 10 of any list if not the top 5. As for Seinfeld, I didn't see enough of it to comment but for shows in the last 15 years I would put it behind Married with Children and Murphy Brown.

 

[AlanP]

I may have missed this. A bit, of trivia, Bette Davis was originally slated to appear, in the episode, that Tallulah appeared. And Davis fell and broke her arm or leg and she withdrew, and Tallulah agreed to do the show. And from all accounts, it was a huge disaster with her antics on the set. I had read
at one time that Joan Crawford was scheduled to do an episode as well ??

 

[JohnMor]

Desi actually had to warn Talloo that she was VERY close to being fired if she didn't sober up and start taking it more seriously. And, being the pro she is, she did just that and gave a GREAT performance on show night.

One of my all-time favorite Lucy eps.

 

[ScottR]

There is a rumor on lucyfan.com that these episodes are going to be the cut/syndicated versions and that the full 75 min. premiere episode is cut as well. Does anyone have contradictory news?

 

[Jeff#]

Here's a bit of Lucille Ball trivia I wasn't aware of until just the other day:

I regularly listen to Mp3 downloads I've made of SUSPENSE, a CBS radio anthology series that ran for 20 years beginning in 1942. Since I try to listen to as many as I can at work in chronological order, I've run across at least 4 guest appearances by Ms. Ball, such as an episode called "A Little Piece of Rope". In November 1949 she acted with Desi in an episode called "The Red-Headed Woman". In that one Lucy played a bank robber in Texas who absonds with $40,000. She drives towards the Mexican border and picks up a hitchhiker named Jose Lopez (Desi Arnaz). In true Lucy tradition, a misunderstanding brews as her character thinks Jose is going to kill his girlfriend! Well, I won't tell you how it turns out, but it was one of the dumbest stories that SUSPENSE ever presented. It's interesting to note that the series' original producer and show editor for the first 6 years, William Spier left for a year & 1/2 (just weeks after the switch to a 60 minute format before it went back to 30), and when his replacement Anton (a.k.a. Tony) Leader moved on Spier returned for all of the 1949 to 50 season before he quit again.