Clip of the Day: William Frawley on The Lucy Show

101 years ago today, Lucille Ball was introduced to the world.  And that means it was just 1 year ago that we attended Lucy Fest 2011 for Lucy's 100th Birthday!  So in honor of Lucy's birthday, we thought we'd post a very special Clip of the Day!

After I Love Lucy ended, Lucy had another successful show on TV called The Lucy Show.  For the first 3 seasons, Lucy starred with Vivian Vance (who played Ethel on I Love Lucy) as two single mothers living together as roommates and raising their children together.  After season 3 ended, Vivian Vance left the show due to a scheduling conflict, and Lucy continued on for 3 additional seasons without her (starring alongside her always hilarious rival Mr. Mooney, played by Gale Gordon, who was introduced in season 2).

On I Love Lucy, Vivian Vance of course starred opposite William Frawley, who played her curmudgeon husband Fred.  While they played a married couple on the show, the two hated each other in real life, and after the show ended, they never spoke to each other again.  So naturally, Vivian Vance would never agree to Frawley appearing on The Lucy Show while she was there.  But, once she was out of the picture in season 4, Lucy had William Frawley make a little cameo on The Lucy Show, which turned out to be his last on-screen appearance before his death the following year.  

Ever since we finished watching the complete series I Love Lucy on DVD last year, we've been watching The Lucy Show on and off when we don't have anything else to watch.  And as it turned out, we happened to watch William Frawley's appearance on episode 6 of season 4 today, on what would have been Lucy's 101st birthday!  

So I know it's a very long and rambling introduction, but here is today's Clip of the Day, William Frawley's cameo on The Lucy Show!  Happy Birthday Lucy!

We Love Lucy - Part 2

As I described in the "We Love Lucy - Part 1" post, we became obsessed with watching I Love Lucy.  This was last summer (2011), we were just about done watching all the episodes, and I was looking for somewhere Lucy-related we could go for fun.  I thought perhaps there would be a Lucy Museum in New York City or something (we live in North Jersey, very close to New York City).  It turns out that there was a  Lucy Museum in New York, but not New York, New York.  It was in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York, a good 7 hour drive from where we live.  Furthermore, not only did this town have a Lucy Museum (entitled the Lucy Desi Center), but every summer they have an annual "Lucy Fest" where they celebrate all things Lucy!  And not only that, but this particular year, Lucy Fest occurred over what would have been Lucy's 100th birthday!  This was too good to be true!  So we decided to go on a little road trip and spend a long weekend in Jamestown for Lucy Fest!

We got there Friday night just in time for the big parade.  Marching bands and flag twirlers from all over the country marched along with Lucy-themed floats, as hundreds of Lucy fans lined the streets to watch!

The next morning we went on a tour of Jamestown, and saw Lucy's house, Lucy's high school, and even Lucy's grave.

We also got a great overview of the town of Jamestown, which as the proud birthplace of Lucille Ball, has huge Lucy murals painted on various buildings throughout the city.

We then went to the Lucy Desi Museum, which had lots of Lucy and Desi related artifacts, such as the saxophone that Lucy often played in I Love Lucy and one of Lucy's Emmys!

After that, we visited the Desilu Playhouse, which had replica sets from I Love Lucy!

We then went to a staging of My Favorite Husband, Lucy's radio show before I Love Lucy, which was hosted by Greg Oppenheimer, son of I Love Lucy creator and head writer Jess Oppenheimer.

For dinner, we attended a dinner show in a replica Tropicana Club (the night club where Ricky would perform on I Love Lucy).  The show featured Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel imitators who sang all of the memorable songs that were sung on I Love Lucy.  And for dinner, Ricky's favorite dish: Arroz con pollo (chicken with rice)!

After dinner, we attended an outdoor screening of the film Stone Pillow, a drama that starred Lucy as a homeless woman living in the streets.  While this certainly wasn't the hilarious Lucy that we usually think of, it was interesting to see that she wasn't just a silly comedian, but also a very talented actress.  It was the last film Lucy ever made before she died.

The next morning we went on a boat cruise in a nearby lake and got to meet Joe Mayer, one of the twins who played Little Ricky as a toddler on I Love Lucy!

And after that, we headed home.  We really had a wonderful time in Jamestown and really enjoyed Lucy Fest!  If anyone's interested, they just announced Lucy Fest 2012!

But now that we've finished watching every episode of I Love Lucy,  and being more obsessed with Lucy than ever before, we had nothing to watch!  WE NEEDED MORE LUCY...

(Coming soon, We Love Lucy - Part 3!)

We Love Lucy - Part 1

Years ago, back in my childhood, I still liked TV.  But of course, since I was a child, I mainly watched children's television on the only network for kids - Nickelodeon.  And as the day got later and the kids shows ended, Nickelodeon transitioned into Nick at Nite, the place for TV hits.  While nowadays Nick at Nite airs shows that have only been off the air for a few years like George Lopez and My Wife and Kids, back in the 90's, Nick at Nite aired real classic television from the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  And while I enjoyed the other classic shows like The Munsters, Beverly Hillbillies, and Bewitched, my absolute favorite was I Love Lucy.  I was obsessed with this 1950's black and white show, to the extent that I had an I Love Lucy Board Game, I Love Lucy Monopoly, 2 I Love Lucy posters in my basement, and some I Love Lucy VHS tapes (back in the day when TV Shows on home media was rare).


And as it turned out, years before we ever met, Anna was a big I Love Lucy fan too.  We bonded over our love of the show (amongst other things) and for Anna's birthday in college, I got her the first season of I Love Lucy on DVD.  We'd watch it on occasion in college, and it was fun.  But being as we were in college, we were busy with schoolwork and other things, so we didn't fully get into it.

We stopped watching for a while, and didn't pick it up until a few years later, when we were bored, looking for something to watch, and decided to continue with I Love Lucy where we left off.  And similar to our experience with How I Met Your Mother, we got hooked.  We'd come home after work, and just pop in some I Love Lucy and just watch all night.  After we finished the first season, we decided to just go all out and by the complete series DVD set.  This set had it all: All 6 seasons of I Love Lucy, the 3 seasons the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour specials, and tons of special features such as the long lost I Love Lucy Movie, a colorized episode, and much more.  It took us about a year or so, but we finally finished watching it, and we truly had a great time.

Although we were hooked on I Love Lucy, it was very different to our addiction to How I Met Your Mother.  With HIMYM, we were mainly driven by the plot of the episodes, and we couldn't wait to see what would happen next and how all of the little details would fit together.  With I Love Lucy, there really wasn't much of an overlying plot.  While there was a little bit of continuity through the episodes (for some episodes they went to California, for some they were traveling through Europe, eventually they moved to the country), you could pretty much watch each episode on its own, and still fully understand what was happening.  What was fun about watching I Love Lucy, is that it we had already seen most of these episodes as children before, so they had a lot of nostalgia.  There were some episodes that were so classic that we looked forward to them, such as the classic Chocolate Factory episode:

And then there would be other episodes, that we forgot about at first, but then as we were watching, it would all come back to us, like this one (Ricky rehearses the song straight first with the professional singer, then at 2:19, Lucy takes over :

And still, there were other episodes that we had either never seen before, or had completely forgotten about, and it was a thrill to watch them for the first time.  But while we may have finished watching all the episodes of I Love Lucy, our Lucy obsession was far from over...

(Coming soon, We Love Lucy - Part 2)