Television. One DVD at a Time.

"Hello, friends. I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, run down, and listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle." - Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo in "Lucy Does a TV Commercial"

I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season DVD Review

By Jonathan Boudreaux

Hollywood just didn't know what to do with Lucille Ball. In the early part of her career, Ball found reasonably steady film work, but she lacked the defining role that could propel her to the next level of stardom. In the late 1940s, she ventured into radio with the CBS sitcom My Favorite Husband, where she played Liz Cooper, a sharp yet goofy housewife. The role and the series struck a chord, and Husband became a hit. At the same time, sales of televisions were exploding, and CBS decided to expand its television network's programming by translating radio shows into the new medium.

As a popular success, Husband was a natural choice to make the move to TV, so CBS approached its new star. Ball agreed in principle, but she had one stipulation - she wanted to dump her radio husband, Richard Denning, in favor of casting her real life husband, bandleader Desi Arnaz. CBS scoffed at the idea, deciding that viewers would not believe that all-American Lucy was married to the Cuban bandleader. Ball was adamant, though, as her marriage was troubled, and this would be a last ditch effort to save it. Arnaz was constantly touring, and with Lucy in Hollywood working on her own career, their marriage was on the verge of failing. She hoped that the series would allow them to settle into a happy Hollywood-based domesticity. CBS, however, would not budge.

Ball, an enterprising business woman, decided to prove CBS officials wrong. During her summer vacation from the radio show, she and Arnaz toured the country with a live act created by Husband's writers. The road show was popular and well reviewed, but CBS was still skeptical. They eventually agreed to fund a pilot, but only after Ball and Arnaz began to shop the series to NBC.

Filmed in 1951, the pilot of I Love Lucy held enough promise that CBS decided to pick up the show. To Ball, now pregnant, this was wonderful news. She and Arnaz could now raise their child - together - in their California home. There was just one more hurdle to clear. At the time, there was no way to instantly transmit television images from one side of the country to another. The east, with its heavier concentration of viewers, was the de facto television capital. Almost all shows were performed live in New York, with only crude kinescopes made for later airings in the west. The kinescope process involved using a camera to film a show off of a television monitor as it was performed live. Kinescoped programs were notorious for the poor quality of both their audio and video. Ball had been working under the assumption that the show would be performed live in the west and kinescoped for the east. The east coast ratings for shows that tried this method had always been dismal, and CBS could not afford to risk failure.

Ball was crestfallen - her pregnancy was difficult and she was unwilling to uproot - but she and Arnaz came up with a possible solution. Rather than being broadcast live, the show would be filmed like a movie. Since Ball thrived in front of a studio audience, she recruited her friend Karl Freund (cinematographer of Metropolis and Ball's own DuBarry was a Lady) to devise a new filming technique that could combine filming with live performance. The costs would be massive, but Ball and Arnaz agreed to front the money by taking greatly reduced salaries and retaining ownership of the show.

This move actually changed the course of television history. For the first time, a pristine, high quality filmed record was retained after a show's initial broadcast. This allowed the shows to be rerun, both on the network and in syndication. What at first seemed like a money losing proposition for Ball and Arnaz would eventually make them millionaires, and the system devised by Freund back in 1951 is still the basis for the one used by most sitcoms to this day. (It also helped to solidify I Love Lucy's legacy as a classic, since viewers could watch it for years to come. Other performers of the time, like Milton Berle, have become less relevant over the years because kinescopes of their shows are so poor that they have essentially fallen out of sight).

I Love Lucy followed the adventures of Lucy Ricardo, a smart but wacky redhead married to a mildly successful bandleader, Ricky. Lucy aspires to be in show business, but Ricky wants her to continue being a housewife. On the surface, Lucy agrees, but that doesn't stop her from trying to change Ricky's mind. The Ricardos live in a New York apartment building owned by an older couple, Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance). The two families are close friends, but often divide on gender lines whenever a mutual problem or controversy arises.

The show premiered in the fall of 1951 and rapidly attracted an escalating number of viewers. At the show's height, 71% of all television sets in the United States tuned in each week. At the same time, television sales spiked around the country. Lucy, with its cross-cultural appeal, became a cultural phenomenon, soon eclipsing TV's first star, Milton Berle, whose show attracted mainly east coast city dwellers.

I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season contains all thirty-five first season episodes and the pilot on DVD for the first time. The rarely seen pilot was feared lost for years, until a copy was found in the late 1980s. CBS broadcast it for the first time in 1990. The pilot features Ball and Arnaz as Lucy and Larry Lopez. As in the series that would follow, Ball plays a housewife who constantly schemes to get into showbiz like her bandleader husband. Beyond the basic premise, the pilot bears little resemblance to the series it would spawn. It is essentially the stage show that Ball and Arnaz toured around the country captured on film - complete with too-lengthy musical numbers, broad acting, and embarrassingly flimsy sets. It is more vaudeville than television. This vaudeville feel is furthered by the fact that the characters of Fred and Ethel had not yet been conceived, so Lucy and Desi's home life feels underdeveloped. The pilot is an incredible artifact that all fans will want to watch, if only to see how horrible the series could have turned out.

Incidentally, the plot of the pilot episode was recycled for I Love Lucy's sixth episode, "The Audition," presented on disc two. Much of the musical numbers have been jettisoned, and Fred has been added, but Ethel's absence makes this episode feel a little odd.

The first regular episode to be filmed was actually the fourth to be aired: disc two's "Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her." The writers (and the performers) had yet to hit their stride, so it was probably a good idea to hold this one back. Lucy's demonstration of how a moving target is harder to hit is extraordinarily funny, but the episode lacks the polish of those to come.

Season one contains several classic episodes, including "The Diet," in which Lucy starves herself to fit into a costume for Ricky's show, "The Séance," in which she pretends to communicate with the dead, and "The Freezer," in which Lucy and Ethel's scheme to buy a commercial sized freezer goes horribly awry.

Ball's gift for broad physical comedy shines in many of these episodes, but one highlight is "The Ballet." When Ricky announces that he is having trouble filling two slots in his show, one for a ballet dancer and one for a burlesque performer, Lucy proclaims that since she took ballet lessons for four years in high school, she would be perfect for the show. Ricky is skeptical, but agrees that she should audition for the choreographer, Madame LaMonde (played by Sister Act's Mary Wickes). In an outrageously funny scene, Ball proves herself to be a graceful klutz, infusing Lucy's struggle to duplicate the dancers' moves with an awkward beauty that is closer to wounded gazelle than Bolshoi Ballet. The fun doesn't end there - soon she teams up with a burlesque comic (Frank Scannell) to learn the classic "Slowly I turned." routine. This chestnut was ancient when it appeared on Lucy, but the performers sell it so well and so much time has passed that it seems fresh and vibrant to modern audiences. Lucy does get to appear in Ricky's show, but thanks to a little mix-up, she combines the ballet and the burlesque with hilarious results.

Here's an endearing moment to listen for in "The Ballet" - as the "Slowly I turned." sequence builds and builds, listen for Arnaz's seal bark of a laugh as he watches Ball's antics from off-camera.

Another audience favorite is "Lucy Does a TV Commercial," more commonly referred to as "Vitameatavegamin." Lucy actually lands a role in a commercial for a health product. Unknown to her, the elixir contains a healthy dose of alcohol, and after a few rehearsals, she is smashed. The look of mounting revulsion on Lucy's face as she takes a teaspoon of the stuff for the first time is priceless. We can practically track the noxious substance as it oozes down her throat. This is a masterful bit of physical comedy.

Ball made the show - both literally and figuratively. But while she becme a powerful Hollywood producer, audiences were not ready to watch a female TV character in control of her own destiny. Because of this, no matter how smart or successful her scheme, Lucy always lost, ceding power to her husband. Even when she won, she lost. In "The Audition" and the pilot, Lucy's act makes a better impression than Ricky's with the sponsors, but she has to turn down their offer of a television show. Here she has achieved her ultimate goal - a goal she will stubbornly continue to pursue throughout the season - and yet she turns away. She constantly reaches for something more, but is always put back in her place. Lucy may not be the most liberated show, but it is still incredibly funny.

I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season's biggest flaw stems from the fact that it was initially released over a period of time in stand-alone volumes of four episodes apiece. Rather than reconfiguring the number of episodes on each disc, or making the packaging more attractive, the set simply collects all nine volumes in their individual keepcases and houses them into a cardboard sleeve. This means that a lot of real estate on your DVD shelf will be taken up by I Love Lucy. To put this problem in perspective as it relates to another best-selling series, this single season of I Love Lucy takes up more room than the first four seasons of Friends boxed sets put together. That's nine discs of I Love Lucy compared to sixteen discs of Friends, yet Friends takes up less shelf space. Granted, other boxed sets (like The Complete Are You Being Served? Collection: Series 1-5) utilize this same system, but it just feels like Lucy deserves better. Plus each Friends set packs twenty-two episodes onto four discs while I Love Lucy's thirty-five episodes take up a leisurely nine discs. Even with the pilot episode and the radio shows factored in, the number of discs probably could have been reduced.

[Editor's Note: On June 7, 2005 Paramount released a repacked version of I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season. This rerelease reduces the disc count to seven and employs the same classy packaging used for seasons two and beyond. Click here for specific information from Amazon.]

Video and Audio

Stunning. That sums it up. These fifty year old episodes look and sound better than many modern shows. The black and white cinematography by the legendary Carl Freund looks gorgeous in these remastered episodes. The blacks are solid and sharp. In almost any given episode, notice the beautifully rendered difference between the deep matte finish of the body of Desi's tux and the satiny sheen of the lapels. In "Breaking the Lease," the subtle variations in Lucy's iridescent black, diamond-patterned dress are also impressive. There are remarkably few instances of dust or other blemishes in the film. Compare the video with the un-restored footage included as extra footage to see what an amazing job those responsible for the restoration have done.

The sound, too, is great.

It should be noted that the above only applies to the thirty-five regular episodes. The pilot is in worse shape, both visually and aurally. This is because the pilot is actually a kinescope - a process that involved pointing a camera at a television monitor and filming from that monitor while the show was fed into it. This inferior method of filming - imagine videotaping an episode of Will & Grace by pointing a video camera at your television - was dumped in favor of movie-style filming once the series began. As far as kinescopes go, the I Love Lucy pilot is in good shape - everything can be clearly seen and heard.

A Spanish language track is also included. Select episodes are also closed captioned.

Extras

I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season contains a plethora of extras. Admittedly, some of them are more exciting than others, but they serve as an excellent supplement to this classic series.

Each disc presents "Flubs" from the episodes included on the discs. These are not "bloopers" in the classic sense - unused footage of on set foul-ups. Instead, "Flubs" points out mistakes that exist in the episodes that may have gone unnoticed by viewers. To keep things spontaneous (and, no doubt, to save money), scenes were rarely re-shot, even if something went wrong. The "Flubs" menus point out these inconsistencies and allow viewers to see clips of the mistakes. These are fascinating bits of trivia, especially in light of the fact that some major mistakes should be totally obvious to viewers but instead are overlooked until pointed out. In "Breaking the Lease," for example, Fred and Ethel leave the Ricardos' apartment to head back to their own. Once they enter the hall, however, Ethel turns left and Fred turns right. Fred was going to sleep on the fire escape, perhaps?

Each disc details the "Guest Cast" of individual episodes, offering up short biographical sketches and a list of repeat I Love Lucy appearances.

All of the discs contain the "Original Opening." The familiar "heart on satin" credits were not added until the show went into syndication. As keeping with the custom of early television, at the time of broadcast the opening credits prominently featured the product of the show's main sponsor. In this case, animated versions of Lucy and Desi scale a giant pack of Phillip Morris cigarettes. The DVD retains the heart on satin opening for the individual episodes while offering the original on the bonus menu. (Luckily sponsors do not play as big a role in television shows of today. Imagine how disconcerting it would be to see the cast of NYPD Blue cavorting around a giant bottle of ketchup).

When Lucy made the move to television, she brought her My Favorite Husband radio show team of creator/producer Jess Oppenheimer and writers Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll with her. Many classic I Love Lucy episodes were loosely based on scripts from Husband. Each disc contains at least one (and as many as three) of the radio shows paired with the television episode that it inspired. These are a terrific addition, exposing modern audiences to a phase of Lucy's career that most of us are familiar with only through written histories. The sound quality is understandably inconsistent, but most sound remarkably good. There is really only one problem with these radio broadcasts as extras - radio, of course, is an aural medium, while television is visual. While listening to the programs, a static screen image slowly burns it way into your television screen. It is too bad that a creative visual solution could not have been found. Instead, solve the problem yourself - turn off your television, allow the radio shows to waft from your speakers, and pretend that you are listening to your radio circa 1950.

With the exception of disc four, each disc contains "Special Footage," some of which has not been seen since the show's original broadcast. When Lucy needed to take time off for the birth of Desi, Jr. in the show's second season, CBS decided to take advantage of the fact that the series was filmed by rerunning episodes from the first season. In order to give these rebroadcasts a patina of newness, the cast filmed reminisces about the events of the events that took place in the episode about to be re aired. Afterwards, these "remember the time when." sequences were cut and never shown again. Discs one, two, and five contain a total of four such scenes. The writing of these sequences is often stilted, and the quality of the unrestored film pales in comparisons to the episodes themselves, but it is nice that they are included here. When the show entered syndication, musical cues were often cut or shortened in order to fit in more commercials. Discs one, two, three, seven, and nine present before and after examples of these cuts which have now been restored. Phillip Morris cigarettes were often worked into scenes and dialogue since the company sponsored the show. Many of the more explicit references were cut from the episodes once they went into syndication. Discs two, three, five, eight, and nine present before and after examples of the cuts. Disc three features a holiday greetings "Christmas Tag" that ran after "Drafted" when it was originally broadcast on December 24, 1951. Disc three also contains a restored kiss scene from "Lucy is Jealous of Girl Singer" that was shortened after its initial broadcast because it was deemed too racy. Disc five contains restored footage that was cut from "Lucy Fakes Illness" when the show ran too long in syndication. Discs five and six include the animated sequences that led to commercials in the original CBS run. Disc nine features an "End of Season" tag that has not been seen since it was initially run. Some of the "Special Footage" is a little more special than others, but all of it attests to the time and energy that has been put into making the episodes presented here as complete as they could possibly be.

Several discs include "Behind the Scenes" features. Disc one presents an eighteen minute audio excerpt from Jess Oppenheimer's book Laughs, Luck, and Lucy. Read by actor Larry Dobkin (who appeared in several Lucy episodes), this excerpt details the development of the pilot episode and the I Love Lucy series. Dobkin's reading has the folksy, homespun appeal of a grandpa telling stories on a porch swing - an odd choice, perhaps, but effective nevertheless. The information presented here is informative and engrossing, but, like the radio shows, it slightly suffers from being an audio only feature. Disc two features a ten image photo gallery from the filming of the series' first episode, "Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her." Disc four ventures behind the scenes of the pilot. An image of the original written show proposal slowly scrolls down the screen while Dobkin reads it in voiceover. Afterward, seven photos from the pilot rehearsal form a slideshow while dialogue from the show is used as voiceover. While it is odd that this is not found on disc one with the actual pilot, it is a welcome addition. Disc eight contains another audio excerpt from Oppenheimer's book. This nineteen minute sequence deals with Lucy's pregnancy before segueing into a wonderfully vivid exploration of the writing process behind "The Freezer" and the filming of "Lucy Does a TV Commercial." This is a must for Lucy fans, and is especially effective because clips from the radio show and television series are integrated with Dobkin's narrative. Disc nine goes behind the scenes of the first season with a gallery of thirteen photos.

Volumes five, six, and seven include "Production Notes," a series of four, five, and eight screens of trivia and behind the scenes information on the series and individual episodes.

Summary

I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season is why DVD was invented - its producers took an already classic series, spruced it up so that it looks better than ever before, and provided extras that allow viewers to better understand how the series was developed. The bulky packaging and stingy episode-to-disc ratio make this set a flawed masterpiece. Then again, the Mona Lisa in a cheap cardboard frame would be no less a wonder to behold. The quality of the series itself - its writing, its performances, and, in this set, its lushly remastered visuals - more than makes up for the packaging snafus. The fascinating extras are the icing on the cake.

These DVDs belong in your collection. Period.

10/4/03