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“I Love Lucy” Friday: When Tallulah Bankhead moved next door to the Ricardos
This is one of the only one-hour I Love Lucy episodes that I truly love. After six seasons of half-hour shows, it transitioned to 3-4 one-hour episodes per year for its final three seasons.
They all featured big guest stars like Milton Berle, Danny Thomas, Ernie Kovaks and they, for the most part, lacked the heart and chemistry of the earlier shows. The increasingly trouble marriage of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz contributed to this, no doubt. They were divorcing by the time the final episode aired in 1960.
But this episode, A Movie Star Next Door, is terrific. It featured the great Tallulah Bankhead who was in great form, just funny as can be. She and Lucy are magical together as they from being friendly to outright war on each other. It was also great because Fred and Ethel (William Frawley and Vivian Vance) were featured heavily which was not the case in some of the other one-hour episodes – much to their detriment.
So enjoy the first half of of the episode which includes the neighbors meeting and a disastrous dinner party where Fred and Ethel pose as the hired help. I just love when Ethel tries to serve Miss Bankhead the fried chicken.
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Mark says:
Unquestionably the best of the hour shows, most of which had a good bit or two but otherwise fell horribly flat. There’s a reason for that, too: the Tallulah episode was the only one of the hour-long shows shot in front of a live audience. One of the first things Desi insisted upon when “I Love Lucy” was in the planning stages was that the show be performed before an audience, because he knew how vital it was to his wife’s performances. He was right.