“I Love Lucy” Friday: In celebration of the show’s 60th anniversary, here is the show’s rarely-seen movie

LUCYPALOOZA: Happy I Love Lucy Friday everyone!

I’ve written about I Love Lucy: The Movie in the past but didn’t realize until recently that I had never seen it!

hen Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were riding high in 1953 as the stars of I Love Lucy, they decided to capitalize on their show’s popularity by signing to do the movie The Long, Long Trailer.

What is not widely known is that the release of the movie in 1954 about a couple on a rocky honeymoon meant pulling the plug on I Love Lucy: The Movie, a feature film version of their sitcom that had already been completed.

MGM, the studio releasing Trailer, balked because they felt that having the “Lucy” movie in theaters would interfere with the film’s marketing.

I Love Lucy: The Movie had a successful test screening in Bakersfield before it was shelved, then lost for many years, before being located in a CBS vault by Dann Cahn, one of the handful of people who had been looking for it.

The movie was actually three episodes of the sitcom, The Ballet, The Benefit and Breaking the Lease, which were linked together with 12 minutes of specially shot footage featuring Ball, Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley — who made up the classic quartet of Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel.

The movie was a behind-the-scenes look at I Love Lucy, which began with two audience members waiting in line for the show and then shows Arnaz warming up the studio audience and introducing the cast.

I present it to you today in its entirety. Enjoy!