"[T]he Lucy we see in Stone Pillow is a cranky bag lady, fiercely independent and violently resistant to do-gooders who try to alter her homeless status. Daphne Zuniga plays an idealistic social worker who tries to get Ball off the streets. It is only after watching several of her fellow indigents die where they sleep that Ball agrees to give up her 'stone pillow.'" [Hal Erickson] 

RUNNING TIME
    100m's

AIR DATE
    November 5, 1985

STUDIOS
    Gaylord Productions
    Schaefer-Karpf Productions

NETWORK
    CBS

COLOR/B&W
    Color

DIRECTOR
    George Schaefer

WRITER
    Rose Leiman Goldemberg

CINEMATOGRAPHER
    Walter Lassally

MUSIC
    Georges Delerue 

The Wisconsin State Journal TV-Week had Lucy (as Florabelle) on their cover for the November 3-9, 1985 issue.

Stone Pillow was originally supposed to be shot during the winter of 1984/85, in New York City.  Production was delayed, however, after writer Rose Leiman Goldemberg's daughter was killed.  The company couldn't begin shooting due to unfinished work on the script.  The film finally began production in May 1985 -- during a sweltering heat wave.  Lucy lost 23 pounds during production.  She was loaded down with heavy, winter clothing, and had to be hospitalized for dehydreation upon her return to the west coast.  Lucy didn't complain, though: "You just keep going.  You get in there and get it over with.  There's a whole company around, and they're suffering, too.  So you just shut up and do it."  Lucy's health was never the same after the film, though.

Stone Pillow was the second-highest-rated TV-movie of the 1985-86 television season.  The film received mixed reviews -- as did Lucy's performance, with some sighting a weak/sentimental script as one of the film's detractions.

The high ratings garnered by Stone Pillow led ABC to sign Lucy for a series comeback.  Life with Lucy bombed, and was cancelled after only eight episodes aired early in the 1986-87 season.

Although one of Lucy's most requested films, Stone Pillow has never been released on video.  In recent years it has, however, aired on Lifetime. 

"If you were one of those people who loved Lucy in the '50s and in reruns in the '60s and '70s, you may at least take comfort in the fact that you won't loathe her as Florabelle. At times, as when she awakes and pops out of her trash bag, looks out on the New York City streets and says, 'Well, I'm still here,' she looks as if she's even going to make something of her character.

"But it isn't to be. Ball doesn't embarrass herself, but neither does she in any way distinguish herself or find dignified or noteworthy in Florabelle. Which isn't entirely her fault

"Director George Schaefer and scriptwriter Rose Leiman Goldemberg ('The Burning Bed') have molded a thoroughly predictable, cliche-ridden, low-risk and unbelievable account of the homeless. (When's the last time you saw a stranger go up to a bag lady and ask, 'Need some change, grandma?' Or a certified public accountant who goes out at night to help the homeless like a combination of Zorro and the Miracle Worker?)

"The story concerns a naive social worker (Daphne 'Sure Thing' Zaniga) who's told by her superiors to learn about the homeless. Pretending she's homeless herself, she adopts Florabelle as her mentor and you can write the weepy, wimpy script from there. See Florabelle eat a raw egg, see Florabelle drink from a garden hose, see Florabelle scrounging for food in a garbage can, see Florabelle say, 'I has to go bathroom' and get her shopping cart stolen by a rival bagger. And along the way hear nonstop maudlinisms. 'You see, kid, you're in a jungle. It's like a bad dream, but you don't wake up.' Spare us. And spare the real bag ladies of the country, victims of deinstitutionalization and budget cuts. Florabelle has as much in common with them as Rambo with Vietnam veterans. She is a Hollywood vision of what a bag lady should be - wise, loving, independent and ditsy but dignified. Of course, Stone Pillow isn't interested in showcasing the plight of the homeless, but the talents of Lucille Ball. The problem is she doesn't have many left. She is no Lily Tomlin, whose bag lady, Trudy, is neither sanitized nor romanticized. For all the humor in Trudy's character, we take her seriously. For all the seriousness in Florabelle's character, it is impossible to take her seriously.

"Ball belongs to a long line of American actors who spend their days as leading men and women developing one persona, playing one character. When Bette Davis can no longer play a bitch goddess or Robert Mitchum a menacing macho man, all that's left for them is to become caricatures of themselves. And that, unfortunately, is the fate for Lucille Ball. Whether it's her fault or that of the director and writer, Stone Pillow isn't willing to take the risks with Ball that, say, True Grit took with John Wayne.

"They can dress her in rags, apply fright-mask makeup, do everything to take the girl out of comedy, but they can't take Lucy Ricardo out of Lucille Ball.

"If Ricky had thrown Lucy out of the house, sometime in the '60s, she might well have become Florabelle. When Florabelle stumbles over a pack of rats and wails in disgust, it elicits the same response as Lucy's wailing after being splattered by a pie - laughter.

"At a recent press conference, Ball said she gave up on television comedy because it was all filth - 'sex, sex, sex.' But there aren't many situation comedies as obscene as a television-movie that would exploit the plight of the homeless for the sake of the ratings envisioned from resurrecting a faded comedian's career." [Ed Seigel, Boston Globe]

"'Lucy Plays a Bag Lady' might have been the title for an episode of 'I Love Lucy' in which Lucy Ricardo donned one of her toothy crone get-ups as a way of getting even with husband Ricky. Actually, though, it conveys the essence of the CBS Tuesday Night Movie, Stone Pillow, which airs at 9 on Channel 9.  Following somewhat in the footsteps of Bette Davis and the Apple Annie character she played in the movie A Pocketful of Miracles, Ball dowdied herself up and hit the streets of New York for this film, a disappointment to be sure, but one not quite so laggardly as Izzy and Moe, the movie that reunited two other '50s TV stars, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, on CBS in September.

"What Ball does with the character of Flora the bag lady qualifies more as an appearance than an actual performance, but one must admit it is warming to turn on a TV set and have her appear there again. Too bad the film is such a standard TV-movie problem drama. It's so ploddingly generic that writer Rose Leiman Goldemberg might as well have titled it Bag Lady Script. The director, however, is the venerable and esteemed George Schaefer, another survivor of TV's golden age who, like Lucy, is still working. He does as much as possible to disguise a pitiful lack of invention.

"Flora the bag lady does not seem particularly typical, and thus may not make a very good symbol for 'the homeless,' the topical social issue to which the film sympathetically attaches itself. There is a passing reference to a victim of deinstitutionalization, a mental patient who is out on the streets and helpless, but Flora is quite lucid and resourceful, and she has even found a way to get fresh vegetables to eat. She also knows her way around a bus station ladies' room.

"According to the storyline, she teaches her rules of survival to a young social worker (Daphne Zuniga) who is just out of college and unaware of the crueler facts of urban life. As in just about every TV movie and series now in production, this one includes an attempted rape--in this case, one that further alerts the young woman to life's treacheries and has nothing whatsoever to do with the story at hand.
"During the Great Depression, another social worker lectures at one point, 'strong men jumped out of windows to avoid what that old lady faces every day.' Unfortunately, that old lady's life is not dramatized in ways that pique one's conscience--nor even, indeed, that really provoke one's interest. If the character were not played by Lucille Ball, we'd probably react the way passers-by, it is noted, react to real bag ladies on the street: We look, we see, and we hurry on our way." [Tom Shales, Washington Post]