TV Guide
"The Lucy Show" (Review)
1963
Last Updated: August 14, 1997
Formatted by: Ted Nesi
Scanned and Provided by: Garth Arrik Jensen
How hard it is to be a beautiful woman I can only guess from certain
commercials. From my own observation I know that to be a beautiful woman
and, at the same time, a great slapstick comedian is one of the rarest
things in the world. A generation and more ago, Mabel Normand made it,
and later Carole Lombard. Since then the incomparable practitioner of
this double art has been Lucille Ball. I say this although I remember
perfectly well that I denounced I Love Lucy using such moderate words as
"the worst program of the year." I was angry because that program used
only about one-fifth of Miss Ball's armory of talents. More of them are
visible in The Lucy Show.
It is commonly, and properly, held that the great ones of
knockabout comedy have to know how to be loud and broad. Yet among the
things I remember best in the wild and funny antics of Lucille Ball are
tiny moments of absolute quiet. One was in a movie: Lucille, as a move
star going downhill, was guest at a college dance, and as the young man
was escorting her up the steps of the gym he said something like "even
at your age." How Miss Ball managed in a long shot, with her back to us,
to let us know she nearly died, I'll never know. But after some 20 years
I remember it.
And on TV a few weeks ago she and Vivian Vance spent New Year's Eve
at a restaurant with their sons as escorts. There was a lot of noise and
fun. There was also a moment when the younger boy, looking a full seven
years of age, got up to dance with Lucy and came around to hold her
chair for her before she got up. For one-tenth of a second she changed
her position - and all the grace of a lovely woman and all the
tenderness of a mother who respects her child were in that fraction of
time.
This was the show on which Miss Ball did her imitation of Charlie
Chaplin - the imitation was broad, but it referred us back to the
delicate art of the original. All this, however, comes more easily to
Chaplin. He isn't, he'd be the first to admit, a beautiful woman.
The show itself is a variable. You may see Lucy singing lullabies
to a sheep or find Lucy and Vivian almost going to law because Vivian
hurt her ankle at Lucy's house and insists on 24-hour attendance or
she'll sue. No one can move faster and funnier than Lucy picking up a
portable typewriter, a tray full of lunch, a newspaper, some knitting
and other assorted objects to the patient. No one can plot to outwit the
enemy more keenly. (A mouse scares Vivian to her feet and all is
forgiven.) The best of the lot so far was the New Year's Eve one because
it rose from a simple source: The daughter, giving her first
boy-and-girl party, doesn't want mother at home. The party is a dud
until Lucy does her Chaplin routine (the children thought Chaplin was "a
Stone Age Soupy Sales").
At times, you have to wait between the great moments. But it isn't
hard. After all, you can always look at Lucille.
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