The Lucy & Desi Comedy Hour 2: Celebrity Next Door

Buy This Item The Lucy & Desi Comedy Hour 2: Celebrity Next Door by 20th Century Fox  Available from Amazon  $9.98  on 9-20-2008     Originally written for Bette Davis, "The Celebrity Next Door" is infamous for Lucy and Desi's encounter with Tallulah Bankhead OFF screen, but it is also a very funny hour of television comedy. The story has the temperamental actress moving in next door to the Ricardos, so Lucy and Ethel begin spying on her through binoculars. When Tallulah comes over to use the phone, Lucy embarrasses herself and ends up inviting the star to a disastrous dinner where Fred and Ethel pretend to be the butler and maid. Things then get progressively worse, and funnier: Lucy accidentally sprays paint all over Tallulah who then gets Lucy to sit in a painted chair as the war escalates.<p>"The Celebrity Next Door" is far and way the funniest of the five Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show specials that constitute the seventh season of the "I Love Lucy" format. The episode is rather infamous because Tallulah Bankhead spent the week either drunk or acting up (or both) throughout rehearsals, terrifying Lucy and Desi, who babied their guest star the entire week and then were stunned when the actress was letter perfect during the taping. Apparently, Bankhead usually did this when she was up against another major actress as she was with the Queen of Comedy. Actually, the funniest woman in this show ended up being Vivian Vance, who steals her scenes as "Ethel Mae" the Ricardos' maid. Reader Reviews The original plan was for Bette Davis to play the lead in this episode, but it is hard to imagine anyone doing a better job than Tallulah Bankhead did in creating such a wonderful comedy which was by far the best of all the Lucy-Desi series. She kept the cast of the series on edge by pretending to be drunk in the rehearsals, but in the final take, all her lines came off like clockwork, which explains the tension that is rather evident among the cast members in the episode. The episode opens with Lucy and Ethel spying on a new neighbor moving in, whom they suspect is a "lady junk dealer" because of the old furniture she has. Thus enters Tallulah Bankhead into the picture, already with Lucy on the wrong foot. The only way she can make things up is by hosting her for dinner, and so she does, with Ethel and Fred posing as maid and butler. The meal turns out to be a disaster, but the comic scene at the table with Ethel reminiscing over Tallulah's acting career steals the show. The school play that ends the episode is, of course, hilarious and contains some classic Lucy slapstick to make it complete. It is regrettable that the episodes in the Lucy-Desi series are not yet available on DVD. When they will be available, I will be one of the first to add them to my collection.

The Lucy & Desi Comedy Hour 2: Celebrity Next Door Available from Amazon Price: $9.98 Updated on 9-20-2008.

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