The Essential Lucy

I found this article on the 16 essential I Love Lucy episodes. I'm not sure exactly what the author meant by essential: is it just the favorites? I agreed with five of the 16 selected. I went through a list of the episodes and came up with 19 favs. 

If I narrow it down to 16, here's my list.

Season One

Lucy Does a TV Commercial

Lucy's Schedule

Season Two

Job Switching

Season Three

Lucy Writes A Novel

The Diner

Season Four

Business Manager

Ethel's Birthday

Ethel's Hometown

Hollywood At Last (my all-time favorite)

The Star Upstairs

Season Five 

Lucy Visits Graumann's

Great Train Robbery

Staten Island Ferry

Lucy's Italian Movie

Return Home from Europe

Season Six

Building A Barbecue

Happy Birthday Lucy!

One day late.

Lucille Ball would have been 100 years old yesterday. TCM named her star of the day. Hallmark ran a marthon of I Love Lucy episodes focusing on California, Europe and Connecticut.

I'm much more interested in I Love Lucy than Ball's movie career. The California episodes make up my favorite story line. LA at Last, with William Holden is my favorite episode. I missed some of my other favorite Hollywood shows with John Wayne and Richard Widmark. But I did catch the cheese episode, my favorite of the Europe story line, when Lucy tries to disguise 25 pounds of cheese as a baby on a transcontinental flight.

The Connecticut episodes never particularly appealed to me, but I love the barbecue episode. This morning I rediscovered the episode in which Lucy, Fred and Ethel pretend to be gangsters to get the Ricardos out of their purchase of the Connecticut house. It was awesome.

Lucy was a comedic genius. Desi also had his moments as a performer and was a great producer.

Happy Birthday Lucy.

Real Gone With The Wind: Lucy Writes A Novel

Hallmark Channel is running a I Love Lucy marathon including one of my favorites, Lucy Writes A Novel.

I live in fear that I will share Lucy's fate: excerpts from my novel included in a textbook about how to write a novel--heading up the chapter entitled "Don't Let This Happen To You."