DVDS
| I love Lucy |
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| DVDs - Television | ||||||||||
Boxed DVD SetsIn the 1950's the upbeat, energetic comedy, "I Love Lucy" was a show we just couldn't get enough of. Scatterbrained and scheming, charming, and child-like, Lucy was America's favorite red-head. As soon as the camera settled on her, you were ready to laugh. The show was much-loved not only because Lucy was so irrepressible when she got herself into scrapes, but because she was such a physical comic genius. Her intentionally lame disguises and purposely-unconvincing impersonations convinced us of her gift for melodrama, developed out of her experience on radio. Over-the-top acting such as resorting to loud, long wailing and "full-body" pouting, when everything else failed, was her hallmark. Lucy's "scary" phrase, "I have an idea!" always made the other characters wince. Sometimes all she had to do was to give that wide-eyed look, raise her eyebrows, then shift her glance slowly sideways for us to know an ill-fated plan was hatching. The show portrayed two middle-class couples, the newly-married Lucy and Desi and the long-married Fred and Ethel. We watched Lucy scheme her way through domestic crises or chase notoriety while enlisting the reluctant aid of her best friend and landlady, Ethel. The vivacious Lucy was never content just running a household. There was an exciting world out there that she desperately wanted to be a part of. She was convinced she could do that by breaking into show business, mainly via her band leader husband. Of course, she had no talent, but he could never quite convince her of that fact. Desi spent much of his efforts cleaning up the messy situations she got herself into, and at times unwittingly becoming a player himself in her zany antics. The domestic issues explored were plausible, ones familiar to a television audience, but the solutions hilariously foreign. Lucy mostly caused her own snafus, by exacerbating already tangled problems with her hare-brained machinations. The "I Love Lucy" show is also notable in that several innovations in television were made on the set. First, three pairs of cameras were used in filming to lend a more "live" feel to the show instead of the kinescope normally used throughout the 60's. Because shows were filmed off video monitors, they had a grainy and "flat" appearance, as evidenced in the early "soaps". The relative vitality of the "I Love Lucy" show was a huge part of its success. The show garnered 4 Emmys and closed on a high note in 1957. Demand for it has kept it continuously on the air. |
