I Love Lucy: The Untold Story (10 page)

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Bob and Madelyn thought it would be funny if Lucy could get caught in the freezer. Well, although this sounded like a good situation, it seemed impossible on the face of it. We finally concluded that even if we could think of a situation strong enough to motivate Lucy to hide in
a home freezer, there just wasn’t one on the market that Lucy could reasonably get herself into.

But out of that discussion came a suggestion: “What if we could get one of those walk-in freezers that they have in butcher shops?” That would solve our problem. Now, this solution was a pretty big problem in itself. How would a big freezer like that find its way into an apartment house? After kicking this around for a while, we finally hit upon the notion that Ethel could have an uncle who was a butcher going out of business. That sounded fairly reasonable, so we decided to proceed in that direction and try to write a story around it.

We started at the beginning, with Lucy agitating to get Ricky to buy a freezer, and Ricky taking the time-honored position that they couldn’t afford it. Then Lucy and Ethel, together, get the idea about her uncle. After talking to him they decide to go through with it on the basis that they’ll save so much money by buying the meat wholesale that their husbands will love them for it. So far so good, we thought.

Then we hit a snag. We realized that if Lucy and Ethel buy a reasonable amount of meat and put it in a freezer they get for practically nothing, their husbands can’t be angry with them. After considerable discussion, we decided that most people, lay people, probably don’t know how
big
a side of beef is. We threw in an extra clincher by having Lucy tell Ethel, “Well, if a side of bacon is
this
big, then a side of
beef
must be just a little bit bigger.” Anyway, we had them order two sides of beef, one for each of them, because the wholesalers only sell it by the side.

When the meat arrives, of course, there is a tremendous
quantity, which gave us a completely new dilemma for the girls to try to work out. We recalled a routine that had worked for us on the radio series, when Liz had tried to unload a bunch of unreturnable dresses by selling them to other department store customers:

LIZ.  Say, maybe I can get rid of these other two dresses, too.

CUSTOMER.  Oh, I think I like these dresses with the blue and white polka dots. How much are they?

SALESWOMAN.  $59.50.

LIZ. 
(Side of mouth, like pitchman.)
Pssst. Hey, lady.

CUSTOMER.  Were you addressing me?.

LIZ.  Yeah. Step in a little closer, y’re blockin’ traffic. Now don’t buy that dress. Step over here. I’m in a position to sell you the very same thing at a sensational reduction in price.

SALESWOMAN.  Hey, this is
my
customer!

LIZ.  Get away, kid, ya bother me.

SALESWOMAN.  I’m going
(Fades.)
to see the manager about this!

CUSTOMER.  Is there something wrong with this dress? Who are you?

LIZ.  You’ve heard of me. Honest Liz Cooper—the biggest used dress dealer in town.

CUSTOMER. 
(Alarmed.)
Is this a
used
dress?

LIZ.  Oh no. It was
just
worn by an elderly couple from Pasadena.

CUSTOMER. 
(Doubtfully.)
Well—

LIZ.  Give me $39.50 and I’m losin’ money on the deal.

CUSTOMER.  Well, I can’t pass up a bargain like that. Here’s the money.

LIZ.  Here’s your dress. Sure you couldn’t use two of them?

CUSTOMER.  Oh, no thanks.
(Fading.)
Goodbye.

LIZ.  Goodbye. Come back tomorrow—I’ll give myself a hotfoot and have a fire sale!

In the “Freezer” episode, we decided to have Lucy and Ethel try a similar scheme to unload the meat. The girls figure that they got the meat so cheaply that they can sell it below the retail price the butcher charges, so they set up a stand just inside the butcher shop and try to snag customers away from him. Of course, the butcher discovers their plan and chases them out:

(Fade in on the butcher shop. The counter is in sight and the butcher is in back of it. Four or five people are standing in line. Lucy enters, looking furtively around, then motions for Ethel, who comes in pushing a baby carriage which has the hood pulled down. Ethel sits down on a stool next to the carriage.)

LUCY. 
(To a woman in line at the butcher shop.)
Pssst—psst.
(The woman looks around.) (Pitch man voice.) C’mere!
(The woman looks over to Lucy.)
Are you tired of payin’ high prices? Are you interested in a little high class beef? Do you want a bargain?
(Claps her hands together.)
Tell you what I’m gonna do. Step up a little closer, I don’t wanna block the traffic. Now, you look like a smart dame. What’ll it be? I got sirloin, tenderloin, T-bone, rump. Pot roast, chuck roast, oxtail stump. I got a special on T-bone, 79 cents a pound.

FIRST CUSTOMER.  Well
really,
I—
(She starts to turn away and does a take.)
79 cents!

LUCY.  Shhh. Quiet. Get ‘em while they last, lady. Step right over here and help yourself. Ethel, help the little lady, will ya?

ETHEL.  What’ll you have?

FIRST CUSTOMER.  Well, I’d like a… sirloin.

ETHEL.  A sirloin comin’ up.

LUCY. 
(Out of the corner of her mouth.)
Keep it down. Keep it down, kid. Keep it down.
(She starts innocently whistling.)

(Ethel hands the woman a package of meat.)

FIRST CUSTOMER.  How much does this weigh?

ETHEL. 
(Motioning to Lucy.)
Weigh.  
(Lucy lifts the carriage hood, reaches in and pulls black a blanket to reveal a kitchen scale, which Ethel puts in her lap. The woman hands her the package of meat, which Ethel weighs.)
…Three pounds.

FIRST CUSTOMER.  I’ll take it.

LUCY. 
(To the next woman at the end of the line.)
Pssst. C’mere.
(The lady walks over.) (Pitchman voice.)
Are you interested in some high class beef? Are you tired of payin’ high prices? Do you want a bargain?
(Claps hands together.)
Tell ya what I’m gonna do. .

FIRST CUSTOMER.  Is this Choice meat?

LUCY.  Absolutely. Give the little lady her choice, Ethel.
(Claps hands together.) (Turns to second customer.)
Tell ya what I’m gonna do.

FIRST CUSTOMER.  That’s
not
what I meant.

LUCY.  Get away from me, kid, ya bother me.
(The first customer walks away.) (Lucy turns to second customer.)
Tell ya what I’m gonna do. Any cut, 79 cents a pound.

SECOND CUSTOMER.  But how can you afford to sell it so cheap?

LUCY. 
(Claps her hands together.)
I’m glad you asked that, Lady. Now this is all made possible because we do
(Claps.)
everything ourselves.
(Claps.)
We rope.
(Claps.)
We brand.
(Claps.)
We butcher.
(Claps.)
We market. We do
(Claps.)
everything but eat it for you—79 cents a pound.

SECOND CUSTOMER.  Well, I’ll try a round steak.

LUCY.  Okay, step right over here.

ETHEL.  Round steak.

LUCY.  Help the little lady.
(Ethel, and both customers converse with each other.)
Keep it down to a roar.
(Lucy rocks the baby carriage back and forth.) (Sings.)
Rock-a-bye baby, on a tree top, rock-a-bye baby on a tree top.
(While this is going on the butcher has sighted them and has walked around to this side of the counter and over to Lucy and is standing right behind her. Lucy is facing her customers and Ethel and doesn’t see him.)
Keep it down to a roar, that’s what we want. Step right up. Every tootsie, a tootsie—
(Lucy turns and suddenly sees the butcher standing there, scowling at her.)
Ohhh!
(Lucy pushes one of the ladies aside, grabs the handle of the baby carriage and quickly wheels it toward the door.) (To Ethel.)
Am-scray, am-scray! Utcher-bay!
(Ethel follows her.)
Watch the papers for our new location. Good afternoon.
(They run out the door.)

Having failed at the butcher shop, the girls go home and put all the meat in the newly delivered freezer so it won’t spoil.  And they hope that maybe they can keep Ricky and Fred away from the basement so that the boys won’t even know there is a freezer down there until Lucy and Ethel figure out an answer to their problem.

Now Lucy and Ethel don’t know what to do next. And neither did we. We finally decided that in order to create another situation, we had to have the boys know that the freezer was there. So when Ricky and Fred come home we had them tell the girls that they ran into Ethel’s Uncle Oscar, the butcher, on the street, and that he told them about the transaction. The boys even think it was an excellent idea and have brought home thirty pounds of meat as a starter, and they want to go down and put it in the new freezer.

Once again, we were faced with a problem. If Ricky and Fred go down and see the freezer, the story is over and it really hasn’t gone anywhere. So we had to figure out a way to keep the boys from going down there until the girls could do something about it.

Lucy, we decided, hits on the idea of playing on Ricky’s actor’s ego. She tells Ethel to ask him to sing to her.  Ethel doesn’t think it’ll work, but Lucy says she thinks it will. (Of course, we
know
it will, because we’re writing the script.) So Ethel tries it while Lucy rushes down to the basement, takes the meat out of the freezer, and tries to put it someplace completely out of sight. We figured we’d have her get caught in the freezer and when the boys and Ethel finally come down she’ll be a pitiful sight, frozen stiff, with snow and icicles hanging from her.

Now we had to figure out how she gets caught in the freezer. For this to make sense, the thing would have to be a self-locking freezer that can  only be opened from the outside. But it would be too expedient to present that fact just when we needed it, so we went back to an earlier scene and introduced this to the audience without making much out of it. So later, when Lucy comes down to move the meat, the audience already knows that the freezer is self-locking when it closes and that she can’t open it from the inside.

We were happy—it was about four o’clock in the afternoon and we had the story pretty well plotted out.  But then Madelyn said, “You know, that’s not much of a finish. What happens? She’s frozen. Do we take her out? Do we thaw her out? If we do, what’s funny about it? We have to have a final high point—a final fillip that really wraps this thing up.” Of course she was right. So we wiped the smiles off our faces and the three of us started looking for a climax.

The only possibility any of us could think of was to make something out of the place that Lucy hid the meat. Out of our discussion came the idea that it would be funny if she hid it in the furnace. Now, the thought of just taking a lot of meat, even wrapped meat, and putting it in a dirty furnace is pretty unreasonable. Even in desperation it seemed like a pretty stupid thing for Lucy to do. So we went all the way back to the beginning and opened up the show with Fred coming upstairs and saying, “Don’t expect any heat today. I’ve been fixing the furnace. Had to take all the insides out of it and put all new firebrick into it. Take at least all day before the cement sets.” This gave us a furnace that wasn’t working and a nice, fresh, clean repository for the meat. So when Lucy put it there it wasn’t unreasonable at all. At least, the three of
us
felt that way.

We had Lucy run down and make trip after trip from the freezer to the furnace and stack it full of meat. She gets caught in the freezer on her last trip in. When Ethel and the boys come down, they find Lucy frozen, take her out, carry her upstairs, put an electric blanket around her. In order to help even more with the thawing-out process, Fred lights the furnace. This gave us the joke finish we were looking for. When everyone notices the smell of cooking beef coming from the heating register, Lucy leaps up and starts toward the door. Ricky asks her where she’s going, and she says, “I’ll explain later.  .  .  .  Just get a knife, fork and some ketchup and follow me to the biggest barbecue in the world!”

That was more or less typical of our Monday writing sessions. We usually worked until five o’clock—sometimes as late as seven—and we tried to stay as isolated as possible, because this was an important several hours. We would just kick it around and when we finally felt we had it, I would dictate the whole thing scene by scene into a machine while Bob and Madelyn were still there. Often we’d get other ideas as we heard it talked straight through like that. By Tuesday morning each of us would have a typed draft of the outline that I had dictated the night before. Bob and Madelyn would take this and turn it into a first draft of the script, which they would deliver to me on Wednesday at the end of the day.

I think in the five years I was on the show there might have been three times that we didn’t finish developing a story by the end of the first day. We had no choice, really, because our schedule demanded that we write a new script every single week.  In our first season, the three of us wrote forty shows in forty weeks. (Today a show will do about twenty-four episodes per season, using ten or fifteen writers.) If it had taken us two or three days to develop a story, there would have been no way to do the series. Of course it helped that we had a two-and-a-half year backlog of scripts from
My Favorite Husband.
 Each of those radio scripts had a good solid basis for a story, whether or not we used any of the particulars. 

Photo caption (next page):

We had Lucy run down and make trip after trip from the freezer to the furnace and stack it full of meat.