Your Favorite Encounter Between Lucy and a Celebrity

Yes, the William Holden episode was great. When Holden was so gracious about their encounter, I wonder who "Spinned the Beans Out of the Catbag" as Ricky would say, that later on, everyone seemed to have heard the truth.

I guess in a town like Hollywood, it's not so hard to believe. In the John Wayne episode, he even mentions that William Holden told him some stories about Lucy, though that doesn't mean he mentioned their encounter at the Brown Derby...maybe he just mentioned her nose catching on fire.

And for 15 years!

Great choice! George Reeves was terrific in this episode, and his closing comment is one of the funniest in the entire series, emphasized by Lucy's look of shock and turning to face the wall in embarrasment.

Great picks! William Holden was somewhat two-faced about the whole "pie incident," wasn't he?

In the episode when Holden is hit with the pie, he originally protects Lucy and tells Ricky he asked a waiter who the "pretty redhead was" because he thought she should be in movies.

But in the episode with John Wayne, Wayne says he's heard a lot about Lucy "from Bill Holden."

Maybe Holden figured once the incident became public, he could tell the truth.

I notice that in later Hollywood episodes, it's said that Lucy "threw a pie at William Holden." While I do think it was Lucy's fault Holden wound up with a face full of pie, she didn't throw it at him.

Lol!

Harpo's appearance was a classic. He was not only great in re-creating the "Mirror Scene" with Lucy, he was funny with Ricky and Fred in the scene that set up his visit with Lucy and Ethel.

Novello made several appearances on ILL, but this was probably his funniest performance.

You're right that since he didn't play himself I don't know if he could be considered "a celebrity," but it's a great performance anyway and well worth remembering.

Lucy, Fred and Ethel also get memorable bits in this episode. Thanks for bringing it up.

i don't think Ricky is being mean when he wants to avoid contact between Lucy and celebrities. Her terrible record of embarrassing and outrageous behavior when she meets up with a celebrity speaks for itself. Moreover the problems almost always arise because Lucy is completely self-absorbed and feels her needs/wants always should take precedence over everyone else's. In the episode with Cornel Wilde, for example, she perfectly ready to get the hotel's nice bellhop ("Bobby") fired just because she wants to get a look at Mr. Wilde to complete her "100 Celebrity Sightings List." I can understand why Ricky doesn't want her to be at the lunch with Richard Widmark, as he later says to Widmark about Lucy: "She's a very nice girl, but something happens to her when she gets close to a movie star."

I like the John Wayne episode a lot, though I can't understand how Lucy, Ethel and Fred wouldn't realize that stealing Wayne's footprints from the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre wasn't a crime. In the episode when Lucy and Ethel hold a raffle for a TV set to finance their trip to Europe, when the District Attorney tells Lucy that she's committed Fraud and that it's a crime punishable by imprisonment, Lucy says she wouldn't have done it if she'd known it was a crime.

As for Robert Cummings, he was a successful film actor from the late 1930s through the 1960s, and in the 1950s starred in a very successful TV sitcom, Love That Bob. I can understand why many viewers today would have no idea who Cummings, Tallullah Bankhead and Erine Kovacks and his wife Edie Adams were, among others, but at the time the shows were produced they were all extremely successful, well known and admired celebrities.

I like the Fred MacMurray episode, too, especially when they're all racing across the desert to beat each other to file the Uranimum claim.