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The Lucy Show Prime Time Reruns


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For Season 5, 15 of the 22 episodes were repeated.  22 episodes probably stands as a record for the least number of episodes any series put out for a full season up to that time.

They reran George Burns, the season premiere between Christmas and New Years.

 

The official reruns started with the show that was #1 in the Nielsens in its original outing:

Carol Burnett Part 1 on March 13th

then

Carol Burnett Part 2

Ring a Ding

Substitute Secretary

Lucy Meets the Law

Viv on Sunset Strip

Don Rickles

and on May 8th, yes they reran "Mooney the Monkey"

Sheldon Leonard

Mainstreet 1

Mainstreet 2

John Wayne

Phil Silvers

Tennessee Ernie

 

Missing are the "Lucy in the Armed Forces" shows, both of which are enjoyable, much more so than "Mainstreet 2" "Monkey", "Silvers" "Leonard""Rickles" or T. Ernie.

Also missing was the delightful "Paul Winchell".

I suppose if they weren't going to rerun "Lucy in London", they didn't see the point of running "Lucy Flies to...." again, even though it's tied with "Sub Secretary" as the best of the season (in my book).

Also in said book, the first half of the season is stellar with some of my favorite non Bob-Madelyn-Danfield Lucy Shows.  The last half really starts to falte. A gem here and there, but for the most part: BLAH!

They chose to rerun most of these, but thankfully NOT "Lucy Babysits the Chimps".

It was not until "Lucy Moves to NBC" that a Lucille Ball special was rerun.  I don't know why.  Specials were rerun, but it was not very common I guess.

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Didn't they rerun some just to recoup costs?  Funny how our tastes change, saw Mooney the Monkey just last week and it was a bit better than I remembered.  Paul Winchell's I thought was very very good.  And Lucy with Gomer Pyle I never liked but found it more enjoyable after seeing it a hundred times over the last six months on CTS.

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I didn't realize until I started collecting TV Guides that episodes selected for the "Close up" were different for different city editions.

For instance, our Portland TV Guide did a Close up for the 1963 summer rerun of  Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour's "Celebrity Next Door", an episode that had already had at LEAST 3 networks showings.

This Dean Martin rerun close up did not appear in our edition.

 

The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy seemed to have had many more (paid) picture advertizements than any other series.  Wonder who funded these: CBS/ LBP/ Local stations or a combination..    Don't know if these varied edition to edition.  Many were full page ads, some were the lower half of one page, and several were 1/2 that size in the vertical column closest to the margin.  The frequency of these increased when Here's Lucy started.  Usually ANY guest star warranted an ad, with pun-ish copy "Lucy Bubbles While Welk Plays Dumb"  "Lucy's Got a New Boyfriend Who Doesn't Know Whether He's Cummings or Going" ("Punctured Romance").

The first full page ad I remember was for Danny Kaye in the 3rd season.  Others:  Ironman Carmichael 1, John Wayne, 5th and 6th season Carol Burnett plus the first Here's Lucy (gym musical).  The premiere of Here's Lucy, certainly the Burtons, and Lucy Meets Lucy "Tonight the Funniest Woman in the World Meets the Funniest Woman in the World."

"Lucy Meets Lucy" also warranted a "Best Bet" picture and extended description and review in our local paper.  It was always a thrill when Here's Lucy was the "Best Bet", but sometimes the episode did not live up to expectations  (Tennessee Ernie Fun Farm, for instance which that reviewer seemed to love).   The first 2 Here's Lucy's both warranted Best Bets.  It seemed like the series was on a roll, but...............then......

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  • 8 months later...

The fifth season of Here's Lucy went into reruns March 12, 1973 with YET ANOTHER showing of "Meets the Burtons".  Our newspaper archive does not list any episode synopsis-es until April 16th when "Big Break" the season's premiere episode finally aired.   For one of the three Mondays in between Burtons and Big Break, HL was pre-empted, but I wonder what they aired on the other two Mondays.  The 4th, 5th and 6th seasons were the only ones of all the years of Lucy's series where all the  episodes got two airings in the same season, the original and a "summer" rerun.

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