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LIFE WITH LUCY Coming to DVD Oct. 8 2019


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11 hours ago, JoeySoCal said:

Seeing the snippet of the deleted bedroom scene makes me wish they'd included it -- even if they couldn't remaster it to the quality of the full episodes -- so at least we could see them; plus, there must be others cut for time, etc. (certainly wasn't for laughs! :HALKING:)  I don't even remember her doing that sort of "twirl" move on the bed! 😲

There were at least a few other deleted scenes of note. That shot in the intro of Lucy descending the stairs in her pink date dress while Larry Anderson fans himself must've been cut from "2x4s". As well, "Sax Symbol" ends with Lucy and Becky alone in the basement, with Curtis off fetching the saw to cut the sax off Lucy's hand. The cutting scene was filmed, as I found a publicity still of Gale Gordon holding the saw while Lucy and Becky cringe. I'll try to find that shot again and share it here.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Added to "The List of Noses I Will Tweak if I ever Meet Them in Person" ----Tom Shales,  the OBTUSE PUTZ and TV critic for the Washington Post at the time of LWL.   He was one of the nationally known critics to be particularly cruel in his assessment of Life with Lucy and Lucy herself.    Not content with just that, when the show was cancelled he wrote sort of a "NYAAH" column under the title:  "Commentary" to, in effect, rub it in.  He was personally offended by Lucy's appearance on "Joan Rivers" saying she cried after she read some of the "notices" (quotation marks: his). He calls the display mawkish and embarrassing and accusing her of trying to "mobilize the audience for a critics lynching party".  He then goes on to bash the show again.  "The TV audience had grown too sophisticated for slapstick"...REALLY???   He ALMOST ends on a positive note "Surely there is a place in television for a performer and gifted as Lucille Ball. Perhaps Lucy can return as a character with some depth and feeling" but then feels the need to add "She really should play a crabby, wealthy old TV star, which she is", a not-particularly-witty and totally unnecessary remark. 

It's very possible that Shales is now 75 or close to it, so while I'm tweaking his nose, I'm going to call him "aged" three times.   Also on my nose tweaking list: Ethan Mordann. I missed my chance with Herb Kenwith the one time I was within nose-tweaking range.  

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1 hour ago, Mot Morenzi said:

Related to the subject Neil just wrote about, I recently found this gut-wrenching article by Bob Greene from May, 1989, a week after her passing.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-05-01-8904080941-story.html

So much truth.

What's interesting is I still see this today. People are shocked on social media when you burst their "Lucy" bubble. They know and love I Love Lucy but not so much her other shows. They adore Lucy and Desi together and romanticize the union so heavily they either don't know about or dismiss their second marriages. 

And God forbid you present anything that shows Lucille was nothing like she was on screen.

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3 hours ago, Luvsbway said:

So much truth.

What's interesting is I still see this today. People are shocked on social media when you burst their "Lucy" bubble. They know and love I Love Lucy but not so much her other shows. They adore Lucy and Desi together and romanticize the union so heavily they either don't know about or dismiss their second marriages. 

And God forbid you present anything that shows Lucille was nothing like she was on screen.

So sad. Yes, I Love Lucy may be the benchmark of her legacy, but that doesn't mean her other shows, films and specials don't warrant attention. As well, the personal life of Lucille Ball is a fascinating and worthwhile story in and of itself. It's disheartening so many simply refuse to acknowledge the woman behind Lucy Ricardo.

And the more I read about the critical and audience reaction to Life With Lucy, the angrier I get. Both the show and Lucille deserved more respect and more of a chance to prove themselves. It's so easy to fire off nasty comments about things you may not like, but so few think about the consequences of those actions. Those who "loved Lucy" should've shown more of that love when she needed it most.

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I found this quote in an article after the reviews had come out. Gary addresses how mean these critics were.

“Why knock her because of her age? These guys were snipers. One wire service critic was especially harsh. I don’t know if he had a mother but I’m sure he wouldn’t write those things about her. He was way out of line. She can take criticism of the show’s content but why get so personal? That hurts, but Lucy is a fighter.”

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Tom Shales:  I'm adding to my nose tweak a kick in the ass (I could hardly MISS) and a repeated Chinatown-"she's-my-daughter/sister"  face slap.

He wrote a book  "Legends" published in 1989 and has a chapter on Lucy.  He makes some good observations acknowledging her genius as Lucy Ricardo.  Then like a lot of I Love Lucy-only purists, he lumps per post-ILL product up in a couple of sentences.   The LDCHs he says "lack the spontaneity of the half-hours"  (true for many; not true for some).  "Ball continued with The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy but the chemistry just wasn't there"  .   Well, that's his opinion and he's not alone thinking that, but that's a lot of product--300 episodes--to characterize as all the same quality.  (Until I added up 156 and 144, I hadn't realized that the total # of episodes was EXACTLY 300) 

After that fairly respectful treatment, he just can't let well-enough alone.  He then feels the need to attack her LWL look, picking apart and making fun of her make-up.  ("applying lipstick to lips that weren't there...."etc.)  There's a picture of 'ol "Blubberface" on the dust jacket with a bio that states "He refuses to say how old he is"  In 1989, he was 45.  He got a Pulitzer Prize for CRITICISM in 1988.  There was such a thing?  And I get awfully tired of writers pointing out the Lucy was "not funny" off-stage.  It's not that she wasn't funny, she just wasn't "on".  She could be funny and witty but what these people don't seem to realize is that she was an actress playing a character and not a CLOWN. 

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2 hours ago, Neil said:

 It's not that she wasn't funny, she just wasn't "on".  She could be funny and witty but what these people don't seem to realize is that she was an actress playing a character and not a CLOWN. 

LOUDER, for those on social media. Part of this "not funny" does come from Lucy herself being quoted all those years saying "I'm not funny." Well this is a lady that also said she "wasn't sexy or a great beauty." She just couldn't see herself for what she really was and what other people saw in her. 

 

 

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Spot on. It's amazing how many people fail to recognise there's a difference between being a clown/comic and an actor with a flair for comedic characters. Apples and oranges. 

As for Shales and her later shows lacking chemistry - there may not have been the sustained consistency of writing that I Love Lucy employed, but the Ball/Gordon association would not have lasted as long as it did had the two of them not had chemistry. 

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I feel like the LWL/Lucy bashing is so much worse because in hindsight we know how it affected Lucy and that it happened only a couple of years before her passing. Not that I'm defending any of those schmucks, but at the time they probably didn't think that it would end up being her last real project or that it would hurt her so deeply. It's hard to think of an analogous situation because Lucy's legacy was so enormous and LWL's reception was so absurd. Last season's Murphy Brown revival comes to mind; the network trying to ride a current trend by pumping a ton of money into a project that reunited a cast and show runner who were 70+, although by comparison, Murphy's ratings performance and even the reviews were a lot better than Lucy's. Even today, when it feels like everyone has lost all of their tact when it comes to spouting opinions and criticisms, LWL's reviews seem particularly nasty. The closest I've seen to anyone making comments that pig-headed is Laura Ingraham, who is really filling the void that Freida Claxton left.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

I received the Australian release in the mail today, and decided to compare it to its North American counterpart. You can differentiate the front covers by the huge rating, of course.

IMG-2619.jpg

The back cover is a little different. With the absence of the barcode in the upper right corner, Australia got a larger picture of Lucy in her saxophone costume, while the shot of her and Gale in the hardware store was omitted entirely. The complete cast photo is also less cropped on either side, while the image of Lucy in her tracksuit has been shortened to accommodate the higher "special features" bar. (Not to be overly pedantic, but the summary should've been modified to remove the 5 NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN EPISODES blurb, as all 13 were actually broadcast here. I doubt anyone working at Shock would've known this, however, and they probably only had permission to use CBS approved materials.)

IMG-2620.jpg

Don't get too excited about the 16:9 aspect ratio, that is an error. I knew it was the moment I saw it. Life With Lucy has NOT been remastered in widescreen for Australia! I also somehow doubt the audio is 5.1, though I haven't checked specifically. The discs are different from the U.S. release in that they open with the SHOCK logo instead of CBS, and they're locked to Region 4. Apart from that, the menus and source contents are identical.

IMG-2621.jpg

The biggest difference (and only true improvement) over the U.S. release is the full-color artwork printed on the discs themselves. I may eventually splurge on Shock's The Lucy Show boxset if only to get the discs with color artwork instead of CBS's standard grey printing.

IMG-2622.jpg

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On 5/1/2020 at 5:52 AM, Mot Morenzi said:

I received the Australian release in the mail today, and decided to compare it to its North American counterpart. You can differentiate the front covers by the huge rating, of course.

 

IMG-2619.jpg

The back cover is a little different. With the absence of the barcode in the upper right corner, Australia got a larger picture of Lucy in her saxophone costume, while the shot of her and Gale in the hardware store was omitted entirely. The complete cast photo is also less cropped on either side, while the image of Lucy in her tracksuit has been shortened to accommodate the higher "special features" bar. (Not to be overly pedantic, but the summary should've been modified to remove the 5 NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN EPISODES blurb, as all 13 were actually broadcast here. I doubt anyone working at Shock would've known this, however, and they probably only had permission to use CBS approved materials.)

IMG-2620.jpg

Don't get too excited about the 16:9 aspect ratio, that is an error. I knew it was the moment I saw it. Life With Lucy has NOT been remastered in widescreen for Australia! I also somehow doubt the audio is 5.1, though I haven't checked specifically. The discs are different from the U.S. release in that they open with the SHOCK logo instead of CBS, and they're locked to Region 4. Apart from that, the menus and source contents are identical.

IMG-2621.jpg

The biggest difference (and only true improvement) over the U.S. release is the full-color artwork printed on the discs themselves. I may eventually splurge on Shock's The Lucy Show boxset if only to get the discs with color artwork instead of CBS's standard grey printing.

IMG-2622.jpg

Thanks for posting these... I love comparing all of the little differences in the design layout, and it's nice to see Life With Lucy getting releases all over the world.

I didn't think we'd ever see the day!

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Wow, I didn't know Australia got all 13 episodes broadcast! Was that during its original run in 1986 or sometime later?? Also curious: the back cover packaging grid indicates that the show was broadcast in a widescreen 16:9 or "letterbox" format rather than it's originally broadcast (as it was filmed) 4:3 ratio (pretty much a nearly perfect "square" look as compared to the rectangular letterbox ratio)...so, is this correct? Presumably you've screened these by now, how are they being projected? Very curious that they'd have an alternate version given the era in which the show was filmed, which predated the common practice of shooting in the wider ratio by a good decade or so. :HALKING:

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9 hours ago, JoeySoCal said:

Wow, I didn't know Australia got all 13 episodes broadcast! Was that during its original run in 1986 or sometime later?? 

I didn't even know that until a few months ago. According to someone else from Australia who posted here a while back, all 13 were aired around 1988 or so, but only once. I believe there were other international markets where all 13 were shown, but I don't know exactly where. Max definitely recalled seeing it when I showed him a few clips.

9 hours ago, JoeySoCal said:

Also curious: the back cover packaging grid indicates that the show was broadcast in a widescreen 16:9 or "letterbox" format rather than it's originally broadcast (as it was filmed) 4:3 ratio (pretty much a nearly perfect "square" look as compared to the rectangular letterbox ratio)...so, is this correct? Presumably you've screened these by now, how are they being projected? Very curious that they'd have an alternate version given the era in which the show was filmed, which predated the common practice of shooting in the wider ratio by a good decade or so. :HALKING:

As per my original post accompanying the photos:

On 1 May 2020 at 7:52 PM, Mot Morenzi said:

Don't get too excited about the 16:9 aspect ratio, that is an error. I knew it was the moment I saw it. Life With Lucy has NOT been remastered in widescreen for Australia! I also somehow doubt the audio is 5.1, though I haven't checked specifically. The discs are different from the U.S. release in that they open with the SHOCK logo instead of CBS, and they're locked to Region 4. Apart from that, the menus and source contents are identical.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎1‎/‎28‎/‎2020 at 8:48 AM, Neil said:

Tom Shales:  I'm adding to my nose tweak a kick in the ass (I could hardly MISS) and a repeated Chinatown-"she's-my-daughter/sister"  face slap.

He wrote a book  "Legends" published in 1989 and has a chapter on Lucy.  He makes some good observations acknowledging her genius as Lucy Ricardo.  Then like a lot of I Love Lucy-only purists, he lumps per post-ILL product up in a couple of sentences.   The LDCHs he says "lack the spontaneity of the half-hours"  (true for many; not true for some).  "Ball continued with The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy but the chemistry just wasn't there"  .   Well, that's his opinion and he's not alone thinking that, but that's a lot of product--300 episodes--to characterize as all the same quality.  (Until I added up 156 and 144, I hadn't realized that the total # of episodes was EXACTLY 300) 

After that fairly respectful treatment, he just can't let well-enough alone.  He then feels the need to attack her LWL look, picking apart and making fun of her make-up.  ("applying lipstick to lips that weren't there...."etc.)  There's a picture of 'ol "Blubberface" on the dust jacket with a bio that states "He refuses to say how old he is"  In 1989, he was 45.  He got a Pulitzer Prize for CRITICISM in 1988.  There was such a thing?  And I get awfully tired of writers pointing out the Lucy was "not funny" off-stage.  It's not that she wasn't funny, she just wasn't "on".  She could be funny and witty but what these people don't seem to realize is that she was an actress playing a character and not a CLOWN. 

I don't care what he thinks or anyone thinks in regards to Lucy's post-ILL sitcoms. They didn't stand the chance to begin with given they had a tough act to follow. Even Lucille Ball herself said that she couldn't top what she, Desi, Vivian, and Bill had done. But that didn't make her other sitcoms unwatchable or less valuable. People still continued to watch LUCY w/out the other three (or two in the TLS first three seasons). That says something right there. The love affair with Lucy didn't stop after I Love Lucy. It continued to flourish well into the 60s and 70s.

I, for one, am glad that Lucy continued in series TV after I Love Lucy. Granted there are some instances where it could been handled much better but that doesn't take way from the enjoyment. Lucy was just as entertaining in her other TV sitcoms as she was in I Love Lucy. And yes, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life with Lucy do have some duds here and there but so does I Love Lucy and other television shows in general. One can't just pin it soley on Lucy's post-ILL sitcoms. And let's be honest ... some of the episodic product Lucille Ball made after 1957 rivaled that of I Love Lucy such as getting stuck in the shower, installing a TV antenna, keeping an eye on Ricky while being disguised as a geisha girl and that Geisha Girl dance scene, conducting a symphony, masquerading as Danny Thomas's wife and the whole snowball fight scene and the courtroom scene that followed, getting drafted by a mere technicality and becoming a "marine", crashing an event with roller skates, getting the Burton's ring stuck on her finger, entering a Lucille Ball look-a-like contest, racing the Mertzes and Fred MacMurray in the middle of the desert to be the first to claim uranium, transforming herself into a "My Fair Lady" type persona, tearing up an entire wall just to "fix" a light switch, overhearing a "love scene" and jumping to the wrong conclusion, resorting to skydiving to prove that she is just as much of a daredevil, disguising herself as a patient in a wheelchair only to be followed around by a growing line of nurses throughout the hospital, abruptly becoming a nursemaid to her loved ones even to pregnant cat named Harry, snooping on Mr. Mooney and her substitute through various disguises, ect. So please don't let this guy tell you that the post-ILL sitcoms are trash. Because they aren't. There is PLENTY of gems to watch with memorable scenes. Great entertainment.

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