I Love Lucy (film)
| I Love Lucy | |
|---|---|
| Directed by |
Marc Daniels (original episodes) Edward Sedgwick (new footage) |
| Produced by | Jess Oppenheimer |
| Written by | Jess Oppenheimer Madelyn Pugh Bob Carroll, Jr. |
| Starring |
Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Vivian Vance William Frawley |
| Music by | Eliot Daniel |
| Edited by | Dann Cahn |
|
Production
company |
|
| Distributed by |
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer CBS Paramount Home Entertainment (2007) |
|
Release date
|
October 23, 2007 April 27, 2010 (Single release) |
|
Running time
|
81 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
I Love Lucy, a.k.a. I Love Lucy: The Movie is a 1953 American feature film spin-off of the sitcom I Love Lucy. Except for one test screening in Bakersfield, California, the film was never theatrically released and was shelved.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz co-star. Some scenes were directed by Edward Sedgwick, the final film work of his long Hollywood career. Sedgwick died in March 1953.
The film plays out with three first-season episodes edited together into a single story: "The Benefit", "Breaking the Lease", and "The Ballet", with new footage included between episodes to help transition the episodes into one coherent storyline. As the series routinely took the format of filming scenes in chronological order, this adds to the "show within a show within a show" format of the film, as viewers watch the cast perform the episodes live. The film itself ends with a "curtain call", as the cast comes out and Arnaz thanks the audience for their support.
Shortly after the end of the first season of I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball decided to cash in on their show's popularity by compiling several episodes of the first season of the series into a movie.
A test screening in Bakersfield, California went very well and Desilu (through distributor United Artists) prepared to release the film. But Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer demanded the film be shelved because they felt it would diminish interest in the upcoming MGM film, The Long, Long Trailer, in which Lucy and Desi co-starred and were contractually bound to promote. The I Love Lucy movie was ultimately forgotten.
Unlike most movies of existing media properties, I Love Lucy: The Movie is framed within the meta-context of a "show within a show within a show". The film is framed around a plot involving a young married couple (played by actress Ann Doran and actor Benny Baker) attending the filming of an episode of I Love Lucy. After an opening sequence of Ann Doran and Benny Baker's characters arriving at the studio, there is a brief introduction by the show's announcer, Roy Rowan, as he introduces Desi Arnaz, who speaks to the studio audience and introduces the cast (something Arnaz would do throughout the run of the series).
...
Wikipedia