My Favorite Lucy….”It’s so tasty, too!”

This week, you most likely read the news, unbelievable though it may seem, that I Love Lucy turned 64 years old. It is amazing to ponder how postwar American culture continues to dominate  our consciousness.   It was a time in our history where we were loath to look back given the recent horrors of the greatest conflict in our nations history. Yet looking forward was both sci if fantasy and, given the rate of change, going on before our very eyes.  Television symbolized this state of affairs, and the products of TV from that time occupy a very visible place in our history due to the visual nature of the medium and the foresight of someone like Desi Arnaz who shot the show on 35mm film for future use.

Naturally, when we watch Lucy and Desi, we don't tend to think about the bad things that were going on the country during the 1959s. It's never a cake walk for everyone all the time. TV was pure escapism, it's largely live nature constant barrage of broad, vaudevillian fare. It's this wild spirit which makes Lucy exhilarating to watch even today. Had Lucille Ball not been a master of comic timing, it would've been just a bunch of noise.

Watch her in action in a clip from this retrospective featuring a generous helping of the episode where she becomes a pitch man for a miracle cure tonic. She's more than just a slapstick comedian.