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Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Compilation > TV Situation Comedy > Lucille Ball Collection (Passport)

The Lucille Ball Collection (Passport)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Content: B

 

 

With TV on DVD being a boom, it is a long time coming for more Lucille Ball to be issued.  Paramount has been issuing boxes of each season of I Love Lucy, while another company actually plans to issue Here’s Lucy.  The Lucille Ball Collection is a new 5 DVD set from Passport which happens to feature 8 later episodes (1966- 1968) of her hit series in the middle of those, The Lucy Show and a Desi Arnaz/Lucille Ball installment of Hollywood Couples.

 

When The Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour wrapped up the capers of the I Love Lucy characters after three seasons, Lucy continued the season after with a black and white Lucy Show that co-starred Vivian Vance as two adults raising children together.  It was also funny and that situation stayed when the show went to full color.  When Vance decided to leave, Lucy continued the series with the addition of long-time friend Gale Gordon.  She would be the nice, innocent and not always efficient secretary to Gale’s boss Mr. Theodore J. Mooney at the bank they now work at.

 

Though many criticized the show for not being as clever, witty or memorable as I Love Lucy, I believe that is revisionist thinking for those who missed the point of the show.  If anything, it proved Lucy could be great without her I Love Lucy people backing her up, and she got to push her comic abilities into directions she never had before.  The episodes are as follows:

 

Lucy Meets John Wayne

Lucy Meets George Burns

Lucy Flies To London

Lucy Meets The Berles

Lucy & Jack Benny’s Bank Account

Lucy Gets Trapped (great department store gags alone)

Lucy The Babysitter (with Mary Wickes)

 

As you can see, she had the could to get all kinds of big name guest stars when you could still get such talent on TV and these offer some of her best comic moments.  She constantly has great chemistry with each of the stars and the writers are clever enough to get the most out of each appearance.  The only precedent this set was for later shows to think they could coast with guest appearances, but the material is underrated.

 

Each show is under a half-hour and that means there is less than an hour on each DVD, which extends to the Hollywood Couples segment, which runs under an hour and is very good.  It offers rare stills and other footage on the famous screen couple and is well researched enough.  This even includes the black and white videotape footage of Lucy driving around the Desilu lot, Hollywood’s first movie mogul after her and Desi’s production company bought out the RKO Studios.  It is something all fans will want.

 

Everything is full frame, including some trailers on the special chopped down to be full screen, but the picture quality is another matter.  The documentary piece is varied in quality throughout and a bit soft overall, while all The Lucy Show prints are old, with washed out color and probably from older analog transfers.  This is especially sad, because the color episodes of the show are some of the best uses and demonstrations of color in TV history, with the DeLuxe color showing off Lucy’s red hair like nothing since her pre-TV Hollywood days and sold untold color TV sets.  This is sadly how good these are gong to look until the original film materials are unearthed and new HD transfers are made.  This is very average, where it could be stunning.  The sound fares a little better, with the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono showing the age of the prints, but there is no major trouble.  There are no extras, but The Lucille Ball Collection is a fun set that offers up Lucy we are not seeing enough, and that is a good thing.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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