When a heavy computer falls on Mr. Mooney's foot, Lucy has a rush of adrenaline to lift it up. From then on, she has super-strength and wreaks havoc with her new-found power. Lucy the superwoman is then brought into a lab to be examined by scientists.
Directed by Maury Thompson ~ Written by Elroy Schwartz
Lucille Ball (Lucy Carmichael), Gale Gordon (Theodore J. Mooney), Mary Jane Croft (Mary Jane Lewis)
Robert F. Simon (Dr. Robert F. Simon) had a ten year run on Broadway (1942-52), in which he cut his teeth as actor and stage manager in everything from drama to musical comedy. He served as understudy to Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was seen with Lucille Ball in the 1960 film The Facts of Life and in a 1963 episode of “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Parley Baer (Dr. Davis) previously played MGM’s Mr. Reilly in “Ricky Needs an Agent” (ILL S4;E29) and the furniture salesman Mr. Perry in “Lucy Gets Chummy with the Neighbors” (ILL S6;E18). This is the fourth of his five appearances on “The Lucy Show.” He also made two appearances on “Here’s Lucy.” He is perhaps best known for his recurring roles as Mayor Stoner on “The Andy Griffith Show” and Doc Appleby in “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
Herb Vigran (Mr. Vigran) played Jule, Ricky Ricardo’s music agent on two episodes of “I Love Lucy” in addition to playing movie publicist Hal Sparks in “Lucy is Envious” (ILL S3;23). He was seen in the Lucy-Desi film The Long, Long Trailer. He played the role of the baseball umpire (and eye doctor) in two previous episodes. He will be seen in just one more episode of “The Lucy Show.”
Jack Perkins (Terrible Tony, a Wrestler) was a stuntman and actor often cast for his ability to play drunk. He also has quite a few credits as a brawler and a bartender. This is his last episode of “The Lucy Show.”
Lucy claims to have seen Terrible Tony on television.
Joel Marston (George Denton, Reporter for the Daily Gazette, above left) previously appeared as the supermarket clerk in “Lucy and Joan” (S4;E4). Marston was an internationally known dog breeder and proprietor of Starcrest Kennels in California. This is his final appearance on the series. He retired to Jacksonville, Florida, where he became a water aerobics instructor.
Eddie, the Daily Gazette photographer, is uncredited.
Robert S. Carson (Coach from the US Women's Olympic Team) played bank employee Mr. Potter in “Lucy Saves Milton Berle” (S4;E13) and “Lucy at Marineland” (S4;E1). He was a busy Canadian-born character actor making the fifth of his six appearances on the series. He also made five appearances on “Here’s Lucy.”
Natalie Masters (Woman from Whamo Breakfast Cereals, below) was seen as a saleswoman in “Lucy Bags a Bargain” (S4;E17). She played private eye “Candy Matson” on the radio series of the same name, which ran on NBC from 1949 to 1951. This is her last appearance on “The Lucy Show.”
John Perri (Man from Full-of-Pep Vitamins, above center) was previously seen as a supermarket checker in “Lucy and Joan” (S4;E4). He was seen on Broadway in The Boy Friend (1954), the musical that introduced Julie Andrews. This is his final appearance on “The Lucy Show.”
Joyce Perry (Lab Secretary) makes the first of two appearances on the series. She was also a screen writer, receiving Emmy nominations for “Days of Our Lives” and winning a WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award in 1975 for “Search for Tomorrow.”
Sid Gould (Sid, Computer Deliveryman) made more than 45 appearances on “The Lucy Show,” all as background characters. He also did 40 episodes of “Here’s Lucy.” Gould (born Sydney Greenfader) was Lucille Ball’s cousin by marriage to Gary Morton.
Bennett Green (Computer Deliveryman #2) was Desi Arnaz’s stand-in during “I Love Lucy.” He does frequent background work on “The Lucy Show.”
Gould and Green have no lines as the Deliverymen. The two also played Deliverymen in “Lucy the Robot” (S4;E23) delivering the very large box containing Lucy as Major Fun Fun.
Alberto Morin (Bank Employee, uncredited) was born in Puerto Rico, and appeared in some of Hollywood’s most cherished films: Gone with the Wind (1939), Casablanca (1943), and Key Largo (1948). He was Carlos, one of Ricky’s “Cuban Pals” (ILL S1;E28) and the Robert DuBois in “The French Revue” (ILL S3;E7). His many background appearances on “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy” were all uncredited.
Hazel Pierce (Bank Employee, uncredited) was Lucille Ball’s camera and lighting stand-in throughout “I Love Lucy.” She made frequent on-camera appearances on the show. She was also an uncredited extra in the film Forever Darling (1956).
Joan Carey (Bank Employee, uncredited) was a background performer who appeared on “I Love Lucy,” “The Lucy Show” and “Here’s Lucy.” She was also one of Ball’s camera and lighting stand-ins in later years.
One other uncredited performer plays a bank employee who comes to Mr. Mooney's aid when the computer falls on his foot.
This is the final episode of season 4. Overall, season 4 rated #3 (a 27.7 share) in the Nielsen Ratings, the highest rating of the series thus far. The official DVDs of season 4 (with bonus material) were first released on April 26, 2011.
This is the first of three episodes written by Elroy Schwartz. He was born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1923 and was the brother of Sherwood Schwartz. As such, he wrote several episodes of his brother's most popular series: “Gilligan's Island” and “The Brady Bunch.”
Indeed, the premise of this episode was taken from a script of “Gilligan's Island”! On the series, the castaways discover cans of vegetables that turn out to be radioactive. Gilligan eats the spinach (the same vegetable that gave Popeye strength) and develops super-human strength. It was aired six months after this episode of “The Lucy Show” - September 26, 1966 - also on CBS.
The idea of a sudden onset of super-human strength (aka ‘Hysterical Strength’) was a familiar trope on television, but based on real-life anecdotes, mostly about parents lifting cars to rescue their children. Comic book artist Jack Kirby claims he saw a woman lift a car off her baby, which inspired him to create the Incredible Hulk, whose first appearance was in 1962.
On the same evening this episode first aired (March 21, 1966), ABC broadcast the last new episode of “Ben Casey” starring Vince Edwards. Edwards did a cameo in “Lucy Goes to a Hollywood Premiere” (S4;E20, above). “Ben Casey” was filmed at Desilu Studios. The series finale was directed by Marc Daniels, who had directed 39 episodes of “I Love Lucy” from 1951-53.
“The Lucy Show” was replaced for the summer (July-September 1966) by the fourth season of “Vacation Playhouse,” an anthology series of unsold TV comedy pilots. One was titled “Where There's Smokey” starring Gale Gordon as a Fire Chief. The pilot was completed in 1959 but not aired until August 1, 1966. When the pilot wasn't picked up, Gordon took the role of Mr. Heckendorn, the landlord on “Make Room for Daddy,” also filmed at Desilu. On August 29, 1966, “Vacation Playhouse” aired “The Two of Us” starring “Lucy Show” cast members Mary Jane Croft (Mary Jane) and Barry Livingston (Arnold Mooney).
When Mr. Mooney is getting a computer in his office, Lucy wants to ask it for dating tips. Mr. Mooney replies that it is a computer, not “Dear Abby.” Dear Abby is an advice column founded in 1956 by Pauline Phillips under the pen name ‘Abigail Van Buren’ and carried on today by her daughter, Jeanne Phillips. In 1965, CBS aired a radio version of Dear Abby’s column. Lucille Ball also had a CBS radio series at the time.
In this episode, Lucille Ball's hairstyle (probably a wig) has longer bangs and sides. This could be to cover the 'lift tape' (a sort of non-surgical face lift) that she wore on camera starting around this time.
To decide where to put the computer in the office, Mr. Vigran feeds it a punch card. Punch cards were widely used through much of the 20th century in the data processing industry. The IBM 12-row / 80-column punched card format came to dominate the industry. Many early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data. While punched cards are now obsolete as a storage medium, as of 2012, some voting machines still used punch cards to record votes.
When Lucy lifts the computer the second time (just to prove she can), she gets a round of applause from the studio audience! This happens again when she lifts the desk in her apartment. Apparently the audience completely invests in the silly premise that Lucy has developed super human strength.
When Lucy inadvertently crushes the can of tomato juice, she says in a childlike voice: “Boy, it sure doesn't look like tomato juice!” In the 1960s “Wow, it sure doesn't taste like tomato juice!” was the advertising slogan for V8, a beverage manufactured by Campbells.
V8 got its name from the fact that it originally contained the juice of eight different vegetables. It was first marketed in 1933 and is still sold today.
Lucy swats a fly with a rolled up magazine and breaks a support column in half. This is the same column that muscular Frank Winslow broke in half when he was startled awake and went into a karate chop in “Lucy and the Sleeping Beauty” (S4;E9). The column in “Lucy, the Superwoman” is much narrower than the one seen above.
When Lucy breaks the blood pressure machine causing a spurt of liquid into the air, Mr. Mooney shouts “Thar she blows!” "Thar she blows" is what the lookout on a whaling ship would shout when seeing a whale surface and blowing air out of its blowhole.
When Lucy sneezes and blows the paperwork off the shelves, Mr. Mooney says “Now I know why they name hurricanes after women.” In 1953, after a brief two-year period of using the Greek alphabet, meteorologists began using female names for hurricanes. In 1979, after much pressure from women's groups, male names were integrated into the naming. Hurricanes now alternate between male and female names.
Lucy's twenty foot standing broad jump and hurdle stunts were accomplished by speeding up the film and putting Lucy on wires.
It is likely that most of the lab scenes were shot without a studio audience due to the nature of the stunts involved. Also telling is that after Lucy does her first ‘flight’ the studio audience does not applaud, as they had for the much simpler stunts earlier in the show.
Examples of Lucy's super human strength:
She lifts Mr. Mooney off his feet into the air when helping him up
She breaks the return carriage off her typewriter
She staples a document and breaks off the end of her desk
She closes a file cabinet drawer which smashes a hole in the wall
She rips the doorknob off Mr. Mooney's office door and then rips the door off as well
She closes her apartment door with a kick and splits it in two
She squeezes her grocery bag and collapses a can of tomato juice and cans of vegetables
She tears the door off her refrigerator
She squeezes 6oz of juice from a 3oz orange
She pulls the bottom off an ice cube tray
She swats a fly and breaks a pillar in half
She empties a full glass of cranberry juice in one sip
She saws through a table when cutting a slice of roast beef
She brings a professional wrestler to his feet with a handshake
She causes paperwork to fly off the shelves with a sneeze
She breaks a blood pressure machine
She kicks a tray into the air when her reflexes are tested
She nearly deafens the doctor when she talks into his stethoscope
She pitches an iron shot put ball through a glass window pane and a brick wall
She jumps twenty feet in her first attempt at the standing broad jump
She hurdles in the air over three men who are bending over
Mary Jane says that the TV reporters are calling Lucy “Superman with prettier muscles.” In 1957, Lucy Ricardo pretended to be the man of steel in “Lucy and Superman” (ILL S6;E13).
Lucille Ball also used wires to ‘fly’ as the Witch in “Little Ricky’s School Pageant” (ILL S6;E10).
And again in “Danny Thomas’s the Wonderful World of Burlesque” aired just a few months before this episode of “Here’s Lucy”.
Lucy operated a similar massive gray computer that was located in the bank lobby at the start of “Lucy and Bob Crane” (S4;E22), although neither she nor Mr. Mooney mention it in this episode.
In 1972, Harry Carter also gets a computer installed in the office to help with the workload in “Lucy’s Replacement” (HL S4;E19).
Mrs. Carmichael wants to ask the new computer for dating tips like it is a mechanical Dear Abby. Two years later, Lucy Carter consulted a computer for dating tips in “Lucy the Matchmaker” (HL S1;E12).
The desk that Lucy Carmichael lifts with ease will turn up again as set decoration for Harry Carter’s Home in “Lucy’s Wedding Party” (HL S3;E8) in 1970. Lucy Carter dusts it, but doesn’t lift it!
Keep Jiggling, Viggie! When the computer is first installed, Mr. Vigran has a bit of trouble getting the second dolly out from underneath the computer so it can fall on Mr. Mooney’s foot. After a few seconds of jiggling, it comes free.
Desk Work! When Lucy lifts the desk in her apartment, the track for raising it off the ground can be seen underneath, despite being painted the color of the wall.
Super-Strong Sweet Tooth! Lucy comes home from work holding a shopping bag and 5 pink bakery boxes. Why does a woman living alone need five boxes of baked goods? The boxes were a familiar item on the show and the Desilu props department must have had quite a few in stock! Also, if Lucy went shopping on her way home, why doesn’t she have any stories of the mayhem she must have caused in the stores to tell Mary Jane when she comes over?
I’ve Got A Beef! When Lucy picks the roast beef up off the floor, we can see that the roast has been glued to the plate!
At the lab, Dr. Davis asks Lucy if she’s ever had any accidents. She says that except for fender benders, she hasn’t. She must have forgotten that she suffered a blow to the head and got amnesia just two years earlier!
“Lucy, the Superwoman” rates 2 Paper Hearts out of 5
