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
