CBS is going back to the vault for two I Love Lucy treats. The broadcaster is colorizing two more episodes from the classic sitcom: “LA at Last!,” a 1955 episode from when the Ricardoes and Mertz’s were in Hollywood, and “Lucy and Superman,” an episode from the final season of the series shot in 1957.
CBS is launching a new Supergirl TV series later this fall so out comes anything with a cape and a crest. The episode, which originally aired on Jan. 14, 1957, featured George Reeves–star of The Adventures of Superman–as the Man of Steel.
CBS had great success airing four colourized episodes of the series over the past few years during the Christmas season. The colour work is designed in a way so that the images resemble tones from the time, a vibrant palette that mimics an old fashioned Technicolor hue.
The Sunday, May 17 broadcast will also feature a few extra scenes cut from the “LA at Last!” episode and not seen since it first aired 60 years ago. Modern timeslots allow more commercials than they did back in the original run of I Love Lucy. “LA st Last!” has that memorable scene where star-struck Lucy meets William Holden at the Brown Derby and lights her nose on fire.
Modern audiences as as likely to ask, “Who’s William Holden?” as “What’s an I Love Lucy?” Despite claims that the series is forever in reruns, my kids, now in their twenties and raised on the classics, were the only ones at their schools who knew who Fred and Ethel Mertz were.
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The renewed interest in Lucy comes as news of a horrible statue depicting the famous red head has come under fire for looking nothing like her. The life size statue, from area sculpture Dave Poulin, is supposed to capture Lucy from her famous “Vitameatavegemin” scene. Instead, it looks more, to me, like former prime minister John Diefenbaker, a man first elected PM in the waning weeks of I Love Lucy‘s run.
If you must, you can find the bronze statue in a park in Lucille Ball’s hometown of Celeron, N.Y., not far from the Lucy-Desi Museum in neighbouring Jamestown.
