in 'Redecorating the Mertzes' Apartment' episode lucy and ricky are in the kitchen and lucy says she has an idea that wont cost the mertzes a cent, they will paint the furniture and upholster the old furniture.an obvious goof that she doesnt notice, desi repeats what she says,then he corrects her by saying the right line,paint the apartment and upholster the old furniture, it seems even the audience didnt catch that because there is no reaction from even them.
shareBecause it wasn't a goof, she did it on purpose to show that Ricky was actually listening to her so she messed it up on purpose which confused Ricky so he corrected here thus proving to her that he was listening.
shareIt was a goof according to the DVD bonus.
shareNo. it was a goof, and OP, I think you're right, the audience didn't seem to catch it.
share"paint the furniture and upholster the old furniture" sounds reasonable to me. You put new fabric on the chairs/couch and repaint the dressers and hard wood stuff.
shareIt is a goof, Lucy spoke the line wrong. There was a strict policy, set by Lucy, of no retakes on the set. If someone blew a line, they had to ad-lib it and save the scene just as if they were putting on a stage production, which they technically were. There are several throughout the show. Desi dealt with this one in grand fashion.
shareThere were retakes for something serious. Yes, we all know it was like a stage production. IN this case, Lucy was excellent at keeping her composure as if nothing happened due to her goof.
shareRetakes in front of the studio audience were rare, unlike sitcom recordings today. Nowadays it takes hours of real time to record a half hour episode. Part of the reason was ILL was a costly show to produce for the time. Even though Desilu was making a bundle of money on the show, they still tried to keep costs down while maintaining production quality.
They did, however, do pick-ups more often. These would be filmed later, mostly in close-ups. Often it was to pick up a line that was either stepped on by one of the actors, covered up by audience reaction, or unintelligible for other reasons, or for a camera placement issue.
Yes, that magic is gone: I observed that first-hand while being an extra on Designing Women. On shows like The Carol Burnett show, they weren't always able to disguise the goof, and their reactions.
In this particular case, Lucy didn't so much as blink when she made that goof, unless it didn't click with her until later. However, I don't know if it was do to budget constraints; it didn't cost that much more in film to redo a small snippet. I think it was more for the audience's sake and themselves.
I was referring to the crew's time to have to reset a scene, camera blocking etc. moreso than the film costs. To have to back up and re-do gets expensive very quickly if you do it a lot.
Today, budgets are so large (look at The Big Bang Theory, where each of the leads gets $1M per episode), they can spend a lot more time and money doing scenes over and over.
The Carol Burnett show did two complete tapings per episodes and spliced the show together from both tapings. The second taping had all of the ad libs in them, where we see in the finished show the crack ups and stifled cast laughter.
When you worked on Designing Women, how long did it take to finish an episode?
what I meant is that re-taping that "big goof" would not require the crew to move, block, reset; it would be the same set-up. (like taking another snapshot of something that you just took)
Designing Women was a bore. Even as an extra, I had to attend a extra-group rehearsal (for whar?). I don't know how long the entire ep took to film, since I was only in one scene, that one scene seemed to take 2 hours. Miss Dixie was acting like co-director. But, I moved myself right in line of the camera (hehe) since I figured I'd be seen that way (albeit, out of focus).
Really? You think anybody would use such redundant wording?
shareI'll have to watch it, I don't remember this. I do remember a goof from the passport episode with the trunk. The phone rings, Ricky says hello, then immediately (while on the phone) asks what that trunk is doing in the living room, Fred answers him, and then Ricky talks to the person on the phone. I wonder if the sound que for the phone was too early, because that conversation was mixed up.
shareThere's another episode which I think is from the "Hollywood" time. I think Lucille Ball accidently says "marry" instead of "carry" (I'm not sure.) She deftly turns her back to the audience obviously laughing---a deep laugh too, as her shoulders were thrusting up and down---as Desi Arnaz, as "Ricky" with a phone in hand, ad libs a bit to cover and buy more time to let her compose herself, and then moves forward. The scene was not edited, and I don't believe most saw her laughing.
I've watched these episodes WAY too many times!
Are you talking about the Van Johnson episode? She says "I did vance with Dan!" She obviously screwed up that sentence and was laughing at herself.
One of my favorite goofs is when Ricky's friends from Cuba visit and he's translating to Lucy. When he gets mixed up and realizes he's speaking the wrong language.
Yep...that's it! Maybe a bit of a Freudian slip since her co-star's last name was "Vance"...
sharethe cuba visit episode was a goof but a very good one because a person who is translating could easily get mixed up and make a goof like that.
shareyour correct Lucy did goof up the line. Ricky did correct her by how he questioned her.
Ricky: You mean paint the apartment and upholster the old furniture?
Lucy: yeah
Ricky: I didn't hear you.
I had noticed that years ago. it's one of the rare mistakes she made.
One of my favorite goofs is an episode where Ethel refers to Mrs. Trumball as "That old Mrs. Trimble"
share