I Love Lucy – Lucy Gets Homesick in Italy – season 5, originally aired April 9, 1956
Lucy Gets Homesick in Italy is one of those I Love Lucy episodes that is both funny and heartwarming. As part of Ricky’s European tour, Ricky, Lucy, Fred and Ethel are visiting Italy, where tightwad Fred has booked the group in the cheapest hotel in the country. A small street urchin, a shoe shine boy, offers to shine their shoes, but he is shooed away by the hotel manager. After checking in, and learning that their rooms are many, many floors up, the hotel owner tells them that the elevator is out of order.
The long climb soon becomes a running gag, especially since the only telephone in the hotel is at the front desk. And Lucy is desperate to call LIttle Ricky back in New York City, since it is his birthday, and momma Lucy misses her little boy fiercely.
Things seem to conspire against Lucy, as she keeps missing Little Ricky when calling – and having ‘fun’ running up and down the stairs. The shoeshine boy re-enters the plot, coming to Lucy’s room to shine her shoes …. Where a tearful Lucy lets the little boy know why she’s so sad. And, coincidentally, the shoeshine boy lets Lucy know that it’s his birthday, too – and Lucy rewards him with a chocolate. The pay-off comes a little while later, when the shoeshine boy brings all of his friends to meet Lucy. And they all share Little Ricky’s birthday, too! Lucy sees through the ruse, but holds a birthday party for them all anyway. And she finally gets to talk to her little boy, courtesy of Ricky’s intervention.
A very funny, and very sweet, episode of I Love Lucy, and well worth watching. Lucy Gets Homesick is available as part of the I Love Lucy season 5 DVD collection.
Funny quotes from I Love Lucy – Lucy Gets Homesick
Fred Mertz (William Frawley): It may be a little old, but it’s cheap.
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) That makes two of you.
Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz): [exhausted after climbing 4 flights of stairs] Hi!
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): You can say that again!
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): One flight up? What did you give us? The bridal suite for mountain goats?
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): That elevator she’s a no bust; she’s a pooped.
Fred Mertz (William Frawley): Ethel, you oughta see the view from our room. There’s a flock of pigeons right outside the window!
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): Those aren’t pigeons, they’re angels.
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): Just my luck – I’d get an operator in Italy who studied English in Cuba.