Ricky’s Old Girlfriend – I Love Lucy season 3, episode 78, originally aired December 21, 1953
In Ricky’s Old Girlfriend, Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) lets her insecurity get the best of her. After her husband Ricky (Desi Arnaz) mentions an old girlfriend (making up a name out of thin air – or so he thinks), Lucy sees an advertisement in Variety for the young lady, Carlotta Romero, and her imagination runs wild about Ricky leaving her for the beautiful, young, talented Carlotta
It turns out that Ricky did know a Carlotta Romero in Cuba, where he danced with her and her sisters in an act – but he never dated her, and Lucy is the only woman that he loves. Speaking of Lucy, her insecurities run awry, and in a very funny dream sequence, she imagines Ricky leaving herself and Little Ricky for the sexy, young Carlotta – and later she and Little Ricky begging outside Ricky’s club – and years later, still begging, with a not-so-Little Ricky.
Ricky tries to make everything right, and invites Carlotta over, where Lucy sees that the photograph in Variety wasn’t recent and Carlotta is no threat.
Ricky’s Old Girlfriend is available as part of the I Love Lucy season 3 DVD collection.
Funny quotes from Ricky’s Old Girlfriend – I Love Lucy
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): I’ve looked at so many fights on television I’ve got cauliflower eyes.
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): How about playing some cards.
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): We can’t. Little Ricky ate the queen of spades.
Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz): I must have seen her name in Variety or Billboard and it stuck in my mind.
Fred Mertz (William Frawley): Well, Lucy will knock it loose.
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): Be kind of hard to stir embers into a flame after 15 years.
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): She doesn’t look like the kind to ever let her pilot light go out.
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball):If you’re going to mumble, have the decency to mumble in English.
Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz): What have you been doing since I last saw you?
Carlotta Romero: Putting on weight, mostly.
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): I didn’t anyone so pretty and charming and so full of…so full of…well…, so full.