I Love Lucy
Lucy Writes a Play
TV Flash files “Lucy Writes a Play” as hour 17 of 180 in the TV Flash guide — I Love Lucy (1951–1957) on CBS, season 1, episode 17, aired 1952-02-04, 30 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E17: listed hour 17 of 180 in the I Love Lucy guide, hour 17 of 35 in season 1. It aired 1952-02-04 (30 min). The listed hour before it is “Lucy Fakes Illness” (S01E16). Next is “Breaking the Lease” (S01E18).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Lucy is busily writing the script for the play that her women's club is going to put on, a little something called "A Tree Grows in Havana," and she needs Ricky to appear in it. When Ricky sees the script, he immediately declines. So Lucy is then left with no alternative but to get Fred to agree to do the role. Deciding that Fred wouldn't be very good for portraying a Cuban character, Lucy decides to rewrite the play so that it is set in England. Later, however, Ricky decides that he wants to be in the play when he hears that some very important sponsors are going to be at the women's show. So he manages to trick Fred into giving him back the role. But Ricky doesn't know that Lucy has rewritten the play. This leads to some pretty disastrous results.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Lucy Writes a Play sit in the I Love Lucy guide?
S01E17 is listed hour 17 of 180 — hour 17 of 35 in season 1, season 1 episode 17.
When did I Love Lucy S01E17 air?
Lucy Writes a Play aired 1952-02-04 and is listed at 30 minutes.
Where should I start?
Start with the 1951 nightclub opener, then the candy-line hour. Those two teach the marriage contract and the physical-comedy machine; the rest of the run is variations on both.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Ball owned the joke and the company. Watch the live-audience blocking, the marriage-as-engine, and the way Desilu turned a Monday night into national infrastructure. Reruns still teach timing that prestige comedies keep rediscovering as if they invented the studio audience.
CBS Monday, 1951: three networks, a living room with no scroll, and a redhead who treated physical comedy like a contact sport. I Love Lucy did not drop. It arrived, film rolling, audience laughing in the same room as the furniture, and America discovered that a sitcom could be both popular and formally serious. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were not merely a TV couple. They were the production company. Desilu’s three-camera method, the live audience, the blocking that still gets stolen — that is the industrial…
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