00:09Good afternoon, I'm Dave Karger. Thanks for joining me today on TCM.
00:13Up next is a comedy starring television's favorite couple of the 1950s, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
00:20It's a movie that was deliberately designed to capitalize on their popularity as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on the I
00:26Love Lucy show.
00:28From MGM in 1954, the long, long trailer.
00:31Lucy and Desi play a pair of newlyweds who take a honeymoon back to nature in a trailer, an oversized
00:37and unwieldy one.
00:39At the time they made this picture, Ball and Arnaz were the stars and executive producers of I Love Lucy,
00:45which was the most popular TV show in the country.
00:47They were also a real-life married couple, and to write the script for this big-screen comedy, MGM turned
00:53to another real-life married couple, Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett.
00:57The Hacketts, as they were collectively known, had been one of Hollywood's most successful screenwriting teams for two decades by
01:04this point.
01:04In 1934, they earned their first Oscar nomination for writing The Thin Man, and with that movie, they introduced audiences
01:11to a whole new concept of a modern marriage—one where the couple really liked each other and had fun together.
01:17They returned to the theme of marriage in 1950, writing the script for the original Father of the Bride, and
01:23they also wrote its sequel, Father's Little Dividend, in 1951.
01:27Both of those films were directed by Vincent Minnelli, and the team reunited to make another domestic comedy, this time
01:34a vehicle for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, hoping to parlay their success on the small screen into a big
01:40box office hit.
01:41It worked, and this comedy became one of MGM's biggest moneymakers of the year.
01:47From 1954, also with Marjorie Main and Keenan Wynn, the long, long trailer.
02:01We'll see you next time.
