Ricky’s Contract - I Love Lucy | clown ministry

You are here: I Love Lucy season 4 >Ricky’s Contract - I Love Lucy

Ricky’s Contract—I Love Lucy season 4, episode 107, originally aired December 6, 1954

Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball Poster Card
Buy at AllPosters.com

In Ricky’s Contract, Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) is slowly going crazy, waiting to hear the results of his movie audition ... and is making everyone else crazy as well. It begins with Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance) coming to collect the rent money. Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) and Ethel begin a short conversation, speaking in short snippets, with Fred Mertz asking, “What are you talking, shorthand?” In addition to being a funny bit, this allows Ethel to bring the audience up to speed on Ricky’s waiting for his screen test. Fred leaves, to put the rent money in his “secret hiding place;” unknown to Fred, Ethel has known his “secret” hiding place for 24 years! Ricky is on “pens and niddles”, even going so far as to take the telephone to bed with him -- which he demonstrates when he brings it with him out to breakfast. Desi Arnaz is given a chance to showcase his own comedic skills as he obsesses over over the waiting telephone call.

His wife Lucy (Lucille Ball) is not allowed to use the phone, since it might give a busy signal when ‘the call’ comes. Later, Fred delivers the mail, and Ricky goes through it manically, and Lucy, Fred and Ethel try to take Ricky’s mind off it, to no effect. Ethel suggests a community sing, with the group singing ”When You’re Smiling”—only to have Lucy’s bad singing bring the song to a screeching halt. They convince Ricky to go to practice, and he reluctantly complies—taking the telephone with him, causing him trip and fall off-stage. At the club, Ricky is still obsessing over the telephone, taking a break only to sing I’ll See You in Cuba.

Back at the Ricardo’s apartment, Ethel is babysitting while Lucy is at the beauty parlor, and taking telephone messages. Fred comes in, hungry for his lunch, and writes down the message that that Ricky wants to see - that Hollywood called back with Ricky having gotten the contract. Ethel convinces him that it’s a bad idea—after all, it sounds like one of Lucy’s! She gets sidetracked and sets the message aside instead of throwing it away. When Lucy gets home, she sees the message and calls Ricky’s club, in a very funny bit where she mistakenly thinks that the man answering the phone at the club is Ricky. Upstairs, Ethel realizes that she’s left the message behind, and rushes down with Fred to warn Lucy that the message was bogus—but it’s too late. She’s already left a message with Marco at the club, and Ricky has taken the entire band out to celebrate. “Off course, when I tell him, I’ll be holding little Ricky. He wouldn’t dare hit a woman with a baby in his arms.” And so Lucy, Ethel and Fred are waiting in dread for Ricky to come home, so that they can break the bad news to him. Luckily for Fred (and Lucy, and Ethel) it turns out that Ricky did get the part, and the crew will soon begin their trip to Hollywood!

Ricky’s Contact is available on the fourth season DVD of I Love Lucy, as well as on I Love Lucy : the Complete Series.

Funny quotes from Ricky’s Contract—I Love Lucy

Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): I’ll get the money.
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): How did you know why we were here?
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): There’s only one thing that can put a smile like that on Fred’s face.

Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz): (answering phone) No, she’s not here. (Hangs up phone)
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): Who’s not here?
Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz): You.

Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): No, nothing’s wrong. Ricky’s expecting an important phone call, and he’s been keeping the line free. Lucy’s quite a talker, especially when she’s talking with one of her gabby friends like Carolyn Appleby. Well, I’ll leave a message, Marge ... Carolyn!

Fred Mertz (William Frawley): My stomach’s rumbling.
Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance): Well, tell your stomach that lunch is going to be a little bit late today.
Fred Mertz (William Frawley): (patting stomach, talks to his stomach) You hear that, Charlie?

Fred Mertz (William Frawley): In the second place, why don’t you keep quiet in the first place?

Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): Fred, how could you do that?
Fred Mertz (William Frawley): I didn’t know what I was doing! I was half-crazed with hunger!

Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz): Mr. Benjamin wanted to know ... he only received the telegram 20 minutes before. How did you know? Do you have a friend at the telegram office?
Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball): Good! Yeah, a friend at the telegram office.