Jerry Bittle

Vitameatavegamin_Disco Lucy_I Love Lucy Commerical

• Report rights infringement
• published: 29 Jul 2013
• views: 8208

Episode #30 - Lucy Does a TV Commercial Season: #1 - 1951-52 Airdate: May 5, 1952 Filmed: March 28, 1952 Supporting Cast: Director-Ross Elliott, Joe-Jerry Hausner, Script Clerk-Maury Thompson "Hello, friends. I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, rundown, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle: Vitameatavegamin. Vitameatavegamin, contains vitamins, meat, vegetables, and minerals. Yes, with Vitameatavegamin, you can spoon your way to health. All you do is take a tablespoon after every meal (Lucy samples product). It's so tasty too. Just like candy. So why don't you join the thousands of happy peppy people and get a great big bottle of Vitameatavegamin tomorrow. That's Vita..Meta..Vegamin." After repeated rehearsals, Lucy gets bombed because the liquid tonic is 23 percent alcohol. Further attempts to polish her performance proves hilarious, with Lucy garbling her words and slurring her speech. This is Lucille Ball at her comic best. Vitameatavegamin is a fictitious health tonic imbibed by Lucy on the I Love Lucy episode "Lucy Does a TV Commercial". It is stated as an elixir containing concentrated "vitamins, meat, vegetables, and minerals" (on the commercial filming; the label showed that the main ingredient was "23% alcohol"). It promised to help people who are "tired, run-down, and listless". During filming, Lucy was actually drinking apple pectin out of the Vitameatavegamin bottle. Originally, the Vitameatavegamin was 11% alcohol, according to a rare picture seen here, but for production, it was increased to 23% The fictitious elixir is portrayed on multiple souvenir merchandise from cinnamon-flavored Vitameatavegamin candy, to cookie jars, to clocks. Vitameatavegamin bottles were also seen in the Our Miss Brooks episode "Vitmin E-4" which focused on the gang at Madison High School bottling and selling a similar health tonic. Special Notes: Maury Thompson, the script clerk, played himself. A good deal of time and effort was expended by stage manager Herb Browar to find just the right liquid concoction to fill the Vitameatavegamin bottles. It had to ooze out of the bottle, not flow freely, plus it had to taste good to Lucy. After trying and dismissing a half-dozen products, including honey, Browar stopped off at a health food store on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and found the perfect liquid: apple pectin. Lucy loved the taste, and they proceeded to fill the bottles with it on dress rehearsal day. At the end of the show, Ricky gestures offstage before his musical number and says "Mr. Hatch, if you please." Wilbur Hatch was the conductor of Desi Arnaz's orchestra. Lucille Ball was offered her own televison program by CBS in 1949, at the dawn of television. Modeled after her hit Radio Program, My Favorite Husband, Lucille Ball was excited by the new medium. She told CBS that she would only do it if her husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, could be her co-star. CBS had more of an all-American couple in mind, and they flatly turned her down. Not one to take no for an answer, Lucy raised $5000 and, together with Desi, produced a pilot. That historic show did not air ... but it contained all of the elements that would make I Love Lucy an instant hit, and it convinced CBS to sign the deal. On October 15, 1951, I Love Lucy debuted on CBS and the rest is TV history. For its entire run, I Love Lucy maintained its time slot, Monday night at 9pm, during which millions of Americans stopped whatever they were doing to join the Ricardos and the Mertzes for a half hour. The series' premise focused on the antics of a wacky wife who drives her husband to distraction. As one of the ultimate Classic TV shows, I Love Lucy continues to be enormously popular worldwide.