I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy (1951)

179 mistakes - chronological order

(11 votes)

The Million Dollar Idea - S3-E12

Character mistake: When Ricky sits down to calculate by hand how much Lucy and Ethel have spent on supplies to make and sell their salad dressing, he adds $7.21 for the groceries, $1.20 for the jars, and 10 cents for the labels. He says his total is $8.31. He miscalculated; the correct total is $8.51. Ironically, his profit calculation is correct at 3 cents a jar. (00:15:10)

Paco386

I Love Lucy mistake picture

Ricky Minds the Baby - S3-E13

Continuity mistake: While Ricky's telling the bedtime story in Spanish to Little Ricky (worth watching just for this darling scene), in the closeups of the baby in the crib, the pillow bumper has an embroidered heart with stick figures, which flips in reverse. Actually, the last closeup of Little Ricky lying down is the normal shot, but all the closeups of the baby sitting up are the flipped shots. (This pillow bumper has stick figures of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and can be seen in previous episodes). (00:06:40)

Super Grover

I Love Lucy mistake picture

Ricky Minds the Baby - S3-E13

Continuity mistake: While Lucy is at Ethel's apartment nervous about leaving the baby with Ricky she's wearing v-strap pumps, then she heads back to her apartment to get her coat and bag, but when Lucy walks into her apartment she's wearing ankle strap pumps instead. (00:16:00)

Super Grover

Ricky Minds the Baby - S3-E13

Other mistake: When Ricky puts the baby in the crib and begins telling him the bedtime story, in the closeups Little Ricky's sitting up beside the crib rails (at Ricky's side of the room), but in all the wideshots when the camera pulls back to show Ricky's lively storytelling, we can see that Little Ricky is not where he should be.

Super Grover

The Charm School - S3-E14

Visible crew/equipment: While Lucy and Ethel are at their charm school, when they're standing in front of Miss Emerson's desk, in the widehots a small tape mark is visible on the floor in front of Lucy's feet. Then, when Lucy and Ethel are in sweatpants there are two small tape marks on the floor, and when Ethel walks to the other side of the room to join Lucy, there's another tape mark which Vivian even looks down at to confirm her foot's position.

Super Grover

Sentimental Anniversary - S3-E15

Continuity mistake: While Lucy's showing Little Ricky the pictures in the album, we see Lucy's fingernails are not polished, but in the closeup of her hand pointing to the photo the fingernails have dark polish on them. This happens again when Lucy's looking through the album with Ricky.

Super Grover

Home Movies - S3-E19

Plot hole: Toward the end of the episode, when the spliced-together movie is shown, there are several scenes from the movie Lucy, Fred and Ethel shot, often showing all three of them on screen at the same time. The problem is that no one else was there with them, yet the camera follows them as they move around the room. Who was running their camera?

Jeff Swanson

Home Movies - S3-E19

Factual error: In the film Lucy and the others make, there is a long sequence of footage played forwards, then "mistakenly" repeated backwards. With the equipment and techniques they were using, this would have required not only making a complete copy of the segment, but also reversing the order of individual frames. Just feeding the film in backwards would have also flipped the image vertically. The result seen would be nearly impossible to produce accidentally.

I Love Lucy mistake picture

Bonus Bucks - S3-E20

Continuity mistake: After Ricky takes out the extra expenses from the prize money, when starched-up Lucy walks into the office Fred's holding the last dollar bill, and in the closeup of Ethel's and Fred's shocked reactions to Lucy's appearance we see Lucy's hand holding the dollar, but in the next wideshot Lucy's open hand is empty so Fred gives her the dollar. (00:24:35)

Super Grover

I Love Lucy mistake picture

Ricky's Hawaiian Vacation - S3-E21

Continuity mistake: When Ricky has five seconds left on Freddie Fillmore's show, in the wideshot Ricky starts singing "Let's have another piece of" and he's holding the paper with his right hand while snapping the fingers of his left, but it cuts to Ricky's closeup and the paper's now in his left hand while he's snapping the fingers of his right hand. (00:24:40)

Super Grover

Lucy is Envious - S3-E22

Continuity mistake: When Martians Lucy and Ethel are sneaking up behind everyone on the Empire State Building, in the closeup Ethel has a toy gun tucked into her belt just as she climbs over the fence, but in the next wideshot her toy gun is already lying on the observation deck floor. (00:17:25)

Super Grover

I Love Lucy mistake picture

Lucy Writes a Novel - S3-E23

Visible crew/equipment: While Lucy starts taking notes about Ethel, Fred walks in and soon asks, "What's going on this booby hatch," then just as Lucy rushes back to the desk, we can see the end of the set wall and there's some kind of partition in front of the kitchen set. (00:02:35)

Super Grover

Ricky Ricardo: Fred, how often is Ethel's checking account overdrawn?
Fred Mertz: Never.
Ricky Ricardo: Never? How do you manage that?
Ethel Mertz: It's easy. I never had enough money at one time to open a checking account.
Fred Mertz: She spends money like I'm printing it in the basement.

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Show generally

Question: I know this show is from the time period when a lot of couples had two beds in their room. Just out of curiosity, when did it become acceptable to show a couple's bedroom with a single bed on TV?

Answer: According to Snopes.com, there is no definitive answer, but the mid-1960s is the most verifiable date with "The Munsters" being cited as the first, although others claim "The Brady Bunch" showed the first couple seen in a double bed. An early TV show from the late 1940s titled, "Mary Kay and Johnny" is also thought to have shown the married couple's bedroom as having a double bed, although probably not with them in it. However, this was when TV was aired live, and there are no surviving episodes, only anecdotal accounts.

raywest

Something that is funny is that in the movie "A Christmas Story," they show the parents having two twin beds in their bedroom. In a real situation, they should have shown them having a double bed. Lucy and Ricky had twin beds pushed together in an early episode, which would have been pushing television boundaries in that time.

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