I Love Lucy Superstar Special comes to CBS in May

CBS

From CBS Press Release:

New I Love Lucy Superstar Special, a new one-hour special featuring two colorized back-to-back classic episodes of the 1950s series, to be broadcast Friday, May 20 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

The two episodes, “Lucy Visits Grauman’s” and “Lucy and John Wayne,” are newly-colorized with a vintage look, reminiscent of the 1950s period in which they were filmed. This is similar to episodes presented in I Love Lucy specials on the Network last spring and the past few holiday seasons. Previously only shown separately, the two episodes tell a continuous story in one comedy hour for the first time. As with the previous I Love Lucy specials, the main titles and end credits are seamlessly combined into one set at the beginning and end of the hour. Academy Award-winning movie legend John Wayne is the special guest star.

I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and Vivian Vance and William Frawley, as the Ricardos’ best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz.

“Lucy Visits Grauman’s” finds Lucy and the Mertzes visiting Hollywood’s famed Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where Lucy discovers that the cement slab containing John Wayne’s footprints has come loose. Lucy thinks it would be a fabulous souvenir to take home, if only she can come up with a way to take it without being caught.

In “Lucy and John Wayne,” Lucy must find a way to replace the pilfered footprints. Ricky tries to help by calling John Wayne, but as usual with Lucy, the seemingly simple task of replicating the footprints becomes a comedy of errors.

“Lucy Visits Grauman’s” and “Lucy and John Wayne” originally aired October 3and October 10, 1955, respectively, and became instant classics. “Lucy and John Wayne” was included in CBS’s 1958 summer series, “The Top Ten Lucy Shows,” as selected by a panel of 155 newspaper TV critics and columnists.

I Love Lucy aired on CBS from October 15, 1951 until June 24, 1957. It was voted “the best TV show of all time” in a 2012 viewer poll conducted by People magazine and ABC News.