The episode was an immediate sensation with congratulatory telegrams flooding in to Desilu studios, including one from silent star Colleen Moore, according to The "I Love Lucy" Book by Bart Andrews. BTW, you can read my review of The Country Girl here).ĭirector Bill Asher, Lucille Ball, and William Holden on the set of I Love Lucy. The actor, who was then one of the biggest box-office draws in Hollywood, agreed to take on the part for free - he and Ball were old pals who starred together in the 1949 romantic comedy Miss Grant Takes Richmond - but Paramount Pictures did insist that the actor promote his new film The Country Girl (1954) during the episode (I've often wondered how effective those promos were amidst all the hilarity, but, it certainly didn't hurt anything: Holden's costar Grace Kelly won a surprise Academy Award for her performance in The Country Girl a little over a month after "L.A. With that in mind, the writers decided to move I Love Lucy to Hollywood for the second half of the fourth season with the first celebrity guest star being Holden. The runaway success of the comedy film The Long, Long Trailer (1954), in which Ball and Arnaz played characters very similar to the Ricardos, also made it seem natural that Ricky would one day go to Hollywood to make a movie.
Also, a two-episode guest stint in season three by singer and TV host Tennessee Ernie Ford was a ratings winner (Ford would return for season four episode "Tennessee Bound"), and CBS executives were pressuring I Love Lucy's producers to have more high-profile guest stars on the series.
By its third season, I Love Lucy was a TV and cultural juggernaut, but writers Bob Carroll, Jr., Jess Oppenheimer, and Madelyn Pugh were having difficulties coming up with fresh material based on the domestic situations that were the show's bread and butter.
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