By India McCarty
Lucille Ball’s favorite episode of I LOVE LUCY might have been funny onscreen, but the actress revealed she took a “beating” while filming it.
“Our director didn’t speak Italian,” Ball said of the episode “Lucy’s Italian Movie” while appearing on THE DICK CAVETT SHOW in 1974. “I didn’t speak Italian, no one spoke Italian…[Italian co-star Teresa Tirelli] was told that there would be a fight, and it was also explained to her that there were times when my legs had to come up in this huge vat of real grapes.”
Ball continued, “I slipped and when I slipped, I hit her, accidentally. And she took offense. So, she hauled off and let me have it…it took all the wind out of me.”
The actress explained that Tirelli “kept me down by the throat. And she was choking me, and I am really beating her to get her off. I was drowning in these grapes. She was killing me.”
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However, producers reportedly didn’t intervene because they knew how funny the scene would be for viewers.
“She spent so much time beating…me in the vat, we had to cut half of it,” Ball joked.
While Ball’s story is hilarious, I LOVE LUCY producer Jess Oppenheimer’s son Gregg took to Facebook in 2024 to set the record straight.
“Any stories you may have heard that the Italian woman in the vat spoke no English, or that Lucy nearly drowned, are simply untrue,” he wrote. “The fight scene in the grape vat was carefully rehearsed all week. The Italian actress, Teresa Tirelli, was a card-carrying SAG member who spoke perfect English. She later appeared on the TV series DR.S KILDARE and as a midwife in THE GODFATHER PART II.”
Whether or not Ball’s story about the episode is true, there’s no denying her legacy as an actress and comedian.
“Her face was seen by more people more often than the face of any human being who ever lived,” the citation for her posthumously-awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom read. “Who can forget Lucy? She was like everyone’s next-door neighbor, only funnier. Lucille Ball was a national treasure who brought laughter to us all. Love Lucy? Sure. This nation is grateful to her, and we will miss her dearly.”
Ball’s recollection of this now-iconic episode of I LOVE LUCY is just another way the legendary comedian kept us laughing.
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