Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
Long before Dr. Fleischman moved into Cicely, Alaska, in the television series “Northern Exposure,” viewers were treated to a sit com episode based in our great state. It was just one episode and it was filmed right after Alaska joined the Union as the 49th state. Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel were here! In Nome!
Yes, the Ricardos and the Mertzes came to Nome in a black-and-white rerun I saw recently of the old “I Love Lucy” show. Lured by a promise of getting rich with a Nome-area property with oil reserves, the Mertzes and Ricardos traveled 4,800 miles–they emphasized that number a few times–to arrive in Nome.
They all stayed in a hotel where guest star Red Skelton happened to be the proprietor. There were the inimitable high jinks with sleeping arrangements. Ethel Mertz got a bed, Fred started on the floor and then shared a bed with Ricky, and Lucy tried the hammock tied to doorknobs. You don’t have to be a Hollywood scriptwriter to guess what kept happening with the hammock and the doorknobs as Red came in for the umpteenth time to check on his guests. Red finally offered his room to the two women and fell soundly asleep in the hammock, not even budging when Lucy opened the door again. The next day, Lucy drove a jeep with Red out to the alleged oil-rich property. The back-ground shots of Nome as they drove along looked pretty real with flat, white expanses of snow stretching out to the frozen sea’s horizon. Then this duo ran into a nasty blizzard. Red promised he’d buy Lucy’s oil property if she’d just be sensible and turn the jeep around. Lucy agreed to the sale, turned around, and slammed into a snow bank. Luckily, two Natives happened to come from behind the snow bank AT JUST THAT MOMENT! Lucy and Red begged the men to mush them by dogsled back into Nome. “No!” the Natives laughed. “We don’t need to use dog sleds! We have a plane!”
The Native man piloted them in his small plane but knocked himself when Lucy insisted on opening a window. Lucy and Red were now the pilots! Ricky and the Mertzes dashed to the airport (where the big leather chairs and old ticket counter look pretty authentic) and listened in frozen horror as the airport manager talked Red and Lucy to the runway where they crash landed into a mountainous snow bank. Lucy fell out of the plane’s doorway into a huge pile of snow, happy to be alive.
It’s a good thing she made it, too, since she and Red had to perform a skit together in the next scene. Transformed into lovable tramps through Emmett Kelly clown makeup, the two did a colorful turn singing “Side by Side.” They do a great job, too— not anything Richard Beneville couldn’t pull together with a few rehearsals—but it was the best part of the show.
This “I Love Lucy” episode isn’t going to teach anybody much about the Seward Peninsula or upgrade any TV images of the Inupiat people, but I’m easy. I live in a tiny town on an ocean most Americans have barely heard of and it warmed my little couch-potato heart to hear the airport announcer actor say in a national television production, “Ladies and gentlemen, the flight from Savoonga has been delayed.”
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