The Long, Long Trailer

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
Watching the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz film "The Long, Long Trailer" some 50+ years after it was made, is a rather surreal experience. By 1953, The "Baby Boom" was indeed booming, tract housing was all over the place like crab grass, trailer parks multiplied like jackrabbits, and Americans were inundated with the wonders of "space age" technology. Big, flashy-looking cars, refrigerators, TV sets, "streamlined" furniture, and snazzy clothes were the things that everyone wanted to have. It was as if America wanted to wipe away its gritty, unglamourous past and face the space age all polished and waxed and Simonized. To see Eisenhower's America as depicted by MGM in better-than-real-life Technicolor and filmed largely on MGM's backlot (interspersed with location photography of Yosemite Park,etc) I feel like I'm watching home movies that were shot in a suburb of a distant planet! "The Long, Long Trailer" was made to capitalize on the overwhelming popularity of TV's "I Love Lucy", which...

SOOO Funny
We watch this wonderful movie once a year, just for the pleasure of anticipating each perfect scene. Directed by Vincent Minelli, and perfectly acted by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, this comedy takes us through the engagement and honeymoon of a young couple starting out life in an "up to date" way, in a trailer. Each cameo appearance by marvelous second and third banana studio people whose faces any movie buff will recognize is very enjoyable, too. There are two several scenes that are our favorites. 1) Tacy (Lucille B.) fixes dinner in a moving trailer (HAH) 2) Nicky (Desi A.) freaks out trying to get his golf clubs to fit in the trailer; 3) Tacy and Nicky try to get over the high passes in Colorado with a rock-filled trailer); 4) a mechanic explains why trailer brakes are soo important. This film is just too magical to believe. You have to see it.

the Short version of the Long Long Trailer
I looked forward to seeing this classic because we had recently purchased an RV and I remembered how hilarious the T.V. movie had seemed when I saw it as a child. Several of the key elements for humor where there...the rock collection, running over the flower beds, etc. But I recalled other parts of the movie that were not on this DVD.
There was alot more character and story development in the original version shown on T.V. I remember Spagehtti going all over the place...not in this DVD; and when Lucy (Tacey) was in the trailer with a sprained ankle, there was more in the sequence than shown (Marjorie Maine had a lot more speaking parts). Overall, it was fun seeing the highlights again, but I wish the entire movie had been shown. I'm wondering why they deleted some of it.

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