I Love Lucy Season 1, Episode 13: The Benefit

1

The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub

An argument ensues among the couples when Ethel wants to celebrate the Mertzes's anniversary at the Copacabana while Fred wants to attend the fights. Ethel and Lucy decide that they will go to the club with dates.

23 min

2

Be a Pal

Thinking Ricky is losing interest in her, Lucy follows the advice of a book Ethel gave her and takes up Ricky's hobbies.

23 min

3

The Diet

To her dismay, Lucy finds out that she's put on twenty-two pounds since marrying Ricky. When one of the girls in Ricky's new show quits, she tricks him into promising, she can be in the show if she fits into the dancer's size twelve costume.

23 min

4

Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her

After becoming too involved in a murder mystery book, Lucy believes that Ricky is trying to murder her.

23 min

5

The Quiz Show

When Lucy needs to balance her household accounts, she decides to go on quiz show. To win the $1,000 cash prize, she has to introduce her "long lost first husband" to Ricky.

23 min

6

The Audition

Ricky lands a TV audition at the club. When Buffo the Clown injures himself and cannot make it, Lucy takes his place.

23 min

7

The Séance

Lucy tells an important talent agent that Ricky cannot appear in a show because of his horoscope. The agent is also interested in the occult. So Lucy arranges a séance.

23 min

8

Men Are Messy

Fed up with Ricky's messiness, Lucy divides the Ricardo apartment in a clean part for her and a messy part for him.

23 min

9

The Fur Coat

Ricky returns home with expensive mink coat that he has rented for an act at the club. Lucy jumps to the conclusion that it's her anniversary present.

23 min

10

Lucy Is Jealous of Girl Singer

Lucy is jealous of one of Ricky's dancer at his nightclub after hearing about a gossip column item linking the two.

24 min

11

Drafted

When Lucy opens Ricky's a telegram ordering him to appear at Fort Dix, she assumes that he has been drafted. Ethel suspects that Fred has been drafted as well when she hears, Fred is joining Ricky.

23 min

12

The Adagio

Lucy thinks she is a perfect fit for Ricky's Parisian apache dance number. But her dance teacher has more than dancing on his mind.

25 min

13

The Benefit

Ethel wants Ricky to a headline a benefit show for her women's club, but Lucy refuses to ask him, unless she can be on the bill too.

26 min

14

The Amateur Hour

Lucy spends too much money on a dress. So she tells Ricky that she will get a job babysitting in order to pay for it.

26 min

15

Lucy Plays Cupid

The Ricardo's neighbor Miss Lewis wants Lucy to deliver a dinner invitation to her grocer. But he misunderstands and thinks the invitation is from Lucy herself.

26 min

16

Lucy Fakes Illness

Lucy pretends to suffer from numerous psychological ailments so that Ricky will feel sorry for her and let her go into show business.

26 min

17

Lucy Writes a Play

Lucy writes a play set in Cuba hoping to cast Ricky, But when he refuses, she has to settle for Fred and changes her setting to England.

26 min

18

Breaking the Lease

After a big quarrel between the Ricardos and the Mertzes, Lucy and Ricky decide that they want to move out. Ricky and Lucy become the most undesirable tenants ever so that they can break that lease, while the Fred and Ethel resist.

26 min

19

The Ballet

Lucy learns that there is an opening in one of Ricky's acts for a ballet dancer as well as a burlesque comic.

26 min

20

The Young Fans

A shy young teenager named Peggy has a major crush on Ricky. Ricky, however, is tired of all this "attention" that this girl is giving him, so asks Lucy to have a talk with her. During their conversation, Lucy asks Peggy to think of some other boys her own age that she might like to go out with instead. Peggy, it seems, also likes a boy named Arthur Morton. Unfortunately, Arthur is painfully shy and cannot dance, so Lucy volunteers to give him a dance lesson. But it is then that Arthur becomes infatuated with Lucy! To get the two off their backs, Lucy and Ricky come up with a solution: they will dress up and act like 90 year olds, and scare their "young fans" back to reality.

26 min

21

New Neighbors

Lucy becomes afraid that one of her new neighbors is threatening to kill her and convinces the others that the neighbors are trying to kill them...which gets them into big trouble.

25 min

22

Fred and Ethel Fight

Fred and Ethel have been going at each others' throats for the past few days now, and aren't talking to each other any more. (Fred: She called my mother a weasel!)To get them back together, Lucy comes up with a plan: She will invite Ethel to dinner, while Ricky will invite Fred. Neither Mertz will know that the other is coming, Lucy hopes that she can bring the Mertzes together so they can talk out their issues. Lucy commences with her plan, but during dinner, she and Ricky start to bicker. By the end of supper, the Mertzes leave the Ricardos' apartment as happy as larks, but Lucy and Ricky are now at each others' throats. It's now up to the Mertzes to bring the Ricardos back together.

26 min

23

The Moustache

Lucy dislikes Ricky's new moustache. In order to take revenge, she glues a moustache and beard on to her face. Then, Ricky agrees to shave his moustache off, as long as Lucy gets rid of hers. Lucy tries to get the facial hair off, and is unsuccessful. They try to get a special substance to take the glue off, to find out that it is not made anymore.

26 min

24

The Gossip

Ricky is disgusted by Lucy's obsession with gossiping about other people. According to Ricky, Lucy acts as if it is her ""life's blood."" Fred, too, is disturbed by Ethel's love of gossiping. The two girls then point out that both Ricky and Fred have been known to gossip, also. The boys then challenge the girls to a bet: They will see who can go without gossiping the longest, and the winners will receive breakfast in bed for a month. The bet commences, and everything is going fine until Ricky comes up with a plan to cheat so that he and Fred can win.

25 min

25

Pioneer Women

Having been bet by their husbands that they can't do without modern conveniences, Lucy and Ethel churn butter and bake bread from scratch-an eighteen foot loaf! But then Lucy demands that Ricky live as if it's the turn of the century for him, too.

25 min

26

The Marriage License

Lucy thinks she and Ricky aren't legally married because his name was misspelled on their marriage license. So she wants them to renew their vows at the same place in Connecticut where Ricky first proposed to her. But they run out of gas getting there.

25 min

27

The Kleptomaniac

When Ricky finds a closet full of valuables that Lucy has collected for a bazaar, he mistakenly thinks that she's become a kleptomaniac. He secretly calls in a doctor to hypnotize her, but Lucy is wise to his plan and feigns recalling a notorious past.

24 min

28

Cuban Pals

Lucy burns with jealousy when she gets an eyeful of Ricky's dance parter Renita (Lita Baron) from the "old days" in Cuba. She was a child then, but no more! Determined to keep them apart, Lucy heads to the club in disguise, and finds herself in the clutches of a wild man named Ramon.

24 min

29

The Freezer

Where's the beef? It's in Lucy and Ethel's new walk-in freezer (according to Lucy, the "human popsicle"). Of course, Ricky and Fred have a beef with their wives, because they paid $483 for it. The meat company won't take it back, and they can't sell it to customers waiting in the local butcher shop, so they're stuck with it. And speaking of stuck, Lucy gets herself locked in the freezer!

24 min

30

Lucy Does a TV Commercial

Desperate to be in Ricky's new television commercial, Lucy makes every attempt to get her way; which eventually pays off. But her one-and-only chance flops when she is forced to test the sponsor's product over-and-over, a vitamin syrup called Vitametavegimin, which is 25% alcohol.

24 min

31

The Publicity Agent

Lucy poses as a princess for a publicity stunt.

24 min

32

Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio

Lucy secretly books Ricky on a radio quiz show.

24 min

33

Lucy's Schedule

Ricky puts Lucy on a rigid time schedule.

25 min

34

Ricky Thinks He Is Getting Bald

Ricky fears that he is going bald, so Lucy takes it into her head to help him: she stages a "bald people's party" to show him that he's not so bad, after all. But when that doesn't work, she resorts to showing some new "hair treatments" (or "torture tactics" as Lucy calls them) to show Ricky how silly he's been.

25 min

35

Ricky Asks for a Raise

Ricky asks for a raise, but his boss (Gale Gordon) turns him down, prompting Lucy to prove just how popular a performer he is. Her scheme involves making a lot of bogus reservations at the club on the night that somebody else is playing, then show up in various guises(including Fred in drag) feigning indignation that Ricky's not performing--and leave in a huff.

24 min