Lucy’s Italian Movie and the Grape Stomping Scene

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

If you’re in early 50s, you will surely remember the fun you had watching various episodes of the popular TV series called I Love Lucy. It was a comedy show in black and white format. And that used to be the TV show I loved watching as a kid amongst others like Star Wars, Bharat Ek Khoj, Ramayan etc.

Well it appears that Lucille Ball who played the character of Lucy in the series also had a tryst with wine or winemaking to be precise.

In the famous 1956 episode called as Lucy’s Italian Movie, Ball, hoping to bag a role in the film (which she mistakenly assumes is about Italian winemaking) ends up stomping grapes in a huge vat.

According to The International Wine & Food Society, her fellow actress inside the same vat, didn’t speak English and when it came time for their staged fight – she didn’t understand that the fight was supposed to be fake and a real fight ensued inside the vat between the two actresses, about which Ball would later say that “I almost died drowning in the grapes”.

In Ball’s own words “Once the (filming of) fight started, the lady was bent on drowning me. At one point, she literally held my head underwater, and I had to fight to get my breath back”.

Sources: the images and story has been referenced from many articles on the topic though google incl History.org, IWFS, Reddit, Insider.com etc.