(thanks, ItsNotYouItsMeblog!) 

I happened to be flipping around the dial randomly again and TCM paid off, as usual with a film I hadn’t seen yet (but had heard of). This clip from director Dorothy Arzner’s 1940 film Dance, Girl, Dance of Lucille Ball doing the number “Jitterbug Bite” cracked me up because in another universe, she’d have been more famous for her sassy song and dance numbers and not trying to “splain” every week to Ricky about why the oven grew a twenty-foot bread loaf, why she stuffed too many chocolates into her face at the chocolate factory or got into a catfight in a vat of wine grapes with some stubborn grape-stompers.

The film itself is pretty funny, pitting Lucy’s burlesque queen Bubbles (what a name!) up against the cute gal played by Maureen O’Hara who does the opening act everyone boos until Lucy steps in to pull her showstopper number. of course, being typcast as a sexpot isn’t the best thing for any actress who wants to stretch her wings, so it’s definitely a great thing that Lucy didn’t let herself get trapped into these sorts of roles, right? But of course, if you never loved Lucy, it means you just never watched enough TV back in the day or sought out all those reruns that seem to in in constant loop on some channel somewhere in the world…