The Lucy & Desi Collection

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were the most famous married couple in America during part of the 1950s as stars and producers of the hugely popular situation comedy I Love Lucy, and they also costarred in the three features gathered together in this boxed set. 1940's Too Many Girls is adapted from a Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical, with three of the original stars (Eddie Bracken, Van Johnson, and Arnaz) making their feature film debuts. The delightful story finds Bracken and Arnaz playing two of four Ivy League college football players who agree to secretly chaperone a wealthy man's willful daughter (Ball) to a small New Mexico university and keep her out of trouble. Once the boys arrive, however, restlessness leads them to sign up for the varsity squad, and they ultimately put the school on the pigskin map for the first time in its history. The Rodgers and Hart songs are not among the duo's best (“You're Nearer” is the closest to a classic), but the real highlight for I Love Lucy fans here is surely the very first scene shared by Arnaz and Ball, in which Desi, playing a star athlete who hasn't seen a woman in weeks, faints at the sight of his future bride. Vincente Minnelli's The Long, Long Trailer (1954) is a comically cautionary story about a newly married couple who invest in a transportable 40-foot trailer as their first home and find themselves in a wide variety of humorous situations. Sight gags in the I Love Lucy mold are plentiful, including a classic scene in which Ball struggles to prepare stew and a Caesar salad in the wildly wobbling trailer. Forever Darling revolves around the marriage of visionary chemist Lorenzo (Arnaz) and socialite Susan (Ball). The latter can't decide if she should be entertaining friends and keeping up high society appearances or going off with her husband on a two-year field test of his bug killer. James Mason costars as a dapper guardian angel trying to steer Susan toward happiness. A solid trio of films sure to appeal to fans of comedy's most famous redhead, The Lucy & Desi Collection also includes DVD extras such as vintage shorts and cartoons. Recommended. (T. Keogh)