I just got a movie recommendation from my Dad: The Long Long Trailer,” which opened in 1954 featuring the beloved Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz team, a 1954 Mercury convertible, and a really big travel trailer.
Dad has been laid up for the past month following rotator-cuff surgery; he’s currently banned from using his right arm, so he’s been reading a lot of books and magazines and watching movies. He mentioned that he and Mom had watched (and enjoyed) The Long Long Trailer, and that he’d seen it at matinee when he was a little kid (he was 6 in ’54). He was telling me about going to the movies with Grandma Chickadee (his grandmother, my great-grandmother), his big sister Glenda, and three of his cousins. Grandma would take the kids to Saturday matinees because it was an economical way to treat all of the grandkids (and give their parents a break!) and this was one of the movies they went and saw. He said that he was surprised at how much of the movie he remembered from the first time he saw it, considering that there’d been about a 55 year lapse between viewings. He said that he remembered holding his breath and shouting “don’t back up any further” during the a particularly tense scene on a twisty road in Yosemite.
Anyway, the movie starts here for those of us who don’t have Turner Classic Movies at our disposal:
I’ll be enjoying this I’m sure. I am a big Lucy fan, love roadtrip stories, and have some particularly good (if exhausting) memories of Yosemite from our tour. I’m expecting that the set, props, and general array of cultural artifacts from that exuberant period of populuxe post-war affluence will be total eye candy!
Also, I feel that it is not inappropriate to stick you all with a jaunty little earworm:
I remember watching that when I was a kid. Great movie & very funny.
I have that Roger Miller cd – I LOVE it!!