User Reviews

Great comical quips from the main cast throughout this half-hour gem, with even Ricky tossing in a slapstick bit when he twice collapses, totally exhausted, onto a bed that seems to have a solid, concrete mattress! They're at a rundown hotel in Florence, Italy, both the Ricardo's and the Mertz's, and Lucy, feeling homesick, is desperately trying, but so far failing, to place a phonecall back home to New York to wish little Ricky a Happy Birthday. When she collapses, disappointedly, into a chair by the hotel Lobby's phone, in walks the little hero of this memorable episode: a poor, eight-year-old shoeshine boy(played by ten-year-old guest actor Bart Baverman), who immediatly, and masterfully, brightens up the scene with a most charming and brilliant acting performance such as I've never seen pulled off by an actor so young! He delivers all his lines in Italian-style-broken-English; but the rub here is that, convincing as he is, he is not Italian at all! Is it too late to award him an honorable Emmy---he's alive and well at 76!--- for a 66-year-old performance? He effortlessly steals the rest of the show, which you'll just have to watch to understand why!