During a 1974 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Ball responded to the audience with one word when asked to name her favorite episode from the classic TV sitcom she starred in with her then-husband, Desi Arnaz, from 1951 to 1957.
Ball was referring to the iconic 1956 episode “Lucy’s Italian Movie,” which aired 70 years ago on April 16, 1956. Ball teamed up with an Italian actress, Teresa Tirelli, for a famous grape-stomping scene during her character Lucy Ricardo’s trip to Italy. But things went awry when Tirelli reportedly went off-script and got overly physical with Ball in the grape-stomping vat.
“I slipped and when I slipped, I hit her, accidentally. And she took offense. So, she hauled off and let me have it … it took all the wind out of me,” Ball continued. “She had been told that we were to stay down for a while, give me a chance to get my legs way up so that they’d show in the camera. Then, up would come an arm…My head was supposed to pop [up]. Well, my head never popped up. She kept me down by the throat. And she was choking me, and I am really beating her to get her off. I was drowning in these grapes. She was killing me.”
The lack of communication may not have been a language barrier
Ball’s story on Cavett’s show alluded to the fact that Tirelli didn’t speak English. But I Love Lucy producer Jess Oppenheimer’s son, Gregg, stated on Facebook in 2024, “Any stories you may have heard that the Italian woman in the vat spoke no English, or that Lucy nearly drowned, are simply untrue. The fight scene in the grape vat was carefully rehearsed all week. The Italian actress, Teresa Tirelli, was a card-carrying SAG member who spoke perfect English. She later appeared in the TV series Dr. Kildare and as a midwife in The Godfather Part II."
But when one fan asked, “But isn't Lucy partly to blame for the story of the Italian actress not speaking English and nearly drowning Lucy?” Oppenheimer explained.
Tirelli, who was also a renowned classical singer, died in June 1989 at age 81, per a UPI obituary, just two months after Ball’s death that April at age 77.
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