BACK TO THE FUTURE AS `I LOVE LUCY' CELEBRATES ITS 55TH ANNIVERSARY, THE SHOW IS MORE POPULAR THAN EVER.

Byline: GREG HERNANDEZ Staff Writer

No matter how many times people see the zany redhead stomp grapes in Italy, set her nose on fire in Hollywood, get fired from a chocolate factory, or get good and drunk on Vitameatavegamin, there seems to be an endless appetite for the madcap adventures of Lucy MacGillicuddy Ricardo.

The first episode of ``I Love Lucy'' was filmed 55 years ago this month, but the series has, somehow, never gotten tiresome to generations of fans.

``At some point, it will fade away but I think `Lucy' has a shelf life kind of like Elvis,'' observed pop culture expert Robert Thompson. ``Every time a new generation watches, it extends the shelf life.''

Since the very first episode of ``I Love Lucy'' was filmed before a live audience on Sept. 8, 1951, the instant love affair was established with viewers. The show has thrived from first-run network television to more than four decades of syndicated reruns to popular VHS tape compilations and now to wildly successful DVD boxed sets released at a steady clip over the past two years.

``It was the first show that really proved that older television shows would do very well on DVD,'' said Doug Thomas, managing editor Amazon.com's online DVD store. ``The show holds up well on the technical side because it was filmed so it looks good on DVD. Each season is a top-10 seller when it comes out.''

CBS DVD has teamed with Paramount Home Video to release each of the show's six seasons in boxed sets that include unedited episodes of the show and are loaded with extras, including trivia, commentary and the show's original opening title sequence that was different from the one familiar from decades of syndication.

Each season has sold in the ``hundreds of thousands,'' according to Ken Ross, executive vice president and general manager of CBS Consumer Products.

``The notion of enjoying a complete season in packaging that has the width of a book spine is something that is very attractive,'' Ross said. ``By the nature of the beast, subsequent seasons usually sell less so what we do as a marketing tactic to avoid attrition is to emphasize specific episodes and iconic moments.''

Season six, for example, included the classic episode in which Lucy dances the tango with Ricky with dozens of eggs hidden in her blouse -- a scene that resulted in the longest laugh in the series' history.

The DVD sets include all 179 half-hour episodes in their entirety and have been gems for die-hard fans who can't get enough of Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel.

``It's wonderful that people can see them unedited, the way they were originally,'' said Gregg Oppenheimer, producer of the ``I Love Lucy'' boxed sets. ``I think everyone is buying them for their kids and grandkids to watch.''

Oppenheimer, the son of the show's late producer, Jess Oppenheimer, said it's almost as if the show was filmed with DVD technology in mind as it has already been remastered in high-definition although not yet for release.

``The production value was way ahead of its time and they established the technique for sitcoms better than anyone else,'' he said. ``It looks like they shot it yesterday. Everything was done beautifully. The music was live, and there was no laugh track -- it was all authentic laughter.''

And the content has had even more to do with its longevity.

``If you get away from it being in black and white and the dated haircuts, it's so modern,'' said Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television. ``It really was kind of the birth of the modern sitcom, the template of how so many sitcoms thereafter went.''

``Ultimately, it is such stripped-down skeletal comedy because it is almost Zen-like in its structure: simple stories and great performances and those things can transcend generations,'' he added. ```Seinfeld' will become incomprehensible 50 years from now but with `Lucy,' you don't have to really know anything about that era to enjoy watching her getting drunk while filming a TV commercial.''

The show starred the real-life husband and wife team of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who launched the show so they could spend more time together. Ball was a movie actress based in Hollywood while Arnaz was a touring bandleader. After they wed, they bought a ranch in Chatsworth.

On the show, set in New York, Arnaz was again a bandleader while Ball played a housewife bent on breaking into show business. Their neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz, were played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance.

So with the six seasons now released, it would seem that this is the end of the DVD run. Not a chance. Ross said there are plans to release all six seasons in a single gift set, much like such shows as ``Friends'' and ``Sex in the City'' have done.

But first, a boxed set of the not-as-widely-seen 13 one-hour episodes of ``Lucy'' will be released in early 2007. The show ran in a weekly half-hour format from 1951 to 1957, then switched to monthly one-hour shows for the next three seasons.

The one-hour shows were originally titled ``The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show'' on CBS, then syndicated as ``The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour'' and ``We Love Lucy.'' Each show featured the original cast, with guest stars such as Milton Berle, Danny Thomas and Tallulah Bankhead.

``People have been asking about the `Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour' a lot'' said Gord Lacy, editor of the Web site TVShowsOnDVD.com, where fans vote for which shows they want most to see released on DVD. ``The `I Love Lucy' seasons have been released at a steady pace and people are happy with the sets and want more.''

The episodes will be released as seasons 7, 8 and 9, but in a single DVD package. They will have some rare gems, including color home movies secretly taken by an audience member during the show's first season. It is the only color film of the Ricardos in their apartment, according to Oppenheimer, who is producing the set.

Also included will be three episodes linked together by 12 minutes of never-before-seen footage that was originally put together as an ``I Love Lucy'' feature film. But it was shelved and seemingly lost forever until it was discovered recently in an incorrectly labeled film cannister.

```I Love Lucy' had a leg up in the nostalgic market because there are very few '50s shows that were in regular rerun circulation throughout the childhoods of subsequent generations,'' said Thompson. ``My personal experience with the show was exclusively in reruns, and I've seen every episode of it.''

He doesn't think any show will ever seep into the culture as deeply as ``I Love Lucy'' has been able to with audiences now so fragmented.

``It's very rare that we are going to see a show that the entire nation watches at the same time,'' he said. ```I Love Lucy' was No. 1 for several years and No. 1 back then meant that virtually everyone was watching. Most of the country knew this show and watched it at least occasionally and then, of course, you couldn't avoid the reruns.''

greg.hernandez(at)dailynews.com

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