In ‘I Love Lucy’ Fred Mertz–played by the inimitable William Frawley–protrayed an ex-vaudevillian turned East Side landlord. The backstory was that he and his wife Ethel (Vivian Vance) were once a husband/wife act who wised-up when vaudeville died in the mid-thirties and invested their hard-earned savings in a brownstone that would now be worth north of twenty million dollars. In the show we occasionally get glimpses of Fred doing his old act–singing and dancing in a style as removed from the 1950s as the 1950s is removed from today’s Super Bowl halftime show. Is the above clip a souvenir of the Mertz’s act? Not exactly. It’s Frawley singing and dancing in an awfully Mertz-esque way in a 1935 movie called ‘Ship’s Cafe’. The song is called ‘I Won’t Take No For an Answer’ and if it had achieved greater lasting success I’m pretty sure it would have been cancelled in the mad pre-pandemic reevaluation of past culturtal artifacts deemed offensive which saw ‘Kiss Me Kate’ picketed during its Broadway revival (which was wonderful) to Frank Loesser’s immortal ‘Baby Its Cold Outside’ loudly decried for promoting a Cosby-like scenario involving a drugged drink served from a man to a woman who he wants to…um…kiss. All right, enough of that rant. Frawley sings and dances in the exact way that Mertz does twenty years later and if you’re an ‘I Love Lucy’ fan you can have a little fun inventing a meta-story for this clip. Mine is that Fred and Ethel were touring in California in 1935 and did an engagement at a local vaudeville venue where a studio casting scout caught their act and thought it would be perfect for the no-budget musical they were currently shooting. This was the big break the Mertz’s had been waiting for. Only Ethel got sick–I don’t know from what but I do know that people got sick an awful lot in those days without a lot of medicines to abbreviate the length of the illness. The show must go on, though, and a lovely actress/dancer/singer/Broadway vet named Inez Courtney was enlisted to replace Ethel. Above is the resulting number. Ethel never forgave Fred for not standing on principle and refusing to work without her. Increasing marital bitterness and decreasing interest in vaudeville led to the abandonment of their act and the purchase of the East 68th street brownstone.. Getting out of show-biz and buying a good piece of property was probably the best decision the two ever made. Indeed, it might well still be the best decision anyone could make. I can’t say it hasn’t occurred to me…