Did I Love Lucy and perhaps none of the 1950s or 1960s sitcoms never mention the current year?

Question

I have watched literally every I Love Lucy and I think I can probably say the same thing about several other old shows. I can say that while I recall explicit mention of the year in which a Twilight Zone and maybe Outer Limits episode was made and other mentions of public figures like LBJ that would allow one to know pretty close to the current year, I Love Lucy never mentioned the current year. I think rarely they Fred might talk about some old show biz experience occurring in the 1920s (he had a vaudeville act) but even that sort of thing would tend to date episodes. Of course the copyright date was shown, but I read Roman numerals were used specifically to obscure production dates.

There were also episodes with current movie stars like Harpo Marx or John Wayne which also would indicate when it was. The original Superman, George Reeves appeared and since he passed away in 1959 that also gave an upper limit of the production year.

I read that all of the above stuff was done because it was felt that old shows when rerun would be of less interest. But if so, why did, non-sitcoms mention current date?

Anyway, the question is as in the title: Did I Love Lucy manage to not mention the current year ever in any show? Can the same be said of other shows of that time? (I am not sure about later shows like Seinfeld.)

One thought is that perhaps they, in the 1950s, did not understand what inflation would be like. Occasionally money comes up. I recall on their cross-country trip they stop at a "hotel" or "motel" and they are charged what we are led to believe is an outrageous price and what turns out to be a dollar, the equivalent of about 15 or even 20 today. But they also may have had an inkling about inflation, because I actually can't think of too many times money used to pay for ordinary things is mentioned.

Answer 1

I'm going to directly address I Love Lucy and skip most of the "what if" part if that's alright - This show is historically credited with "inventing the rerun" during Ball's pregnancy and that clearly demonstrates there was no thought put towards reruns at the show's inception.

"Prior to I Love Lucy rerunning its episodes during the summer, shows typically went on a summer hiatus and were replaced with summer replacements, generally lower-priority programs"

Remember, the first television sitcom was broadcast was in 1947 and it's listed in the Guinness book of world records as Mary Kay and Johnny, the first ILL was 1951, that's only 4 years apart. During the broadcast run, there was no question that the show was made between the years 1947 and 1957 if you were watching ILL during its original broadcast (1951-1957).

Moreover, the first "talking picture" was 1927, the first television broadcast was 1928, so this contextually narrows the window for when it was made even if you (as a person of that era) were not well versed in the "new technology".

I think the question, the primary part of the question, is valid. Did they ever mention the year? No, probably not, they did not have to and there really wasn't any reason to because television "was in it's infancy", it dated itself. Also, mention of politics on an entertainment program was probably highly frowned upon - remember that this is the era where also during 1947 the first Mccarthy era Hollywood blacklist appeared and it took down a lot of prominent people, Even Charlie Chaplin was labeled a communist in 1952, one year after ILL began broadcast.

To very briefly address the controversy which for some reason has manifested around the Roman numeral theory, I personally can tell you that if you flash a ton of Roman numerals quickly in front of me I might not be able to read them because once you get out of the tens or hundreds position it all starts to bleed together. The first commercially available VCR the Sony U-matic didn't become available in Japan until 1971 and without an ability to pause live tv (with a VCR, DVR, ETC), the average person might not "on the fly" know that MCMLVII was read as 1957, given that in 1950 3.2% of people in the United States over 14 could not read or write in ANY language. Certainly outside of a liturgical training, private education or institutes of higher education people were very unlikely to be well versed in Latin. It was not more likely that someone in the era of interest would be able to read Latin or Roman numerals than it is today.

There was a practice in film and television of not showing "modern" cell phones (which is why for a block of years you see actors using the same outdated flip phones) which is similar to the suggested use of Roman numerals as production year obscura - to not immediately hint that something a person is watching is a rerun - but as you can tell from current film and television where there are entire plots surrounding smartphones - they have abandoned the practice.

Given the facts, it's safe to conclude I Love Lucy was not intentionally obscuring the year of production so as to secure itself as a re-runnable property, but that doesn't mean they went out of their way to mention it either.

I think this is a valid question, I hope you feel this is a valid answer.

Incidentally, by searching google for only a few seconds I found this link which directly references episodes of "the lucy show" which also starred Lucille Ball in the 1960's and several episodes feature plots surrounding the world's fair. The world's fair in the United States is very easy to date because it is not held in the US every year. The evidence is there, it is up to you to put together the pieces.

You may, however, find that these are not the droids you're looking for.

Answer 2

There are several times in the series that the year is indicated. In the episode “Lucy’s Night in Town”, the Ricardos and the Mertzes go to see a new musical called The Most Happy Fella, a play in which Lucy and Desi actually invested in 1956.

A lot of references to the current year were in the Hollywood episodes when Lucy came across certain celebrities like Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark, and John Wayne.

Answer 3

YES!YES!YES! If one listens very carefully to random shows, the years are occasionally mentioned in an indirect fashion. I have seen a couple of shows where one of the characters is reading some kind of document or other that is apropos. For instance, for some reason in the plot of a certain show, Ethel is reading an inscription on a watch that Ricky has, and she reads it as, "To Ricky from the boys, Christmas 1952."

Also from that same season, there is a Roaring '20s revue at Ricky's club, and they end up using all the old showgirls that Fred used to work with, actually in the 1920s. And at one point, the old women chant something about everyone being in heaven in 1927, but about half of them mistakenly say 1922, and then finally a few of them say, "Well, 1952."

But it is true that generally mentioning dates was avoided. While the same is true regarding contemporary historical figures, I do remember Lucy in an early show saying something about "Truman" in response to something said about the president. Another interesting piece of data is when, on one of the very first shows, Ricky mentions that they moved into their apartment in 1948.

But these incidents are all extremely unusual, which is why most people probably don't notice them. Otherwise, if an event was mentioned from the past, they would always say, "10 years ago" or "15 years ago," as with their wedding anniversary, for instance. So were they married in 1940? Well, they don't say.