This Labor Day weekend is a wonderful opportunity to see two stars who basically defined TV in its early days in one of their few movie appearances together.

It's Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, in the closest they came to making an "I Love Lucy" movie. The film is "The Long, Long Trailer," and while they play a married couple in this comic film, they don't play characters named Lucy and Desi.

Arnaz had tried to bid on the novel "The Long, Long Trailer" by Clinton Twiss, but was outbid by MGM. Still, Lucy and Desi agreed to star in the film.

According to "Desilu: The Story Of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz" by Coyne Steven Sanders and our pal Tom Gilbert, Arnaz liked the story, "which amusingly detailed a honeymooning couple's various comedic adventures driving a gigantic 947-foot New Moon trailer across the country."

Ball and Arnaz made the film while "I Love Lucy" was in hiatus one season.

Debuting in theaters at the end of 1953, the Technicolor film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, "was a great popular and critical success," Sanders and Gilbert write, adding that " 'Saturday Review' called it 'a very funny movie,' and 'Time' deemed 'Trailer' 'a wonderfully slap-happy farce.' "

"The Long, Long Trailer" will be screening on TCM on Sunday, Sept. 5th, 2010 at 4:15 pm, ET, and earlier in all other time periods. The film isn't shown all that often on TV, so set your DVRs if you're not going to be home to watch it.

http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwire/

The trailer was 947 feet long? Considering that the Titanic was something like 885 feet long, I guess this really was a "long, long trailer!"

I've got this movie on DVD - along with two other Lucy/Desi movies. They came in a three pack.

The trailer was 947 feet long? Considering that the Titanic was something like 885 feet long, I guess this really was a "long, long trailer!"
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Here is a picture of a New Moon trailer manufactured by Redman Trailer Company. The kind of trailer Lucy and Desi had in the movie. As you can see it is somewhat less than 947 feet long. However these trailers were known at the time as the "longest trailers in the world".

my DVR can't record TCM anymore. It used to be able to, but after the digital transition last year, I recorded something off of it, and it worked, but when I tried to play it back I got an error message that said I have to get some box from the cable company and hook it up to the TV in order to see it.

The trailer was 947 feet long? Considering that the Titanic was something like 885 feet long, I guess this really was a "long, long trailer!"

:lol: Even if it were 94.7 feet, that would still be an exaggeration!

:lol: Even if it were 94.7 feet, that would still be an exaggeration!

I don't know the exact length, but in the film, the mechanic tells Nicky to think of it as 40 feet of freight train.

Answers.com lists it as a 40-foot 1953 New Moon, which cost $5,345 at the time.

At the RV Museum in Elkhart, IN, they have an older New Moon trailer that you can walk through (it basically has no interior). It is long.