Lucille Ball Teaches Ethel Merman To Sing

Lucille Ball Teaches Ethel Merman To Sing

Lucille Ball ‘teaches’ Ethel Merman to sing in this hilarious classic clip from The Lucy Show. And mistaken identity has never been funnier!


Lucielle Ball is known as one of Hollywood’s greatest funny ladies of all times. Ethel Merman is known for having one of the most memorable and biggest voices of all time. In this video clip from The Lucy Show, the two of them come together for pure comedy gold.

The premise for this episode is that legendary singer Ethel Merman has moved to the town of Danfield where Lucy lives, under the assumed name of Agnes Schmidlapp. The star was buying a house and it was recommended to her to go incognito to keep down the cost of buying a home.

Meanwhile, Lucy wildly made a promise that she can bring Ethel Merman to sing the local Cub Scout charity show. Lucy decides that Agnes has a passing resemblance for the star and concocts a plan to prepare ‘Agnes’ to take the stage.

In this scene from the episode, Lucy is giving lessons on how to sing like Ethel Merman.

Lucy then said, “all you have to do is sing loud, and sound nasal.” She then goes on to close her nose and sing loudly to demonstrate to Agnes how to do it.

Agnes looks taken aback, and then asks, “That’s the way that Ethel Merman sings?” Lucy replies asking if Agnes has ever seen Ethel in a Broadway musical.

Agnes said, “Would you believe it? I never have!”

Lucy and Agnes are then interrupted by Vivian, Lucy’s best friend on the show. Vivian knows who Agnes really is, and desperately tries to get Lucy’s attention to save her from embarrassment.

But Lucy waves her off saying they need to get back to business because they want to make sure that Agnes can sing like Ethel Merman before the show that was coming up. Vivian, not liking how Lucy brushed her off, gives up and sits on the sofa to watch Lucy look foolish in front of the great singer.

Towards the end of the skit, Lucy tells Agnes that they could just use a record player and that Agnes can just lip sync along with the song.

While Lucy was hilariously demonstrating how to look like Ethel, the real Ethel turned down the song and started belting out the tune.

The look on her shocked face lets us know that Lucy has finally realized that Agnes was, in fact, Ethel Merman.

Imagine how completely horrified she must’ve been because she'd been mocking and impersonating the star right in front of her!

What a hilarious skit by these two women that will forever be a classic!

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