Yesterday, we discussed a clip from The Lucy Show in 1965 where Lucy was involved with a show not unlike Shindig! or Hullabaloo. As I mentioned, that episode of Ms. Ball's series guest-starred my favorite male singer, Mel Tormé as a struggling songwriter named Mel Tinker. Two years later, Mel was Mel Tinker for two more episodes of The Lucy Show that were pretty obviously an attempt to spin his character off into a new series called Main Street, U.S.A. Our clip today is a musical number written by Mel for one of those episodes.
A number of actors appeared in both episodes as characters who would have been in the series and you'll see a few of them in this clip — mainly John Bubbles, who was famous for his dancing, and Burt Mustin as Uncle Joe, and you may get a fast glimpse of Paul Winchell in old man make-up as Doc Putnam. The idea for the potential series seemed to be to catch the small town flavor of The Andy Griffith Show, which was coming to an end and being reborn as a series called Mayberry, RFD with some of the same players. By that time, they'd pretty much dropped the character of Otis the Town Drunk so Hal Smith, who played him, was available to be part of the cast of Main Street, U.S.A. also.
In the storyline, the town is threatened by a proposed freeway and Gale Gordon, who played Lucy's boss, had a financial interest in seeing the project go forth…but as you'll see, the song convinced him to join Lucy and the others in keeping Main Street, U.S.A. from going away. (In case you can't spot them, Winchell is to the right of the petition and Hal Smith is on the podium, eventually playing a tuba.)