Penspotting "i Love Lucy" - Papermate Deluxe Ballpoint

[shadeone]

"I Love Lucy" has always been one of my favorite TV shows. During a recent binge watching of the entire series, I decided to see if I could spot any usage of identifiable pens... It turns out, the prop department must have been fans of the then-popular Paper-Mate Deluxe ballpoint because I spotted it in 7 different episodes. Some of my screencaps are crappy but when you watch the DVD on a large screen you can tell it is definitely the pen in question.

"Lucy Goes To The Hospital" - Original air date: January 19, 1953



"Lucy Changes Her Mind" - Original air date: March 30, 1953

"The French Revue" - Original air date: November 16, 1953

 

"Don Juan and the Starlets" - Original air date: February 14, 1955

 

"Lucy Gets Into Pictures: - Original air date: February 21, 1955



"Don Juan is Shelved" - Original air date: March 21, 1955



"The Star Upstairs" - Original air date: April 18, 1955




The Papermate Deluxe was one of the pens that really took off and greatly helped secured the public's faith in ballpoints.

For a great history see here: http://penshotsandthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-history-of-paper-mate-part-2.html

[tamiya]

dayum, so that's why Lucy never had inky fingers... she's one progressive lass!

[MisterSheaffer]

Love these kind of posts, would like to see more of these pop up. Thanks for the content and additional links.

[qvxb]

I think Paper Mate gave the pens to the prop department. A cheap way to get advertising.

[pen lady]

''Product Placement'' even back then?

[shadeone]

I don't know if it was a deliberate product placement, I think it was just due to the fact that this pen was so popular. In 1953 alone with just this pen as their only model, Papermate's volume of sales was $19.6 million.
They were available at just about every drug and stationery store, usually right in front:

[pen lady]

Oh tilt that tray of fountain pens up a bit so that we can see those too! Sigh.

[Zookie]

The Papermate pens pretty much saved the ballpoint pen industry. The ones before Papermate were pretty bad, they would leak, some quit writing after a day or two and were, for the most part, very unreliable.

It's an interesting history.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Zookie

[pajaro]

Most of the early ballpoints would leave blobs of ink on the paper that would stay wet for a while. The brand name pens would be better.

[WLSpec]

Nice catch!