"The Road to Burbank," Scenes B and C

Scene B is faithful to the script, so let's move on to Scene C, in a "motel room - night."

That wardrobe note is Squiggy-specific.  Squiggy was supposed to lock the door after he comes in, but I didn't see this.  Also, after the boys' entrance, Shirley had the line, in reference to Laverne saying they were lucky to get a room, "Lucky?  Look at this.  We have to pay again to go to bed."  Squiggy's line about adopting was originally to Lenny, after the girls exit to the bathroom, "Boy is she dumb.  We can always adopt."

This was omitted after Squiggy's line about Shirley seeing him in his "love clothes":

SQUIGGY

...She's gonna melt like bon bons on a hot tin roof.

SHIRLEY (O.S.)

Bite your tongue!

SQUIGGY

Ooo, why don't you bite it for me?

LENNY

(WHISPERS) They can hear us.  Shhh.

LENNY TAKES HIS STUFFED IGUANA, JEFFREY, AND HIDES IT UNDER THE GIRLS' BED SHEETS.  THEY LAUGH SILENTLY AND IMPISHLY.  THE GIRLS ENTER WEARING BATHROBES OVER THEIR PAJAMAS.

LAVERNE

Boy, I hate those little strips of paper across the toilet.  I always feel like I'm breaking in.

THE BOYS START TO UNDRESS.  THE GIRLS NOTICE THIS, GASP AND COVER THEIR EYES.

SHIRLEY

Attention, Lenny and Squiggy.  There are certain things in life that should remain a mystery.

LAVERNE

So, change your clothes in the bathroom or you'll be sleeping on top of a cactus.

LENNY

Let's go, Squig.  I ain't sleeping in the desert.  It's full of lizards, and tigers and bears...

SQUIGGY

Oh, my.

LENNY/SQUIGGY

Lizards and tigers and bears, oh my...

THE BOYS EXIT INTO THE BATHROOM WITH THEIR BEDCLOTHES.  SHIRLEY TAKES THE SHEET OFF THE BOYS' BED.

LAVERNE

Shirl, if you're gonna steal something, take a towel or an ashtray.  They'll catch you with that.

SHIRLEY

No, no, I'd never steal. I'm just hanging it between the beds.  Here, gimme a hand.

THEY START DOING THIS.

SHIRLEY (CONT'D)

I saw this in "It Happened One Night."  Claudette Colbert wanted to stop Clark Gable from molesting her.

LAVERNE

Why would she wanna stop Clark Gable?

SHIRLEY

She didn't, really.  It was just a movie.

This was replaced by a time-skip, to when the boys emerge in their "Bullwinkle pajamas" and "love clothes."

After Squiggy's "Africandisiac" line, they had this bit:

SQUIGGY TURNS ON THE T.V.  WE HEAR ROMANTIC, SEXY MUSIC.

LAVERNE

That's not Johnny Carson.

SHIRLEY

And that's certainly not Ed McMahon.

SQUIGGY

But, that's the lady with the animals.

SHIRLEY

That's no lady.

SHE TURNS OFF THE T.V.

Lenny's "Of course no cigar.  That don't come 'till our babies are born" became the more generic (and singular) "Well, of course there's no cigars yet.  That doesn't come 'till the baby's due."  They then added Laverne slapping Lenny and Shirley telling her to not have a "snit" and "wreck her beauty sleep."

They dropped this, after the "horse-thump" exchange:

LAVERNE

Do you feel something in the bed?

SHIRLEY

Like a handbag with teeth?

LAVERNE

Uh, huh.

THE GIRLS SCREAM AND THE BOYS LAUGH.  LAVERNE TURNS ON THE LIGHT AND SEES LENNY'S STUFFED IGUANA, JEFFREY.

SHIRLEY

It's Jeffrey.

LAVERNE

Gimme that lizard.   (THROWS IT OVER THE SHEET TO THE BOYS)  If I see Jeffrey again, I'm gonna send him to Iguana Heaven.

LENNY

No, Laverne.  They don't believe in an after life.

LAVERNE TURNS THE LIGHTS OUT AND EVERYONE LAYS BACK DOWN.  THEY ALL TURN OUT AND SIGH.

In the script, Lenny not only offers to come over and scratch Laverne's itchy lips, but he actually says, "I'm on my way to take you to Heaven."

Squiggy calling Shirley "my pretty" seems to be an adlib that continues the strange Wizard of Oz theme.

As for Lenny, in the script, he doesn't tell Laverne not to fight it, and he doesn't suggest she take a bath.  Instead, without lines, she breaks off one of the fan blades by pulling on the sheet and then, "she starts to threaten Lenny with the blade.  Lenny takes the blade out of her hand and paddles her into the bathroom."

Shirley punching Squiggy in the stomach and almost hitting him with a lamp were not in the script.  She was supposed to accidentally break the window before Squiggy throws the phone out.  Him referring to the police as "coppers" and "flatfeet" sounds like a Lander touch.

When Laverne and Lenny return, he with a plunger on his head, she in the filmed version says the un-Laverne-ish line, "Well, I never," which leads to him telling her to hold still and she'll get the chance.  Here's what's in the script instead:

LENNY

Thanks, Laverne.  My brain needed a flushing.

LAVERNE IS HOLDING A CAN OF AEROSOL SHAVING CREAM, AD-LIBBING THAT IF LENNY TAKES ANOTHER STEP SHE IS GOING TO LET HIM HAVE IT.  HE DOES.  SHE SPRAYS HIM.

Lenny does not grab Laverne and force-kiss her in the script!  He also doesn't pick her up or deliver the line about her being all his.  Therefore, she's not described as fighting him off at this point.  We don't know what they're doing between the time he destroys the TV and Shirley and Squiggy run back in.

Onscreen, the girls flee into the bathroom, but the printed version ends with them "flipping the guys onto their backs and pinning them."

Many, many thoughts:

• The girls being able to overhear the boys explains a bit how Shirley apparently knows what happened when she was not in the room.
• Sometimes an iguana is just an iguana, but yes, it's pretty symbolic that Lenny sneaks it into the girls' bed.
• I assume that the "they" laughing silently and impishly is Lenny and Squiggy, not Lenny and Jeffrey.
• I don't hate the first half of this scene in either version.  I'm OK with the boys being, well, boyish and immature, here even pulling a prank.  I think that if they were starting out like this, the scene didn't have to go in the direction of, admittedly Burlesque, attempted rape.  They could've had the girls explain why they won't put out, and then mishaps happen otherwise, but of course Frank et al. would think the worst months later.  I could see that working, although I know some viewers still wouldn't like it.
• A toilet joke bites the dust, because apparently that would be in poor taste.
• This would've been at least the second time that Lenny started to undress in hopes of group sex with Laverne and Shirley.
• Details have faded, but didn't Shirley have a stolen hotel towel in "A Nun's Story"?
• So the It Happened One Night motif pops up in both Shirley's story and Squiggy's.  Here, it's, well, lampshaded, as Laverne questions why Claudette would bother, and Shirley says it was just a movie.
• I'm not an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't watch porn in a motel room in 1965.  But maybe this is just a romantic, sexy movie with, as the line goes in Cindy W's First Nudie Musical, "minor bestiality."
• When I began this project two and half years ago, I did not foresee having to discuss Jeffrey's religious beliefs.  But I think we can say he does not share Lenny's Catholicism.  Of course, we soon after learn what Lenny (in this episode anyway) sees as Heaven.
• OK, I'm going to just say it.  Unlike "The Bully Show" and "Monastery" scripts, this is somehow less problematic than what aired.  I mean, it's problematic, but some of the creepiest moments, especially with Lenny and Laverne, appeared after this script yet by the time of filming.  Except for, of course, him "paddling" her into the bathroom.
• On the other hand, Shirley defends herself more impressively onscreen, except for the end of the scene.  I'm very curious about these differences.
• I may discuss this scene more after we look at the rest of the script, but there you go.  This is what this scene looked like in the pre-shooting phase, and I can't imagine what earlier drafts were like.