Fred and Ethel looked stupid together on I Love Lucy

He was a stupid choice as Ricky's BFF as well.

You’re both showing your ignorance about Bill Frawley’s credentials for the role of Fred. The Emmy award for Vivian being plumped and aged as Ethel speaks for itself; and began an association with Ball that viewers obviously adored.

What’s FUPA?

Fred and Ethel were supposed to look stupid together , as that is called “comedy” — Lucy and Ricky got to be the passionate lovebirds, so their friends had to be the opposite, all to make a Lucy look less nuts

Fat upper pussy area, R3.

Pelvic, not pussy.

DILF William made perfect casting sense!

I never really thought of Fred Mertz having a FUPA ,but you’re not wrong , OP.

I mean it is no worse than the mother of the fat kid on Leave It To Beaver, she was presumably supposed to be a contemporary of Barbara Billingsly's character, since they were both mothers of boys the same age, but the woman looked like BB's mother or grandmother.

With Ethel and Fred I just figured Ethel was one of those women who shave a few years off of their age, but she ran away young with Fred when he came through town and was kinda stuck. She figured he'd be a star but it never happened.

I always figured Fred was secretly loaded.

R10- I always figured Fred was a connoisseur of COCK.

The lovebirds.

Fred was a fashion MAVEN in 1952 the way he wore his pants OVER HIS HEAD

I just watched him in a 1939 movie, and he had the same trouser issue.

William Frawley was OBESE for much of his life yet he still lived longer than all the others from I Love ❤️ Lucy- 79 years old.

Kramer's got nothing on Fred.

It was obviously a lavender marriage, OP

That's why they were childless

An ugly man, inside and out.

They all seemed around the same age to me as a child. I mean obviously Fred was older but if you had asked me then, I would have said they were all in their late 30s-mid 40s.

Back in the day younger women sometimes married older men "for security". Especially working class women. Fred owned that building not Ethel. It was called "settling". As in "she settled for him."

Everyone in a working class neighborhood knew at least once such couple.

As per another thread, here's the REAL Fred/Ethel backstory, OP:

During their senior year of high school, Ethel became pregnant with Billy Hackett's child. Ethel, estranged from her mother and afraid of her father, thought that she could end the pregnancy with a bottle of Jose Cuervo. But she only became very ill.

Mertz and Kurtz were passing through Albuquerque that week. From the window of his hotel room, Fred noticed an attractive blonde wandering along the railroad tracks. She possessed a soft vulnerability, so unlike the whores he usually traded intimacies with. He struck up a conversation with the buxom teenager, who was drunk and despondent, and, upon learning her fate, agreed to take her on the road to escape the inevitable wrath of her father. When Mertz and Kurtz arrived in El Paso later that week, Fred took young Ethel across the border for a back-alley abortion in Juárez.

The botched procedure rendered Ethel sterile. But she now felt indebted to Fred, older and a little gruff, and agreed to marry him. He learned she had a powerful singing voice and later incorporated her into his act.

They never spoke of that trip to Mexico, or that terrible day when, along the railroad tracks, Ethel had deemed her life unlivable. They only looked forward, at the hopes and possibilities that still lay on their horizons. But many years later, after their retirement from show business, Ethel would sometimes lay awake in bed. She would hear little Ricky Ricardo crying, or practicing his drums, and think back on the life she'd left behind in Albuquerque. She'd look over at Fred, once her savior, and resent the drudgery that her life with him had become. She'd think about that baby who had once been only a burden, and wonder if she'd have been a good mother. Not a godmother. But a real mother, with a child all her own. Someone who loved her.

In those stolen moments, she'd think of Billy Hackett. The softness of his lips. The sweetness of his breath.

T21 You poor dear. You forgot to take your meds again.

Ethel owned the building, R20. She mortgaged it to go on one of their trips. Fred had no say.

R21 Don't quit your day job.

I loved the banter and the I’m married to a battle axe / the old ball n chain style humor Fred and Ethel shared.

I thought Ethel looked frumpy and matronly. They had to look older to contrast Lucy & Desi, who were past their own prime by then.

R25 what I didn't like about it is that it was mostly Fred being an asshole and badmouthing Ethel and their marriage.

Couples like this exist, OP. More common back then based on what I’ve seen in photos.

As if younger women don’t marry old men all the time today, sheesh. Uh, Jerry Hall and Wendy Deng and CZJ come to mind, and that chickadee that just got engaged to that loser Dane Cook. Fred and Ethel fell within the realm of normal.