by Ray Hagen
She was loaned out to Fox for the well-liked The Dark Corner (1946). Ball gives her role, secretary to private investigator Mark Stevens, a quiet, warm strength that holds the tough movie together, as her jaded boss is framed for murder. “I sharpen pencils, I do the typing, answer the phones—and mind my own business,” she calmly tells a cop, until circumstances, and a blossoming love between her and Stevens, gets her involved.
While it doesn’t dull memories of its source Libeled Lady (1936), Easy to Wed (1946) gave Lucy her best comedy showcase, reprising, and greatly enriching, Jean Harlow’s part in the original. The story: Esther Williams sues a newspaper for libel for claiming she stole somebody’s husband. Editor Keenan Wynn gets lady-killer Van Johnson to set her up in the same situation she’s denying. Lucy, Wynn’s long-suffering fiancée, stood-up at the altar too many times, reluctantly marries Van at Keenan’s urging. At the appropriate time, she’ll barge in and … Esther can’t sue. Except, Van falls for Esther and Lucy falls for Van, causing expected complications.
When we first meet jilted bride Ball, she’s storming through the newsroom in full wedding regalia, like a tornado, to Wynn’s office, papers flying and swirling in her path. Fiery, gorgeous, starved with neglect, Lucy falls for smooth-talking Romeo Van. Their drunk scene is high comedy at its best, as is the wacky one where Van is taught duck calls; after Van lamely does the “Lazy Hen Call,” Lucy cracks, “She’s not lazy. She’s dead.” She madly giggles, noodles on the piano, acts like a female duck responding to mating calls—in short, she’s sensational. Lucy’s speaking voice is used here to fun effect. Harlow had said the word “subtle” correctly; Lucy, her character none-too-bright, mispronounces it haughtily as “sub-tul.” It’s a small change, but effective—and very funny. In fact, aided by writer Dorothy Kingsley’s enhancement of her part, Lucy is the only player to bring freshness to her role, the only player to improve on the classic original.
We can look back now, in view of her success on TV, and say MGM was unfair. Sure, she was terrific, but the moviegoing public just didn’t warm up to her. Easy to Wed showed what she was comically capable of, but, MGM was just being practical when they released her after the minor Two Smart People (1946).
Without the big push of MGM, Ball freelanced (at $75,000 per). After Lover Come Back (1946) at Universal, she found herself in the first-rate Lured (1947), co-starring George Sanders. It was a neat atmospheric thriller about a killer lurking around London nabbing young, innocent girls via the personals. He is dubbed “The Poet Killer” for the poems he posts to the police foretelling his murders. Lucy is a flippant taxi dancer engaged by Scotland Yard to help smoke out the culprit by playing female detective.
She went over to Columbia for the slight comedy Her Husband’s Affairs (1947). It was directed by Ball’s friend S. Sylvan Simon, and would eventually earn Lucy a non-exclusive three-picture deal with the studio, on Simon’s request.
In late 1947, she returned to the stage, touring regional theaters in Elmer Rice’s Dream Girl. The show had been a hit on Broadway with Betty Field and a flop on film starring Betty Hutton, but Lucy took the role as her own, gaining excellent notices. The Los Angeles Times praised her “efficiency as a comedienne,” adding that “she can tinge a scene delicately with pathos. She has special facility in dealing with sharp-edged repartee.” Author Rice was duly impressed, later crediting Lucy’s “expert timing” for keeping “the play bright and alive,” and her performance “delighted” him. The successful run was cut short, due to Ball’s health, when a virus spread through the overworked cast.
Radio opened up new opportunities. She’d been a regular on radio going back to the ’30s, and had done some excellent dramatic work in the medium (Lux Radio Theater’s “They Drive by Night,” in Ida Lupino’s part, and “A Little Piece of Rope” from Suspense are sides of Lucy never seen on film). In 1948 she secured her own CBS show with Richard Denning, My Favorite Husband. This successful comedy, a precursor to I Love Lucy, had behind it four people who would become very important to Ball and her future TV successes: writers Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr., producer-director Jess Oppenheimer and actor Gale Gordon. It would run until 1951.
There were rumors that she turned down the lead in Born Yesterday (1950) for the chance to do Sorrowful Jones (1949), her first of four movies with Bob Hope. Other sources say she desperately wanted the part of Billie Dawn, which won Judy Holliday an Oscar, but that Columbia chief Harry Cohn was against it. Instead, the first of her deal with Columbia was Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949), a not-bad comedy of a wacky secretary who unwittingly uncovers a gang of bookies.
She did a cameo as herself in Rosalind Russell’s A Woman of Distinction (1950), followed by her best role at Columbia, the title role in The Fuller Brush Girl (1950). It was a frantic, slapstick-heavy showcase for her comedic abilities, particularly her hilarious masquerade of a burlesque dancer with heavy fake eyelashes.
Over at Paramount, she romped through Fancy Pants (1950) with Bob Hope. In this reworking of Ruggles of Red Gap, Hope is an inept actor posing as a butler. One marvelous sight gag has Hope styling Lucy’s hair. When he finishes, she’s sporting an enormous bird cage, complete with live bird, embedded within her coiffure. One critic observed, “She is a fine foil for the star, building up bits of business to a point where they are comically consequential even though they have next to nothing to do with the original plot.”
Pre–I Love Lucy, Ball had one of her best comedy roles in the slapstick-heavy The Fuller Brush Girl (Columbia, 1950) with Eddie Albert.
Cecil B. DeMille, noting her work, sought her for The Greatest Show on Earth (Paramount, 1952). Lucy asked Harry Cohn for a postponement on her commitment, which had one film to go. With her Columbia booster S. Sylvan Simon passing away in 1951, and Cohn resenting Ball’s high-priced deal ($85,000 a picture), the mogul had other plans.
He gave her The Magic Carpet (1951), a screenplay she said made her “hysterical with laughter.” Her friend director Edward Sedgwick termed it “a lease breaker.” “He expects you to turn it down,” he advised Ball, “then he’s automatically free of paying you eighty-five thousand dollars. Tell him you’ll do the picture. It’ll break [producer Sam] Katzman. His whole budget is less than your salary.”
Lucy surprised them all by accepting. When revisions were suggested by a bewildered Katzman, Lucy shrugged them off—no changes, she “liked” it just as it was; she wanted it over with as quickly as possible. A real potboiler, it took just a week to shoot, and the same amount of time to forget.
Lucy wasn’t able to accept DeMille’s offer after all. She found, after a decade of marriage, she was pregnant. She was overjoyed, DeMille less so. After being informed of the event, the director sighed to Desi, “Congratulations, Mr. Arnaz. You are the only man who has ever screwed his wife, Cecil B. DeMille, Paramount Pictures, and Harry Cohn, all at the same time.” Gloria Grahame was assigned Ball’s role in the Oscar-winning movie.
Since 1950, CBS had been interested in transferring My Favorite Husband to television. During most of her marriage, Lucy and Desi had been separated due to Desi’s band tours, and Lucy was anxious for him to join her on TV. Executives at CBS couldn’t see it. My Favorite Husband was about a “typical all–American couple,” and Cuban-born Desi certainly didn’t fit that description. “From all sides,” Lucy remarked, “we were told that the idea was ridiculous and were advised to give it up.” The couple, undeterred, personally paid for the pilot, now called I Love Lucy, formed their own company, Desilu, and went out on a vaudeville tour to show the network that people would accept them as a duo. After some heavy negotiations with CBS, eventually giving the Arnazes ownership of the series and half of the profits, it was a go. In an unprecedented move, even surprising Lucy, the couple would later buy RKO Studios for $6,000,000 to house their production company.
Meanwhile, Ball gave birth to daughter Lucie Desiree on July 17, 1951. A few months later, I Love Lucy premiered. Lucille Ball, 40, show business vet
of almost 20 years without any major success, became a mega-star overnight. The show validated what her few loyal film fans knew all along: She was a top comedienne. She would win two Emmy Awards (1952, 1955) for her zany portrayal of Lucy Ricardo, a showbiz-crazy housewife always ready to crash her bandleader hubby’s act.
The show was a phenom. The same audiences unable to relate to Lucy the glamorous movie star took her to heart on television. She was one of them, a typical, funny, middle-class woman with dreams and schemes. When Lucy became pregnant for a second time, it was incorporated into the show’s storyline, despite protest from the network. She gave birth in real life to her son Desi, Jr. on January 19, 1953. That same night, in a show filmed in October, Lucy Ricardo also gave birth to a boy. The show made television history and 44 million tuned in to see the event.
Because of their TV schedule, there wasn’t much time for feature films. Then in 1954 Lucy and Desi were approached by MGM to do The Long, Long Trailer, directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by Lucy’s old RKO colleague Pandro S. Berman. Newlyweds buy a trailer, almost damaging their marriage. It turned out to be MGM’s highest-grossing comedy up to that time.
Successful, yes. Good, no. Lucy gets one wild scene trying to mix salad in the back of the speeding trailer, but it’s basically Desi’s movie. Ball gave a strange, almost irrational performance, with a touch of underlining bitterness that hardly fit her “new bride” role.
Perhaps the sharp edge that Lucy displayed was an early sign that the Arnaz marriage was hitting rock bottom. TV’s “perfect couple” had troubles going back to 1944 when Lucy had filed for divorce, only to reconsider. The oft-cited difficulties were Desi’s womanizing, but now his drinking was an added factor. Lucy’s friend, author Bart Andrews, informed People Weekly, “She told me that by 1956 it wasn’t even a marriage any more. They were just going through a routine for the children. She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was ‘just booze and broads.’ That was in her divorce papers, as a matter of fact.”
The overload of work placed on Desi didn’t help. As president of Desilu, he was supervising at least 229 series (Our Miss Brooks, Make Room for Daddy, The Ann Sothern Show, etc.). He had little time to attempt damage control on his ailing marriage.
According to author Charles Higham, “Desi was busier than ever, fighting off headaches and tics caused by pressure… It is scarcely any wonder that his hair went white or that his headaches, violent outbursts of temper, and quarrels with Lucy increased…”
Lucy was no innocent. “She was vulnerable,” said her friend Ann Sothern. “But if she didn’t respect you, she could be tough.” Many describe her as a controlling, demanding and difficult perfectionist. When Joan Crawford later guested on TV with Lucy, she was incredulous: “And they call me a bitch!” Ball had a love-hate relationship with co-star Vivian Vance, one that reportedly put Vance in therapy. During one assertive moment, Vance supposedly cracked, “I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, if Desi hadn’t already taken care of that.”
Her friend Phyllis McGuire remarked, “She was very much in love with Desi, but she went through absolute hell with him.” It was heartbreaking for her to see the unraveling of a relationship that many thought, even to the end, was the love of her life. It was said that money, enterprise, and power had wrecked their personal happiness.
MGM agreed to another picture, this time with Desi producing: Forever, Darling (1956). It was directed by the same Alexander Hall cast off by Lucy so many years ago for Desi, and it again featured them as a couple in conflict. Forever, Darling was not a hit, a puzzlement since it was much better than The Long, Long Trailer.
The still very popular I Love Lucy went off the air in 1957 to public disapproval, and was replaced by one-hour specials (The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour) featuring them as the Ricardos. It lasted until 1960, by which time they were deep in divorce proceedings.
It was, according to Lucy, “the worst period of my life. I really hit the bottom of despair—anything from there on had to be up. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally, though we’re very friendly, ridiculously so … ” To keep herself busy, she accepted two offers, a Broadway musical Wildcat and her third movie with Bob Hope, The Facts of Life (1960).
The Facts of Life told the story of Hope and Ball, married to others (Ruth Hussey and Don DeFore), whose attempts at an affair are foiled. Much praised at the time, today it just doesn’t play. However, Lucy looks terrific, very un–Lucy Ricardo–ish, and her maturity and warmth were sparkling.
Hedda Hopper said of Wildcat: “She knew she couldn’t sing, admits she was too old to dance, but for her Broadway debut she would sing, dance and have to hold the whole thing together.” The musical comedy, written by Richard Nash, with music and lyrics by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, directed by Michael Kidd, rested squarely on Ball’s very slight musical shoulders. “It’s a challenge,” she admitted. “I’d gone as far as I wanted in TV. I know I’m sticking my neck out—but I stuck it out in TV, too. It won’t kill me if the play flops, but I’m not anticipating failure.”
The show opened in New York on December 16, 1960. It wasn’t what everybody hoped for, but Ball got great reviews. This was attributed to writer Nash’s reluctant revision of Lucy’s character. “We found out the audience had come to see ‘Lucy,’ not Lucille Ball playing in Wildcat … I was writing against my own views as a writer, but I had to,” Nash remarked.
By the sheer force of Lucy’s personality and hard work, Wildcat did outstanding business. A long run was likely, but she got sick; viruses, exhaustion and strained vocal chords that developed nodes (the reason for her eventual raspy voice) became too much. The show closed after 171 performances. Though Lucy was certainly no singer, she effectively put over the show’s big hit, “Hey, Look Me Over.”
The Arnaz marriage was officially over on May 4, 1960, but months later she met stand-up comedian Gary Morton. Everyone was surprised when they married on November 19, 1961; they seemed oddly matched. Gary took over managing her career and, it was whispered, stayed out of her way; the conflicts between her and Desi were now history. They would remain married until her death. Desi also married again in 1961 to (many say Lucy lookalike) Edie Hirsch.
She was unable to accept Frank Sinatra’s offer to play Laurence Harvey’s mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) because of TV work, a loss considering what a stretch it would have provided her. Angela Lansbury nabbed the part, but it would have been fascinating to see Lucy pull off the unsympathetic role.
Lucy stayed on friendly terms with Desi, and it was Desilu who produced her next series The Lucy Show (1962). But, a month after its premiere, Lucy bought out Desi’s share of Desilu, becoming its sole controlling force, the first woman to hold such a position. Lucy continued on with her popular show, while astutely and firmly guiding Desilu. The Lucy Show was revamped as Here’s Lucy in 1968, again with Gale Gordon (a perfect foil) and her two children Lucie and Desi, Jr.; Lucy won two more Emmys (1967 and 1968) before the show went off in 1974. Lucy would sell Desilu to Gulf + Western in 1967 for $17 million.
Her last movie with Bob Hope, Critic’s Choice (1963), had flopped, and future films worried her. Finally in 1968 a project materialized. The idea of filming the life of Frank and Helen Beardsley was tossed around Desilu for years after their story was chronicled in Life—a widow with eight children and a Navy lieutenant–widower with ten kids, who also have children together. Lucy owned the rights, and when she was finally pleased with a script, the project went full speed ahead. Henry Fonda was signed on, the pair obviously over their cold feelings during The Big Street. The funny, warm comedy Yours, Mine and Ours was a smash, grossing over $17 million.
Still nervous, Lucy turned down Cactus Flower (1969), which went to Ingrid Bergman. She didn’t return to the big screen until the dismal, problem-plagued Mame (1974). Based on Patrick Dennis’ novel Auntie Mame, this musicalization (score by Jerry Herman) was first presented on Broadway in 1966 wi
th Angela Lansbury. Auntie Mame, sans music, would have been a fine Ball vehicle. Composer Herman later said, “She was a nice lady and she tried, so you can’t punish her for not being able to sing or dance.” But everyone did. Ball heatedly asked author Charles Higham at the time, “Why am I doing this? I must be out of my mind.” The movie was critically savaged. It would be her last theatrically released film.
The ’70s and ’80s brought her semi-retirement. She appeared on television, mostly with Bob Hope and her own specials for CBS and NBC. Now considered “The First Lady of Television,” awards came her way (Entertainer of the Year, Television Academy’s Hall of Fame, Kennedy Center Honors). Lucille Ball had become an American institution.
Lucy unwisely turned down two film projects going to Jessica Tandy: Driving Miss Daisy and The Story Lady, but she made a gutsy choice by accepting the telefilm Stone Pillow (1985), portraying a homeless woman. Lucy was unfairly criticized for going against type. I Love Lucy was still playing in syndication (and will continue to play forever), and everyone wanted to remember her as the zany redhead, not someone picking through garbage. The same response met her 1986 return to series TV, Life with Lucy. At 77 she was still trying to play the Lucy everyone remembered, not a woman her own age. It was painful to watch, and the ABC show was off the air quickly.
Desi Arnaz passed away in 1986 of cancer. Even though they had been divorced for over 20 years, the feelings were still there. Lucy’s friend Betty White told People Weekly, “The day that Desi died she and I were doing Password together. She was being real funny on the show, but during a break she said, ‘You know … it’s the damnedest thing. Goddamn it, I didn’t think I’d get this upset. There he goes.’ It was a funny feeling, kind of a lovely, private moment.”
She was in and out of the hospital in her last years, especially with heart problems, passing away after a ruptured aorta on April 26, 1989. The whole world felt the loss.