by Lucille Ball
It was not a great play, but I enjoyed the junket. Conway Tearle was the star, and Alice White played a starlet in this feeble melodrama about life on Eucalyptus Drive in Hollywood. Keenan Wynn, a massive talent with a daredevil personality, was a “man in white.”
We opened the show in Princeton, and the reviewers called me “another Hepburn.” We moved on to New Haven, and there Conway Tearle became seriously ill, so that was the end of the tour.
In New York I moved into a swank Fifty-seventh Street hotel, and then walked over to Fifth Avenue to buy myself a truckload of new clothes. To a newspaper reporter for a New York paper, I said candidly, “I’m happy for the first time in my life. I know what I’m doing and where I’m going.” I explained that I had been in love twice but that I didn’t want to get married. “I want to be a good comedienne,” I told that reporter, “like Alice Brady or ZaSu Pitts. Character actresses last longer.”
After my big clothes spree, I went up to Jamestown to visit my grandmother Peterson. It was February and six inches of fresh snow lay on the ground, to my intense delight. I saw Johnny briefly. He had not married and was still carrying the torch for me, but my feeling for him had cooled to a very small glow of affection. With the arrival of the Depression, Johnny had fallen on hard times. Jamestown was a sad place that winter of 1937. The furniture business was in the complete doldrums; the banks had foreclosed on four thousand homes and thrown as many families into the street. Johnny asked me for money to pay for his mother’s insurance, and I was glad to be able to help him. It was wonderful to be a contract player; whether you worked or not, you got that paycheck every week.
Back in Hollywood, I did another play for Lela, Breakfast for Venora. After the last performance, as I was removing my stage makeup, Lela came backstage with a huge bouquet of red roses. “These are for you,” she said.
“But Lela,” I said, amazed, “what for?”
“Tonight’s our last night together,” explained Lela. “I’ve taught you everything I can. From now on, you have to put it into practice.”
I could feel the tears welling up inside me. “You mean I’m not coming back anymore?” I asked incredulously.
“No, darling,” said Lela. “I’ve had you two years, and the studio says that’s all. They’ve got some new students for me. You’re through here at the Little Theater.”
We both cried a little and then I didn’t see Lela for weeks. As a final favor, she got me a speaking part in Stage Door, which Gregory La Cava directed. He was an outstanding director, but he didn’t particularly like me; he’d only given me the part, I’m sure, at Lela’s prodding.
The movie was based on the play by Edna Ferber and George Kaufman about a group of stagestruck girls living together at the Footlights Club. Critic Howard Barnes called it “brilliantly written, directed and acted . . . a superbly modulated succession of scenes and moods.” He added that “Ginger Rogers as Katharine Hepburn’s caustic roommate serves notice that she can act as well as dance.” Adolphe Menjou played the rake play producer and Gail Patrick the opportunistic young girl. Andrea Leeds was the overly sensitive one who committed suicide. Eve Arden and Ann Miller and so many other fine actors had roles in this picture. It was a treat to be even a part of it.
I played one of the boarders at the Footlights Club, wearing my hair long and dark, loose and straight like Hepburn’s. It was my first standout part, and afterward some Hollywood producer’s wife lunching at Chasen’s was overheard to say, “Who was that funny, tall girl in Stage Door who went home to Oregon to marry a lumberman?”
My next opus was also a big, expensive A movie, Having Wonderful Time. Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., played the leads in this comedy about two weeks at Camp Kare Free. Eve Arden, who had been in Stage Door with me, was in the large cast, as well as Phyllis Fraser, Jack Carson, and a new comic named Red Skelton. I even got Cleo a small part. We went on location for three weeks to seven-thousand-foot Big Bear Mountain. I felt literally on top of the world. The movie was a hit at Radio City, and for the first time I was mentioned in the New York movie reviews: “Lucille Ball is faultless as Miriam, one of the harpies.”
I believe that we’re as happy in life as we make up our minds to be. All actors and actresses, no matter how talented or famous, have ups and downs in their careers. It’s just the nature of the business. You have to learn to roll with the punches, and not take them personally. Ed Sedgwick and Buster Keaton used to tell me about dozens of Hollywood people who ran into trouble. This was comforting, like reading an autobiography and thinking, “Well, that happened to them, too. . . . I’m not the only one.”
At RKO I was known as the starlet who never complained. When I began getting small supporting parts in big A movies like Stage Door and Having Wonderful Time, the front-office brass began to notice me. There was an important producer who was especially kind and encouraging. I liked him and respected his judgment. He had a young wife and small children, and we often spoke about the problems of raising a family.
Then—I don’t know quite how it happened—this producer fell in love with me. He wanted to divorce his wife, leave his children, go against his religion and his conscience to marry me.
To me, marriage has always meant sharing. It meant forever, like the wonderful marriage of my grandparents Flora Belle and Fred. Theirs wasn’t a storybook romance, by any means; they had plenty of yelling fights—“You come right in here, Fred,” and, “I’ll be damned if I will,” and so forth—but I knew as a child that no force on heaven or earth would be strong enough to pull those two apart.
That’s the kind of marriage I wanted. I respected this producer’s talent; he was attractive, young, and vital. But I couldn’t allow myself to fall in love with him because of his wife and children.
But because I was ambitious, and because he was a great catch, I struggled with my conscience long and painfully. Friends told me, “Why don’t you marry him? He’s a real talent, and he’ll make your career.” But in the end, I finally found the courage to turn him down.
This decision put into motion a lot of unforeseen consequences. The producer, of course, suffered from a bad case of wounded pride; he immediately lost all interest in me and my career. But his wife heard some studio gossip—after the romance was busted and over—and really lowered the boom. She had influence through some important relatives, so that she was able to decree that one Lucille Ball would never again appear in any A picture at RKO.
Then all my friends said, “You dope! If you’d married the guy, you’d be on top. Now you’ll never make it at RKO, and the wife will get all the other Hollywood wives to blackball you so that no other major studio will hire you.”
My movie career just about ended then and there, but I never regretted that decision. I knew what it was like to lose a beloved father early in life; no child was going to be put through that torture because of me.
When a man and woman work in close proximity in the highly charged atmosphere of moviemaking, emotions become very combustible. I remember Humphrey Bogart at a garden party, watching the beautiful actresses in their diaphanous gowns walk by with their handsome actor escorts, and saying to me with a wink, “No wonder they all want to f __ __ each other all the time.”
But actors and actresses learn to switch their emotions on and off like light bulbs. Change, not constancy, characterizes the usual Hollywood romance. This producer’s temporary interest in me caused a big roadblock in my career for a while. But I was convinced that eventually I would get going again. In the meantime, I had to give Hollywood a rest and look around for other showcases for my talent. I wound up trying radio. This turned out to be one of the smartest things I ever did.
Early in 1938, I appeared on Jack Haley’s weekly radio program, The Wonder Show. This led to a featured spot on Phil Baker’s Hollywood radio show. I worked with some wonderful comics, Jack Carson and Al Pierce, as well as Jack Haley and Phil Baker. This gave me a name in the trade as a good feminine foil. I could flip a
comedy line, which a lot of actresses couldn’t do. In radio I couldn’t depend upon props or costumes or makeup; I had to rely on timing and tone of voice for comic effects, and this was invaluable training.
My contract at RKO still had some time to run, and since I was well liked on the lot, I soon became known as “Queen of the B’s.” My first B picture, made on a low budget with little-known stars but with a strong story line, was Next Time I Marry. James Ellison and Lee Bowman starred in it with me, and our director was Garson Kanin. One reviewer wrote, “Miss Ball, the former lanky and glass-eyed comedienne, has prettied herself up, put her eyebrows in the wrong place, and acquits herself with charm and gusto.” My radio work had put new zip in my acting, and besides, Garson Kanin was a good director. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called Next Time I Marry “one of the best ‘B’ comedies of the year.”
Next I was cast in the Annabel series with Jack Oakie. The first was The Affairs of Annabel, in which I was a glamorous movie star and a comic foil for Jack. When this did well at the box office, we made Annabel Takes a Tour. My old beau Ralph Forbes was in this second picture, playing a rakish viscount.
I also did some musicals with Kay Kyser. My option was picked up each year with an automatic increase in salary, so that eventually my little $50 a week rose to $1,000.
I began dating a director, who was twenty years my senior. Al Hall was part of the Charlie Ruggles, Buster Keaton, Ed Sedgwick, and Bill and Mary Gargan group. They were all wonderful to me. We did things together, almost like a family. Al had been married to Lola Lane, and was in no hurry to marry again; I enjoyed his company, his advice and guidance, but was not in love with him. For two years or so we had a perfect understanding, with no demands on either side. This easy, relaxed relationship continued until a Cuban skyrocket burst over my horizon.
In 1939 I felt sufficiently affluent to buy my first fur coat, a great bushy silver fox with square shoulders four feet wide. I also hired my first personal maid, Harriet McCain. I first heard Harriet being interviewed on a radio program called Help Thy Neighbor. She said that her mother had worked for the Jack Bennys for fourteen years and that she was looking for the same kind of job. When I interviewed Harriet, I didn’t ask for any references, to her surprise. After about five minutes’ talk, I decided I liked her looks and manner and asked, “What size uniform do you wear?” and that was that. She has been with me throughout the United States and Europe—traveling in the air, on the sea, and on the ground—and at home and on movie sets and backstage at the theater for twenty-three years.
When I was doing Wildcat on Broadway in 1960 and 1961 and living in an Upper East Side apartment house, I was told that Negroes were not allowed to ride the front elevator. But I changed that rule in a hurry. Harriet and I were the first to integrate those $l,300-a-month apartments, I’m glad to say.
Back in 1939, Harriet would arrive at my house early in the morning to fix coffee and help me get dressed. Then we’d drive to the RKO studios in my bright red Buick convertible. There, Harriet would cook me a hearty breakfast: steak, fried potatoes, hot biscuits—the works. Lupe Velez, who had to starve herself continually to keep her curves under control, would sweep into my dressing room stamping and swearing, “Goddammit, Lucille, you and your breakfasts!”
Carole Lombard also dropped in often. She was so elegant; her clothes looked as if they had been poured on her. I tried to copy the way she looked, but not the way she talked. Carole had a very lively vocabulary. She could get away with it. Not everybody can and I didn’t even try. But there were many things about Carole that were oh-boy-out-of-this-world wonderful. She was class. She was a good actress, and she always looked great. More important, she had a lot of heart. No wonder Clark Gable adored her so.
When I’m weighing a particularly difficult decision, sometimes I ask myself what Carole would have said, and it helps. She gave me lots of pointers on what she called “studio behavior.”
Often, Harriet and I had a two-hour drive up into the mountains or sagebrush country or wherever they were shooting outdoor scenes. We had to be at the studio by four forty-five a.m. in order to be ready to leave for location by seven. Sometimes a day that began at four a.m. ended at two a.m. the following day if we stayed on location for night scenes. To alleviate the tedium of endlessly waiting between scenes, Harriet and I played gin and poker.
To Harriet’s way of thinking, I didn’t act like a potential movie star at all. I’d get ferociously hungry out there in the sagebrush, and since I had trouble keeping my weight up, I’d send Harriet to the food wagon for fried-potato sandwiches. Harriet was ashamed to give such an order; she felt I should be nibbling on lettuce leaves and cottage cheese like the other players. But she soon learned that I like only the plain and hearty foods.
But those long hours of waiting and of takes and retakes made me restless. My nerves would get frayed and I’d become irritated and short-tempered. After one of my outbursts, Harriet would go around apologizing for me. “Miss Ball didn’t mean it. . . . She’s not really mad at you, she’s just hungry.”
I was almost twenty-eight and hungry for a lot of things: the deep, enduring love of a man I could love in return, and children, and recognition as a performer. I was earning a very high salary: $1,000 a week for forty weeks of the year at the studio, whether I worked or not, plus my radio earnings. But I knew something was missing from my life.
In the spring of 1939, I was offered a small dramatic part in a B movie, Five Came Back. My role was originally intended for Ann Sothern, but she was too busy to do it, so somebody thought of me. I had done only comedy, but luckily I had a great director, John Farrow, and he helped me realize one of the best parts of my movie career.
Five Came Back was a sleeper which proved to be a solid-gold hit. When it opened, the Rialto in New York went on a twenty-four-hour schedule to accommodate the crowds. It was the film that gave my career a much-needed boost. Soon I was being told that the front office was “grooming” me for A films and stardom at last. In line with this, I was sent east in December for personal appearances. “And while you’re in New York,” the studio head told me, “be sure and see the big Broadway hit Too Many Girls. We’ve bought the movie rights, and George Abbott will direct. You may get a starring role in it.”
In New York, the studio press agents wanted to photograph me on the outdoor rink at Rockefeller Plaza doing a pratfall on the ice. I said sure, why not, and bought myself a short black velvet skating outfit trimmed with white fur, and a pair of long black tights. Russell Markert told me for God’s sake not to go through with the stunt. He knew I’d do almost anything for a laugh, but he also knew I was no acrobat.
“You don’t know how to fall properly,” he warned me. “You’re apt to hurt yourself.”
I should have listened to him, but in those days I thought I was indestructible. After so many years in California I guess I’d forgotten how hard ice can be. I fell over backward and landed with a mighty crack on my sacroiliac. I made all the big dailies in New York, all right, and the rest of the country, too. They had to carry me off the rink on a stretcher, and I spent the next ten days of my New York holiday in a hospital.
From show business friends who popped in and out of my hospital room, I learned that the new Broadway musical Too Many Girls was a great hit. It was fast-paced and funny, with gorgeous girls and Rodgers and Hart songs. The sensation of the show, everyone agreed, was a twenty-two-year-old Cuban named Desi Arnaz.
The plot of Too Many Girls wasn’t much: A beautiful rich girl decides to go to college, and she takes along four football heroes who are really her bodyguards in disguise. Desi was cast as the South American football wonder; he sang with a heavy Spanish accent, danced a way-out conga, banged a bongo drum, and strummed a guitar. From the way girls reacted to him, he was the Elvis Presley of his day. Offstage he was dating film stars, stage stars, and all the leading debutantes, including the beautiful Brenda Frazier.
My friends told me that this yo
ung nightclub entertainer was a nice guy and that his overnight success on Broadway hadn’t gone to his head at all. In his review of Too Many Girls, critic John Mason Brown called Desi “at once attractive and modest,” and in Variety, John Anderson wrote that in the title song, “the ‘Sta-combed’ Desi Arnaz establishes his position as the show’s glamour boy and clinches the Latin-It supremacy on Broadway without reducing the part to a gigolodeon.”
When I recovered enough to hobble around, Russell Markert took me to see Too Many Girls. I couldn’t take my eyes off this Desi Arnaz. A striped football jersey hugged his big shoulders and chest, while those narrow hips in tight football pants swayed to the catchy rhythms of the bongo drum he was carrying. I recognized the kind of electrifying charm that can never be faked: star quality.
Then Desi opened his mouth and began talking in his own peculiar brand of broken English, and a great belly laugh burst out of me. Now it’s hard to make me laugh. I observe, I smile, but when I’m really amused you can hear me a block away. Here was a stunning-looking male who was not only thrilling but funny. What a combination!
Russell asked me where I wanted to go after the show, and I said La Conga. That’s where Desi was appearing nightly after the show, singing and demonstrating the conga, then the sexiest and hottest dance in the country. But that particular night was Desi’s night off, so I didn’t get to meet him.
In a few days, I went back to Hollywood. Too Many Girls was doing such a sell-out business in New York that it would be months before George Abbott would be free to do the movie, so in the meantime, the studio gave me a co-starring role with Maureen O’Hara in Dance, Girl, Dance.
Now, I discovered long ago that when you’re cast in a part, first you’re cast physically. The producer couldn’t care less about your soul shining from your big bright eyes; he looks to see if you’re thin or fat, young or old, ugly or beautiful. I’m tall and wear clothes well, so first I was cast as a showgirl and a clotheshorse. Then I played the other woman, the prostitute, and the hard-as-nails career girl. I guess I’m not the lady type. The refined-looking Maureen O’Hara got the role of the ballet dancer in Dance, Girl, Dance; I was the tough, wisecracking stripteaser.