by Lucille Ball
The Milwaukee appearance was for one night at some kind of benefit they were having. Desi phoned and made me promise to come right back to New York so we could talk some more. But it was now late November and blizzards were arriving in the Midwest. A train carrying Gloria Jean, a starlet who was supposed to follow me at the benefit, got stuck in a snowstorm. The RKO publicity people asked me if I would continue playing in her place. My RKO bosses got on the phone too. They had seen those pictures of me and Desi together in New York and warned me against marrying him. He’d left a trail of broken hearts from Times Square to Sunset Boulevard to East Hampton, they told me. “I’m not going to marry him. Relax,” I said. “We both know it’s impossible.”
My one-day appearance at the Milwaukee benefit stretched into five days. Every evening Desi would phone, hopping mad, and ask when I was leaving for New York. One midnight I came into the hotel after an exhausting day of appearances. Desi was on the phone from New York, so I took the call in the lobby.
“I know now why you’re stalling,” Desi was yelling into the phone. “There’s a verree handsome actor playing een Milwaukee, Joseph Cotten. I suppose there’s a beeg theeng between you two—ees that why you’re stalling?”
“I don’t even know Joseph Cotten,” I hollered back at Desi while the whole lobby listened. I’d been so busy working I didn’t even know a stage troupe was in town. Just then I looked up and striding through the lobby was—Joseph Cotten. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning,” I told Desi, and hung up.
I went up to my rooms boiling mad at Desi and told Harriet that I was leaving that minute for New York. She could follow the next day with my clothes. Joseph Cotten was still in the lobby when I came down again and he kindly drove me to the airport. It was then past midnight and there was no regular flight, so I chartered a private plane.
In New York, I checked into the Hampshire House, slept until noon, and then waited for Desi to appear between shows at the Roxy. A woman interviewer arrived just minutes before Desi. I was still mad at him for having so little faith in me, so I let him cool his heels while I went on letting myself be interviewed for an article that wound up with the title “Why I Will Always Remain a Bachelor Girl.”
It wasn’t until late that night that Desi and I were alone together. He told me why he was so upset about my staying on and on in Milwaukee. He had been arranging an elopement to Greenwich, Connecticut; already he had postponed it five times!
“But I thought we decided that we couldn’t get married,” I said.
“That’s right,” he agreed, “but we are.”
He left me at my hotel at three a.m., saying he’d pick me up again at eight, and I went to bed deliriously happy. Just before I fell asleep I remembered all my clothes were in Milwaukee with Harriet. All I had was the little black wool number I’d been wearing all day. When I thought about all the appropriately beautiful things I had in my trunk but not available for eight a.m., I was fit to be tied.
But Desi was much too elated to notice his bride wore black. I sat beside him in the back of the car while his business manager drove like sixty over the icy, treacherous winter roads to Greenwich. Desi had a noon show at the Roxy to make.
Inwardly, I was terrified at what I was doing and wondered if I had chosen wisely. Aunt Lola had married a Greek and her life with him was no bed of roses. I knew how Latins can be, how jealous and possessive. But most of all I worried about whether I could make Desi happy.
In many ways, marrying Desi was one of the boldest things I ever did. I had always gone with older men. I had also achieved some kind of stability in Hollywood, and Desi with his beautiful girls and good times seemed headed in another direction.
Yet I sensed in Desi a great need. Beneath that dazzling charm was a homeless boy who had no one to care for him, worry about him, love him. And I wanted him and only him as the father of my children.
All these thoughts drummed through my mind as we tore up the Merritt Parkway to Connecticut. Desi was singing. His dark eyes were shining, his face radiant, but his hands, I noticed, were shaking.
In Greenwich, we spent a harried two hours seeing a judge about waiving the five-day waiting period and getting the necessary health examination. Desi had planned to marry me at the office of Justice of the Peace John J. O’Brien. He had forgotten only one thing: a wedding ring. Desi’s business manager ran into Woolworth’s and bought me a brass one. Although Desi later gave me a platinum ring, that little discolored brass ring rested among the diamonds and emeralds in my jewel case for years.
At the last moment, the justice of the peace decided that we needed a more romantic spot than his office for the wedding, so he drove us out into the country to the Byram River Beagle Club.
After the short ceremony, we ate our wedding breakfast in front of a bright fire in the club’s lounge. Outside, a fresh mantle of snow hung on the pine trees. After all the indecision we’d been through, Desi and I were dazed with happiness. We kissed each other and the marriage certificate again and again. It still has my lipstick marks on it.
“I’m going to keep this forever and ever,” I told Desi, clutching it to my black-wool-covered bosom. This marriage had to work. I would do anything, sacrifice anything, to make Desi happy.
Then our intimate little moment together turned into bedlam. Reporters rushed in the doors of the Beagle Club. Desi phoned the manager of the Roxy at 11:55 a.m.
“You’re on in five minutes,” said Manny calmly, thinking that Desi was in his dressing room at the theater.
“That’s what I called you about,” said Desi. “I’m een Connecticoot.”
“You can’t be in Connecticut!”
“I know,” laughed Desi. “But I am. I been marrying Lucille.”
On the car radio driving back to New York we heard the news of our elopement. My mother heard it too, in California. At the stage door of the Roxy we elbowed our way through a mob of cheering fans. Desi carried me over the threshold of his dressing room. Inside we found it packed to the walls with reporters and photographers. Desi led me on the stage, still in that darn old black dress, and thousands of people roared their good wishes and pelted us with rice, thoughtfully supplied by the management.
It was November 30, 1940, the most momentous day of my life so far. I phoned the Hampshire House; Harriet had finally arrived with my clothes. She had been my inseparable companion, at home and on the set, for years. She was flabbergasted. “Who did we marry?” she asked.
In my usual efficient way, I hurried over to the Hampshire House and checked out while Desi celebrated his marriage with some friends in his dressing room. Desi had been staying at the Hotel Maurice with his mother; we decided to begin married life in style at the Pierre. I thought Desi would be delighted to find me all settled there when he finished his last Roxy show that night, but instead he was furious.
“I won’t have my wife riding around New York alone een a taxi!” he stormed.
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“You sure are possessive as hell all of a sudden,” I told him.
We glared at each other and then fell helplessly into each other’s arms—the way so many of our quarrels were to begin and end for years to come. Friends gave our marriage six months; me, I gave it a week.
I knew that Desi wanted a wife who would play second fiddle to him, and this was all right with me. He wanted to get into the movies and we had big hopes that his exuberant sex appeal, his good taste and intelligence would carry him far—farther than me, I hoped. But his heavy foreign accent limited the roles he could play. Nevertheless, I did everything in my power to advance his career, to bolster his confidence in himself, and to run his home the way he wanted it. This was the way I had been brought up and this was what I wanted.
On our wedding night Desi woke me out of a sound sleep by shaking my shoulders.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I thought the hotel must be on fire.
“I’m thirsty,” he explained. “Please get
me a glass of water, darling.”
I was out of bed and running the tap in the bathroom before I woke up sufficiently to wonder why in the hell he didn’t get it himself.
We stayed in New York for six weeks while Desi finished at the Roxy; then I was recalled to Hollywood for retakes on the Harold Lloyd production, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob. On the way back to California on the Super Chief, I began making happy plans for domesticity. I hadn’t cooked since my teens in Jamestown and I had no idea what Desi’s food tastes were. But whatever they were, I intended to indulge them. As we sat in our compartment ravenously waiting for the dining car to open, I’d say, “What do you feel like eating?”
Then I’d jot down everything in a notebook as he rattled it off—”What’s that?” “How do you spell it?” “What’s in it?” I wrote down God knows what else, wondering if I’d ever get to eat my pet dishes, like pot roast and fried chicken. Actually, I’m a Bisquick-variety cook; Desi turned out to be the real chef in the family.
Desi and I were convinced that trying to build a happy marriage right in the heart of Hollywood is very, very difficult. So after we’d been married about six months, we decided to move far out into the open spaces of the San Fernando Valley. It was a blustery, rainy day in March 1941 when we first saw our not-yet-completed little white ranch house in Chatsworth, with a white fence surrounding its five acres. That builder was a good psychologist; the house was just a shell but that fence gave us such a proud sense of ownership. We bought the place for $16,900, and as soon as it was possible to move in, Desi carried me over every threshold and through one window.
Each of us laid the stamp of our different personalities upon that little house. Although it sat on a sandpile when we bought it, I had flowers in profusion before the plumbing was in. I decorated it in Early Victorian and Bastard American; with cabbage-rose wallpaper, red plush chairs, white ruffled curtains, trailing ivy, and beribboned lampshades. I even had some petit point embroidery I’d done as a child in Celoron.
My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband’s side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the planner and the dreamer.
Desi’s idea of family life was based on his childhood in Cuba, where his father owned three ranches, townhouses, an island in Santiago Bay, a racing stable, cars, and speedboats. So the first thing Desi did at our home was hire a bulldozer. He sat on it stripped to the waist, tanned and darkly handsome, glowing with health and vitality, as he dug out a huge swimming pool and then planted groves of orange and lemon trees. Then he built a bathhouse while I adoringly handed him the nails, one by one.
We were so excitingly in love. All my jewelry was marked “To Lucy” on one side, and “Love, Desi” on the other. Around his neck Desi wore a gold Saint Christopher’s medal marked “Darling,” and he carried a gold lighter engraved: “Dear Desi, my love for you will last longer than this lighter, I betcha, Lucy.”
We christened everything in sight Desilu, the combination of our names: the ranch, our station wagon, Desi’s first boat, even a special goulash invented by Desi.
Desi was supporting his mother, and I was supporting DeDe and Daddy in the little house on North Ogden Drive; our good friends Bill and Brenda Holden persuaded us that we needed a business manager. I’m a careful spender; Desi is highly extravagant. It would save a lot of arguments, we felt, if we kept our incomes and obligations completely separate.
So right from the beginning of our marriage, our business manager, Andrew Hickox, handled our affairs on this basis. I paid for all my personal expenses, Desi paid for his, and we each contributed a fixed amount every week toward home expenses. Andy gave each of us twenty-five dollars a week for incidentals, and everything else we charged. Andy wrote all the checks and paid the bills from our separate accounts. I was the most cooperative client with money he’d ever known, Andy said, and he’s handled many stars. Occasionally I’d go on a clothes spree and then he’d tell me, “Don’t spend an unnecessary cent now for the next three months,” and I’d do this. I gave him a fixed sum every month to invest, and these holdings have done very well; Desi never was very good at saving.
Once, Desi was playing craps and losing at Vegas. “Let me try,” I told him, and took over. Within a short time I won $18,000, and quit. I phoned Andy Hickox and asked him what to do with the pot. “Get a cashier’s check for it right away and mail it to me,” he said, which I did. When Desi won the same amount of money, he bought a boat.
Having separate accounts works out well in Hollywood. Then when one partner goes on a spending spree, the other can’t scream. So although Desi was often extravagant, it was his money. As long as he paid half the household expense, he had the perfect right to do whatever he wanted with the rest of it.
One night soon after we were married, Desi and I had a long, loud fight. The next morning I got out of bed at dawn and walked outside the ranch house. We had a brand-new station wagon parked there. I took a hammer and walked around the new car, smashing every window. What satisfaction that was! Then I telephoned Andy Hickox and told him to get it fixed at my expense.
There isn’t that much business managers don’t know about their clients. To me, Andy personified cool, impartial judgment. He never took sides in our arguments, since we were both his clients. So one day I phoned Andy and told him to come out to the ranch at eight o’clock that evening.
Desi and I were still at dinner when he came; he joined us for dessert and coffee. “Now let’s move into the den,” I directed. “Andy, you sit here between Desi and me.” We all got settled comfortably and Desi said impatiently, “Okay, Lucy, now what? What’s thees all about? How come you asked Andy?”
“We’re going to have one of our arguments,” I explained calmly to Desi. “And Andy’s going to sit here and referee. Okay, let’s start.”
A complete silence fell. Desi shook his head in bewilderment. Then he started to laugh. Then quiet little Andy broke into guffaws. All three of us sat roaring with laughter. Then Andy said good night and left.
In those early years, our fights were a kind of lovemaking. Desi and I enjoyed them, but they exhausted our friends and family, I’m afraid. Desi even went to Lela Rogers and asked her help in pleasing me. And often I phoned DeDe at three a.m. to recite our latest, loudest, and most passionate fight. DeDe, like our business manager, tried never to take sides, but just the listening, she said, wore her out.
My usual complaint was that Desi only worked at marriage in spurts. I don’t believe he ever really intended to settle down and become a good, steady, faithful husband. He said I was much too jealous, and so the arguments roared on and on. But we remained very deeply and passionately in love.
Our rumpus room at the ranch was an early monument to our battles. As Desi once explained to reporter Eleanor Harris, “During that first year of our marriage, every time Lucy and I fought, I packed my clothes and moved to a Hollywood hotel. Once there, I unpacked, had my clothes pressed, made up with Lucy, repacked, went home—and had to get my clothes pressed all over again! Repeated endless times, this becomes a highly expensive business; finally, I figured out that it would be a lot cheaper to build myself a glorified doghouse right on our own grounds. Then, after a fight, I could move all my clothes on their hangers from one closet to another. Well, that’s how I built our big rumpus house with its main room, bathroom, and kitchen. Grandpa Freddy Hunt helped me shingle the roof. For years, it was our pet place to give parties.”
One time, however, Desi announced it was the end of our marriage and he moved in with his mother in her Hollywood apartment. Three miserable days passed and neither of us got in touch with the other. Then one morning at six o’clock I looked out the window and saw Desi standing among the little orange trees he had planted. He was looking about and patting our five dogs on the head at once while tears ran down his cheeks. Once again he was homeless, and uncared for, and he couldn’t stand it. Neither could I. I ran
bawling out of the house and into his arms.
I’ll always remember the first birthday of mine we celebrated in our new little house. It was August 6, 1941, and I was thirty—not an easy birthday for any woman to face.
I thought that Desi had forgotten the day, especially when he sent me off to do some shopping by myself. But at five o’clock, when I drove our station wagon into our long driveway, I found Desi leading a five-piece combo of fellow Latins and forty guests singing “Happy Birthday.” The final touch of the romantic, willing spender was the solid carpet of white gardenias floating in our swimming pool.
* * *
I loved to bring friends home from the studio. One day I saw a newcomer under the hair dryer at RKO. It was June Havoc’s first day on the set and she was unstrung, the tears running down her face as fast as she could wipe them away. “Hey,” I told her, pulling back the dryer so she could hear. “I never knew that much water could come out of a human being. How about coming home with me for dinner tonight?” This was the start of an enduring friendship.
Another good friend of mine was Renée DeMarco of the Dancing DeMarcos. I had never even heard of Renée until after I married Desi, and then I learned that he had been engaged to her. They broke up before he came to Hollywood and met me. She married Jody Hutchinson, and after her little daughter was born, she spent a lot of time at the ranch. The biggest disappointment in my life then was not having children. My scrapbooks of my early days in Hollywood—even before I was married—are filled with magazine illustrations of adorable pink-cheeked children. “When?” I’d write next to each picture. “When?” and “When?”
San Fernando Valley was considered the wild and woolly open spaces then, and many movie people built homes there to get away from it all. In the evenings our neighbors would come over to see us—the Bill Holdens, Jack Oakies, Gordon MacRaes, Francis Lederers, Richard Carlsons, and Charlie Ruggleses. We’d play poker or gin rummy, run home movies, or just sit there, feet up, and talk—mostly ranch talk, about when the best time to plant was, which insecticides to use, and how often to irrigate. All that good earthy talk carried me right back to Celoron and my grandfather’s livestock and garden. I spent my days at home cooking, hoeing, weeding, washing curtains, and cleaning out closets (a compulsion of mine, since I can’t bear to have anything in storage that can be given away).