Love, Lucy

by Lucille Ball

  The birth of little Desi has been described in a college history textbook as one of the great emotional events of 1953. I had quit doing the shows in November, when I was carrying thirty-three extra pounds. During the following seven weeks, we aired the sequence involving my pregnancy (filmed in September and October but shown on TV screens in December and January).

  The baby’s birth had been scheduled for Monday morning, January 19, at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. We had tried to keep the date a secret, but the news had leaked out that my real baby and Lucy Ricardo’s fake baby would arrive on the same day. Flowers and telegrams in great profusion preceded my trip to the hospital. When Desi took me in that Sunday night, the bouquets already filled my room and half the corridor. One wire from a good friend read, “Well, don’t just lie there—do something.”

  They doped me up with pills, but I lay awake all night anyway. I had the same feelings of terror and desperate hope that any mother has. “Oh God,” I prayed, “just make it a normal, healthy baby.” During the early-morning operation I was conscious the whole time. At 8:20 a.m., my baby was born—Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV. At last Desi had a son and heir to carry on his proud family traditions.

  That afternoon I awoke to find Desi sitting on my bed sobbing. There were seven thousand letters and a thousand telegrams waiting for me. But this was only the beginning. Counting the telegrams, letters, cards, phone calls, baby bootees, and other gifts, one million people sent some expression of their good wishes for the new baby.

  Desi went to the Brown Derby that day, threw his hands up to the ceiling, and shouted, “Now we got everythin’.”

  The national hysteria continued for weeks. The same day our little Desi was born, forty-four million Americans watched the arrival of Ricky Ricardo, Jr., on the I Love Lucy show. The next day, Eisenhower was inaugurated as president, and the following Sunday night Walter Winchell said on the air, “This was a banner week: the nation got a man and Lucy got a boy.”

  This was a banner year in all respects for Desi and me. In February, we won two Emmy Awards—Best Comic Actress and Best Comedy Show—and Desi clinched an $8 million deal with Philip Morris, making us television’s highest-paid stars. In March, two months after little Desi’s birth, I went back to work. In June, we were named Husband and Wife of the Year. We took three days off from the show and then went directly into production of MGM’s The Long, Long Trailer.

  We did this movie for my old friend producer Pandro Berman. My former studio, MGM, paid us $250,000, and fortunately the show was a big moneymaker. I had Lana Turner’s old dressing room and Desi was in Clark Gable’s. We took one month’s vacation, then went right back to Stage 9 again for the Lucy show. During all this period I was not getting my rest. I felt terribly tired.

  The smash success of our TV show and the physical strain of combining my last pregnancy with a full work schedule took its toll. I developed a feeling I couldn’t shake. All our good fortune was suddenly going to vanish. When I tore myself away from my babies in the morning, I had this terrible fear that they’d be gone when I returned at night. Having the love and adoration of millions was wonderful and thrilling, but I could have done with half of our Lucy success, for with it came a lot of new stress.

  Desi had managed to cut our shooting schedule down to five days a week, but evenings and Saturdays and Sundays our house was filled with people running in and out consulting Desi on deals. By this time he was producing other shows and giving technical assistance to still others. We had signed a ten-year lease on the Motion Picture Center in Hollywood, which we eventually bought for $750,000, and Desi was deeply involved in the reconstruction of four soundstages and hundreds of offices. He estimated correctly that by the end of 1953, Desilu would have completed ninety hours of film production and would be doing a gross business of millions of dollars.

  In addition to the production company, we also had a merchandising business. It was possible to furnish a house and dress a whole family with items carrying our I Love Lucy label. Red Skelton did a hilarious TV skit poking fun at this. As he walked into his house, his wife shouted, “Don’t track mud on my I Love Lucy rug!” As he started to sink into a chair, she added, “Don’t mess up my I Love Lucy chair!” He finally shoots her, and she moans, “You shot a bullet through my I Love Lucy blouse!”

  One baby food company offered us $50,000 to use little Desi’s name on their product, but we wouldn’t even consider that, even though it was the same baby food he ate.

  In the middle of August 1953, we settled into a rented house on the beach in Del Mar, California, with both babies, a nurse, Desi’s mother, and an assortment of houseguests. It was then that I received a call that seemed to realize my anxious apprehension. The call was from William A. Wheeler, an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee. The committee wanted to hold a closed hearing with me, DeDe, and Freddy on September 4, in Hollywood.

  Freddy, now a salesman in Phoenix, Arizona, joined us at Del Mar and we drove up together. Investigator Wheeler went over some statements we had made the previous year to the FBI about my “Communist connections.”

  What had happened was that when Dore Schary and Larry Parks were subpoenaed to go to Washington in the late 1940s to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Bill Holden and I went on the air to support them. We did that at the request of the Screen Writers Guild; when my own union told me my support was needed, I didn’t ask questions. Then after I spoke my piece for Schary and Parks, some scandal-sheet reporter went through all the voting records to see how I had registered over the years, and he found that in 1936 I registered as a Communist.

  That was the year my grandfather Fred held all his political meetings in our garage at 1344 North Ogden Drive. He had a friend running for city council on the Communist ticket and he insisted that DeDe, Freddy, and I register so we could vote for him.

  We did it to please Daddy. He’d had one stroke already and the least little argument got him all upset.

  So in the spring of 1952 I talked to some FBI men for several hours at a meeting arranged at the ranch. The records showed that I had registered as a Communist voter in 1936. I never voted, however, and after two years, my registration lapsed. The FBI said that I had once been named to the California State Central Committee of the Communist Party. I said this was news to me and that if my name was there, it was listed without my knowledge or consent. They also said that a member of the Communist party had testified that she attended meetings at 1344 North Ogden Drive during 1936 and had never seen me at any of these meetings.

  I told the investigators that during 1936 I had been working at the RKO studios and in Lela Rogers’s Little Theater group, six and seven days a week. I was seldom home before midnight and then I was only interested in getting some sleep, not attending a political meeting.

  The FBI men seemed satisfied. As far as they were concerned, I was cleared. They called me “politically immature” and saw no reason for further investigation of what was essentially an impulsive, emotional step I’d taken in my youth for the sake of my grandfather.

  So I had put the whole business out of my mind, until I got Wheeler’s call in Del Mar, in August of the following year.

  At the hearing held September 4, 1953, in Hollywood, I told him about my registering as a Communist in 1936, “I was of a mind to try and do something that would please Daddy. It just didn’t seem like such an awful thing to do, the way it does these days . . . it was almost as terrible to be a Republican then.”

  Then I was asked about a petition I had read over the radio about the plight of the Okies. I explained that a studio official had asked me to read it and that I had been excused from a picture to do so.

  According to my testimony, which was officially recorded that day, I swore: “I have never done anything for the Communists, to my knowledge, at any time. I have never contributed money or attended a meeting or had anything to do with people connected with it, if to my knowledge they were. I
am not a Communist now. I have never been. I never wanted to be. Nothing in the world could ever change my mind. At no time in my life have I ever been in sympathy with anything that even faintly resembled it.”

  Again we were completely cleared and assured that none of the secret testimony would go beyond the walls of that hearing room.

  But two days later, on Sunday night, September 6, 1953, I was home alone at the ranch in Chatsworth with our two children, listening to Walter Winchell’s radio program, when he came out with a blind item: “What top redheaded television comedienne has been confronted with her membership in the Communist party?” (I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, do they think Imogene Coca is a Communist?”) When Desi called from our beach house in Del Mar, where he’d spent the weekend with some poker buddies, he said, “Lucy, were you listening to Winchell tonight?”

  “Of course, you know I always do. Do you believe that about Imogene?”

  “Lucy,” he said, as if scolding a small child, “he’s not talking about Coca! He means you!”

  “Me?” I said, as my knitting went flying. “How can he?”

  “I’m on my way home—we’ll be expecting some people about one a.m.,” he told me.

  “Why? What are you having, a party?”

  “No, honey,” he said seriously. “You’re in trouble.”

  For years I had known about Hollywood’s insidious “blacklist.” The mere accusation of Red activity against someone—a writer, actor, or director—could put that person under a permanent cloud whether he was guilty or not. An actor could be “cleared” for one show and not for another—all on the same network. A writer could be denied credit for his work or find himself permanently unemployed by any studio. Television sponsors, fearing a boycott of their goods, quaked in their boots if anyone on their shows was even remotely tinged with the label of “controversial.”

  The most vicious thing about this blacklist was that anyone—even the most ignorant crank—could point the finger at someone and the charge could hold.

  I had now gone through two closed-door hearings on the matter—before the FBI and the Un-American Activities Committee—and been cleared by both. But Walter Winchell’s broadcast could still ruin me. I don’t blame Walter Winchell. He had heard that the charge against me was going to be publicized in a magazine. He wanted a scoop; that’s what he’s paid for. But he might at least have been accurate.

  That Sunday night, Desi quickly rounded up Desilu officials, including our public relations man, Kenneth Morgan, who was then married to my cousin Cleo, along with press relations men from MGM, CBS, and Philip Morris. Our movie for MGM, The Long, Long Trailer, was not yet released, so the studio was also interested in protecting its investment in me.

  I told them all about my voting registration back in 1936. When they learned that I had been cleared by both the FBI and the congressional committee, they decided that nothing further need be done. Perhaps it would all blow over.

  Two days passed. Then on Wednesday, September 9, Winchell’s nationally syndicated column repeated the same statement he had made on the air. On Thursday, Jack O’Brien of the New York Journal-American wrote, “Lucille Ball plans to retire in four years. She will retire a lot sooner than she thinks.”

  On Friday, the hot news broke. This was the day we’d planned to film the first show of the fall season. I rose early, as usual. Through the window I saw two strange men in hats standing near our orchard. I woke Desi up. Still in his pajamas, he opened the door and asked what the men wanted. They said they were police reporters from the Los Angeles Herald-Express, sent to talk to me about my “Communist activities.”

  Desi said firmly that I had no statement to make. We dressed as fast as we could and slipped out the back door. At the Desilu studios, twenty-five miles away, everything was pandemonium. Reporters were everywhere; a cacophony of phones rang. By noon, the Herald-Express had a three-inch headline: “Lucille Ball Named Red.” Two hours later, New Yorkers read in their five o’clock evening papers, “America’s Most Beloved Comedienne is Communist.”

  It seemed to Desi and me that the first statement to the press should come from the Un-American Activities Committee, so I kept mum and away from reporters. In the morning I sat under the hair dryer in pin curls, as usual, and did my nails. My hands shook. In the afternoon I went through hours of comedy rehearsal, white-faced and with a devastating headache.

  Alfred Lyons, board chairman of Philip Morris, phoned me and said, “Lucy, I want to ask you one yes-or-no question: Are you a Communist?”

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s good enough for me,” he said. “If you want, you can cancel the show we planned for tonight. Take the full half hour of our TV time and explain to the public in any way you like what this nonsense is all about.”

  I burst into tears and thanked him. I would have spoken to America, except that at six o’clock that evening Representative Donald L. Jackson, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, called a press conference in his Hollywood hotel room and cleared me completely.

  Jackson, a California Republican, had spent the day phoning the majority of the other committee members, and his statement was authorized by them. He told reporters that I had freely admitted having registered as a Communist in 1936, but that there was no evidence that I had ever belonged to the Communist party, or voted Communist, or attended any Communist meeting, or even known that my name had been listed on the party’s state committee.

  He said that the House committee had known about my registration for a year and had not thought it fair to divulge it, but that “independent investigators” had come across the record recently. The consequent spreading of rumors had threatened “irreparable damage” to Miss Ball.

  Desi brought me the news of Representative Jackson’s statement in my dressing room. “Today I’ve learned who my friends are,” I told him. This official clearance meant that we could go on with the show. But before me was the terrible ordeal of facing an audience packed with reporters and curiosity-seekers. I stood waiting for my cue with a face white as chalk. A doctor stood by because, as Vivian said later, “I think if Lucy had heard one boo from that audience, she’d have collapsed.”

  Desi gave the warm-up in his usual breezy way. “Welcome to the first I Love Lucy show of the season,” he said. “We are glad to have you back, and we’re glad to be back ourselves. But before we go on, I want to talk to you about something serious. Something very serious. You all know what it is. The papers have been full of it all day.”

  He had a little typed speech in his hand but at this point he tucked it into his pocket. His voice broke and then he went on with deep emotion. “Lucy has never been a Communist—not now—and never will be.” The audience applauded for a full minute. “I was kicked out of Cuba,” Desi continued, “because of Communism. We despise everything about it. Lucy is as American as Bernie Baruch and Ike Eisenhower. . . . On Saturday the complete transcript of Lucy’s testimony will be released to the papers and you can read it for yourself.”

  The audience stood up and cheered. Someone yelled, “We’re with you, boy.” Desi then introduced Bill Frawley and Vivian Vance, who came out and smiled. Then he said, “Now I want you to meet my favorite wife, my favorite redhead—in fact, that’s the only thing red about her, and even that’s not legitimate—Lucille Ball.”

  Feeling as stiff as an iron poker, I walked out into the limelight. I couldn’t speak, but my features were fraught with emotion. Still speechless, with tears in my eyes, I turned and walked back through the curtains.

  My years of rigid self-discipline paid off that night. I lost myself in Lucy and clowned and cavorted without a sign of strain. At the end of the show, the cast came out as usual for a farewell bow. My Lucy voice—that high, bubbly, childlike voice—dropped to my normal low tones. “God bless you for being so kind,” I told them. Finally, in my dressing room, I gave way to the tears I had been holding in since early morning.

  True to Desi�
��s promise, we had fifty copies or more made of my testimony before William Wheeler and distributed them to the press at the ranch the next afternoon. Among the thirty reporters there to receive them were many who had known me since my Goldwyn Girl days; I considered them firm friends. Still, I was understandably nervous as Desi distributed the sheets of testimony I had given under oath. The reporters sat soberly reading for ten minutes or so. Then one of them stood up and said to his colleagues, “I think we owe both Desi and Lucy a vote of thanks for this chance to set the record straight, and I think a lot of irresponsible people owe them an apology.”

  Someone asked me how Walter Winchell found out about my registration.

  “Walter Winchell,” I replied, “knew I was pregnant before I did.”

  Desi told them, “William Wheeler told Lucy after he heard her testimony that she was politically immature. Hell, she couldn’t even tell you who the governor of California was last year. And her grandfather was a character right out of You Can’t Take It With You.”

  Winchell apologized for his inaccurate reporting the following night—just one week after his words had initiated the furor. If our sponsor had canceled our contract, it was entirely likely that no sponsor or network would have been willing to carry us; and with the fall of the Lucy show, Desilu Productions would have collapsed too, affecting thousands of people and costing us millions of dollars.

  As it was, only one store in the whole country canceled orders for I Love Lucy merchandise. I received over four thousand letters, of which only two were critical. In the following months, I was chosen Television’s Woman of the Year for the second time, and President Eisenhower invited me and Desi to dinner at the White House. And Lucy remained the number-one show in popularity in the United States.