Book 21: Lucille Ball - Love, Lucy

 

Love, Lucy

Lucille Ball

 Released: September 24th, 1996

Book #21 complete for the year.  One of my favorite actresses and businesswomen of all time, Lucille Ball.  When an ex and I suffered a miscarriage several years ago, I had a temporary fixation with the show.  I would watch it every day on live TV.  It got me through some painful weeks.  It reminded me of seeing it on at grandparent’s houses in years past.  I loved how it inspired so many other shows.  Lucy and Desi were amazing pioneers and innovators.  Desi is arguably the poster child for the American Dream.  He made it happen.  So did Lucy, with her meteoric rise behind stardom.

Here are things I learned, or quotes that inspired me:

One of Lucy’s favorite things to do would be to wait until someone left the room, and then when they returned she would blurt out, “Here she is now! Why don’tcha tell her to her face?!!” Before howling with laughter to break up the tense moment.

She was working on an autobiography since the mid-1960’s.  She feared upsetting Desi, despite being divorced and remarried for 20 years.  The work was discovered shortly after her death.  Her children pieced it together for her.

Born in Jamestown, New York, but conceived in Montana.  She spent a few years in the west before relocating to a Detroit suburb, and later western New York.

Her father passed away from Typhoid Fever at the age of 28.  Lucy was only 4 years old.

Lucy was superstitious about birds, and believed birds that flew threw a window were bad luck.

She was moved around a lot as a child due to her mother’s situation.  She lived with grandparents, aunts & uncles, and even her stepfather Ed’s parents.

“I have my grandmother Peterson to thank for the gnawing sense of unworthiness and insecurity that haunted me for years. The Puritan idea that everything pleasurable is somehow bad almost ruined for me the first joys of our big I Love Lucy success.  The hardest thing for me was getting used to the idea that I deserved it.”

“When we speak of the slights of our childhood, it's hard to remember that often people were struggling to do their level best. This knowledge comes to you later in life, of course, when you have children of your own.”

She felt her Puritan heritage greatly influence her.  One of her biggest dreams was to live in a little, white house in the New England area with a lilac bush by the front door.

Jamestown, NY is a great furniture center.  A lot of her classmates were children of highly-skilled craftsmen from around the world who had come to Jamestown for work.

She and her brother Freddy would stage their own play based on shows they had seen at the nearby Celoron Amusement Park.

She considered herself the most Conservative member of her family.

She and her brother would call her grandfather “Daddy” all their lives because he raised them as if they were his own.

Lucy always supported cancer research after watching her grandmother waste away before passing

She had an obsession with lilac, and was known to travel from California to New England just to smell it fresh in the fields.  She tried growing it, but CA is a difficult environment for it to grow.

She held a discomfort with guns and distrust in law enforcement since one incident as a child.  Her grandfather was supervising a targeting range with kids.  One of the children’s moms called them home, and the kid ran in front of the gun a little girl was shooting.  The family sued her grandfather, and even had a witness in court testify that the grandfather was having the other kids target and shoot this specific child.  He lost his entire life savings ($4,000 in 1927 - $70,000 in 2023) and had their house foreclosed on.

NYC made her uncomfortable her whole life.

When she first applied for theater school, she failed out.  She got some rehearsal parts in plays, but one had 5 weeks of unpaid rehearsal and then getting cut before opening night hit her hard.

“When you have kids late in life, you appreciate them more.”

One Sunday morning, the Celoron Amusement went up in flames.  It was like witnessing her wonderful happy childhood being gone forever and so tragically.

She modeled clothing at some different stores in Nee York, and even gained some recognition as the Chesterfield Tobacco model.  One day, she was recognized outside a theater, and was told that she was being searched for because a part had opened up in Hollywood, and they wanted her to take it.

She traveled to Hollywood and was in a major motion picture called Roman Scandals.

She was a fan of ostrich eggs filled with creamy custard.

Following the success of the film, she was loaned out to different studios as one of the Goldwyn Girls

She was then determined to stay in Hollywood.

She went back to NY for a short visit to see her family.  Her brother ended up going with her back to Hollywood.  

When she returned, she received a contract as a stock character in multiple studio productions.  She worked endlessly, but enjoyed every moment of it.

She and her brother bought a house, and fixed it up for her parents to come visit.  As soon as they booked the trip, she received a call that she had been let go.

That night she had a date who recommended her for a Radio showgirl calling.  She went in and interviewed.  She made up a story about working at a famous dept store in New York.  Despite the executive being there the whole time and calling her on the lie, he liked her and decided to hire her.

She credits moving her family to Hollywood as adding 10 years to her grandfather’s life and helping to ease her mother’s depression with sunshine and warmth.

Hollywood Cliché: Behind every successful actress, are a hairdresser and a mother.

Her first car was a Studebaker Phaeton.

“Only rarely can we repay those who helped us, but we can pass that help along to others.”

She reactivated Lela’s theater workshop in 1958

She jumped around doing different films in Hollywood before going back to New York to do a few shows.  After her final performance, Lela gifted her some flowers, and told her she was being released from the school as she had learned all she could.

“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."

One of the producers at RKO wanted to leave his wife and family to marry Lucy.  She turned him down, and it set back her career a bit.  But she remained determined, and ventured into Radio.

In 1939, she hired her first personal assistant after hearing her on a radio program called “Help Thy Neighbor.”  They clicked immediately and Harriet has been all over Europe and the US with Lucy for nearly 23 years [when she wrote this].

She was doing Wildcat on Broadway in the early 1960’s when she moved into an apartment on the Upper East Side.  At time, there was a rule, “No Negroes were allowed to ride the front elevator”.  She quickly changed that rule.

The Broadway show “Too Many Girls” was a runaway hit thanks to its 22-year old lead star, Desi Arnaz.  

She saw the play as her studio advised her that it might be her next big film.  She couldn’t take her eyes off Desi.

She went to the Conga Club where he would perform after shows, but it was his night off.

She got a role in “Dance, Girl, Dance”, along with Maureen O’Hara.  She had to do a striptease dance that Desi saw live.  That night they grabbed dinner and fell in love.

Desi Arnaz was both with the proverbial “silver spoon in his mouth.”  He lived a very nice life and embraced it well.  

Cuba had a massive revolution, and his family lost everything.  So his father took him to Miami and they rebuilt their lives.

“Babalu” was Desi’s signature song.

The “old star system” did not rely on talent, hard work, or acting experience, but rather personality.

Desi and Lucy named many things “Desilu” after their romance.

Lucy was a careful spender, while Desi was lavish and extravagant 

Lucy and Desi had loud, long fights in the early days of their marriage.

She had a compulsion for closet cleaning as she couldn’t bear to have anything in storage that can be given away.

They ran a vaudeville act in New York together until Lucy became pregnant.  This happened around the time of Pearl Harbor, and began a series of misfortunes.

The nation was broken over the attack at Pearl Harbor.

On the train ride back to Hollywood, they received the news of Carole Lombard’s death in a plane crash.  It was a month after Pearl Harbor.  It was one of her closest friends in Hollywood.

Carole’s husband, Clark Gable didn’t take it well.  He would drive his motorcycle recklessly, bring films over, and want to talk with them about Carole every hour.

In her third trimester, Lucy suffered a miscarriage.  She felt optimistic for “next time”

But after a few years, believed “next time” would never come.

She raised chickens and a cow during the war years.

Their place was known as “the farm for retired chickens.”

Desi’s generosity was legendary.

She was known as the peacemaker in her friend’s troubled marriages.  She had the ability to get down to the essential difference and analyze and set things in perspective.

She shot The Big Street with Henry Fonda.  It was a big hit for her, but still didn’t give her any more clout at RKO.

In August 1942, she signed on to MGM because RKO was on its last legs, and she wanted to try more musical-inspired pictures.

Desi Arnez was drafted into the army in February 1943.

Desi had hoped to be sent overseas as he was impassioned to support his adopted country.  Lucy was distraught as she felt, with his reckless and impulsive nature, she would never see him again.

Desi broke his kneecap playing baseball in Basic Training.

Lucy would use her riding from the ranch to the studio as her “thinking time”.

Desi’s nightlife became out of control in the summer of 1944.  He got belligerently drunk and said some intense things to his supervisor.  He also stopped coming home.  

Lucy decided to divorce Desi.

“Things said in embarrassment and anger are seldom the truth, but are said to hurt and wound the other person.  Once said, they can never be taken back.”

*She was very social and knowledgeable about different people in Hollywood and show business.  She seemed to have been able to read people quite well, and know how to treat them.

In late 1945, both of their movie careers seemed to be stalling.  Desi returned to music, and Lucy kept pushing along.  She was getting older, still childless, and her dream of working side-by-side with Desi seemed gone.

She always tried to go to Desi’s opening acts in support of him, but started getting word around places that people felt she was there to “keep an eye on him.”  When she would miss it, she would be criticized for putting her career before her husband.”

She struggled with her agent in the mid-1940’s.  She was loaned out to a studio for $6,000 a week, but her agent took $2,500 away from her.  She developed a stutter and kept messing up her lines.  She was accused of drinking.  Instead, it was the result of stress from fighting with Desi, agent woes, no children, struggling family members, the death of her grandfather (who was her father figure in life), and other things.

She quit MGM and found herself in a depression.

Olivia De Havilland had been in a similar situation with the same agent, and fought an 18-month court battle, which she won.  Because she courageously fought the systemic everyone benefitted.

Universal helped her get over her stuttering problem, and she bounced back.

She took a 6-month vacation in 1946.  Five of her movies were playing on Broadway at the same time.

1946 saw a growth of movies goers.  Some 90 million people went to see different shows.  It was her first experience being a New York celebrity.

She went on tour for “Dream Girl” in 1947 as her friends felt she was going stir-crazy with Desi hopping around the country with his band.

Desi used to always say, “Helping the fellow who’s in a tough spot is the best thing about America.”

In 1950, tired of people not having faith in them as a team, Desi and Lucy started their own corporation, Desilu Productions.

They traveled around the country doing their act.  One night in Chicago, they were robbed.  Lucy got sick expectedly, and later found out she was pregnant again.  They found out the news via radio because Hollywood producers kept tabs on their stars.  They raced home and began preparing for their new baby.  Sadly, she miscarried again in the 3rd trimester.

Lucy really wanted to do Greatest Show On Earth with Cecil B. DeMille.  The head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, was completely against it.  He set a trap for her.  He offered her an “E” movie (bottom of the barrel) hoping that she would turn it down and he could fire her and not have to pay.  Instead she took the film, earned $85,000 (in 1950 money) and was free of her contract.  She unfortunately got pregnant again, which meant she had to turn down DeMille’s film.  This led to him turning to Desi and saying “Congratulations Desi, you are the only person in the world to screw Harry Cohn, Columbia Pictures, Paramount, Cecil B. DeMille, and your wife, all at the same time.”

(On Desi’s change after she found out she was pregnant) “The more conservative he became, the happier I grew.”

In 1951, she was entering the 4th month of her pregnancy when she and Desi were given a television pilot together.  They had to give up their radio and band careers.  They dreams were being realized, but it was a tremendous gamble.  If TV failed, they risked being blacklisted in Hollywood.

Desi discovered that there was no studio big enough to house an audience.  She he rented out an unused studio, and built it to meet their needs.

I Love Lucy was shot on Thursday nights with a live audience.

The show worked because it allow Lucy to utilized everything she had learned in movies, radio, theater, and vaudeville.

CBS paid out $300,000 to launch the series.  And hope it just made enough back to cover the advance.

I Love Lucy debuted August 15, 1951.  It has never gone off the air since it premiered.

The first 4 shows were Top 10 in ratings.  The 20th show hit #1 and the series stayed there for 3 years

In May 1952, Lucy found out she was expecting her 2nd child.  They talked with studio executives and let them know the show would have to be cancelled.  The execs came back with the idea that Lucy could be pregnant on the show and they could introduce a child for her and Ricky.  The show continued on.

1952 was a banner year for Desi and Lucy.  In January their son was born.  The next day, war-hero General Eisenhower was sworn in as President of the US.  In February Desi scored a sponsorship deal with tobacco company Philip Morris for $8 Million, making them the highest paid stars on TV.  In June, Lucy went back to work.  In June they were named Husband and Wife of the Year, then show the Long Long Trailer.  

In 1953, she was flagged by the Un-American Activities Committee for being registered as a communist.  She had some friends who were subpoenaed to Washington, and the Screen Actor’s Guild asked her to support them.  Because of this, the committee’s records found that she registered as a Communist in 1936.  Her grandfather had a meeting where a friend was running for office, so he had her register as such to vote for him.  She did this to make him happy, not actually because she was a Communist.

She associated closely with the Republican Party and voted for Dwight Eisenhower despite remaining politically neutral most of her years.

The communist issue was further compounded by the blacklisting it carried.  Someone even remotely accused of siding with Communism could be permanently out of work in Hollywood.

After meeting with US officials, she was cleared of any wrongdoing.  

Walter Winchell had a famous radio program in the 1950’s and he announced Lucy had been confronted with membership in the Communist Party.  Suddenly reporters and media personalities around the country were all over their house and Desilu Studios, with newspaper headlines reading things like “Lucille Ball Named Red”.

Lucy was nervous all day long, and her sponsor called her and asked her if she was a communist.  When she said “No”, he declared that her answer was sufficient enough for him, and that she could postpone the show that night and give an open account for the 30 minute block.  Instead, California representative Donald Jackson gave a press conference giving the official findings of the committee.  Later that night, the show still went on, but Desi gave a speech during introductions explaining the truth, and that her transcript would be available to the press the next day.  

After reading the testimony, the press apologized.

“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.”

*Personal Opinion: Modern day news would never apologize.  Too unforgiving, hence “cancel culture”.  Guilty, before you are proven innocent, because the masses say so.

If Philip Morris (the sponsor) had canceled their contract, it would have been the end of Desilu.

After securing the number 1 spot on TV, they took a vacation in New York where they made a personal appearance at Radio City Music Hall, where they introduced their new film and thanked people for their support.

They went to go see “Kind Sir”.  When they arrived, the audience was standing and clapping.  They assumed Mrs. Roosevelt was in attendance, however they soon realized the standing ovation was actually for them, and the theater even held the curtain until the applause was over.  This was because every time they went to sit down, the applause grew louder.  This was one of the greatest shockers of her life.

“You have to learn to live with recognition and fame, and more important, you have to realize why you’re famous.”

“The Long Long Trailer” was a huge hit.  It was the biggest Sunday and Washington’s birthday box office earnings at the time for Radio City Music Hall.

“For there's a lot of masochism in the acting profession. We're willing to take a lot of punishment, but the minute we hit a little bit of success we are liable to run from it. We're frightened of it and develop all kinds of phobias as a conse-quence. Outsiders who don't understand think we have a chip on our shoulder, but it's not that at all. We're so used to fail-ure, to being hurt and rebuffed, that we can easily come unhinged by success.”

She was introduced to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale at his Marble Collegiate Church.  She was very moved by his speaking, and they became lifelong friends since that meeting.

“Dr. Peale helped me realize that our professional achievements are secondary; the important thing in life is our relationship with other human beings. It's not what we set out to get, but how we go about the daily task of living.”

Desi’s business acumen amazed all of Hollywood including Lucy herself.

At Desilu [Studios], [Desi] was the kindest, most considerate boss who ever lived.

He felt creative people should be given enormous leeway, and shouldn’t have to account for every minute of their time.  If they seldom showed up before 2pm, it was alright, so long as they got his scripts done.

They purchased a new house in Beverly Hills, and set about fixing it up.  When they finally moved in, the water pipes had burst destroying all they had worked so hard on.  Desi, who was working 18-hour days, for weeks at a time, went on a rage, flipped out, kicked the walls, tore them down barehanded, and was inconsolable.

They originally planned to retire from the show after their 5-year contracts had expired.  But they soon realized how much the loved building their new company. They started with 7 employees, and it had grown to over 1,000.  The company had a sense of family, and in those 5 years, nobody had ever left the company.

One day in November 1957, Desi was late for work, only to find out he was buying RKO studios for just over $6.1 Million.

They inherited 33 more soundstages in addition to what they already had.  This was 11 more than 20th-Century Fox, and 4 more than MGM.

1958 was one of the greatest years for Desilu Studio.  Unfortunately, it was the last straw for Desi and Lucy’s marriage.  They escaped to Europe for a getaway, but returned not speaking to one another.

(On her failing relationship in 1958) “I was at fault too. I had lost my good humor and sense of proportion. When you're too mad and too rattled to see straight, you're bound to make mistakes. You can't go on and on for vears being miserable about a situation and not have it change you. You get so you can't stand yourself.”

She divorced Desi.  This brought her closer to co-star Vivian Vance who was also going through a divorce.

Her original plan was to sell all of her Hollywood property and move to Switzerland l, far away from Hollywood and Desi.

She suffered a concussion on the set of “The Facts of Life.”

While working on “Wildcat” for Broadway, she developed a red spot on her leg.  Turns out the wound had healed over and developed an infection.  

She was massively successful in “Wildcat”, even performing through 2 broken fingers, 3 sprained ankles, and a pulled tendon.

“Wildcats” stayed in Philadelphia for 2 months with packed houses.  When it opened in New York, plane-loads of friends arrived for the premiere.

She worked herself to death until doctors order her to close the show.

She remarried to Gary Morton in November 1961.

In 1957, RKO had become Desilu Studios.  In 1962, she bought Desi’s controlling interest in the company, thus becoming the first woman President of a major television studio.

On to Book #22: “Arnold”, By Wendy Leigh