Ball of Fire

by Stefan Kanfer

  The worst of those hardships ended in 1919, when Desirée returned with her second husband to reclaim the children. Lucille’s ordeal had lasted little more than a year; even so, it was to transfigure the rest of her life. (For children it is not the length of the pain and discomfiture that matters, but the intensity. A century before, the respectable clerk John Dickens was sent to debtors’ prison and his young son forced to work long hours in a blacking factory. Charles’s stay was only a few months, but one way or another the humiliating experience was to echo in every novel.) Lucille took to calling Grandpa Fred Hunt “Daddy,” just as her mother did, trying always to keep him within sight, cheering his every idea. Her favorite was the one about moving the entire family under one roof. In Grandpa Fred’s opinion, that roof had to be over a much larger dwelling, and to everyone’s surprise he made good on his notion early in 1920. On February 1, he sold the old house and bought a two-story dwelling on Eighth Street in Celoron, moving everyone closer to the enchanted amusement park. The assets of the new house included lilac bushes and a coop full of chickens in the backyard. Inside were plenty of mirrors, large bedrooms, and the luxury of two toilets, one in a half-bathroom downstairs, one in the full bathroom upstairs.

  Lucille was to remember the Celoron household as a version of the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart play You Can’t Take It With You. That comedy concerned a family as freewheeling and odd as her own—except that hers had no curtain that could descend when things got out of hand. In addition to the elder Hunts, there were Ed and Desirée Peterson (she was now called DeDe, a nickname Lucille and Freddy used in addressing her), plus Aunt Lola Mandicos, who had just separated from her husband, and Lola’s three-year-old daughter, Cleo. To stay afloat Grandpa Fred ran a lathe in a furniture factory, Ed labored in whatever local plant would have him, Desirée took a job selling hats at an upscale dress shop in Jamestown, and Lola ran her beauty parlor in the house. The children were given specific assignments: Cleo dusted, Freddy made beds, and Lucille led the other two in the dishwashing and table-setting chores. That left Grandma Flora, whose strange mood swings bewildered the children. Where once she had been smiling and indulgent, she was now edgy and critical. A piano sat in the parlor, and Desirée, convinced that Lucille possessed musical talent, had hired a piano teacher. In the beginning, Flora loved to hear her granddaughter practice the scales and attempt new pieces. Now, mysteriously, the sounds seemed to grate on her nerves. Lucille was finally told the truth: Flora was very ill. She had been diagnosed with uterine cancer. The girl watched her grandmother grow weaker and smaller until, toward the end, the patient was confined to a big mahogany bed placed in the front parlor. When Flora died, the adults thought it better to keep the children away from what would be another traumatic funeral. Lucille disobeyed the order to stay at home. Taking Cleo and Fred by the hand, she led them down the streets of the little town until she spotted a procession to the graveyard. The three children followed at a distance, their silence broken only by the older girl’s sobs.

  Grandma Flora’s death signaled the end of supervision. No adult remained in the house during the day, and at the age of eleven Lucille found herself in charge. School took up the weekday mornings and early afternoons. After that, freedom reigned until about 6 p.m., when the clang of a streetcar bell indicated the approach of Desirée. This was the moment for Freddy to set the table while Lucille and Cleo frantically made all the beds. DeDe was undeceived by this last-minute activity: a thousand dust motes danced in the air. Upon seeing them she generally made a wry remark or two, and these let the children know that they had not fooled her—but that they would not be punished for the tardy cleanup.

  Between the end of the school day and DeDe’s arrival, the children liked to fill the hours by playacting, with Lucille as the leader. Their dramas and comedies started out as miniature versions of the two-reelers she had seen at Celoron Park. Later they reflected the influence of monologists who had enchanted her at a local theater.

  As much as she found Ed Peterson unlikable and remote, Lucille conceded that it was he who introduced her to Chautauqua. This was an institution that began in 1874 in upstate New York as a summer retreat for Sunday-school teachers, then grew into a series of year-round venues for lecturers, musicians, and actors. Lucille liked to reminisce about the winter evening “a monologist named Julian Eltinge was appearing. A female impersonator, yet. Ed insisted I go.” Eltinge used to get into fistfights—most of them staged—to scotch any rumor of effeminacy, and though he used rouge, lipstick, and yards of female costumery, he kept his material resolutely clean and simple. Lucille watched as a solitary figure amused audiences with nothing more than a bare lightbulb, a table, a glass of water, and his extraordinary skills at mimicry. She was equally impressed by another soloist, Julius Tannen, who went on to major character roles in Preston Sturges films. Tannen affected the air of a peering, self-involved businessman complete with pince-nez and a pompous manner. A vaudeville historian remembered his “fine command of English” and the way he liked “to switch in the middle of his monologue to ‘dese, dose and dems’—maybe just show he was the same kind of a guy that was sitting up in the gallery.” No one could squelch hecklers with a lighter touch. Razzed by one, he replied simply: “Save your breath, you may want it to clean your glasses later.” Tannen favored word pictures; he said that using a paper cup reminded him of drinking out of a letter, and he excused himself for being late by saying he had squeezed out too much toothpaste and couldn’t get it all back in the tube. To Lucille he was pure enchantment: “Just this voice, and this magnificent man enthralling you with his stories, his intonations, which I never, never forgot. He changed my life. I knew it was a very serious, wonderful thing to be able to make people laugh and/or cry, to be able to play on their emotions.”

  Ed Peterson did more than take Lucille to events on the Chautauqua circuit. He was a Shriner, and when his organization needed female entertainers for the chorus line of their next show, he encouraged his twelve-year-old stepdaughter to audition. Her enthusiasm outran her ungainliness; they awarded her the part. Onstage she understood what Tannen and Eltinge felt: the energy of performance and the assurance of applause. This could be more than a kick, Lucille decided. This could be a vocation.

  Empowered by her little triumph, Lucille tried out for a musical produced by the Jamestown Masonic club; she won a role in that as well. During rehearsals, a partner threw her across the stage so vigorously that she dislocated a shoulder. Rather than discourage her, the accident only provided a goad. Next time out she appeared in a straight play, and a local critic compared her to Jeanne Eagles. The family assured Lucille that the notice was flattering; she had never heard of the silent-film star. The following year, with DeDe’s approval, she took a bus to New York and went to an open call for the chorus line of an upcoming Shubert musical, Stepping Stones. Her bright blue eyes and long legs attracted the attention of the choreographer, and Lucille thought that if this was all it took to crack Broadway, conquering show business was going to be a snap. Before rehearsals began it was discovered that the dancer was thirteen years old. She was unceremoniously sent back to Celoron. More than three decades would pass before Lucille Ball took a bow on Broadway. Nevertheless, the appetite for recognition had been awakened. It would take few naps from now on.

  The mixture of Hunts and Petersons was a lot merrier from the outside than within. The effects of Prohibition had reached upstate New York. With the closing of the public bars, many of the hotels around Lake Chautauqua lost their clientele and shut their doors for the last time. Tourism began to dry up on the shorefront and in the towns. Along with many of his neighbors, Ed hung around the local speakeasy, and he returned drunk on too many evenings. DeDe kept her voice down when she bawled him out; Ed was not so discreet, and Lucille overheard their arguments. She was distressed but not surprised to see her mother come home early on certain afternoons, laid low by the pains of a migraine headache. DeDe would draw the shades and remain b
edridden, unable to move or talk until the pain had lifted. Fred Hunt no longer seemed his cheerful and anecdotal self; since the death of Flora he had spent hours at the Crescent Tool Company griping about conditions and urging workers to demand a bigger piece of the pie. DeDe heard about the agitation and disapproved. Stirring up trouble might well be a firing offense, and the loss of his salary would mean a backslide to penury.

  Lucille watched all this and said nothing. But she began to spend more time away from the house, performing stunts and taking dares from her new friends in high school, roller-skating across the freshly varnished school gymnasium floor, sitting on the front radiator of a classmate’s jalopy as it roared through the streets of Celoron, playing hooky whenever she was in a vagabond mood. She was a difficult student, bright but distracted. She fought with other girls—and sometimes with boys—and once got so angry with a teacher she threw a typewriter at her.

  But Lucille had absorbed too much moral training to go completely wild. She yearned for some direction in her life, and when it was not forthcoming at home or school, she imposed it on herself. One of her cronies, Pauline Lopus, was to remain in Jamestown for most of her life. More in awe than envy, she liked to look back to the days of 1925 when Lucille called her Sassafrassa for some reason, when her new friend seemed to be “the first girl in town who dared to talk aloud about her dreams—about one day being able to have nice cars, nice clothes, a nice home; about one day doing something and being somebody special.”

  Along with Pauline and another pal, Violet Robbins, Lucille founded a musical group called the Gloom Chasers Union. Pauline conducted, Violet played the piano, and Lucille provided the rhythm on a set of borrowed drums. It was not a success. Egged on by their leader, the girls then recruited two more members and founded an acting company. Their most memorable production was a version of Charley’s Aunt, adapted and directed by Lucille. She not only gave the story another spin by starring as a man who impersonates a woman, she dragged furniture from her house to use as scenery, sold the homemade tickets for twenty-five cents apiece, put makeup on the cast, and persuaded the school principal, Mr. Drake, to let them have the gym for the evening. The prompter was DeDe, who got so caught up in the plot and gags that she kept laughing, applauding, and losing her place in the script.

  Although tourism was off that summer, Celoron Park still needed extra help to get through July and August. Lucille talked her way into a job as short-order cook. “Look out! Look out!” went her spiel. “Don’t step there!” When the startled passerby stopped, one foot in the air as he stared worriedly at the ground, Lucille closed the sale: “Step over here and get yourself a delicious hamburger!” Off-hours were spent experimenting with makeup and fashion. Passing a shop window one day, she stopped to admire a leather hat in black and white. Over dinner she bargained with DeDe: the hat for hours and hours of extra work around the house. Her mother refused at first, then gave in to the entreaties. The delighted teenager wore the hat everywhere, including the kitchen as she washed and dried the dishes.

  DeDe’s response was not so lenient after Lucille attended her first dance at the Celoron Pier Ballroom. For the occasion DeDe made a taffeta dress and trimmed the hem with real fur, prompting envious sighs when Lucille’s classmates first clapped eyes on it. At the end of the dance, a drably dressed classmate went out of her way to admire the outfit. The next day Lucille presented it to her. DeDe remonstrated when she learned about the gift. Her daughter’s explanation—the donee came from a poor family and had never owned a decent dress before—left her unmoved. Weeks went by before DeDe forgave Lucille.

  The teenage Lucille was aware that women dressed to please the opposite sex, but she knew next to nothing about that sex. Because of her daughter’s innocence, DeDe allowed her only a few tentative experiments with lipstick and makeup. The colors widened Lucille’s mouth and accentuated her bright blue eyes so effectively that some laws had to be laid down. Lucille was strictly forbidden, for example, ever to go canoeing with any young male except her brother. Predictably, she could hardly wait to paddle around the shallows with a local boy. When he tried some amateurish overtures, however, she managed to tip the canoe, tossing them both overboard. “I got wet,” she recorded proudly, “but I was still virtuous!”

  That state was not to last much longer. In time she bobbed her brown hair and shortened her skirts, thereby advertising an interest not only in fashion but in young men. Lucille was tall, willowy, physically mature, and emotionally undeveloped. “Maybe I was still searching for a father,” she was to speculate. There was no maybe about it. When the DeVita sisters introduced Lucille to their big brother Johnny at Celoron Park, she was instantly beguiled. A bit shorter than her five foot seven, much heavier than her weight of just under one hundred pounds, Johnny wore an unflattering moustache, and his hairline was already beginning to recede. But he had acquired a reputation as a local hood, someone who gambled, trafficked booze, and carried a gun. As if these enticements were not enough, he owned his own car and had a closetful of expensively tailored suits. Best of all, he was an adult. Johnny DeVita’s driver’s license offered proof: he had recently passed his twenty-first birthday. Lucille was fourteen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “This girl’s fulla hell”

  JOHNNY’S SWAGGER did not derive from movies or pulp fiction. He was the son of Louis DeVita, a nouveau riche who sold insurance and produce to Italian immigrants. On the side, it was rumored, he was involved with prohibited booze and illegal gambling. As Louis’s chauffeur and heir apparent Johnny had the use of several automobiles, not to mention a steady income and a status enjoyed by few men his age. He and his new romance became the object of lurid high school gossip, a situation that Lucille found immensely pleasing: once again she was on center stage. The adult response was not so pleasurable, particularly when it issued from DeDe. Lucille protested that her boyfriend was from an honest and caring family; she reminded her mother of all the times Louis had given her dishes of pasta and bags of vegetables to bring home. As for Johnny himself, she went on, her young man was not an irresponsible playboy; he was going to medical school in a year or two. DeDe bought none of this but did nothing, on the assumption that the affair would burn itself out in a few weeks. When the weeks turned into months she took Johnny aside and asked him to stay away from her daughter. He refused to do it. They were in love. What right had she to interfere?

  After a year of soul-searching, and some painful ransacking of her bank account, DeDe saw a way out. Lucille liked to talk about the vaudeville acts Johnny took her to see at the local houses, Shea’s and the Palace. When she spoke of those evenings her voice thrummed and her eyes took on a glitter that Johnny himself could not evoke. Clearly she yearned to be in a real spotlight. And who could tell? With Lucille’s background in amateur theatrics, perhaps she had a chance to be a chorine or a soubrette. Everyone said she had talent—even Mr. Drake had proclaimed as much, on the night of Charley’s Aunt. Still, the fifteen-year-old needed professional instruction, and such lessons were not available in upstate New York. For those, Lucille would have to go to Manhattan, geographically six hundred miles and emotionally light-years away from the small-town life in Chautauqua County.

  At the time, the Robert Minton–John Murray Anderson School of Drama on East Fifty-eighth Street in Manhattan was the most prominent institution of its kind, and one of the most demanding, financially as well as psychologically; in 1926 the tuition was $180 per five-month term for a playwriting course, $270 for scenic and costume design, $350 for drama lessons, $390 for musical comedy, and $500 for motion picture acting, a fee that included a screen test. The faculty and advisers included such luminaries as choreographer Martha Graham, composer Jerome Kern, actor Otis Skinner, writers Christopher Morley and Don Marquis—as well as the founders themselves. Anderson was a longtime producer of the hugely successful Greenwich Village Follies, and Minton had directed a number of breakthrough symbolic pieces, including the afterlife drama Outwa
rd Bound and the Russian allegory He Who Gets Slapped.

  DeDe cobbled together enough money for the first semester and persuaded some friends in Manhattan to board her daughter. This seemed too rare an opportunity to pass up. Lucille was to characterize herself at that time as “struck by the lightning of show business”—a flash that Johnny could not hope to outshine. He was philosophical about it; he drove his young inamorata to the station in Buffalo and saw her off on the train to New York. She carried a small valise full of clothing deemed proper for the city, $50 sewn into her underwear, and a passage she had copied from a Julius Tannen routine. The monologist had inspired her in upstate New York, and now he brought her luck in Manhattan. The other girls auditioned with stilted deliveries of Shakespearean verse. With her vaudeville turn, the fifteen-year-old from Jamestown gave the impression of originality and freshness. Alas, from that moment everything went downhill.

  “Ridicule,” Lucille was to recall acrimoniously, “seemed to be part of the curriculum.” In an elocution class, Minton mocked his student for what he called her “midwestern” pronunciations of “wawter” and “hawrses.” She retreated into silence. Lucille hoped for a better time in dancing class, where she could let her legs do the talking. The pupil was promptly informed that she had “two left feet.” In another period the school might have carried her for a second term, until she acquired some polish and timing. But it was Lucille’s misfortune to be there at the same moment another young actress was making her mark. Bette Davis arrived as a powerhouse with more gifts than the rest of the pupils combined. Anderson questioned Lucille’s instructors, received negative reports from all of them, and sent a letter to DeDe informing her that she was only wasting her money. Little comfort came from the knowledge that her daughter was not alone: of an entering class of seventy, only twelve survived the first term. Lucille never forgave her teachers. “All I learned in drama school,” she claimed later, “was how to be frightened.”