There have been many other slapstick performers since the Little Tramp capered on the silent screen. Why should Lucille Ball be esteemed so highly? In large measure the praise is due to her talent and grit. She was not only funnier than anyone else on TV; she was also more beautiful—a matchless combination. But there is another component in the mix.
Prior to the introduction of TV Land, I Love Lucy’s current cable venue, a Viacom executive complained: “The only problem with I Love Lucy is that it’s not in color. That’s why you never see Lucy reruns in early fringe or prime time. The stations believe that people buy color sets, so therefore they want to see color programs. So what happens is Lucy is relegated to the morning time periods when full viewership levels are not available.” Ironically, those were the very conditions that solidified Lucy’s reputation. The comedians to whom Lucy has been compared, those who achieved iconic status worldwide—Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers—all capered before the Technicolor era. Even Bob Hope, who was still filming into the 1980s, is best remembered for his pre-color work in such films as My Favorite Brunette and the Road pictures. The clowns who came to prominence after 1960, when color became the norm rather than the exception, have by and large been supernovas, glowing brilliantly—and then vanishing in the void. There is something incompatible about humor and color; the palette calls attention to itself, instead of to the jokes. Lucy’s contemporary Danny Kaye, for instance, was MGM’s biggest comic star, clowning in vivid red, yellow, and blue. His range was wide, his abilities unquestioned. Yet his films are virtually unknown to the generations that followed him, and his television specials are rarely glimpsed. The episodes of I Love Lucy, from “Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her” through “The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue,” have never stopped rerunning.
Lucille Ball was a festival of contradictions: a woman who yearned for her own family—and didn’t know how to relate to her children; a demanding wife who allowed herself to be humiliated by a philanderer; a cold-eyed, exacting businesswoman who made others cry—and then retreated into tears when her authority was questioned. In the end, all the negatives will be forgotten or forgiven, as they usually are with performers—particularly funny ones, whose lives tend to be counterweights to the laughter they engender. Whatever Lucy’s private faults, her public accomplishments over a comparatively brief period are enough to guarantee her a lofty place in the history of popular entertainment. In W. H. Auden’s indulgent words about another poet, “You were silly, like us: / your gift survived it all.”
Lucy would have been the first to admit that she was silly; that she made profound and painful mistakes; that nothing else she did on radio, TV, film, or theater ever equaled I Love Lucy and its follow-up, The Lucy Show; that she simply fell into fortune—the right producer, the right writers, the right husband, the right decade, the right medium. In the end, though, that very improvisatory quality is what will make her endure as long as there are audiences to laugh at pranks and pratfalls.
Everyone has spoken of Lucy’s gift of timing. Yet it was her lateness—or, to be more accurate, Desi Arnaz’s—that conferred immortality. While others were disporting in a variety of rich hues and tints, she remained in stark, contrasting shades no different from those of the great silent-film comedians. So many other comedians, male and female, have come after her, enjoyed the tinted spotlight, and then slipped into obscurity. Lucy stays eternally comic because of the vital, frenzied, irreproducible years when the Ball of Fire got it all down in black and white.
Permissions Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made
to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material.
Atlantic Music Corporation: Excerpts from the song lyric “I’m A Fool” by Joey Cooper & Red West. Copyright © 1964 © renewed 1992 by Atlantic Music Corp. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Atlantic Music Corporation.
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.: Excerpts from “A Summer Spent Watching Lucille Ball Perform” by Louis Phillips from The Journal of Popular Culture (Fall 1993). Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Dutton Signet: Excerpts from Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball. Copyright © 1996 by Desilu, Too L.L.C. Reprinted by permission of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from the song lyric “I Love Lucy,” lyric by Harold Adamson, music by Eliot Daniel. Copyright © 1953 (Renewed) by Desilu Music Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permssion of Hal Leonard Corporation.
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.: Excerpts from Desilu by Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert. Copyright © 1993 by Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Hyperion Books For Children: Excerpts from Lucille by Kathleen Brady. Copyright © 1994 by Kathleen Brady. Reprinted by permission of Hyperion Books For Children.
International Creative Management, Inc.: Excerpts from Lucy in the Afternoon by Jim Brochu. Copyright © 1990 by Jim Brochu. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.
Los Angeles Times: Excerpts from “Everybody Loved Lucy: Lucille Ball Made It All Look Spontaneous” by Charles Champlin (Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1989). Copyright © 1989 by Los Angeles Times. Excerpts from “Everybody Loved Lucy: She Set the Standard for Situation Comedy” by Howard Rosenberg (Los AngelesTimes, April 27, 1989). Copyright © 1989 by Los Angeles Times. Reprinted by permission of the Los Angeles Times.
The New York Times: Excerpts from “The Good, the Bad, the Lucy . . .” by Joyce Millman (The New York Times, October 14, 2001). Copyright © 2001 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission of The New York Times.
Oxford University Press, Inc.: Excerpts from Holding My Own in No Man’s Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminists by Molly Haskell. Copyright © 1997 by Molly Haskell. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
Peer International Corporation: Excerpt from the song lyric “Babalu” by S. K. Russell. Copyright © 1941 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright renewed. Copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Peer International Corporation.
St. Martin’s Press, LLC: Excerpts from Lucy: The Real Life of Lucille Ball by Charles Higham. Copyright © 1986 by Charles Higham. Excerpts from The Lucy Book: A Career in TV by Geoffrey Mark Fidelman. Copyright © 1999 by Geoffrey Mark Fidelman. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.
Southern Illinois University Press: Excerpts from the poem “Star-Spangled Banner” from The Star-Spangled Banner by Denise Duhamel. Copyright © 1999 by Denise Duhamel. Reprinted by permission of Southern Illinois University Press.
Syracuse University Press: Excerpts from Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time by Jess Oppenheimer with Gregg Oppenheimer. Copyright © 1996 by Gregg Oppenheimer. Reprinted by permission of Syracuse University Press.
Television Week: Excerpts from articles by Jane Smiley, Susan Stamberg, Dan Wakefield, John Waters from the special commemorative I Love Lucy issue of Electronic Media: now called Television Week (October 1, 2001). Reprinted by permission of Television Week.
Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.: Excerpts from the song lyric “Cuban Pete” by Norman Henderson. Copyright © 1936 (Renewed) J. Norris Music Publishing Co., Ltd. (c/o Sony/ATV Songs). All rights for the U.S., Canada, the Philippines, and the Open Market controlled by WB Music Corp. Excerpts from the song lyric “Disgustingly Rich” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Copyright © 1954 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. Excerpts from the song lyric “I Wish I Were In Love Again” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Copyright © 1937 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. Rights for extended renewal term in U.S. controlled by The Estate of Lorenz Hart (administered by WB Music Corp.) and The Family Trust U/W Richard Rodgers and The Family Trust U/W Dorothy F. Rodgers (administered by Williamson Music). Excerpts from the song lyric �
��Sally Sweet” by Norman Henderson. Copyright © 1936 (Renewed) J. Norris Music Publishing Co., Ltd. (c/o Sony/ATV Songs). All rights for the U.S., Canada, the Philippines, and the Open Market controlled by WB Music Corp. Excerpts from the song lyric “She Could Shake the Maracas” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Copyright © 1939 (Renewed) Chappell & Co. Rights for extended renewal term in U.S. controlled by The Estate of Lorenz Hart (administered by WB Music Corp.) and The Family Trust U/W Richard Rodgers and The Family Trust U/W Dorothy F. Rodgers (administered by Williamson Music). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.
Washington Post Writers Group: Excerpts from an article by Tom Shales (The Washington Post, November 6, 1985). Copyright © 1985 by The Washington Post. Reprinted by permission of the Washington Post Writers Group.
Bibliography
The researcher for Ball of Fire, as well as for two of my other books, was John Bennett at Sterling Library, Yale University. In examining a life begun nearly a century ago, and a career that ended more than two decades ago, I found it necessary to ransack hundreds of long-forgotten personal papers, as well as thousands of periodicals, memoirs, books, and that newest form of communication, Web sites. These concerned not only the obvious subject of bygone show business personalities, but the more complex categories of politics and finance. Mr. Bennett’s work was a model of nuance and scruple, with special attention paid to obscure records ranging geographically from upstate New York to Hollywood, Broadway, Europe, and the Caribbean. The writing of this book would not have been possible without his unflagging diligence, and persistence.
For additional research I am also indebted to Danielle Moon, Archivist, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; Jean Geist, Librarian, Popular Culture Library, Bowling Green University; Lyn Olsson, Acting Special Collections Librarian, Malcolm A. Love Library, San Diego State University; Brad Bauer, Archivist, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum; Nathaniel Parks, Senior Archival Assistant, Special Collections, Boston University; Sally McManus, Palm Springs Historical Society; Nancy Robinson, Librarian/Local History Indexer, Palm Springs Public Library.
Individuals who provided enormous aid include Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, Daniel Melnick, Regina Kessler, the late Chuck Jones, Josh Greenfeld, Howard Weishaus, Stephen Becker, Kevin and Andrew Ettinger, Robert Rittner, Robert Tucker, Will Shortz, Robert Mankoff, Steven Zeitlin, Dr. Robert Spitzer, Richard Schickel, and others who prefer to remain anonymous.
Although all the works cited below bear on Lucille Ball’s biography, several are particularly significant, for historians, scholars, and unabashed Lucy fans.
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF LUCY AND DESI
Arnaz, Desi. A Book. New York: Morrow, 1976. Desi’s disarmingly candid appraisal of his private and professional life happily stresses his own virtues but never shies away from his liabilities, including his alcoholism and unbridled temper that eventually broke up a storybook marriage. Filled with engaging show business anecdota.
Ball, Lucille, with Betty Hannah Hoffman. Love, Lucy. New York: Putnam, 1996. A posthumously published, less-than-frank exercise in nostalgia. The tone is clearly that of a woman who would rather not bear any grudges—in print—but who is withholding a lot from the reader. Nonetheless, a valuable item because Lucy wrote so little about herself.
KEY BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS
Brady, Kathleen. Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball. New York: Hyperion, 1994. The most recent of the biographies, this thoroughly researched, important work uncovers new material about Ball’s early years in Jamestown, N.Y., and closely follows various stages of her career, from modeling in Manhattan to acting in minor and major Hollywood films, to the rise of I Love Lucy and Desilu, to the slow decline of marriage, family, vocation, and, finally, health.
Brochu, Jim. Lucy in the Afternoon: An Intimate Biography of Lucille Ball. New York: Morrow, 1990. A graceful, melancholy memoir of Ball in her final years, by a close friend who noted her recollections of triumphs, sorrows, and regrets, and saw her through the last illness.
Gregory, James. The Lucille Ball Story. New York: New American Library, 1974. An early and rather uncritical appraisal of the star after the breakup of her marriage, but well before her decline.
Harris, Eleanor. The Real Story of Lucille Ball. New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954. The first biography of the star, shortly after I Love Lucy had risen from sitcom to phenomenon. A valuable indicator of television’s power to amuse—and then to influence—its new audience.
Higham, Charles. Lucy: The Life of Lucille Ball. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. A short, intelligent biography of the actress–studio head, published three years before her death, by a veteran Hollywood biographer and journalist.
Morella, Joe, and Edward Z. Epstein. Lucy: The Bittersweet Life of Lucille Ball. Secaucus, N.J.: L. Stuart, 1973. An early account of, as the authors put it, “a super-talented woman with a super-fascinating life.”
Oppenheimer, Jess. Laughs, Luck—and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Despite its subtitle, a disarming and bemused account of I Love Lucy from drawing-table idea to international phenomenon, by its inventor and first producer. The late author recalls his employers with affection, but does not shy away from less-than-flattering glimpses of the couple under pressure.
Sanders, Coyne Steven, and Tom Gilbert. Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. New York: Morrow, 1993. A close, sophisticated look at Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, separately and together, with great emphasis on the formation and daily operation of the Desilu studios. With many interviews and photographs.
Tannen, Lee. I Loved Lucy: My Friendship with Lucille Ball. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Another fan checks in, with his own chronicle of Lucille Ball in old age. Manifestly, she grew dependent on her young admirer, and it is to his credit that he not only treated her well, but saw to it that her meditations on life, love, and work were recorded in print.
OTHER BOOKS
Abbott, George. Mister Abbott. New York: Random House, 1963.
Ace, Goodman. The Book of Little Knowledge: More Than You Want to Know About Television. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955.
Adir, Karin. The Great Clowns of American Television. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988.
Altschuler, Glenn C., and David I. Grossvogel. Changing Channels: America in TV Guide. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Anderson, Christopher. Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
Andrews, Bart, and Thomas J. Watson. Loving Lucy: An Illustrated Tribute to Lucille Ball. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.
Arden, Eve. Three Phases of Eve: An Autobiography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. Affairs to Remember: The Hollywood Comedy of the Sexes. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Bacon, James. Hollywood Is a Four Letter Town. Chicago: Regnery, 1976.
———. Made in Hollywood. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1977.
Balio, Tino, ed. Hollywood in the Age of Television. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990.
Barlett, Donald L. Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes. New York: Norton, 1979.
Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Beauchamp, Cari. Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. New York: Scribner, 1997.
Beeman, Marsha Lynn. Joan Fontaine: A Bio-bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1989.
Berle, Milton, with Haskel Frankel. Milton Berle, An Autobiography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1974.
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sp; Bernardi, Daniel, ed. Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Billips, Connie J. Lux Presents Hollywood: A Show-by-Show History of the Lux Radio Theatre and the Lux Video Theatre, 1934–1957. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1995.
Billman, Larry. Betty Grable: A Bio-bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.
Blesh, Rudi. Keaton. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
Blumenthal, Ralph. The Stork Club: America’s Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Cafe Society. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.
Boddy, William. Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Boller, Paul F., and Ronald L. Davis. Hollywood Anecdotes. New York: Morrow, 1987.
Boswell, Thomas D., and James R. Curtis. The Cuban-American Experience: Culture, Images, and Perspectives. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984.
Bragg, Melvyn. Richard Burton: A Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.
Breslin, Jimmy. Damon Runyon. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1991.
Brochu, Jim. Lucy in the Afternoon: An Intimate Memoir of Lucille Ball. New York: Morrow, 1990.
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