Love, Lucy Page 12

  A few months after Desi and I were married, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable gave us a big, beautiful champagne party at Chasen’s in Hollywood. We especially appreciated the gesture since most of our friends were muttering darkly that our marriage wouldn’t last six months. Carole often invited us to spend the day at their ranch, which was not far from ours in the San Fernando Valley. Carole and Clark did everything together—they hunted and fished, rode horses and cooked barbecues, and their delight in just being together made a deep and lasting impression on me. This was a marriage. There was only one shadow on their happiness, that I could see. With all her heart, Carole longed to be a mother. She would have made a great one.

  More than anything else, Desi and I wanted to costar in a movie together, but we just couldn’t persuade the studio bosses that we were an average American couple. I must admit that many of our rows and reunion scenes were public enough; this may have influenced their opinion of us as a team. Desi kept remembering how enthusiastically the Roxy Theater audience responded when we took a bow together after our elopement. “Let’s do a vaudeville act together,” he suggested. “If we go over big in Chicago and New York, maybe they’ll listen to us in Hollywood.”

  We opened at the Roxy, playing four or five shows a day, and moved to Brooklyn and Loew’s State in Newark. I was glad to exchange the trappings of a glamour queen for baggy pants and a battered derby hat. Desi sang and played the bongo drums; it was a wild, funny act. Soon we had an offer from the Palladium in London. Twice this has happened to us and both times we turned down the offer for the best of reasons: I was pregnant.

  We canceled the rest of our bookings and hurried home, mentally planning the nursery addition to our little six-room valley home. On the train ride back to Hollywood, in January 1942, we heard the news of Carole Lombard’s death in a plane crash. This tragedy, following so closely upon the heels of Pearl Harbor, was a sickening shock.

  Spencer Tracy flew to Nevada to be with The King. He always referred to Clark in this way, half jokingly but in great affection and admiration, too. When Spencer returned, friends asked how Clark was bearing up and if he was drinking much to ease the pain. I’ll never forget Spencer’s answer: “No drinking. Not for The King the easy way out.”

  During the next few months, we saw Clark tearing around the valley on a motorcycle at top speed. I used to suspect that he was subconsciously trying to kill himself. Clark would come to a screeching stop at our doorstep and come in to talk about Carole by the hour. Sometimes he would bring one of her films over in the evening and we would watch her for a couple of hours. I could never tell whether Clark was deliberately torturing himself, or whether the sight and sound of Carole, so vital and lovely, helped erase at least momentarily the pain of losing her.

  During this difficult time for all of us, with the country at war and Carole’s tragic death, I lost my baby in the third month of pregnancy. I was sick with disappointment, but confident that things would work out the next time; only, as the months and then years passed, there was no next time.

  Desi thought it might divert me and help the war effort to get a few farm animals on the place. He should have known better.

  When Desi brought home three hundred baby chicks, I kept them warm in the den at night. When the calf took sick, I moved into the bathhouse with her, covering her with blankets and hot-water bottles. This young spring heifer eventually grew into a large, passionate cow. She used to bawl her head off every time she caught sight of Desi, but the end came when she crashed through our bedroom window to kiss him in bed. We spent close to $1,000 boarding her out one year, since I couldn’t bear to sell her.

  Our chickens all died of natural causes. We started with the three hundred chicks and three roosters named Saint Francis, Saint George, and Saint John. Finally we had forty superannuated hens and one ancient, blind rooster. Our place became known as the farm for retired chickens. I’d step out the door, call to them, and they’d all hobble over and we’d break into a dance. Everything I did, they did. Or maybe it was vice versa.

  I have this rapport with dogs, too, and can carry on quite a conversation. Cats I admire because of their independence. “So you’re home again, so who gives a damn?” my cats seem to be saying when I walk in the door.

  Naturally I would never allow Desi to touch a hair of the pig we had. I remembered too well those ghastly fall mornings in Celoron when Daddy killed the pig in the backyard.

  Desi also put in a huge rotational truck garden which kept twelve families supplied with everything from artichokes to zucchini. Figuring the cost of water, fertilizer, and full-time gardener, I calculated that every last living vegetable cost us about nine dollars per serving. I ate one of our oranges once and it was so sour my mouth turned inside out. We did make a few pennies from our eggs, which I carted into the studio and sold to June Allyson.

  We had pretty wild costume parties and other festivities at the ranch. Our spaghetti parties were renowned, with Desi cooking up the sauce, with lots of Spanish herbs, in a big pot.

  One night, one of our intimate spaghetti parties grew into fifteen or sixteen people. By seven o’clock, they had long since finished off all my appetizers and gone through every piece of cheese and stale cracker in the house. Desi would come out of the kitchen every few minutes, between stirring and tasting, and announce, “Dinner will be ready pretty soon!”

  His sauce was legendary and he would never serve it until it was just right. Finally, as we all sat around the table, napkins tucked in, forks at the ready, he emerged from the kitchen with an enormous casserole pot and announced proudly, “La comida está lista,” as the bottom of the pot gave way and the entire spaghetti dinner clumped onto our new cream carpet.

  There was frozen silence for a moment or two and then everyone, as if on cue, got up with their plates and forks and bent down to serve themselves off the floor! Cleo still kids me about that hysterically embarrassing night. Thank God I’ve got friends with a sense of humor.

  Word games caused Desi no end of trouble because of his heavy accent. When he was given “Mildred Pierce” in charades, he acted out someone eating and hating it. “But of course,” he said later. “Meal-dread!”

  Our groups were large and fun-loving. We celebrated Halloween, birthdays, new puppies, salary raises; anything was a pretext for a party. At a Gay Nineties party I wore a fright wig and bloomers and blacked out my front teeth.

  At Christmastime, the Francis Lederers would stay overnight since, like us, they had no children. Desi always had musicians out; he’s happiest surrounded by Latin rhythms. And presents. He’d have the whole living room stuffed with presents for everyone for miles around. His generosity was legendary. If they ever melted me down, I’d be a pile of gold from his gifts.

  While I was alone at the ranch, an accident occurred which later we reproduced almost exactly on the I Love Lucy show. I was hurrying out the door one morning when a truck pulled into the driveway with some men who offered to stain the roof shingles with linseed oil and red paint. It seemed like a good idea, so I said okay and left, not even bothering to get their names. But some windows were open and apparently a stiff breeze did the rest. I had just had the whole interior reupholstered, repainted, and recarpeted, but when I got home that night the entire color scheme was red. The windowsills, the walls, even the cow!

  And one of our early parties formed the basis for another Lucy show years later. We had asked Marian and Francis Lederer over for dinner along with Renée DeMarco and her new husband, Jody Hutchinson. Someone asked Jody, “How did you meet your wife?” and he told the story in a very romantic, sentimental way. The men thought his tale too slushy for words, but all the women were misty-eyed. Then Francis Lederer spoke up. “Well, it was certainly different with me. I ran and ran until my wife caught me.” He kept this kind of banter up until his wife, who is the sweetest, gentlest woman on earth, began to burn. Finally she stood up and announced melodramatically, “You have desecrated my most sacred moment. Lu
cy, may I stay here overnight?”

  I said yes, of course, she certainly could, and this horrified Francis. His wife ran and locked herself in the bathroom. He followed and kept pounding on the door, pleading with her, saying it was all a joke.

  The rest of us sat in the living room listening, until Desi said disgustedly, “What’s the matter with her? How can an intelligent girl like that act so stupid?”

  “Well,” I told him heatedly, “he had no right to kid about something like that.”

  We started bickering and then Renée and her new husband got into a hot argument. The Lederers eventually left arm in arm, happy as larks. Jody and Renée fought all the way home that night (and eventually divorced). Desi and I almost phoned a lawyer then and there.

  That night notwithstanding, I was known as a peacemaker in friends’ marriage troubles. They told me I had the ability to get down to the essential difference and analyze and set things in perspective. But of course, in my own marriage I found it terribly hard to be objective.

  * * *

  Nothing much seemed to be happening for me at the studio. My $1,000 weekly paycheck came regularly, but I was still a regular among the B’s. Then one day Walter Winchell introduced me to Damon Runyon in the commissary and he requested me for the part of Her Highness, the crippled showgirl, in his movie The Big Street, with Henry Fonda.

  This movie—the biggest hit of my film career—began in the most negative way possible. After Mr. Runyon asked for me, the studio bosses said no, you need a name, and Henry Fonda agreed. He was used to playing with big stars like Margaret Sullavan. But he was under contract to another studio and just owed RKO one picture, so he really didn’t give a damn.

  It happened that the president of RKO at that moment thought I was good and so I got the part. But the day the shooting was finished, Damon Runyon left RKO, the director joined the Army, and the cutter dropped dead. So the three people who were most responsible for the movie weren’t even around when it was edited and cut. In spite of all those handicaps, it was a solid hit, and one of the movies I’m really proud of.

  As Charles Laughton once advised me, “If you play a bitch, play it!” The Big Street was a light and gay comedy, but like the rest of Damon Runyon’s stories, it had its tragic overtones.

  Henry Fonda played Little Pinks, a simple, naive busboy who loves Her Highness, a vixenish singer who believes that love “only gives you a one-room apartment, two chins, and a long washline.” She becomes incurably crippled and Little Pinks dedicates himself to fulfilling her every whim, including pushing her to Miami in a wheelchair to win a millionaire playboy.

  The New York Herald-Tribune said, “Lucille Ball gives one of the best portrayals of her career as the ever-grasping, selfish Gloria who takes keen delight in kicking the hapless Little Pinks about.”

  Life magazine commented, “Lucille Ball’s performance is superb—the girl can really act.”

  Although I got rave reviews, I knew it wasn’t going to lead to anything at RKO. I used to discuss my troubles with a movie exhibitor who was an old friend of mine, Charles Koerner. In 1942, he became president of the studio. He called me into the front office and said, “Lucy, you’re right. They have no big plans for you around here. For your own good, you should get up the gumption to leave. A couple of other studios have been asking for you since The Big Street. I’ll share your contract with Metro or Paramount. Which do you want?”

  I chose MGM because they were tops in musicals. I’d always had a hankering to be a musical comedy star, probably because I can’t seem to do anything well in the musical line. In August 1942, I signed with Metro for $1,500 a week and began, in effect, a whole new career.

  I knew that RKO was on its last legs financially, whereas Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer controlled the biggest pool of creative talent in Hollywood. Louis B. Mayer had more top actors, writers, directors, and other craftsmen than any other studio. He earned a salary of half a million dollars a year—more than any other man in America at that time. His power and his income were based on his shrewd ability to manipulate people for his own productions and for loan-outs and reciprocal deals with other studios. He always loaned his stars for more money than he was paying them, and the studio pocketed the profit.

  Mayer regarded every star as having a fixed dollar value, and his studio was organized into pampering and flattering and manipulating that star to do his bidding. I didn’t dig that too much. When MGM was grooming you, you felt that you were in the second line of the harem and that in another twenty minutes they’d be grooming somebody else in your place. And I didn’t understand the people too well at MGM, but at least it was all new and different and exciting.

  The first day at MGM I was just plain scared. It was a real wrench to leave RKO after seven years, and for the first few months at MGM I had the feeling that some little man was going to tap me on the shoulder and say, “You’re wanted back at RKO for retakes.” Nobody ever did, and finally I relaxed and put myself into Leo the Lion’s masterful hands.

  The names on the dressing room doors filled me with awe: Greer Garson, Jessica Tandy, Angela Lansbury, Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Esther Williams, and—thank heaven—my old friend at Columbia and RKO, Ann Sothern. The names on the men’s dressing rooms were equally celebrated: Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Mickey Rooney, Hume Cronyn.

  I was changed the minute I got over there. Sidney Guilaroff, the hairstylist, had the most to do with it. I had been a redhead at RKO but Sidney changed me to a lighter and more vibrant shade for Technicolor. “Tango Red,” he called it, but actually it was as orange as a piece of fruit hanging on a tree. Every time I glanced in a mirror, I reared back, it was so startling. I hated it, but I went along with it. . . . I wouldn’t now.

  Sidney also changed the style of my hair from long and loose and flowing to up and lacquered, until I had to take the crust off it at night by cracking it with a brush.

  The noted designer Irene designed my first stunning suits. The fit and materials were so beautiful. She took me out of frills and gave me tailored, chic things. Irene also introduced me to color in clothes. With my Tango Red hair and blue eyes, she said I was born for Technicolor, so she gave me a flamboyant look to match. I had always stuck to conservative grays, blacks, and beiges (Hattie Carnegie’s influence, I guess). Irene put me in colors so vivid I felt like a sunburst, a prism, a tropical bird of paradise. The glowing aqua and tangerine and lime and emerald shades gave me such a gay and lighthearted feeling.

  Irene also designed stunning negligees and dressing gowns for me in silks and chiffons, in rosy salmon with lynx collars and emerald satin with marabou.

  In Du Barry Was a Lady, my first starring role for MGM, they gave me a scarlet, four-cornered mouth and a pastry shop pyramid of orange hair, plus a fifteen-pound white Du Barry pompadour wig. Red Skelton played a nightclub attendant who is slipped a Mickey Finn and awakens to find himself Louis XV. I was the nightclub star he admired from afar, who becomes Madame Du Barry in his dream. Most of the action consisted of Red in satin knee breeches chasing me over and around a big double bed. We practiced for days on a trampoline, which made me acutely seasick.

  We all did some spectacular dancing in Du Barry, including a very funny bit to the song “Friendship.” There was also a dance scene to the hauntingly lovely “Do I Love You?” Cole Porter’s songs and Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr had made the show a big hit on Broadway. I made no attempt to copy Ethel Merman’s style—she’s inimitable—but I was pleased when a New York reviewer commented, “To her redheaded and later bewigged beauty, Miss Ball adds vivaciousness and excellent comedy timing, proving once again that she is a musical-comedy star of the first magnitude.”

  Getting to know Red Skelton was another plus. I’ve always thought Red, one of the world’s great talents, is basically a very sad clown. And he had this sadness long before he lost his only son to leukemia. Red is an enigma, even, I suspect, to himself. In his most
outlandish buffoonery, he makes me cry more than he makes me laugh. Something about him is just inescapably poignant.

  Red’s house near ours at Palm Springs has an exquisite Japanese garden, on which he lavished some $80,000 worth of imported plants, some of them centuries old. Red himself prunes and trains these trees with fantastic skill and care. On moonlit nights he can be found alone in his teahouse listening to Japanese music and gazing toward San Jacinto Mountain, almost as though he were in Japan and looking at Mount Fuji.

  His homes are filled with art treasures and bibelots from all over the world. Yet his tastes are basically so simple that he keeps an electric stove, a pan of water, and some hot dogs by his bedside in case he wakes up and feels hungry.

  Red can’t even buy a house in a conventional way. He and his artist wife, Georgia, own a twenty-two-room mansion in Beverly Hills crammed with beautiful things, but Red decided that he also wanted a home in the desert. One of his golfing companions at Palm Springs offered to show him his property. So Red went over in his bare feet and bathing trunks to inspect the place. After a brief tour, he said, “Tell you what. I’ll buy it for spot cash right now, providing you and your family move out this afternoon.” The startled owner was silent as Red calmly pulled $135,000 in loose cash from his bathing trunks. Red shook his hand and the deal was set.

  While Red Skelton in satin knee breeches was chasing me around the bedposts in Du Barry, Desi was away on a USO tour. I found him only after putting a plea in to the Pentagon to let me know where he was. Desi was also signed at MGM. He was to make a movie called Bataan, and got back from the USO tour just in time. Bataan was a grim, stark war drama in which thirteen soldiers are picked off, one by one, by the Japanese in the jungle. Desi was cast as Feliz Ramírez, a Spanish-born American soldier who dies of malaria.