Love, Lucy Read online

  Looking back, I think I must have been going through a mild nervous breakdown at this time. On the weekends, Desi would sit beside the pool most of the day, depressed and miserable. “Look at him!” I’d tell DeDe. “Brooding again!”

  “It’s not good for a man when the woman’s the breadwinner of the family,” DeDe replied calmly. What could I say? I believed this too.

  My brother, Freddy, and cousin Cleo were having difficulties around this time and DeDe accused me of helping them too much. “You’re so strong that you do too much for those you love,” she scolded me. “That weakens them and lets them slide.”

  I was trying to be a good trouper, a good neighbor, and sister and wife. I was trying as hard as I could, but everything seemed to be going wrong and everyone was blaming me.

  When I fluffed my lines on the set the next week and the director said sharply, “Lucy, have you been drinking?” I’d never in my life been accused of such a ridiculous thing. I needed sympathy, understanding, help, but was met only with coldness and hostility. I complained to my agent, “I don’t know what’s happening on that set, but they’re accusing me of all kinds of things.”

  He replied coldly, “Well, from what I hear, what are you doing?”

  Well, that’s all I needed, so I said, “Why don’t you come on the set and see if I don’t know my lines or if I’m wasting time.”

  So that day my agent bothered to show up, but it was too late. I was so unstrung I couldn’t get a word out. I’d never had any trouble with my work before, and to be suddenly called a slacker was more than I could take. “I want Marc, I want Marc,” I cried, over and over. I wanted Marc Rabwin. Dr. Rabwin was not only my doctor and one of the finest surgeons in the country, he was my mentor, my friend. I needed someone who would come and help me. So by this time, everyone on the set was alarmed and they phoned Marc and DeDe, and they both came over and took me home.

  This was highly unusual behavior for me; I’ve never forgotten that moment. Today if anyone gets unpleasant with me on the set, I say, “Hey, what is that? If I’ve done something wrong, let’s deal with it directly. Don’t be snide or sarcastic.” And I try to remain sensitive to others’ feelings on the set. You never know what else people are dealing with in their lives and how those pressures might be affecting their performance.

  But of course, I’m in a different position now. They only pick on you when you can be picked on. After you reach a certain level, they wouldn’t dare treat you so rudely.

  As for my own mini-breakdown, I realize now that I had been trying to embrace too much, taking on too many burdens—emotional and financial. As a result, I was exhausted, just completely depleted in every way. This made me unsure of myself and unstrung. I had enough technical skill to turn in a good performance regardless, and The Dark Corner was hailed as “tough-fibered, exciting entertainment,” with “superior performances.” I can’t say my performance was superior; I look utterly bemused in this movie, with a staring, numb, fogbank look, as if I were being driven into a dark corner.

  I was a very sick girl for three months afterward. I was having a terrible time with Desi, and my agent had me sewn up so tight that the only way I could get him out of my life was to leave MGM. I regretted this keenly but it was the only legal way in which I could get rid of that agent’s representation. Afterward, I swore I would never again be “packaged out” to anybody without my say-so, and I never was.

  The day I left MGM, I went up to Louis B. Mayer’s impressive front office to say good-bye. The movie industry’s most powerful tycoon was still living it up and our paths rarely crossed outside the studio gates. He said he was very sorry to see me go.

  I said good-bye to my friends on the lot and left the studio for good, I thought. I was terribly depressed. Life seemed unbearable. Desi was away rounding up a new band, so I sat home alone and cried. I was still stuttering, and this terrified me.

  Then one day Kurt Frings, a well-known agent, drove the twenty-five miles out from Hollywood to our ranch to see me. He told me that Olivia De Havilland had sent him. She had heard about my difficulties and thought perhaps he could help me. I hardly knew Olivia except to say hello. I was bowled over by her kindness.

  Olivia De Havilland had been involved in the same kind of “package” dealing with the same agent that had been representing me. She had refused roles and had been put on suspension. Olivia fought a bitter eighteen-month court battle with the agent and won. Because she courageously fought the System, we all benefited.

  Kurt Frings suggested that I free-lance, and in fact, he had a picture all ready for me at Universal. “I can’t, I can’t,” I told him. “All I do is stut-stut-stutter.”

  Frings kept talking to me, quietly and soothingly, and almost persuaded me to do Lover Come Back with George Brent. Then the director, Bill Seiter, called and said, “You’re a great gal. . . . We need you. . . . Come on over to Universal and go to work.”

  “I c-c-can’t read a l-l-line,” I told him.

  Bill said, “Of course you can.” I went over to Universal and he laughed at me for three days while I stuttered. By the fifth day I was talking with no difficulty. Lover Come Back got poor reviews, but it saved me. Howard Barnes of the New York Herald-Tribune wrote, “Our sympathy to Miss Ball, who is fetching in Travis Banton’s gowns in spite of the plot’s ennui.” Bosley Crowther said, “Miss Ball wears a wardrobe of costumes and acts as if she really had a script. The poor lady is sadly deluded, she is completely without support.”

  But although the scriptwriters were viewed to have failed me, the director and other players did not. Making Lover Come Back was the best thing I could have done. I will never forget the understanding and help Bill Seiter gave me when I needed it most. I will always be grateful. And George Brent was a wonderfully supportive co-star.

  While I was making Lover Come Back in the spring of 1946, Desi and his band opened to enthusiastic reviews at Ciro’s. His next engagement was at the Copacabana in New York. For the first time in eleven years, I was not under contract to a studio and was free to take an extended vacation. I took six months off; Desi and I boarded a train for New York, along with Harriet and Desi’s sixteen band members.

  We took a big apartment at the Delmonico Hotel at Fifty-ninth Street and Park Avenue. Desi and I had a ball. He had to play at the Copa most of the night and liked to sleep until noon. When I got up at my usual early hour, I’d lock the bedroom door so the hotel maids wouldn’t go in and disturb him. One day DeDe phoned me from California and said, “What’s this I read in Sheilah Graham’s column? It says here you lock Desi out of the bedroom and he pounds on the door and shouts and hollers.”

  “Whaat?” I said. “That’s a pack of lies!”

  I called Sheilah Graham hopping mad and demanded a retraction.

  “Lucy, I wouldn’t write something like that unless it came on good authority!”

  She finally admitted that someone in the hotel had tipped her off. Then I figured out how it all started. It was summertime and our bedroom was on an inner court, with the windows open. Harriet and I would often go shopping in the morning, and once when we got back Desi was awake, banging on the locked bedroom door and yelling, “Lucy! Lucy! The door’s locked!”

  Somebody on the court heard this and reported it to Sheilah, who printed it without checking. She’s never forgotten how furious I was. But Desi and I were so happily reconciled that I wanted nothing to spoil it, least of all an incorrect item in a gossip column.

  This year, 1946, was the movies’ peak year, when some ninety million people went to the movies every week. It was also the year that five of my movies were playing on Broadway at the same time. When I lunched with old friends at Mamma Leone’s, I was mobbed by fans with autograph books. It was my first experience being a New York celebrity and I found it unsettling, especially when hordes of teenagers with pads and pencils sprang out at me everywhere.

  “The little . . . uh . . . rascals are a menace,” I remarked to a reporte
r, diving into a one a.m. breakfast at “21.”

  The reporter asked me about my experience making The Dark Corner, which was being premiered that day. “What’s it all about?” I asked the interviewer. “Honestly, I have no idea what the story is. Most of my scenes were with Mark Stevens and I never did know what the rest of the people were doing. I guess I’ll have to go see it.” I could almost hear the 20th Century press agent grinding his teeth, and I chuckled inwardly. I hoped that the movie which gave me such trouble would be a bomb; actually it did quite well.

  The only picture of the five on Broadway I really cared about was Easy to Wed, the comedy I did with Eddie Buzzell at MGM. I went to see this with musical comedy star Jane Kean, who was then appearing in the Broadway show Are You with It?

  I had only just met the attractive and vivacious Jane, but liked her immediately. “It’s such a pleasure to know you, Miss Ball,” she said very formally when we were introduced.

  “Well, you’ll know me all my life,” I answered. Jane and I have been close ever since.

  The day we went to see Easy to Wed at the Palace in New York, there was a long line of people waiting. I had just come from dining with Desi at the Copacabana and was wearing a cocktail dress and a Lilly Daché hat of turquoise feathers. When Jane and I got out of the cab, I joined the end of the line on Fiftieth Street, three blocks from the theater.

  Jane was amazed. “You’re the star of this movie. Why don’t you see the manager and he’ll let you right in?” she suggested.

  “Oh, I don’t want to do that,” I told her. “Supposing I say, ‘I’m Lucille Ball,’ and he says, ‘So what?’”

  Jane looked at me and shook her head. “And to think I took you for a domineering female.”

  Finally Jane went into the theater, and fortunately the manager laid down the red carpet for both of us. I guess I couldn’t forget all my abortive attempts to get into a vaudeville act on that same Palace stage, back in my early days in New York.

  While I was vacationing in New York, I was invited to Jamestown to help raise money for the Little Theater. The town fathers asked me what kind of a benefit party I’d like and I suggested a boat ride on the SS City of Jamestown to Chautauqua.

  I didn’t realize that they’d have to raise the old steamboat from the bottom of the lake. But they did, and then during the ride every time I’d move from port to starboard to enjoy another familiar view of the lake, everyone on board would follow me and the boat would list dangerously low on that side. The captain kept saying, “Everybody stay in the middle of the boat!” But it was a beautiful moonlit trip.

  “There’s no other place in the world like Jamestown,” I told the local reporter. “They’ll tell you that California is God’s country, but God’s country is right here in Jamestown. I can’t possibly tell you how much this place means to me, because of the normal, happy childhood it gave me and offers to every youngster.”

  The only thing that disturbed me about the visit was that some of my old friends didn’t show up. They were timid about meeting a “movie star.” When they did see me, they jumped to the other side of the street in confusion. And a few stood there with a big chip on their shoulder, waiting for me to knock it off. I finally put an ad in the paper, asking my old friends to stop by the hotel. But it took another ten years for me to have a real homecoming in Jamestown.

  Our New York idyll couldn’t last forever. Desi got pretty busy. He made Cuban Pete for Universal in 1946. He was also musical director for Bob Hope’s radio show, and the rest of the time he toured the United States and Canada. Desi was well acquainted with performing in the best nightspots in New York and Miami; now he learned how people reacted to his showmanship in Kalamazoo and Chagrin Falls. He was well liked wherever he went, and clubs and theaters were always happy to have him back.

  Other bandleaders respected his talents and knew that he ran a well-paid outfit. Even if he ended up with nothing after a particular engagement, Desi always saw that his boys were taken care of. At Vegas, Desi made the most money but generally left it behind. One night he dropped $48,000 at the gambling tables. But as we’d established from the first days of our marriage, his finances were his own business. He ran his band in his own way, and in a few years he was netting $2,500 a week.

  Desi eventually got sick of running around the country for one-night stands, but he never got sick of leading a band. Because he loves music. When he sits at the bongo drums pounding out those pulse-racing rhythms, his smile is ecstatic, his great dark eyes glow. That’s when he’s happiest.

  That said, starting a band from scratch and trying to build a national reputation isn’t easy. During the first year, when money was pretty tight, several of his musicians fell ill and had to be hospitalized. Desi could have replaced the sick men with other players and continued on his tour. Instead, he canceled several engagements and dug deep into his reserve funds to pay both his idle musicians and a pile of medical bills.

  While Desi was on the road, I hired a tutor and studied literature and languages three nights a week. I made My Awful Wife and Her Husband’s Affairs for Columbia with Franchot Tone, and Lured for United Artists. In Lured, a routine whodunit, I played a taxi dancer in London who is used as criminal bait by Scotland Yard. George Sanders played opposite me, and Charles Coburn and Sir Cedric Hardwicke had supporting roles.

  Around this time, June Havoc was staying with us at the ranch. She’s such a bright, warm, fun-loving person, who I thoroughly enjoy having around. One day she said to me, “Lucy, I know you’re going stir-crazy! Why don’t you take a big chunk of time—now that Desi’s away and you’re free-lancing—and tour the country with a play?”

  Soon afterward, two producers who were running the Princeton Drama Festival that summer talked me into doing Dream Girl. Havoc (as we all referred to her) had appeared in this Elmer Rice play on Broadway and she thought it would be a good vehicle for me. It was the first chance I’d had in years to get away from Hollywood, and of course, to me, the stage had always been “it.”

  We opened in Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in June 1947, and ended up touring the whole country, big towns and small, for twenty-seven weeks, or almost seven months, much longer than I had expected. Dream Girl was a tour de force written especially for Betty Field—who was great in it—but it gave me a chance to demonstrate some versatility, a chance Hollywood kept denying me. The reviews were warm and welcoming.

  One night, two gentlemen came backstage and introduced themselves as my former teachers at the John Murray Anderson dramatic school in New York. They congratulated me warmly on my performance and said that they had recognized my potential years ago. That gave me a chuckle, but I was pleased, too. I didn’t take the opportunity to remind them that I’d been kicked out of their school for lack of talent.

  During my tour, Desi’s busload of musicians had a terrible accident near La Porte, Indiana, when the bus driver fell asleep at the wheel at eighty-five miles an hour. One of the boys lost an eye and some of the others were badly cut up. My brother, Freddy, was their band manager, and both he and Desi narrowly missed being killed, because they had decided to charter a plane to catch me in Dream Girl in Detroit that day. Fate was certainly looking out for them, because only six men of the sixteen-piece orchestra were unhurt. The two who took over Desi’s and Freddy’s regular seats up front were hurt the worst. One of them, Charlie Harris, broke many bones and he was the one who lost an eye.

  Desi immediately flew back to join the band. They had a date to keep that night in Akron, Ohio, and a cancellation would have cost him dearly. But news of the accident spread and half a dozen competing bands came to Desi’s rescue. They sent a pianist, a whole trumpet section, drummers, and maraca players to Akron to replace the injured musicians. Desi never forgot that. “Helping the fellow who’s in a tough spot is the best thing about America,” he always said.

  On January 6, 1948, we brought Dream Girl to Los Angeles, after performances in Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee, and many othe
r cities. It was expensive to bring the large cast and the scenery from the East Coast; I wound up contributing to the move to Hollywood for the sake of our cast’s newer actors, kids who wanted to be seen where it might count.

  The show ended in Los Angeles after most of the cast was felled by a terrible virus—including me.

  * * *

  In 1948, the movie industry was in a panic. The year before, MGM had gone $6,500,000 into the red. Now budgets were being slashed and the number of contract players cut in half, and the spate of productions dwindled to a trickle. All over the country, movie theaters were closing, as customers went elsewhere or stayed home with the radio and a new threat, television.

  Like many of my colleagues, I began to cast a speculative eye toward radio. Back in 1946, Hubbell Robinson of CBS, vice president in charge of programming, had talked to me about a domestic comedy show based upon the book Mr. and Mrs. Cugat. I was interested, especially if Desi could costar, but the big brass at CBS thought he was not the type to play a typical American husband. “But he is my husband,” I told them, “and I think it helps make a domestic comedy more believable when the audience knows the couple are actually married.”

  I knew, too, that radio interfered less with a normal home life than any other entertainment medium, a fact borne out by the experiences of such happily married radio greats as Mary Livingstone and Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa, Gracie Allen and George Burns, and Harriet and Ozzie Nelson.

  But CBS turned a deaf ear to my proposal to team me up with Desi. So finally I relented and did a series with Richard Denning called My Favorite Husband, based on the Cugat book.

  This half-hour weekly show was similar to I Love Lucy only in that I played a wacky wife. I was married to the fifth vice president of a bank and trying in comic ways to promote his career. Gale Gordon was the bank president—the same role that was to be his on The Lucy Show. I found radio a wonderful way to make a lot of extra money. It was easy because although we had a studio audience, I could read the script. I didn’t have to memorize it. If I was busy on a movie set during the day, we’d rehearse and tape at night. Radio was very big then in Hollywood and everyone in the movie industry was getting into it.