Love, Lucy Page 20

  Bob went over to sit with the director a moment, and Mel remarked, “It’s amazing that with all this physical stuff, nobody’s even scratched a finger.” Famous last words.

  At that point, an assistant came forward to help me into the boat again. In a spurt of good spirits, I shrugged him away and took one little leap. My foot caught on the side of the boat and I fell headlong into it, landing on my left temple.

  By the time the ambulance came, I had a lump over my left eye the size of a goose egg. My right leg burned like fury where the side of the boat had torn a big flap off my shin, but it was my head injury which concerned everyone most.

  Desi was notified about the accident while at his horse ranch. He raced the forty miles to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. When he learned that all I had was a bad concussion, he wired Bob: “I played straight man to her for nine years and never pushed her. Why couldn’t you control yourself?”

  By the middle of July, after several weeks of convalescence, I was back on the set.

  A few days after we finished The Facts of Life, I flew to New York to begin a new career. The ambition of my life was going to be realized at last: my name in lights on Broadway. Wildcat, by N. Richard Nash, author of The Rainmaker, had originally been written as a drama. By the time we started rehearsals in August, it was a musical with some really great songs by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh.

  How I was going to sing them, I had no idea. I’d never been a singer, not even in the bathtub. I’d never been a dancer, either, and Wildcat had me just about climbing walls.

  The play was set in a western town in 1912. Wildcat Jackson swings into town, a broke but beguiling female in dungarees determined to strike oil. She teaches her crippled sister, Janie, that a bold face to misfortune will always turn the trick. Wildy was tough, calculating, rough-talking, and unbelievably energetic. By the time I had mastered all her calisthenics, my thigh muscles were like cords of steel.

  After a week of rehearsals with my leading man, Keith Andes, and Paula Stewart, who played my lame sister, a bright red spot appeared on my shin where I had fallen during the filming of The Facts of Life. The cut had healed over completely, but an infection had started near the bone. I checked into the Polyclinic Hospital on West Fiftieth Street, where a surgeon opened up the wound and scraped away nylon stocking from the inside.

  With my bandaged leg resting on a pillow, I spent hours practicing the songs I would be singing in Wildcat. Friends stopping by to commiserate found a very merry Lucy. They couldn’t shut me up. I just kept singing. One song in particular I embraced more than any other: “Hey, Look Me Over!”—the one I grew to love at the hospital—eventually became my song. Thereafter, if there was an orchestra around when I entered some room, they’d start playing it. I was glad to be identified with such an upbeat tune.

  During the weeks I was spending in rehearsal, the children were with their father at the beach and the ranch. In the fall, DeDe; Harriet; the children; their nanny, Willie Mae Barker; and our chauffeur, Frank Gorey, all joined me in the vast apartment I’d rented on the sixteenth floor of the Imperial House with a thirty-eight-foot terrace. I naively thought the kids could play outdoors on the terrace, high above the Lexington Avenue traffic. I kept thinking how great it would be for them to enjoy a change of seasons—autumn leaves, snow, spring flowers. But they took an instant dislike to New York’s gray November skies and chill. DeDe accompanied them back and forth to the neighborhood parochial school.

  Everywhere the kids went, a big fuss was made over them. They missed their father and their friends in California, but both of them were really good sports about the move, although they did miss, too, the freedom of playing outdoors wherever they wanted.

  After two strenuous months of rehearsals, Wildcat opened in Philadelphia on October 30, 1960. Desi flew in from Hollywood and was full of suggestions about how the show could be improved. He even brought my two writers, Bob and Madelyn, from the West Coast to help, but because of a union rule, they couldn’t add so much as a comma to the script.

  This role was the most physically strenuous of my career. After a month of playing Wildcat, I had shed nineteen pounds and was covered with black-and-blue marks. I’d broken two fingers, sprained my ankle three times, and had my left leg bandaged under my tight blue jeans to support a pulled tendon. But I felt on top of the world.

  The play stayed in Philadelphia for two months, with mild notices from the critics but playing to packed houses for the duration. DeDe and the children came down from New York every weekend; we couldn’t keep little Lucie out of the theater. She saw Wildcat seventeen times!

  The big New York opening came December 15. Planeloads of friends arrived and surged up to my apartment that afternoon; I guess it was one of the biggest thrills in my life. “Why don’t you lie down and rest?” Cleo kept urging me, but I was much too excited. Instead, I washed and set Lucie’s hair for the opening.

  We opened in a driving New York blizzard. A theater full of “worshipful admirers,” as the press put it, seemed to enjoy themselves hugely. Afterward, Desi threw a big party at “21” in my honor, and we sat waiting for the reviews to appear. As the party wore on, the gaiety seemed to me to wear thin.

  Finally I went over to Cleo and whispered, “Let’s leave . . . I know they’re keeping the reviews from me.” On our way back to the apartment, we stopped to pick up four or five papers. They were full of “Welcome, Lucy” stuff but were tepid about the show. I had hoped for a big fat hit, at least for the sake of our wonderful cast. I was deeply disappointed.

  About a week after our opening, Paula Stewart suggested a midnight supper with her fella, comedian Jack Carter, at their favorite pizza place.

  “We’ve got a friend we’d like you to meet,” Paula said, “Gary Morton. You’ll like him—he’s a great guy.”

  My first reaction was to say no. I was usually exhausted after a performance. I had underestimated what it took to give life to my character eight times a week.

  But Paula persuaded me to go along, so I joined them later at the restaurant. Gary says the thing he liked first about me was the way I walked, head up, like a thoroughbred. But as soon as I reached the table, I just about collapsed, and started griping about how tired I was.

  “Light me a cigarette,” I said offhandedly to this big, tanned six-footer. I tossed a cigarette in his direction.

  Gary picked it up and tossed it right back. “Here,” he said, “light it yourself.”

  I started laughing. Before long, I was jabbing him in those broad shoulders of his and saying, “Who are you? What do you do?”

  Gary jabbed me right back. “I’m a nightclub performer. What’s your line?”

  I didn’t know it at the time, but Gary had never seen me on television. During the nine years we’d been on, he had never caught a single I Love Lucy show. He says this was because he was usually backstage at some theater or supper club getting ready for a nine-o’clock performance.

  When I met him in 1960, Gary had been a popular stand-up comedian for fifteen years in this country and in England and Australia. He’d started doing imitations while in the Army in Fort Riley, Kansas. He told his family he wanted to be a variety entertainer and, “If I don’t make the Paramount in five years, I’ll quit.” He made it in three. He had toured with Johnny Ray for a year and had been an understudy for the Broadway run of Mr. Wonderful. He had also been on bills with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Milton Berle, Lena Horne, and many others. More than a stand-up, Gary was a monologuist with a built-in sense of humor and a flair for zeroing in on the absurdities of life. He didn’t need a putty nose or baggy pants to be howlingly funny.

  I realized Gary had the natural humor of someone who loves to laugh and wants everyone to laugh with him. That made two of us.

  When that first evening ended and Gary took me home, I felt more like myself than I had in months.

  I met Gary on December 20. The next day he left for Ohio for a series of nightclub engagements th
at would keep him away from New York and his friends and family until after New Year’s. I was amazed at the complacency with which he accepted this exile for the holidays.

  I sensed in him a great loneliness and a hunger for a family, but at the same time, a wonderful, philosophic calm. There is an acceptance and balance about him. And unlike so many of us in show business, he isn’t plagued by dozens of insecurities. He gives his best and seems naturally resistant to the kind of doubt that eats away at so many other performers.

  I guess it didn’t take Gary long to realize that beneath my rather brassy exterior, I’m very soft and dependent.

  When he got back to New York, he asked if he could call for me every evening after the show. Soon after this he asked me, “Will you be my girl?” We were sitting at a table with six or so other people and I was so startled I didn’t know what to say. Finally I said I’d have to think it over, but I didn’t go out with anyone else after that.

  In February, I came down with a bad virus and flew to Miami for some sunshine. Because of my leg, which was still giving me a bad time, the doctors kept pumping me full of antibiotics.

  After a couple of weeks, we opened the show again, but the virus persisted. During the last week in April, I fainted onstage during a song-and-dance routine. A month later, I fainted again. By this time they were giving me oxygen backstage to keep me going. Both DeDe and Gary were urging me to quit. “Lucille! The Man upstairs is trying to tell you something!” DeDe told me. But I ignored her warning.

  Since I’d backed the show, I didn’t have to worry about friends or unknown angels losing money in the production, which had been a sellout from the beginning. But I worried about my supporting players and the gypsies, the dancers and singers who migrate from show to show. I wanted them all to have the run of the show, which, in spite of the reviews, promised to be a long one.

  Ultimately, I just couldn’t keep it up, much as I’d wanted to. One night in May, seven months after we had opened in Philadelphia, I collapsed onstage and my doctors ordered me to close the show. We turned back $165,000 at the box office, but my pride suffered more than my pocketbook. When my energy wanes, it embarrasses me terribly. I hate being sick or incapacitated in any way. Hedda Hopper wrote, “Let’s hope Lucy stays in the hospital until she regains her health, strength and peace of mind. Lucy’s one of the most vital girls I know but so weak now she can scarcely hold a teacup.”

  I felt so awful I honestly thought I was going to die. So instead of checking into a hospital, I flew to London and eventually to Capri and Rome, determined to die in a scenic atmosphere.

  I felt deeply depressed about having closed the show, but eventually I recovered my spirits before my health.

  After I returned from my trip abroad, I crawled back to Beverly Hills. I never did get to enjoy much of my beautiful New York apartment. Gary soon followed me out west. He stayed in our guesthouse for several weeks. For the first time we saw him under normal, everyday circumstances, away from the theater and nightclubs.

  When we went to Hollywood parties, Gary says, he felt like “some strange lamp.” Everyone circled around, looking at him from every angle. But I soon discovered that he had more friends in show business than I did.

  During that summer I was convalescing, Gary kept bringing up the subject of marriage and I kept hedging. I seriously questioned whether I could make any man happy. I worried about the slight difference in our ages and the effect my career might have on him.

  Finally DeDe said, “Why don’t you get married? You shouldn’t let that guy get away.”

  I asked the children how they felt about my getting married again.

  “Will Daddy like it?” they asked.

  “He wouldn’t mind,” I told them.

  I’ve always wanted to share with someone the good and the bad. Especially when things are good, you need someone. Some people should never marry, because they don’t know how to share and have no desire to. Gary had been traveling for fifteen years, in and out of cities constantly. With that kind of life, it’s almost impossible to sustain any serious relationship when you’re away so much. He had been married once, very briefly, and it had been annulled in 1957. By this time, he was forty-six and ready and anxious for a family—something money can’t buy.

  When I divorced Desi I had no intention of ever marrying again, but this guy did seem too good to let get away. Years ago, I picked up a little book called The Art of Selfishness. This little book revolutionized my life. It taught me to worry less about all the outside factors in my life and take command of me. I learned to subject everything in my life to these questions: “Is this good for Lucy? Does it fill my needs? Is it good for my health, my peace of mind? Does my conscience agree, does it give me a spiritual lift?” No wonder I had been feeling so happy and secure. The answer was simple: Gary was good for Lucy.

  So, after I’d known Gary for eleven months, I decided to take the big step. We were on a plane flying to New York, where Gary had a date at the Copa and I was going to do a TV show with Henry Fonda. Gary proposed again.

  “Lucy, what are we waiting for?”

  “Well,” I hedged, “are you prepared for any swipes that they might take at you? What if they call you Mr. Ball?”

  Gary answered quietly, “Who are they?”

  “All right,” I said. “If Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is free to marry us this week, we’ll go ahead.”

  From that moment on, I had no qualms, no apprehension. We liked each other before we loved each other. We approve of each other; neither of us is trying to change the other. Gary has a maturity I admire.

  Before our marriage, Gary spoke with my lawyers without my knowledge and offered to sign away any interest in my money. He has always made an excellent living, and we keep our bank accounts separate.

  Dr. Peale was free to marry us in his Marble Collegiate Church on November 19, 1961. The whole thing was quickly arranged, in only five days. The children flew east with DeDe to be part of our new lives from the beginning. We purposely had a small, intimate wedding with as much dignity and love as we could put into it, instead of flying off somewhere into the hinterlands for a few hurried words by a justice of the peace.

  We invited only forty people to the church service and barred all press and television cameras except my adored Hedda Hopper. During the fifteen-minute service, the organ softly played “Make Someone Happy,” a song that had become a favorite of ours early in our courtship. When Dr. Peale pronounced us man and wife, the wedding guests applauded!

  Gary smiled and kissed me.

  “There may be a few Lucy fans waiting outside,” we were warned as we prepared to leave. There had been perhaps fifty waiting on the sidewalk when we arrived.

  We were dumbfounded when we left the church to find a thousand people jamming the Fifth Avenue sidewalk! They were smiling and calling out, “Good luck, Lucy,” and, “We’re with you, Lucy.” It made us feel very, very good—starting our life together with so many good wishes.

  Gary and I honeymooned right in Beverly Hills with the children. For five months I sat and did nothing. For the first time in my life I learned how to relax. But by March, Desi had talked me into doing a new television series without him or Bill Frawley. By then, Bill had joined Fred MacMurray in the highly popular show My Three Sons. And Desi had discovered a book by Irene Kampen called Life Without George, about two women trying to raise their children without husbands, which he thought could be a great basis for a new series for me.

  I refused even to consider being in a continuing series without Vivian. Since we had gone off the air, she had married a handsome and successful New York literary agent, John Dodds. They had bought a century-old house in Stamford, Connecticut, and Vivian was ecstatic about her flower garden, singing in the local church choir, and lecturing on behalf of mental health. Her loyalty to me—and a hefty paycheck—won her back to my side.

  Vivian has always been the greatest supporting player anyone could ask for. During one of the s
hows in this new series, we were supposed to be trapped in a glass shower stall, with the water turned on full blast. The script called for me to dive down and pull out the plug at the bottom of the shower, but when I did this in front of a live audience, I found I had no room to maneuver. I couldn’t get back to the surface again. What’s more, I had swallowed a lot of water, and was actually drowning, right there in front of three hundred people who were splitting their sides laughing.

  Vivian, realizing in cold terror what had happened, never changed expression. She reached down, pulled me safely to the surface by the roots of my hair, and then calmly spoke both sides of our dialogue, putting my lines in the form of questions. Whatta girl! And whatta night! When I finally had the strength to climb out of the shower stall and, as usual, reach for the mike to say good night to the audience, I suddenly heard Gary’s voice from the sidelines: “Don’t touch that mike!” I froze, dripping wet, an inch from that live microphone. Gary had saved me from potential electrocution!

  During this time, Desi was still head of Desilu and executive producer of our new Lucy Show, but having both Desi and Gary on the set at the same time proved to be too much. Desi was getting anxious to retire, anyway. Eleven years at the helm of Desilu had taken its toll and he was ready to devote more time to his horses and his golf.

  At first I thought that we should bring someone else in to run Desilu, but it didn’t prove to be that simple. So in November 1962, I bought Desi out to the tune of $3 million and he retired. The board of directors then persuaded me to be president, and I reluctantly agreed.

  As December of 1962 approached, I yearned to spend a real old-fashioned white Christmas with Gary and the children. Gary loathed cold weather and thrived on sunshine. He also spent so many Christmas holidays on the road that all he wanted to do at this time of year was stay home.