Love, Lucy Read online

  They sued again, claiming that Daddy’s deeding of the house to his daughters for a dollar was “fraudulent, designed to delay and defraud his creditors.” Again the Ericksons won, and again the sheriff appeared, this time to foreclose on the house and to arrest Daddy and take him off to jail.

  This whole affair gave me the most distorted view of justice and so-called due process. To my mind, Daddy was blameless. The judge must have thought so too, because he released Daddy from jail almost immediately, but said that he must remain within the city limits of Mayville for a year. Mayville was about twenty miles from Celoron, so DeDe had to board him out with some farm relatives for the year.

  But Daddy’s ruin was still incomplete. In September 1928, our beloved little house in Celoron was put on the auction block. Curiosity-seekers came tramping over Daddy’s vegetable garden and poking into the chicken coop, and charging up and down the stairs and opening closet doors. To me, it was the final straw—the most unjust, inhuman thing I had ever heard of. I just couldn’t understand it at all. The house was worth $4,000, but only brought $2,600 at auction. All of this was swallowed up by the mortgage Daddy still owed, and various legal fees, and so the Ericksons got nothing.

  They took our house, the furnishings that DeDe had bought so laboriously on time, week after week, the insurance—everything. It was god-awful; unbelievable. My grandfather never worked again. The heart went out of him. I don’t see how anyone can reconcile the punishment with the crime in this case. It made me suspicious of the law forever. And a fear of guns has stayed with me to this day.

  It ruined Celoron for us; it destroyed our life together there. We moved away to a little apartment on Wilcox Avenue in Jamestown. I entered my junior year in a new, strange high school, which I hated. Shortly after this, I began running away. I’d take off to Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, anywhere. I bought my first dog, a little fox terrier, and named him Whooppee. Wherever I went, Whooppee went too, but sometimes my driving was too much for him. Once I hit eighty-eight miles an hour on one of the local dirt roads, and Whooppee jumped right out of the car and broke a leg.

  I itched to go places and do things. DeDe was beside herself with worry about me. She finally decided that if I was bound to run away, it would be better if she helped and guided me. So one night at dinner in our little Wilcox Avenue apartment, she said to me, “Lucille, how would you like to go to dramatic school?”

  My eyes popped. “Could we afford it?”

  “I’ve already been to the bank, and they’ll lend me the money,” DeDe told me. My mother was always willing to go into hock for a good cause.

  Actors and actresses all strive for affection. We get up on a stage because we want to be loved. The stage fulfills this need better than anything else; especially if you’ve found a rapport with an audience and can wrap them up in your arms and hug them close.

  The irony is that in our terrible need to be loved, we pick an arena where we can also be rejected by the greatest possible number of people. Nothing’s quite so wonderful as those waves of love and applause splashing over the footlights—and nothing quite as shattering as when an audience doesn’t like you. All you’ve got to sell is yourself; rejection can’t be anything but highly personal.

  I didn’t begin to have what it takes to succeed in show business when I first came to New York City as an upstate country kid of seventeen. DeDe and I chose the John Murray Anderson–Robert Milton theater school in New York mainly because the tuition was a bit cheaper than in other dramatic schools. To save more money, I lived with some elderly friends of the family on Dyckman Street in upper Manhattan.

  The day I left, Johnny drove me to Buffalo, some seventy miles from home. From there, I took the New York Central south. New York City scared me to death and still does. It has something to do with all that cold concrete and steel instead of grass and trees. I was terrified and struck dumb by everyone at the dramatic school.

  Robert Milton, one of the heads of the school, was my elocution teacher. The very first day, he asked me to pronounce “horses” and “water.” The class giggled as I complied, and Mr. Milton struck his brow in exaggerated horror. “How midwestern!” he remarked. “We’ll have to change that!” I could tell right off he wasn’t too fond of me.

  In short order they discovered that I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t dance, I couldn’t control my body or my voice properly. Both students and teachers ignored me, which almost seemed fitting. To me, everyone was head and shoulders above me in every way.

  Another student at the school earned raves for everything she did. A short, dynamic blonde, she projected with great verve. Bette Davis went on to confirm the school’s belief in her awe-inspiring abilities.

  At the end of the term, the school wrote my mother and said they were sorry but I didn’t have what it takes to be an actress. She would be “wasting her money” if I continued. Of the seventy students who began that term, only twelve made it; I was one of the failures.

  Although lonely, homesick, and lost, I couldn’t face the sneers and snickers I felt would be waiting for me back in Jamestown. This was the day of the Ziegfeld Follies and Shubert spectacles; hundreds of girls were hired to decorate the stage in fur and feathers. So I decided to become a showgirl.

  I soon learned that to survive in the theater you have to be very strong, very healthy, and damned resilient. Rarely does anyone give you an encouraging word. And I dreaded that inevitable question, “Do you have any Broadway experience?”

  I’d stick out my thin chest and say brightly, “No, sir, I haven’t done anything on Broadway, but I’d sure like to try.” I’d then add that I’d come all the way from Butte, Montana. This eager and slightly dishonest little speech won me five jobs in various musicals, such as rear-line chorus girl in the third road company of Rio Rita. No one got paid for rehearsals in those days, so DeDe dug deep to keep me afloat.

  One morning, I woke up to find that all I had was four pennies. Subway fare to the theater district was a nickel. So I panhandled for a penny. One well-dressed older man stopped to listen, then offered me a ten-dollar bill. “Listen, mister,” I told him with a withering look, “all I want is one penny.” He’s probably still standing there with his mouth open!

  The seductive Shubert girls were mean old harpies. They hated all competition, especially seventeen-year-old kids. I’d show up early for rehearsals and stay until they had to sweep me off the stage with the cigar butts, but I couldn’t seem to get the hang of things, even if all I had to do was walk. I was supposed to project sultry sex, but all I managed to get across was my awkward timidity.

  I was so shy that all I could do was shrink in a corner and watch and listen. If someone asked me a question, words stuck in my throat. Time after time, I’d rehearse for several weeks and then get fired. I was never around long enough for the first costume fitting. I don’t blame the directors. I’d have fired that cringing scaredy-cat Lucille Ball too.

  But I didn’t give up. I wore out my soles trudging to casting offices and stuffed the holes with newspaper. I lurked behind coffee bars waiting for customers to leave. In 1928, you got two doughnuts and a cup of coffee for a dime. Often a customer might leave one doughnut uneaten and a nickel tip. I’d wiggle into his seat fast, devour the leftover doughnut, and order coffee with the tip.

  Then I was picked for the chorus of a Fred and Paula Stone show; it was Stepping Stones. When five weeks had passed and I was still with the show, my spirits skyrocketed. Then late one night the producer called for some revisions in the dance numbers. Around midnight, the director finally said, “We’re going to add some ballet, girls. Anybody who can’t do toe work is out of the show.”

  To me he added, “Forget it, Two-Gun. You’re a nice kid but you just don’t have it. Why don’t you go home to Montana and raise a big family?”

  I dug my hands into my empty pockets and trudged the long blocks north to my fleabag apartment in a Columbus Circle rooming house. I can’t say that I was discouraged. For some
incomprehensible reason, I knew that someday I’d make it as an actress. I just decided to postpone the struggle for a while. I didn’t want to be a drag on DeDe any longer.

  Here’s what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn’t prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you’re in your right mind. You won’t be happy, whatever you do, unless you’re comfortable with your own conscience. Keep your head up, keep your shoulders back, keep your self-respect, be nice, be smart. And remember that there are practically no “overnight” successes. Before that brilliant hit performance came ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty years in the salt mines, sweating it out.

  I cured myself of my shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn’t think about me nearly as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody really gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was much too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free. But I still needed to eat.

  It was midnight on a Saturday when I was fired from Stepping Stones after five weeks of rehearsals—with no pay. Sunday I leafed through the classified ads, and early Monday morning I landed a twenty-five-dollar-a-week job modeling coats. A steady diet of coffee and doughnuts hadn’t added much flesh to my figure, so I decided that winter coats would hide my skinniness.

  My fellow models were a helpful bunch. They got me blind dates for dinner and taught me how to stretch that dinner into two.

  I watched in admiration as a redheaded model gave me my first lesson. With a wink at me, while the waiter wasn’t watching, she first put a linen table napkin into her handbag, then several buttered rolls, celery and olives, and a big slice of roast beef. Sometimes if you brought a big enough bag you could squeeze in a little French pastry, too.

  My first modeling job was a good one in a small wholesale coat place on Seventh Avenue run by some nice elderly Jewish people. Then I worked at a dress-and-suit house, where I told them my name was Diane Belmont. I had always liked the name Diane; Belmont racetrack on Long Island inspired the last name. Some of my old friends on Seventh Avenue still call me Diane. They think Hollywood changed my name to Lucille Ball.

  All the time I was in New York I was sick with longing for my family. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I’d pack up and go home for a while. Back home I worked as a clerk in a dress shop and as a Walgreen’s soda jerk across from the Jamestown Hotel. Daddy was still staying with relatives in Mayville, and once in a while we’d borrow a car and take him out for a drive. I remember how we’d panic if we accidentally drove outside the Mayville city limits, since he was still prohibited from leaving.

  Daddy was in a highly depressed state of mind, and I worried about him constantly. One day, toward the end of his year’s sentence, I heard that our farm relatives picked strawberries, and that that was all they were giving Daddy to eat. Just strawberries, three times a day. My good friend Marion Strong remembers that I was so upset, and so furious, I threw a tantrum unlike any before. I threw plates and pillows, stomped my feet, roared, then wept. She was afraid I’d lost my sanity. “I’ll make it up to Daddy someday!” I vowed loudly. “I’ll show ’em, you’ll see!”

  How I was going to do this, I had no idea. But I knew I couldn’t do it as a soda jerk in Jamestown. So back to New York I went, and this time my luck improved. I moved into an atmosphere of gilded elegance. I became a model at Hattie Carnegie’s internationally famous dress shop on East Forty-ninth Street. Overnight, I found myself in a world of rich society women, glamorous movie stars, and free-spending men-about-town.

  Hattie was born Henrietta Kanengeiser, the daughter of a Viennese immigrant who settled in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. When Hattie opened her first shop, on Tenth Street, she took the name Carnegie in tribute to one of America’s greatest success stories. Her partner, Rosie Roth, whom I got to know very well, designed dresses and Hattie made hats.

  Hattie combined unerring good taste and a shrewd business sense; her shop was a fabulous success right from the start, and she and Rosie moved uptown, nearer the carriage trade. Just a few years before I first went to New York, Hattie bought a brownstone at 42 East Forty-ninth Street. Her salon was lavishly beautiful, with entire rooms of gold-leaf antiques from French châteaux. Hattie was a tiny dynamo, direct and outspoken. She wouldn’t let anyone buy a dress she considered unbecoming. Gertrude Lawrence once spent $22,000 in a single afternoon in her shop. I’m told she would have spent more, but Hattie didn’t approve of some of her choices.

  Hattie taught me how to slouch properly in a $1,000 hand-sewn sequin dress and how to wear a $40,000 sable coat as casually as rabbit. Since I was her youngest and least experienced model, I was soon covered with bruises where she kicked me in the shins to remind me to bend my knees properly, or pinched me in the ribs to make me raise my chest higher. Fiery, volatile Hattie fired me at least once a week, but like all the other models, I responded not to those outbursts but to her great warmth, and loved her.

  Mostly I modeled long, slinky evening gowns and suits, thirty to forty changes a day. With each change I had to slip into matching shoes, whether they were my size or not, and go wobbling out over the ultrathick carpet. By night-time my feet were as swollen and sore as my shins. For this I earned the princely sum of thirty-five dollars a week, good wages back in 1929.

  Connie and Joan Bennett were frequent customers and I lost no time in bleaching my hair the color of Joan’s and imitating her style: flat on top with dippy waves on each side.

  Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, and Ina Claire also came to Hattie’s. I tried to analyze their styles: how they walked and moved their hands and eyes, what they wore, and how they talked. I also scrutinized the Social Register, full of Vanderbilts and Whitneys and Rhinelanders to whom a price tag was just something a maid snipped off a dress. Barbara Hutton bought carloads of clothes. And at the Plaza and St. Regis and Pierre hotels, where we appeared in all the important fashion shows, I learned to recognize all the leading debutantes.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but I was storing up a lot of useful knowledge. An actress must draw upon her own background; what she has lived, seen, and observed. It’s often been pointed out that Ginger Rogers and I can function on any level: high society, middle-class, and street urchin. A superb comedienne like Irene Dunne was only convincing in well-bred parts. Ginger could play a finishing-school girl, a housewife, or Kitty Foyle. I can be as regal as a marquise, if the part calls for it, or peel a potato convincingly.

  By the time I worked for Hattie, I was no longer Diane Belmont, but Lucille Ball. I can’t say that I enjoyed the life of a high-fashion model; I hated the stagnation that sets in when you are just a clotheshorse. At Hattie’s I felt like a well-dressed dummy. But I did get out and see things and meet people for the first time in my life. And some pretty funny things could happen. I remember one time I wore a very tight-fitting Paris import to a horse show at Belmont; all of Long Island society was there, and we models were driven about in a Pierce-Arrow touring car to show off our clothes. My dress was organza, with a hand-painted fish-scale design all over it. A sudden thundershower drenched us, and the fish scales were applied to my skin—all over. I thought I’d be a mermaid permanently.

  As a Hattie Carnegie model, I began meeting some of the rich eligible bachelors in town, like Sailing Baruch, Jr., Pat di Cicco, and Cubby Broccoli. Nightlife in New York then was a wonderful spree. You could dance until dawn in Harlem, watch the sun come up over Central Park, and breakfast in Greenwich Village. There were hundreds of supper shows and nightclubs, and an endless number of big Broadway openings.

  I had the usual proposals, but at eighteen, marriage was the last thing on my mind. I feel sorry for young people today who feel so alone that they have to mate with their first crush. It shocks me that so many young brides are pregnant at the altar. When you have kids late in life, you appreciate them more. They keep you young, an
d you see the world through better eyes. You can give your children a finer sense of values, too, because if you’re lucky, your own values have improved with time.

  But like today’s teenagers, I got little sleep and seldom ate the kind of food my body needed. One winter day, I came down with a bad cold that turned into pneumonia. I stayed in my room restlessly for several days, tossing with fever, but then hurried back to Hattie’s. I needed that thirty-five dollars a week.

  I was standing on the dais for a fitting when suddenly I felt as if both my legs were on fire. The pain was excruciating. Hattie kindly sent me to her own doctor, around the corner on Fifth Avenue. He told me that the pains were arthritic, possibly rheumatoid arthritis. This is an incurable disease which becomes progressively more crippling until the sufferer ends up in a wheelchair for life.

  “You must go to a hospital at once,” Hattie’s doctor told me.

  I did some rapid calculations. “I only have eighty-five dollars to my name,” I told him.

  He then gave me the address of an orthopedic clinic up near Columbia University. That night I sat waiting my turn for three hours while the city’s poor, some of them horribly crippled, went in and out. It was ten o’clock before my turn came.

  The clinic doctor examined me and shook his head. I was by this time crying and half fainting from the pain. He asked if he could try a new and radical treatment, some kind of horse serum, and I said yes, for God’s sake, anything. For several weeks I stayed in my room, and he came and gave me injections; finally, when my money ran out and my legs still were not better, there was nothing left to do but go home to Jamestown. One of my beaux drove me to Grand Central Station and pushed me to the train in a wheelchair. I was discouraged but not terribly frightened. The confidence of the young is truly remarkable.