Love, Lucy Page 7

  Roman Scandals was one of United Artists’ biggest musical extravaganzas of 1933. The Depression hit Hollywood hard at first, but since movie tickets cost only fifty cents, the movie industry suffered less than the Broadway theater. By 1933 people were happy to plunk down half a dollar to forget temporarily the grim bread lines and bank closings.

  In addition to Eddie Cantor, Roman Scandals had Ruth Etting, Gloria Stuart, Alan Mowbray, and Edward Arnold. Cantor was the emperor’s food taster in the times of the Roman Empire. The fresh and funny script was written by George Kaufman and Robert Sherwood; the songs included the tuneful “Keep Young and Beautiful” and “Build a Little Home.” According to one reviewer, Roman Scandals was “photographed lavishly and set with considerable taste. Eddie is surrounded by beautiful girls who seem in their languid splendor to have stepped out of a frame devised by the late Florenz Ziegfeld.”

  Languid may have been how we appeared; exhaustion was the cause. They used very large sets with tremendous casts and many, many klieg lights. And this was in July. The lights were terribly dangerous in those days and detrimental to your eyes. When the director yelled, “Okay, hit the lights!” everyone knew it was time to look down. If you looked directly at the lights, you got a piercing, knife-like pain in your head; so you looked at the floor until your eyes got adjusted. Even so, we Goldwyn Girls all went to bed with raw potato poultices on our eyes, those klieg lights burned our eyeballs so.

  In one particular scene we slave girls were high up in a rotunda, chained by our wrists, in the nude supposedly, while the slave traders with long black whips walked around below, picking out the girls they wanted. We wore long hemp wigs, which came to our knees, with a few scraps of chiffon underneath.

  In those days there were no definite working hours. We slaved all day, and sometimes until three in the morning. We’d come to the studio at six a.m., get body makeup on, and then get chained up in the rotunda. Shooting didn’t always start right away, and they didn’t get you down between shots because that was too much trouble. One particular time, they had left us up there several hours and some of us weren’t feeling too well . . . this had been going on for weeks. Suddenly I fainted and fell. The fake chains holding my wrists gave way and I started to fall toward those bare burning klieg lights below. There was a scramble and one of the slave drivers, Dewey Robinson, a big, bulky, wonderful man, caught me just before I hit those sizzling lamps. It scared the hell out of me, but otherwise I was fine.

  Yet as rough as the hours and conditions were, the food was terrific. For the emperor’s banquet scenes, a catering service wheeled into the studio whole hot roasted pigs, barbecued baby lamb, sides of juicy beef, and mountains of fruit and pastry. It was the most delicious food I’d ever tasted in my entire life. I especially enjoyed the “ostrich eggs.” These were real ostrich eggshells filled with rich, creamy custard. Maybe I was just hungry for real food after all those doughnuts; I gobbled that stuff up day after day while the camera ground and the lights frizzled my rope wig, until I became horribly sick to my stomach. It was years before I could touch custard again.

  One of the worst things the studio people did was shave off my eyebrows. We were all trying to look like Jean Harlow. Now God forbid that I should ever find myself on a desert island without an eyebrow pencil. It’s the first thing I reach for every morning. The only girl I know who managed to grow hers back again was Ginger Rogers, and even then it took her years.

  Roman Scandals was supposed to be filmed in six weeks, but it stretched into six months. I loved everything about moviemaking: the money, meeting so many different kinds of people, the high excitement of each day, the fantastic talent of the technicians who could put the Colosseum on a thirty-foot stage. But my movie career might have ended there, and I’d have been a fifty-dollar-a-week model in New York again, except for another remarkable stroke of good luck.

  One day a light, graceful young man came on the set and called to me, “Hello, Lucille!” Then he introduced himself as Russell Markert and reminded me that we had already met in New York. He was going to be the choreographer for a big film, Moulin Rouge, starring Constance Bennett and Franchot Tone. Russell was visiting the Roman Scandals set to see if he could pick some showgirls for his film. Now, I’ve got long legs and a sense of rhythm, but a tin ear when it comes to distinguishing musical measures. Russell knew I’d never be a Ruby Keeler, but he said he could teach me what was required. And so, just as Roman Scandals was through, the Goldwyn Girls were loaned out en masse to Darryl Zanuck at 20th Century–Fox.

  That’s the way it worked back then. Sometimes I’d be loaned out and I didn’t even know what the movie was about or who was in it. I wouldn’t even know the title. I’d just show up at the studio at a certain hour, walk through a scene, maybe say one line. I never knew I was in Broadway Through a Keyhole with Russ Columbo until a few weeks ago, when I saw the film for the first time.

  Life was hectic but the money was good. I thought I was doing great until Russell Markert impressed upon me the necessity of saving. You don’t have to start a savings account with a thousand dollars, he used to tell me. You can start with one dollar. On his advice, I put twenty-five dollars into the bank every payday. Otherwise, he said, I would never survive the parched periods between pictures. By this time, I was determined to stay in Hollywood. I would do what I could to make sure I’d survive the long haul.

  Under Russell Markert’s prodding, I bought a bicycle to save taxi fare. I enjoyed pedaling through the rosy dawn, past the little white bungalows, each with its garden of pink camellias and purple bougainvillea. I pictured my poor family back in New York City in their grimy walk-up flat and pictured myself, too, back in the modeling business.

  I worked long, hard hours without complaint, but some nights after hours of dance rehearsals my legs would really ache. One evening as Russell was walking along Hollywood Boulevard, a yellow cab shot past him with a familiar-looking green bicycle on the running board. He then recognized me at the wheel and the cabbie in the backseat with a disgruntled expression, both arms out the window hanging on to the bicycle. After a sixteen-hour day, I found that the bike ride home was just too much.

  One of my few extravagances was to telephone DeDe in New York. I’d say hello and then start to bawl. After three minutes of this, DeDe would start worrying about the charges and she’d hang up. I told them they were all coming to Hollywood just as soon as I’d saved up their fares. And that week I’d try very hard to save an extra five or ten dollars.

  It was in Hollywood that I finally got Johnny out of my system. The reason was another older man, a handsome, sophisticated matinee idol of the London and New York stage. Ralph Forbes was about thirty and had just been divorced from Ruth Chatterton. He could play Ibsen or Noël Coward. He was terribly British, and so was his whole family; they impressed the hell out of me. But when he proposed, I cooled off in a hurry. I just couldn’t picture myself in his rarefied British atmosphere. I’m not the crooked-finger-and-teacup type. Ralph had wealth, fame, talent, looks—why would he need me? I was more than half in love with him, but I managed to turn him down. Almost immediately he eloped to Yuma with a young British actress, Heather Angel, and that abrupt switch convinced me that I had made the right decision.

  I decided to forget about romance and to concentrate on my career. In rapid succession I had brief walk-on parts in Murder at the Vanities, Bottoms Up, and Affairs of Cellini. While making one Goldwyn picture I had a cough, and as we did our dance routine I kept hacking. Finally, Busby Berkeley glowered at me and said, “Please!” and I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.” I probably had a 103-degree temperature as well. Somebody handed me some cough syrup and I gulped down half the bottle, unaware of its codeine content. Then I crept into the wings and fell asleep. I slept so soundly that it was hours before they found me. Mr. Goldwyn never forgot that, because I held up production for such a long time.

  After I had been in Hollywood for about a year, I went back east f
or a short visit. I stayed with Grandma Peterson in her narrow, dark little house in Jamestown where I had been so miserable as a child. My stepfather Ed was living with her then. He was not working and was very glad to see me; my Hollywood “success” pleased him. I told him how much his encouragement years before had meant to me.

  In Hollywood, of course, I was still an unknown, but in Jamestown the newspapers made a big thing out of the premiere of Roman Scandals. “Jamestown’s own Lucille Ball,” the ads ran, with a full-length picture of me, mostly big eyes and that knee-length wig. Overnight I found myself a local celebrity.

  The Jamestown Journal sent a reporter to interview me at Grandmother’s. He asked how the twelve Goldwyn Girls were doing, and I told him that in one short year, eight had vanished. Here’s what eventually happened to them: One married an English lord, another became the mistress of a Texas cattle king (and ultimately bore him four children), and a third became the lifelong mistress of another fabulously wealthy man. A fourth Goldwyn Girl of 1933 lived high and handsomely, then died of tuberculosis in the charity ward of a Hollywood hospital. Four others were happily married and raised families.

  Back in Hollywood after my brief trip east, I got showgirl parts in a Bulldog Drummond film, Nana, and The Bowery. In all these pictures I was just part of the scenery, strolling past the camera in chiffon and feathers. Friends kept telling me: “You should be in comedy.” I burned to get some real acting experience, so when I was offered a stock contract at Columbia, I jumped at the chance.

  I took the slapstick parts the other starlets spurned, and never whined about the siphon water and pies in the face. I considered myself lucky to be paid while learning a business I adored.

  We often worked past midnight. I did whatever was asked of me. My wages at Columbia were seventy-five dollars a week. Each payday I dropped into the bank across the street and added to my survival account. After Freddy graduated from high school, he came out and found a job at the Trocadero supper club. Together we rented a small furnished bungalow on Ogden Drive in Hollywood for eighty-five dollars a month and spent every spare moment fixing it up in anticipation of DeDe and Daddy’s arrival.

  One of the biggest stars at Columbia in those days was Ann Sothern, who was known for her extravagance and good taste. She was also loved for her generous heart. One day I got up enough courage to ask her advice about fixing up our little rented house. I was a nobody on the lot, yet she took the time to come over. She arrived in a blue Alfa Romeo with a uniformed chauffeur and dripped up the walk in a full-length mink. I was in dungarees and a bandanna scrubbing the floor. The place was a hodgepodge of patterned wallpaper, scuffed floors, and broken-down furniture. Ann raised her delicately arched eyebrows, and very kindly advised me to cover everything possible with white enamel paint, and later add ruffly white curtains and fluffy blue scatter rugs. She knew we had only pennies to spend, but thanks to her good taste, the place became fresh and sparkling, a blue and white dollhouse.

  Finally, Freddy and I were ready. So excited I could hardly talk, I phoned DeDe and told her to make reservations on the Super Chief. I hung up and ten minutes later the studio called to say that I’d been fired. Columbia was giving up its stock company and we had all been laid off! Forever!

  That night I had a date with a wonderful boy, Dick Green, whose brother was Johnny Green, the songwriter. “Well, I lost my job,” I told him. “How do you like that? Out of the clear blue sky.”

  “There’s a showgirl call at RKO at nine o’clock tonight,” he told me. “Say, did you ever model at Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York?”

  When I said no, I hadn’t, Dick told me, “Well, say you did, because Bernard Newman’s picking the models.”

  The name meant nothing to me. I said okay, and went right over to RKO. They liked my height and my manner, and so I was called into the front office. Mr. Newman asked me if I had worked for Bergdorf Goodman and I said, oh my, yes, and when he pressed me for details, I gave him a lot of phony dates.

  He kept saying, “Really?” and, “That’s very interesting,” and finally he said, “Well, I know you’re telling a great white lie because I was at Bergdorf’s that whole time and I never laid eyes on you.” Then he added with a twinkle, “But you’ve got the job.”

  After that we became great friends, and are to this day. I look Berny up every time I go to New York but he never lets me forget how I fibbed my way into Roberta. This was my second major break, for it led to a three-month contract which stretched into seven years.

  The next day I phoned home and told DeDe the bad news about losing my job. “Come anyway,” I said, “but come by bus.”

  George Raft was then going with Virginia Peine, a friend of mine, and we often double-dated. When George heard that my family was arriving in Hollywood, that generous man insisted upon lending me his car and sixty-five dollars to welcome them in style. We could hardly greet the folks on bicycles. So in great glee, Freddy and I rolled off to the bus terminal in style.

  When DeDe saw the little white bungalow on Ogden Drive in Hollywood, she burst into tears. This was one of the few times I ever saw her give way to her feelings. She came prepared to find work as a saleslady, armed with many written recommendations, but I put my foot down. Her working days were over, I told her.

  In the warm sunshine, Daddy seemed to regain some of his old jaunty spirit. The milkman, the trash collector, the retired people on the block all became his fast friends, drinking coffee with him and listening to his political harangues in the garage. This was Daddy’s workshop and also his office, complete with a desk and a couple of old chairs. I really think we added ten years to his life by moving him to California. And DeDe’s migraine headaches eventually vanished.

  Keeping that household afloat was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I cherished every minute of it. It was tough going financially at times—I was earning only fifty dollars a week at RKO, and Freddy was making about the same—but it gave me a real purpose in life. I felt wanted and needed, and I was grateful to have the family together again.

  Each morning I’d get up at six to reach the RKO studios on Gower Street by seven. The long, low plaster buildings of the old RKO lot house Desilu Studios today. In fact, the same guard greets me at the front gate. When he says, “Hello, Lucy,” these mornings, he reminds me that as an eager young starlet I disliked that nickname. My idols were Carole Lombard and Katharine Hepburn. I could visualize Lucille on theater marquees, but not Lucy.

  So I wound up as a showgirl in Roberta, modeling clothes. The movie starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the hottest song-and-dance team in Hollywood.

  One of the clichés of Hollywood is “Behind every successful actress are a hairdresser and a mother.” Hairdressers come and go, but Ginger Rogers had only one fabulous mother, a woman who played mother to many of us as we worked our way up. Pandro Berman once remarked that Lela Rogers charged about the set like a mother rhinoceros protecting her young. Lela was petite, dynamic, practical, and shrewd. She was also quite as sexy and beautiful as her daughter. One way or another, Lela Rogers generally got her own way.

  Her daughter was her Galatea, a star she created. Ginger was just another bright-faced kid from Texas with one Broadway show under her belt when she came to RKO. She was not a great dancer and she couldn’t sing or act. She had to learn all these things and at the same time keep up with a great performer, Fred Astaire, who was also one of the hardest taskmasters on earth. Fred would practice one dance step—which would take about four seconds on the screen—for three hours or more. He expected the same perfection from Ginger. They’d dance sixteen, eighteen hours a day, until their feet were literally bleeding.

  Lela had started Ginger on the vaudeville circuit when she was barely fourteen. Lela wrote her a new act every week, including songs and dances, and made her costumes on a portable sewing machine. She was her daughter’s press agent, business manager, and schoolteacher as well.

  When I knew them, Lela was still k
eeping Ginger hopping with lessons of all kinds: painting, sculpture, tennis; geography, history, and the Great Books. Lela was great on improving Ginger, or any of us who happened to be lucky enough to be around.

  Ginger and Fred had little in common and battled through every picture, yet moviegoers found them one of the great romantic teams of all time. Hollywood at first didn’t know what to make of Fred. He was skinny, balding, and treated girls like a kindly uncle. He had been in Flying Down to Rio with Dolores Del Rio. She wasn’t a good dancer and was heavy at that time. Fred thought the finished movie was a bomb, so the studio decided to get him another girl and add some dance scenes. Fred asked for Ginger, having helped her in New York with some of her dance routines in Girl Crazy as a favor to George Gershwin. So a small part was added to Flying Down to Rio for Ginger, and overnight she and Fred were a hit. The Gay Divorcee followed.

  Lela used to say that Ginger was Fred’s best dancing partner because she imitated his body movements. When he danced with other girls, they took off and did their own kind of dancing. Ginger had no style of her own, so she borrowed Fred’s. Then, to make him appear romantic, she never took her eyes off him. He gave her class as a dancer, and she gave him romantic appeal.