Ball of Fire (26 page)

G
ranted a second chance, could Lucille Ball make it big on the big screen? As MGM (and the Arnazes) saw it, the only way was to have her play Lucy Ricardo in disguise—hence the characters and plot of
The Long, Long Trailer.
The scenario by the experienced farceurs Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich sedulously copied the devices of television. A few critics went overboard: the
Newsweek
reviewer thought the comedy made “Mack Sennett look, in retrospect, like a reticent disciple of Ibsen.” But most agreed with the
New York Times
reviewer, who thought the misfortunes of a honeymooning couple in car and trailer little more than an extended episode of
I Love Lucy.
Tacy, the wife, the reviewer wrote, “is a nitwit with a benign and vacant stare, and Nicky, the spouse, is a good sport with more patience than passion—or brains.”
Trailer,
the review continued, “is a comedy of situation—straight situation—from beginning to end, and Vincente Minnelli has directed for nothing but quick, responsive yaks.” These he got in overplus. The film had enough box office magic to open at Manhattan’s most important movie house, Radio City Music Hall, where Lucy made a personal appearance, gushing to the audience about going to the Music Hall in the 1930s. Never, “in my wildest dreams,” she told her fans, “did I imagine that I would one day be on this stage myself.”
The Long, Long Trailer
racked up impressive grosses in New York, then opened nationwide to large crowds. By the end of the year it had earned some $4.5 million and a place among the top twenty moneymaking films of 1954.

Now it was Desi’s turn to go into overdrive. He took charge of pilots for new Desilu shows, reordered schedules, oversaw scripts. As a result he became tired and cranky in the office and on the set, and not everyone indulged him. Jerry Hausner, featured in the pilot for
I Love Lucy
as Ricky’s agent, had been with the show for two seasons. During one episode he was required to speak to Desi on a pay phone. The prop was at one end of the stage; Desi’s phone was at the other. The instruments were supposed to be connected so that the actors could talk in normal voices and actually hear each other on their receivers. At show time the phones were still unconnected. Instead of ranting at the engineers, Desi cursed out Hausner before the cast, crew, and audience. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Hausner. “In all my professional career I had never been treated so badly. I was so upset that I walked over to Jess Oppenheimer and told him I would never again do the show. He understood. It was terrible when Desi and I had to do another scene together in the last act. I found it very difficult looking him in the face.”

Desi paid for his hyperactivity with eye tics, headaches, and bad digestion. Worse things were in store, though a seemingly offhand remark by Frawley helped to delay them temporarily. “Remember when you led a band?” the actor asked between takes. “You just waved a stick and the boys took it from there. Why don’t you develop faith in others?” For an unsubtle man, Frawley showed extraordinary discernment. By using the image of the band, he persuaded the boss to start thinking about delegating authority. Desi began to allow others to take over some of his duties. Morale improved and productivity rose. Among the shows under way at the Desilu studio were
December
Bride,
starring the aging character actress Spring Byington;
Those
Whiting Girls,
with singer Margaret Whiting and her sister Barbara;
Willy,
starring June Havoc;
The Jimmy Durante Show;
and
The Lineup,
a police drama. Some never made it to the screen, others had a half-life of one season.
December Bride
made up for them all, placing among prime time’s Top Ten for five years. Desilu would do 229 half-hour shows in 1954. According to Desi’s calculations, this would be the equivalent of some eighty feature films.

The pressure of the schedule showed on everyone. Desi and Lucy maintained a façade of mutual satisfaction. Their employees went along with it, but privately they noticed that Desi’s face bore unusually deep lines for a man under forty, and that his hair was dyed jet-black to cover the premature gray. The marriage was correspondingly strained; asked about it, Lucy cheerfully told reporters that the couple’s domestic arguments were used as material for the show, and that running Desilu was their substitute for counseling. And besides, she added, with a long-running program, plus two children to raise, she had no time to waste fretting.

Those children were shadow figures to most of the Desilu personnel—and in a sense to Lucy and Desi. After yearning so hard and so long for children, neither seemed willing to assume the duties of parenthood. In later years Lucie was to remark that her mother and father were “never as happy as when they were working. They weren’t home. I was raised by my nanny, Willie Mae Barker, and my mother’s mother, DeDe.” Barker saw Lucie and Desi IV off to school, reminded them to brush their teeth and clean their rooms, and drove them to pediatricians’ appointments. DeDe took them shopping for clothes. As for Desi: “He didn’t come to my fifth-grade father-daughter dance—my uncle did. Do you think I’ve ever forgotten that?” Weekends were another matter; then Desi and Lucy were very much in evidence, but more as lawgivers than as hands-on parents. Lucie concluded: “I think they would have loved to have been the Ricardos. But they weren’t.”

In fact, during its fourth season more attention was spent on the show than on the kids. It needed intensive care.
I Love Lucy
was running out of ideas, as the critics were the first to notice. In the
New York
Herald Tribune,
John Crosby complained: “Miss Ball is always trying to bust out of the house; Arnaz is trying to keep her in apron strings. The variations on the theme are infinite, but it’s the same theme and I’m a mite tired of it.” Across town, Jack Gould, his counterpart on the
New
York Times,
regretfully noted a surfeit of “the most pedestrian and sophomoric slapstick.” Perhaps, he ventured, “
Lucy
has run its course and has no choice but to press too hard.”

The public disagreed, and ratings remained high. Even so, the president and vice president of Desilu knew that there was a great deal of truth in the newspaper laments. So did their producer and writers. A pair of seasoned writers, Robert Schiller and Robert Weiskopf, were brought in to assist Pugh and Carroll. The new men did the first draft, then the veterans rewrote it. A difficult period of adjustment ensued until Desi made a fortunate error. Examining a script, he barked at Jess Oppenheimer, “Jesus, I don’t know if you chose the right ones, these two guys.” Recalled Weiskopf: “But Bob and Madelyn had written it. That really saved our necks.” To give
I Love Lucy
a fresh look, it was decided to “open up” the show and take it on the road. The Ricardos became a little more affluent—as did a preponderance of their listeners in the mid-1950s—and many episodes took them out of Manhattan. A series of famous guests made cameo appearances, boosting the ratings and giving the program a glamorous undertone.

Driving to California, for example, the Ricardos and the Mertzes are caught in a speed trap and forced to stay in Bent Fork, Tennessee. There they run into the popular folk singer “Tennessee Ernie” Ford. (In some of the crowd scenes was a bit player named Aaron Spelling, who carefully observed the way Desi ran things. Much would be heard of him in the ensuing decades.) When the couples reach their destination, Los Angeles, Lucy manages to meet, among other film stars, Cornel Wilde, Rock Hudson, Van Johnson, Harpo Marx, and William Holden.

The Holden episode, “L.A. at Last,” was to become a favorite with devotees. At the Brown Derby restaurant, Lucy argues rudely with the star, who is dining alone at an adjoining booth. Later, Ricky brings a new friend to the Ricardos’ hotel suite—William Holden. In the next room, Lucy, embarrassed to be revealed as the offender, hastily disguises herself with kerchief, glasses, and a false nose. She enters. The script called for Holden to light her cigarette, and for the nose to burn up. It took Oppenheimer a full week to convince Lucy that the whole prop would not burst into flames, that only the tip was flammable. The makeup man, he remembered, “used a putty nose that wouldn’t burn and placed a candlewick in it, just to ensure her safety. Still, Lucy was extremely nervous about it all through the rehearsal and during the final shooting, and we all held our breath. When her putty nose caught fire, the script called for her to remove it and dunk it in her cup of coffee. Lucy ad-libbed and picked up the cup with both hands, dunking the end of her putty nose while it was still attached. It was an inspired moment, entirely hers.”

In the episode built around Harpo Marx, conditions were reversed. Lucy had adored the comedian since they first met in 1937 on the set of
Room Service.
She was delighted to welcome him to her own show, where the two of them would reenact the famous mirror sequence done by Harpo and Groucho in
Duck Soup.
Lucy had forgotten that Harpo never repeated his motions. Each time, he added some new business. “That was deadly for this episode,” recalled Maury Thompson, “because she had to be his mirror image. This is one occasion where we had to reshoot a scene over and over again after the audience left.” When the routine was finally completed, Lucy threw a party; Harpo played his instrument and Vivian Vance sang pop tunes. Harpo was to look back on the occasion with nostalgia and rue: “I hadn’t worked for a while before this show, because I’d had a heart attack.” His physicians advised against the appearance, but Harpo wanted to get back onstage. “Lucille loved to rehearse, but I had done this stuff for thirty-five years. I had a great time. Right after the show, I had another heart attack.”

For all their comic qualities, these Hollywood episodes displayed an unattractive schizoid character. So strong was Lucy’s television persona that to most viewers she had become a member of the family. For them, nothing could violate the image of Mrs. Ricardo as an insular and naive housewife, forever attempting to worm her way into small-time show business. On the new programs Lucy continued to be presented as the ultimate celebrity freak, dumbstruck by the superstars she met. At the same time, the audience knew very well that Lucille Ball was herself a superstar, very much on a par with the likes of “Tennesse Ernie” or Van Heflin. This collision of fancy and fact tended to unbalance the show, and for the first time
I Love Lucy
took on a forced, artificial quality.

Still, the fans continued to tune in every Monday night, and as a result of their loyalty the ratings stayed astronomical. No one was willing to kill the golden goose quite yet. But it was time to start looking elsewhere for income and fame.

The Arnazes signed with MGM to do another picture,
Forever Darling,
with Desi in the dual role of actor and producer, under the banner of Zanra—“Arnaz” spelled backward. The script had been lying around for twelve years. Scenarist Helen Deutsch, whose credits included
I’ll
Cry Tomorrow
and
King Solomon’s Mines,
had shaped her work for the talents of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Carroll and Pugh (uncredited onscreen) did what they could to retool the plot and comedy for their employers, but
Forever Darling
remained an inappropriate vehicle and the principals seemed uncomfortable in their roles as research chemist Lorenzo Xavier Vega and his bitchy wife Susan. The cast was not materially aided by Al Hall, Lucy’s friend from the old studio days. According to Desilu executive Bernie Weitzman, Hall “was an old-time director who couldn’t get a job with anybody else. Lucy made him the director because she liked him and he was nice to her when she was a nobody.” The good deed did not go unpunished.

Desi’s great concern was bringing in the picture under budget, and that goal, at least, was accomplished—the film was completed several days ahead of schedule at a cost of less than the agreed-upon $1.4 million. That ended the virtues of
Forever Darling.
Radio City Music Hall management judged it to be inadequate in style and substance. The next best option was the déclassé Loew’s State Theatre, where the film opened early in 1956.

This time out, critics treated Lucy and Desi with open disdain. Bosley Crowther of the
New York Times
was among the kindest when he only poked holes in the “thin, overdrawn, weak caper” of a couple “whose once-rosy marriage has deteriorated into bickering and boredom and then is saved through the intervention of the lady’s ‘guardian angel.’ ” He found James Mason, as the angel, a good deal more convincing than the earthly characters. Crowther concluded: “ ‘We had something that slipped away from us,’ one of the disconsolate principals says early in the proceedings. A truer phrase was never coined.” In later years Lucy acknowledged that the film was an unqualified dog, but she was also quick to say that the effort was worthwhile. “As corny as it sounds,” she was to allow, “that movie was more than just a dumb fantasy. I kept hoping that
something
would come along and save my marriage.”

No feature could have worked that miracle, but at least
Forever Darling
brought Lucy back to Jamestown, where she could introduce Desi to her girlhood friends for the first and last time. Some 25,000 fans turned out to greet the Arnazes, standing in a cold rainstorm for the privilege. Desi turned on the charm and kept it going for three days. During a party arranged by press agents, Lucy went around the room trying to recognize classmates she had not seen in more than a generation. There was some trouble identifying the guests by name, but in most cases she could recall something specific: “Your mother kept a red bowl on the sideboard.” “You had a green bicycle.” The last person in line, she wrote in her autobiography, was “a short, bald, sweet-faced man. He looked up shyly while my old friend Pauline Lopus smiled impishly by my side. I kept looking at this stranger, totally mystified. At last Pauline burst out, ‘That’s Vinnie.’