Ball of Fire (29 page)

With the cast in place, Desi went to William Paley and announced Desilu’s series for the fall:
The Texan,
with Rory Calhoun,
The Ann
Sothern Show,
starring Lucy’s old friend, and
The Untouchables.
The CBS chief agreed to run the first two, but passed on the third. In the first place, Paley grumbled, “What the hell are you going to do after you do Capone?”

Desi replied: “Don’t you know how many crooks you had in this country? We can go on forever telling the stories about all the gangsters.”

“Well, Chico, there is another problem. Paramount is doing a pilot for us about gangsters.”

Insisting emptily that his was better, Desi went hunting for a new home for
The Untouchables.
He found it at ABC. There was yet another hurdle. Desi sensed that an authoritative voice-over, someone from the Capone era, was needed to make the program work. Walter Winchell seemed ideal for the role—except that he was involved in a lawsuit with the network. Moreover, Lucy had never forgiven Winchell his cheap scoop, nearly wrecking her career with news about the Communist Party registration. Yes, she acknowledged, the columnist had backtracked and apologized. But that was only after the public and the President had come to her rescue. Operating under the classic Hollywood motto “I’ll never speak to you again—until I need you,” Desi pointed out, “Look, honey, this is business, so let bygones be bygones.” She allowed herself to be persuaded. ABC grumbled about Winchell, but had no voice in casting.

In the end, everything went Desi’s way. The two-part
Untouchables
performed so well in the ratings that ABC agreed to do it as a series, underwriting thirty-two hour-long episodes, each one bloodier and more violent than the one before. In another extension of the Desilu family, the show would be produced by Quinn Martin, the husband of Madelyn Pugh.

All this time Desi was rolling sevens as a high-stakes gambler and genially telling the press he was a “verry locky Cuban.” He believed that his dark side was out of view. Only occasionally would an article hint that things were less than ideal at Desilu. In one issue
Life
commented, “Sometimes the old worry over playing second-fiddle to Lucy’s fame shows beneath his brashness.” For instance, the story continued, when he bought a champion racehorse the papers paid more attention to Lucy. With derisive attention to Desi’s accent, the magazine offered a quote: “Geez, how do you like that? I pay 31,000 bucks for dees horse, and who gets her peecture on zee front page—my wife.” This was accompanied by a wide smile, as if to indicate that it was all in fun. It was not.

As the anger and resentment mounted, so did the need to go on long alcoholic binges. Desi got too many calories from liquor, and began putting on pounds that he could not diet away. His face was frequently flushed, and instead of making him appear youthful, the hair dye only seemed to accentuate his onrushing middle age. Important documents were brought to Desi in the morning when he was clearheaded. The drinking could begin as early as 10 a.m., and after lunch it was useless to talk to him seriously about contractual matters. That meant involving Lucy in the process, if only to rubber-stamp decisions that had already been made. Not that it mattered; for the most part she was content to leave the big Desilu matters to others. Only on trivial items did she exert her authority, ruling on the commissary menus, and choosing the sites for company picnics. It was another manifestation of her deference to men, something that she could not shake even now. And besides, whenever matters got too complicated, whenever the alcohol and abuse became too much to bear, she could always retreat to the character she had invented: television’s own Lucille Ball.

At the conclusion of the 1956–1957 season, Lucy, Desi, and CBS agreed that they ought to go out on top. There had been a few tight moments: Charles Van Doren’s last two weeks on
Twenty-One
(rigged, as it turned out) had topped Lucy in the ratings. And there were other moments when Desi regretted selling all the past
I Love Lucy
shows to CBS for $4.5 million, a sum that was beginning to look like a bargain for the network. But overall Lucy and Desi had exceeded their most exaggerated hopes. Almost every aspect of popular culture had been influenced by the show. Licensing fees brought them dividends from a syndicated “I Love Lucy” comic strip running in 132 newspapers, and from the sale of a million Little Ricky dolls. Between the Arnazes and the cast there had been more than two hundred awards, including five Emmys and twenty-three Emmy nominations. Only so many changes could be wrung out of the same half-hour format, with the same conniving couples.
I Love Lucy
had even run out of ideas for amusing guest shots, like the visit from Orson Welles, playing Orson Welles, egomaniest magician and Shakespearean ham, or the appearance of George Reeves, TV’s Superman, at Little Ricky’s birthday party. Yet because the public still loved Lucy, Desi devised a scheme to take advantage of this profitable affection: the Ricardos would carry on in semimonthly hour-long episodes. The notion of giving the Mertzes their own spinoff comedy was quickly chloroformed by Vance. She refused to make a half-hour pilot because it would extend her on-camera relationship with Frawley. “Whenever I received a new
I Love Lucy
script,” she declared, “I raced through it, praying that there wouldn’t be a scene where we had to be in bed together.” Desi offered a $50,000 bonus if she would change her mind, but Vance was adamant.

Undeterred, he proposed a dozen new hour-long
Lucy
shows to CBS. The network allowed him to produce five. Each would be sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, which insisted on—and ultimately received—top billing. The first
Ford Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show,
subtitled “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” was partially filmed in Cuba only a week before the Castro revolution. Built around a flashback, the program begins with columnist Hedda Hopper grilling the Ricardos and the Mertzes in Connecticut. How did it all begin? asks the news hen. In a dissolve to the past, Lucy McGillicuddy and her friend Suzy McNamara (Ann Sothern) are seen on a vacation cruise to Havana. Onboard they meet singer Rudy Vallee, and in Cuba Lucy is introduced to the man who will be the love of her life, musician Ricky Ricardo. At a café Lucy tries to persuade Vallee to hire Ricky for his band, thereby bringing him to New York. Lucy’s sales talk is lubricated with booze, and before the evening is finished she and Suzy are arrested for being drunk and disorderly. They just barely get up the gangplank before their boat departs for the States.

Seasoned though they were, the four writers had script trouble. The weekly continuity of the half-hour
Lucy
s had build up an audience of devotees over the years. It needed no “back story” to explain the characters. The one-hour format had to start from square one. Over thirty minutes, observed Bob Schiller, many episodes could be built on one large comedy scene. Not true of the long form, where shows had to have two or three to sustain the humor. In his view, “these were never as successful as the shorter ones, despite larger budgets and longer rehearsal time.”

That was not how Desi saw it, however. To him, the cruise show was a triumph from start to finish: “It was beautifully written and it played great.” The comment was more than hyperbole. He approved the story line and the gags, played straight man with his usual cunning and enthusiasm, oversaw the editing, and pronounced the finished product too impressive to be further reduced. When William Paley called to find out how the show had turned out, Desi assured the CBS chief that it was the best work he and Lucy had ever done. “There’s only one little problem,” he added. “We got an hour and fifteen minutes.” Not to worry, Paley assured him. Simply cut the seventy-five minutes to the appropriate length. No, Desi protested, that wouldn’t do. Paley was willing to meet him halfway: “Well make your opening show an hour and a half and the rest will be an hour.”

“I tried that, too, but it also louses it up. It slows it down here and there. What we’ve got is a great hour and fifteen minutes.”

“Now, Chico, let me explain something to you. Television has fifteen-minute shows, half-hour shows, hour shows, sometimes even hour-and-a-half or two-hour shows, but it does not have any such thing as an hour-and-fifteen-minute show.”

“Well, that’s what we’ve got. Why can’t we get fifteen more minutes from whoever follows us?”

“Right after your hour special comes
The United States Steel Hour.
”

“So tell them to give us fifteen minutes of their time.”

There followed a sulfurous exchange, after which Paley concluded, “You want me to call United States Steel, tell them they’ve got such a lousy show it wouldn’t hurt them any if they give you fifteen minutes of their time.”

“Would you mind if I called them?”

“No, do whatever you want, just make sure you keep me out of it.”

Now all Desi had to do was convince U.S. Steel and Ford to accede to his wishes. Operating with maximum chutzpah, he located the vice president in charge of TV for U.S. Steel. Aware that The United States
Steel Hour
had languished in the ratings, Desi proposed: “You give me fifteen minutes from the front of your show. Instead of you going on at ten o’clock, you go on at ten-fifteen. At the end of our show, at ten-fourteen exactly, I will come on, in person, as Desi Arnaz, not as Ricky, and thank
The United States Steel Hour
for allowing Lucy and me to cut into your time period, tell the audience we have seen your show and it is one of the best dramatic shows we have ever seen, and to make sure to stay tuned for it.”

“Who pays for those fifteen minutes we are going to give up?”

Improvising fluently, Desi declared: “Our sponsor, the Ford Motor Company.”

“You got yourself a deal.”

That he did. And on November 6, 1957, U.S. Steel doubled its rating in the bargain.

The second show, broadcast a month later, did not enjoy the same smooth transition. Originally, Bette Davis was scheduled to be the guest on the program subtitled “The Celebrity Next Door.” She was still lording it over her former classmate from the John Murray Anderson school thirty years before. The movies’ grand dame demanded a $20,000 fee, return airfare to her home in Maine, and, in case anyone doubted her enduring star power, equal billing with the Arnazes. She got them all—and then suffered a horseback riding accident, which aggravated a back injury, broke her arm, and put her out of commission.

Second choice was Tallulah Bankhead. The casting seemed appropriate: Bankhead’s hooting, extravagant style was widely considered the source of Davis’s performance in the 1950 film
All About Eve.
Asked about that movie, Bankhead claimed to bear no ill feelings. “Bette and I are very good friends,” she purred in her distinctive whiskey drawl. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t say to her face—both of them.” This malice, coupled with her dependence on alcohol, made rehearsals a running psychodrama. The actress would arrive at the set promptly at 9:30 a.m. But, complained Desi, “she wouldn’t really wake up until eleven. Between eleven and twelve she was fine. But one p.m., right after lunch, we’d lose her again.”

Lucy was not used to having her orders questioned on the set. Only a few times had she backed down when challenged, and then only when a director asserted himself. Performers never dared to disobey her.

The condition was about to change. Lucy had a way of snapping her fingers and giving line readings to cast members; when she tried that on her guest, Tallulah grabbed her hand and responded before the cast in a distinctive throaty bellow, “Don’t ever do that to me!” Shocked at such a mutinous reply, Lucy could only mumble, “Well, I want you to read the lines right.” “I have been acting for a long time,” Bankhead reminded her. “I know how to read my lines. Don’t give me readings.” With that she walked off the set. The move was just another stagy tantrum; later in the day Bankhead came back and rehearsed as if nothing had happened. But tensions rebuilt over the next week as Tallulah showed up late, blew her lines, and bumped into the furniture.

The night before the actual filming, Desi invited principals, writers, and selected personnel into his office for a drink. There, he felt, last-minute notes could be given in an atmosphere of conviviality, and past difficulties could be smiled away. As the group sat in a circle chatting amiably, Lucy made a special effort to charm. She indicated the crocheted garment Bankhead wore around her shoulders: “I love that sweater.”

“My dahling, take it!” Tallulah practically threw the thing in Lucy’s face, despite her protests. There was a moment of icy silence, broken by Vivan Vance’s cheery remark: “Well, for me, the slacks. I love the slacks.” Tallulah promptly stood up and peeled off her slacks. Anything to oblige. She was not wearing any panties.

Madelyn covered her eyes. Bob Weiskopf jumped from the couch and headed out the door. “Desi, get her a robe!” Lucy yelled. “Get her a robe!”

“Tallulah was all set to sit there with her legs crossed on the floor for the rest of the evening,” recalled Maury Thompson. “Here came Desi with a dressing gown and put it on her and she condescended.” It was no wonder that Lucy chain-smoked up to the time she went on camera for the real performance, and that Desi planned to go on a bender as soon as they wrapped—after the inevitable retakes, of course. What possessed them to hire this aging egomaniac lush in the first place? he wondered.

Tallulah surprised them all. When it counted, she knew every line cold, hit every mark, elicited every laugh. She was so professional that it was Lucy who flubbed words so badly a scene had to be reshot. Later Tallulah told the press, “I’ve got not even one picayune derogatory thing to say about those wonderful people.” That sentence alone should have warned the Arnazes to duck. “Of course,” she went on, “I
did
have pneumonia at the time. And someone nearly blinded me one day at rehearsals with hairspray. But Lucy? She’s divine to work with! And Desi? He’s brilliant. He has a temper, however. But that’s because he’s fat. It worries him.”