Eleanor Harris - The Real Story of Lucille Ball

This edition is published by Papamoa Press www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books papamoapress@gmail.com

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1954 under the same title.

Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

Cover image courtesy of Pierre Touigny on Flickr.

THE REAL STORY OF LUCILLE BALL

by

ELEANOR HARRIS

Contents

Actually, says Eleanor Harris, it was I who was interviewing Lucille while Desi was desperately trying to get her attention long enough to propose. It was the first of many articles which Miss Harris was to do on the Arnaz family throughout the years for such magazines as Look , McCalls , and The Readers Digest .

I grew up in Beverly Hills. My familythere were seven of uswere called the Flying Harrises (like one of those trapeze families or something), because we all wrote. We lived in a crazy house which someone described as the Thief of Bagdad set, with a roof on it. Just before I got out of Stanford University, I made a bet with another student that I could get a job as a junior writer within a week after I graduated. I did, too: at Twentieth Century Fox, but I didnt like writing movies. I didnt have what another writer called the killer instinct.

So I took the money I made on one of the pictures ( Brigham Young ), and came to New York. When it ran out, I started writing articles. The first one I wrote was sold to Cosmopolitan. It was called Dont Stop, Dont Look, Just Marry. When the editors of a textbook on magazine writing asked to include it in their forthcoming book, I thought it was a gag. But they printed it. And it took me only two hours to write! Since 1947, though, Ive become conscientious about writing articles, and they began to sell steadily. Miss Harriss profiles on such people as Adlai Stevenson, Princess Margaret, and just about every actor or actress you could mention have appeared in most of the major magazines.

IN THE YEAR 1953 the United States was fascinated by three televised news events: while more than twenty nine million Americans watched on television, Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as the first Republican president in twenty years.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Elizabeth was crowned Queen of Englandwith almost thirty-three million Americans following the coronation on television.

However, the third event topped both of these in national interest: it was the birth of a baby son in a Hollywood hospital to actress Lucille Ball (in private life Mrs. Desi Arnaz). The child was born on the morning of January 19, 1953. That night, over forty-four million Americans turned on their television sets to watch the fictionalized account of the boys birth on the program I Love Lucy . In this comedy program the Number One show in U.S. popularity for the astonishing period of two and a half years now Lucille Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz, act the roles of a married couple named Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. So closely do the fictionalized lives of the Ricardos resemble the real lives of the Amazes that baby Ricky Ricardo, Jr. was born on the same day as Desi Arnaz, IV.

But this was not all: the real babys birth was reported on the front pages of newspapers all over the worldmaking him the most publicized child ever born in the United States of America.

Says a spokesman for the giant Associated Press, The birth of no other American baby has ever been so thoroughly covered. We did it on a wartime basis, with hourly bulletins sent to newspapers around the world....Why? Because, thanks to her fabulously successful television show, the babys mother, Lucille Ball, had become one of the most famous women on the face of the globe.

The redheaded comedienne was by no means done with making headlines in the year 1953.

In September, eight months after Americas most publicized baby had been born, she created a different kind of headlines. They rocked the country: she was accused of having had Communist leanings in 1936, seventeen years earlier. These shock headlines were immediately followed by soothing ones: she was completely cleared by the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities (It was during this tumult that her husband coined the now-famous line, The only thing red about Lucy is her hairand even that isnt legitimate!) By November, the episode was so thoroughly finished that she and Desi Arnaz performed at the Anti-Defamation League show in the nations capital before an audience that included the nine Judges of the Supreme Court and President Eisenhower himself.

All of her headlined adventures were read with startled attention by Hollywoodites who had known her for twenty years.

Life really began for her at forty, says one close friend. She was forty when, for the first time, she became at once a skyrocket success and a mother. Both miracles happened simply because she was trying to make a success of a marriage that most of us had always thought a bad mistake. But she loved the guy. For years now, her biggest aim in life has been to make him happy.

Certainly it is true that the famed show I Love Lucy would never have been possible if Lucille Ball had not married Desi Arnaz. It came into being only because Lucy insisted on co-starring with her husband, a successful Cuban band leader, who longed to act but who had been unable to get an acting job in years. How did her faith in him work out?...Given his chance in I Love Lucy , Desi Arnaz proved himself a delightful actor and, behind the camera, he became a top-flight executive. In the past two years he has built from nothing two brilliantly staffed corporations based on the I Love Lucy show; from them, he and Lucille earned a 1953 net income estimated at over $1,500,000 before taxes.

Hollywoodites chorus in astonishment, Lucy was right all along about Desi! Then a few voices cant resist adding spitefully, But whod have guessed it except Lucy?

She herself says thoughtfully, By this time Im convinced that everything in life happens for a purpose, even though sometimes it takes a long time to find that purpose. I believe that Desi and I werent ready to be a team until the past two or three yearseither as actors or parents. I believe that when the right time came, we were given everything wed ever longed for....Luck? I dont know anything about luck. Ive never banked on it, and Im afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard workand realizing what is opportunity and what isnt.

Actually, for the past third of her life the real story of Lucille Ball has been substantially a love story. During the whole of her lifetime, its heroine possessed a marvelous kind of gaietyand plenty of old-fashioned guts.

But a casual meeting with her would reveal none of these facts. At forty-two, Lucy is a graceful, long-legged woman who looks ten years younger than she is. She is unhappily resigned to public knowledge of her age. One of the biggest mistakes I made when I first came to Hollywood was telling my agenobody else does, she sighs. Her 132-pound body stands five feet six inches tall, and topping it is one of the most pertly charming faces in the country.