Ball of Fire (24 page)

“Lucy Is Enceinte” ushered in a new period of television history. The very title indicated the inhibitions of 1950s television. Not only was the word “pregnant” expunged from dialogue, it could not be shown in the title. Nevertheless, for those who had an inkling of French, episode 45 announced that Lucy was with child. The script indicated how heavily the writers depended on the star’s pantomimic skills. According to their stage directions, Lucy practices breaking the news to Ricky: “She puts her arms around an imaginary neck. This will be facing her away from the cameras toward the back of the set, which is the way this particular scene should be played, considering that Lucy has more talent in the back of her neck than most performers have in their whole bodies.” The script called for Desi to be so elusive that Lucy finally decides to break the news to him in public, at the Tropicana.

RICKY

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. The next number— (
The
maitre d’ walks onto the floor and hands Ricky a note.
To audience
) Pardon me. (
He
reads the note
) Oh, isn’t this sweet. “Dear Mr. Ricardo: My husband and I are going to have a blessed event. I just found out about it today and I haven’t told him yet. I heard you sing a number called ‘We’re Having a Baby, My Baby and Me.’ If you will sing it for us now, it will be my way of breaking the news to him.” (
To
audience
) Oh, isn’t that wonderful? I have an idea. I think they ought to come right up here on the floor and I’ll sing it to them. (
The
audience applauds
) Come on—who sent me the note? (
He
is looking around the
room
) Come on. We just want to wish you luck. (
He
starts
walking toward the tables and the piano player starts playing“Rock-a-Bye Baby.” To first table on the side
) Was it you? (
The
couple giggles and shakes their heads “No.”
Ricky starts to sing along with the piano and ask with his
eyes as he comes to each table.
Singing
) . . . in the treetop. Etc. Etc. (
He
sees an elderly couple—the woman is
95.
He
starts to ask with his eyes and quickly turns to the next
table. As he is doing this Lucy comes in and sits at the
empty table. Ricky sees her when she gets to the table, gives
her a pantomime “Hi” between the words of the song, and,
as though this were a big joke, asks her, with his eyes and
expression, “You?” Lucy slowly nods her head “Yes.” Ricky
gives her a wink, starts to look away as he sings the next
verse of the song and then does a tremendous take.
What???! Lucy again shakes her head “Yes.” Ricky rushes
back to the table, sits down next to her, and has a hurried
whispered consultation with her. Whisper
) Lucy, you aren’t kidding?

LUCY

No, I’ve been trying to tell—

RICKY

Why didn’t you tell—

LUCY

You didn’t give me a chance—

RICKY

Oh, darling. (
He
kisses her
)

That is not quite the way the scene played out. Historian Geoffrey Mark Fidelman notes in
The Lucy Book
that Desi flubbed the song lyrics and when he arrived at Lucy’s table, a strange thing happened. Recalled Jess Oppenheimer, “suddenly they remembered their own real emotions when they discovered that at last they were going to be parents, and both of them began crying. We had to yell at Desi to keep going and do the baby song.”

Lucy and Desi were not the only ones to wipe tears from their eyes. DeDe and Lolita attended this performance, and they cried as well. Asher, who welled up despite his stony expression, called for a retake. The audience, who had been weeping along with the others, cried out “No!” A second version was shot anyway, with the lyrics well articulated and the conclusion dry-eyed. The scene was crisp, well-timed, funny, and utterly bogus. Desilu bowed to the audience’s judgment. For all the flaws, the first take had a validity and tenderness no second performance could hope to reproduce.

By episode 46 CBS had relented enough to allow the P-word to be used in the title “Pregnant Women Are Unpredictable,” and shows thereafter featured a cascade of predictable jokes about unusual cravings (ice cream and sardines was a favorite), and other instances of whimsical behavior. By episode 47 the condition of the star was beyond hiding. In “Lucy’s Show Biz Swan Song” she persuades Ethel to join her in a rendition of “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” featuring Mrs. Ricardo in a hoop skirt with pantaloons that drop on cue. Later in the show, Fred, Ethel, Ricky, and Lucy join in a barbershop rendition of “Sweet Adeline,” with Lucy flatting most of her notes.

In his meticulous survey of every episode of
I Love Lucy,
Fidelman notes that the final commercial in that show was done by Philip Morris chief Alfred Lyons himself. “In it he practically blackmails the audience (whom he claims now number 32 million) with the notion that if more cigarettes are not purchased, the show (which is seen by more people than any other entertainment in show business history) might not be on the air much longer.” Lyons’s ominous message did not go unchallenged. Within days
Variety
reminded Philip Morris and the Biow agency: “Lucy is being paid for just one thing—to deliver an audience, which it is doing at the lowest cost per thousand viewers. If P. Morris can’t sell this vast audience there’s something wrong with the selling copy or the cigarette and certainly not with
Lucy.
”

Episode 47 was also notable for Lucy’s persistent, big, blue-eyed stare. At this stage of her pregnancy she tired easily. As exhaustion took over, her left eyelid had a tendency to droop. To counteract the appearance of fatigue she kept her penciled eyebrows at a high crescent, and the look of astonishment became the most photographed of Lucy’s trademark expressions. In addition, “Swan Song” was notable for the nonstop acrimony between the second leads. Vivian Vance, still steaming years later, spoke of Frawley’s inability to get the joke. He “insisted that he do the repeats in the ‘Sweet Adeline’ number, and somehow it became my job to pull him aside, and set him straight. I told him that Lucille was the star, and it would be funnier if she did them. He got loud with me, so I told him to shut up and that we had to do this thing the way we rehearsed it. He finally calmed down, but he growled at me, ‘You know what she’s going to sound like, don’t you? Like putting a shovel full of shit on baked Alaska.’ Which was exactly what she was
supposed
to sound like, but his ego couldn’t see it that way.”

As the countdown to January 19 continued, vital decisions had to be made. What would be the sex of Lucy’s onscreen baby? What was to be its name? In the days before amniocentesis all that could be determined was that the real Lucy would give birth on a Monday, the same night as her show. She hoped for a boy, and Desi was keen to have one even if the boy was fictive. “Look,” he told Oppenheimer, “Lucy gave me one girl. She might give me another. This is my only chance to be sure I get a son. You give me a boy on TV.” Thus it was decided that Mr. and Mrs. Ricardo would be the parents of Ricky Jr. no matter what happened in the maternity ward.

Feeling very much like “a cumulus cloud in a cloak,” Lucy went into Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on the evening of January 18. The following morning she was taken to surgery and given a spinal anaesthetic, allowing her to remain conscious during the cesarean. Since this was turning out to be the most anticipated blessed event since the birth of Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain, hundreds of journalists lobbied to attend. After lengthy consultations with Desilu, a single reporter, Jim Bacon of the Associated Press, was permitted in the delivery room. At 8:15, as if responding to stage directions, Lucy gave birth to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV. Bacon heard the mother chortle that her baby’s nose was “turned up so much he’ll drown if it rains—oh, Desi will be so happy.” Ecstatic would be more accurate. After a glimpse of his eight-pound-nine-ounce son, Desi winked at waiting reporters. “That’s Lucy for you. Always does her best to cooperate.”

Another newsworthy incident occurred in this period: General Dwight David Eisenhower was inaugurated as the thirty-fourth president of the United States, watched by a television audience of 29 million. Impressive, thought the White House press corps, until they read the statistics the next day: 44 million had watched
I Love Lucy
episode 51, “Lucy Goes to the Hospital.”

As life and entertainment blended, flowers were sent to the Desilu studios and to Cedars of Lebanon. The bouquets at the hospital started at Lucy’s room and overflowed to the corridor and the stairway leading to a lower floor. In all, Lucy received thirty thousand congratulatory letters. (There were also twenty-seven letters scolding her for having the bad taste to be pregnant on television.) The popularity of
I
Love Lucy
reached a fever pitch that winter; there were “Ricky Junior” dolls, “I Love Lucy” nursery tables and chairs, movie offers, fan clubs, games, and costume jewelry.
Variety
described the profits from these ventures as “Desiloot” and inquired: “Aren’t Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz carrying their endorsements a little too far? Their caricatures even adorn ‘potty’ seats.”

A good question. And there was a more pertinent one to be answered. In this heady time, Bob Carroll and Madelyn Pugh put up with Desi’s techniques of persuasion, half genial, half drop-forged steel, simply because whatever the couple suggested turned out to be right. In the spirit of cooperation they hung a sign in their office: IT’S ONLY A SHOW. But was it? A valentine had become the logo of
I Love
Lucy,
and the program actually did have a heart beneath the gags. It starred two people who were married on the screen and off, whose genuine and sometimes raw emotions underlay the numbered episodes, people whose comic battles worked so well because they were miniatures of real domestic wrangles. The writers had no trouble separating actual truth from weekly fantasy; for their bosses the distinction was not always easy to make. In one episode Lucy looks at a photo album of the Ricardos’ life together. She asks her husband whatever happened to the young couple. “Haven’t you heard?” Ricky responds. “They lived happily ever after.” No irony is discernible in their faces and voices; nevertheless, their sincerity did not make it so. Lorenz Hart, the man who wangled Desi his first important job, came closer to the truth in his lyrics for “I Wish I Were in Love Again.” There he spoke wryly of “The furtive sigh / The blackened eye / The words ‘I love you till the day I die’ / The self-deception that believes the lie.”

CHAPTER
NINE

“The only
thing red is
the hair”

AS FAR back as the 1930s Lucy had tried to liberate her comic style. As we have seen, her attempts met with sporadic success, but they had never elevated her to the status she hankered for. Yet in the half-hour format Lucille Ball abruptly metamorphosed into the dominant comedienne of her time, a performer whose virtuosity and timing were compared to those of the giants of silent movies.

How was it possible for a performer entering middle age to alter her character and approach so drastically? Some believed that she was a stage actress rather than a film personality: Lucy’s true metier was performing before a live audience rather than a group of jaded technicians. Others said she had never felt free enough to be zany until she could control everything from the scripts to the lighting. No doubt these factors were important in her astonishing turnaround, but one component overshadowed all the others: Desi. The man who made Lucy uneasy as a wife also gave her assurance as a performer. Cousin Cleo believed that, in films, Lucy “didn’t trust, really let go, put herself in someone’s hands and do what they told her to do. But she had total trust in Desi. She thought he was just brilliant.”

And so he was. He was also mercurial, devious, and self-destructive. Lucy had to balance her husband’s assets and liabilities like a CPA, and this did little to settle her nerves. On the plus side, Desi, acting as a sure-handed catcher to his wife’s lunatic leaps, allowed her to be fearless. “His talents as an actor never received the public recognition they deserved,” observed Vivian Vance. “The contribution that Desi made! The secret lay in his Cuban point of view, which he brought to three clods, who didn’t know what to make of it. That was the crux of so much of the laughter.” Desi’s supposed bewilderment, his comic stubbornness, his accent always gave the trio something to work against. Gradually his bewildered “You got some ’splainin’ to do,” his cry of “Looooosey!” and his cascade of dropped g’s and mispronunciations became almost as vital to the comedy as Lucy’s physical shtick. The
Hollywood Reporter
belatedly recognized these contributions when the paper called Desi “the most underrated performer on network television.”

In fact, as time went on performance became the least of Desi’s qualifications. “He had great enthusiasm,” Bob Carroll was pleased to note. As producer, “he never said no. He never said anything was too expensive. He would do anything, pay for anything.” Madelyn Pugh agreed: “For some reason, people play down his part, like he was some lucky Cuban. I mean, he
was
a lucky Cuban, but he deserved it. He loved writers and he loved working with us. We never had arguments. We never had harsh words.” Lucy remembered the morning her husband pored over the network’s budget for the new season and found a glaring error. The following day he charged over to CBS and presented his findings: their accountants had made a million-dollar mistake. “That’s impossible,” he was informed in a patronizing tone. “Look, Desi, stick to your acting. We’ll take care of the business details.” Desi spread the papers and pointed out the inaccuracies: there actually was an extra million to be used by Desilu for production expenses. “From then on,” Lucy wrote, “when he talked, they listened.”

As an executive Desi moved from strength to strength, just as he had done in the old days when he caromed from conga lines to Broadway to Hollywood. “He’s intuitive,” Lucy observed. “He lives from minute to minute. But I call him Nostradamus—he seems to know what’ll happen next. And he learned every job in our setup before he hired anybody else to do it.”

Among Desi’s most important hires were the people he had seen on the other side of the desk. He began by offering the executive vice presidency of Desilu to Martin Leeds, a hard-nosed network administrator. According to Desi, “That son of a bitch had given me so much trouble arguing about the CBS money we were spending on
I Love
Lucy.
I figured it would be better to have him fighting on my side.” Leeds knew a growth opportunity when he saw it, and he persuaded some of his network colleagues to join him at Desilu. Bernard Weitzman became vice president of business affairs and Edwin E. Holly eventually came over to control the company’s purse strings.

Desilu then moved into high gear, producing Eve Arden’s hit show about a wisecracking schoolteacher,
Our Miss Brooks,
for CBS. High as Desi rose, however, he was never too big to stoop down and pick up the small change. The network had given him expensive overhead lights for the
I Love Lucy
show. Now that he was filming
Our Miss Brooks,
he felt free to charge the network for the use of those lights—and CBS paid up.

Later he found a new opportunity to increase revenue, and this one became a trove. As historians Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert report in
Desilu,
Desi had always disliked the jarring interval between the show and the commercials. Onscreen he and Lucy usually faded to black, followed by the harsh peddling of Philip Morris cigarettes. “Different music, different lighting, different everything,” Holly stated. “Desi thought this was wrong. He thought the commercial should be done as part of the show.” That meant new music and careful illumination to provide a bridge from
I Love Lucy
to the ads. Under ideal conditions there would be no more jarring sales talks; ads would be tailored to the show’s look and tempo. “Desi insisted that as part of the Lucy deal with Philip Morris and CBS that we take their commercials and integrate them—for an additional fee, of course.” The integration was so successful that other producers eventually demanded the same smooth transitions for their programs. Desilu was happy to offer its services—for an additional fee, of course.

Desilu grew exponentially throughout the 1952–1953 season. As
I
Love Lucy
continued to hold first place in the ratings, Jack Benny arranged to have the studio produce five episodes of his program. Danny Thomas, then beginning to rise as TV producer, chose Desilu to make the pilot for his own show,
Make Room for Daddy.
Remembering the audition for ABC, he described himself as “fortunate to have Desi as a boss for the pilot. He laughed so hard on the soundtrack that we sold the pilot in forty-eight hours.” In addition, programs starring Ray Bolger and Loretta Young were filmed on the premises.

Some of Desilu’s aborted projects were as intriguing as the ones that were produced. Nothing came of the full-length feature
Lucy Has a
Baby,
composed of episodes strung together and edited by Lucy’s old counselor Ed Sedgwick. Frank Sinatra planned to star in
Blue in the
Night,
a dramatic series about a musician. It was called off when he won the career-saving role of Maggio in
From Here to Eternity.
Still, business was so good that Desilu relocated to a seven-acre lot on Cahuenga Boulevard. By the time construction was finished, there were nine sound stages and scores of offices for new and veteran employees. Desi calculated that by the end of 1953 Desilu would gross a minimum of $6 million. That year, he predicted, would bring the Arnazes “nothing but blessings, success, honors, and wealth.” (Mindful of costs, Lucy and Desi kept their own salaries at $35,000 each, a liberal sum but nowhere near what they might have drawn.)

During 1953 the couple agreed to star in
The Long, Long Trailer,
a slapstick comedy about newlyweds living out of a trailer as they ply the roads of Southern California. The film would be produced by Lucy’s long-extinguished old flame Pandro S. Berman, and directed by Vincente Minnelli. Lucy was promised Lana Turner’s old dressing room; Desi would have Clark Gable’s.

There were individual achievements as well. Lucy won an Emmy as Best Comedienne. Desi cut a 78 rpm disc,
I Love Lucy
(with his own composition “There’s a Brand New Baby at Our House” on the flip side); overnight it rose to the top of the charts. To ice the cake, he made the list of Ten Best-Dressed Men in the United States, alongside Rex Harrison, Danny Kaye, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Looking at the Arnazes’ period of prosperity, as well as the nation’s, the
New York Times
remarked: “With Lucille Ball’s baby and Ike in as scheduled, the American situation can now be said to be well in hand.” Walter Winchell added his own quip: “The nation got a man and Lucy got a boy.”

Rather than cheer Lucy, these triumphal moments seemed to make her more neurotic and apprehensive. “I developed a feeling I couldn’t shake,” she was to write. “All our good fortune was suddenly going to vanish. When I tore myself away from my babies in the morning, I had this terrible fear that they’d be gone when I returned at night.” Yet the more she thought about them the more these terrors seemed irrational. Filming of
The Long, Long Trailer
went smoothly; the pace was so undemanding that Lucy commented, “I never realized how much tension I was under making TV shows.” She made a great effort to relax that summer, settling into a rented beach house in Del Mar. The four Arnazes were accompanied by Desi’s mother, a nurse, and a continual stream of drop-ins. Lucy laughed a lot, swam, played word games, walked on the beach, and finally let down her guard. It was then that the letter arrived from the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Nothing to worry about, said an aide to Representative Donald L. Jackson, the HUAC chairman. “We simply want to go over the statements made at your previous appearance before our committee last year.” Lucy knew better: the long climb from Jamestown, the career, the house, the show, Desilu itself would all go. Let the shrinks and the friends scoff at her little formless fears. Every time she had reached a peak, disaster beckoned. It was beckoning now.

Since her last interview, the blacklisting of “radicals, fellow-travelers, dupes” and those who had been “prematurely antifascist” had become ruthless in Hollywood and New York. The committeemen of HUAC were obviously after big names, and at this point Lucille Ball was one of the biggest. She returned to their turf and resubmitted her testimony, emphasizing that she and her brother had simply placated their crusty old grandfather by registering as Communists. How many times had Lucy chosen unwisely just to please men? She had lost count long ago. The best thing she could do at present was to please more men, answering all their questions without hesitation.

Lucy’s memory was usually remarkable; she could recall places she had visited and conversations with friends years afterward. But before the congressmen she stumbled, like an auditioning actress who has lost her script. Lucy could not, for example, recall whether she had signed a petition supporting the Committee for the First Amendment, a group protesting the HUAC investigation of Hollywood back in 1947. Perhaps she did; she couldn’t swear she didn’t. The whole business was so long ago, and besides, everybody signed things in those days— Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Frank Sinatra.

Her listeners were sympathetic. After two hours Lucy was allowed to submit an official statement: “I am not a Communist now. I never have been. I never wanted to be. Nothing in the world could ever change my mind. At no time in my life have I ever been in sympathy with anything that even faintly resembled it.” She had worked out a rationale and submitted it for the record: the family had posed as radicals to soothe Fred Hunt’s psyche, that’s all. Politics had nothing to do with their actions. “It sounds a little weak and silly and corny now, but at the time it was very important because we knew we weren’t going to have Daddy with us very long. But I was always conscious of the fact I could go just so far to make him happy. I tried not to go any farther. In those days that was not a big terrible thing to do. It was almost as terrible to be a Republican in those days.”

She was dismissed with the comforting words of investigator William Wheeler: “I have no further questions. Thank you for your cooperation.” She shook hands with him and made her exit, assured that she was in the clear and that her testimony would remain sealed this time as in the past.

That weekend she and the children returned to Chatsworth. Desi remained at Del Mar, where he had scheduled a poker game at the home of producer Irving Briskin. Lucy put Desi IV and Lucie to bed and turned on the radio. It was time for Walter Winchell. Shortly before the newsman signed off, he offered a blind item: “The top television comedienne has been confronted with her membership in the Communist Party.” No name was mentioned, but it was clear that Winchell did not mean Imogene Coca, costar of
Your Show of Shows,
the only other TV comedienne of comparable stature. Despite guarantees, someone had leaked the news that Lucille Ball had been before HUAC.

In Del Mar, Desi received a call from Cleo’s husband, Ken Morgan, recently elevated to the position of Desilu’s public relations chief. Had Desi heard Winchell tonight? No, he had been too busy at cards. What was up? Desi was filled in. Acting on instinct rather than cogitation, the boss ordered Morgan to meet him in Chatsworth. It would be a good idea, Desi added, to bring MGM’s head of publicity, Howard Strickling, along for the ride.