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On the strength of her Columbia contract she brought her mother and brother, her cousin Cleo, and her grandfather Hunt, from Jamestown NY to the small house she had rented on Ogden Drive in Hollywood Hills. They had no sooner settled in than Columbia decided to disband its stock company, which then included Ann Sothern and Gene Raymond. However, RKO took Miss Ball on at $50 a week and gave her the opportunity of studying under its drama coach (Lela Rogers, mother of Ginger), and of acting in its Little Theatre.

The RKO pictures in which she appeared taught her more than Mrs. Rogers did. She was a mannequin swathed in ostrich feathers in ROBERTA; a college girl in the Buddy Rogers vehicle called OLD MAN RHYTHM; a florist’s clerk, with her back to the camera and one line of dialogue, in TOP HAT, the best of the Astaire-Rogers pictures; and an extra in THE THREE MUSKETEERS.

She complained about being used as an extra and RKO began giving her small speaking parts – as Lucien Littlefield and Esther Dale’s daughter in the film in which Lily Pons made her film debut (I DREAM TOO MUCH); as an actress in CHATTERBOX; a sailor-minded girl-friend of Ginger Rogers in FOLLOW THE FLEET; a script-girl in THE FARMER IN THE DELL; an office-worker in BUNKER BEAN; and a blonde dancer in THE GIRL FROM PARIS.

Like many another player who has felt he or she wasn’t getting anywhere in Hollywood, Miss Ball gave the legitimate stage another try. She did so in a stage musical called HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE. But it never got to Broadway (it closed in Philadelphia in February ’37).

So she returned to Hollywood, and, after a small role in DON’T TELL THE WIFE, a Guy Kibbee vehicle, she got a relatively sizeable part in STAGE DOOR, as a tough, aspiring actress who gives up the theatre to marry her sweetheart back in Seattle. STAGE DOOR is a good film and gave Miss Ball an opportunity to demonstrate her flair for comedy. Its cast included not only Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers but also Eve Arden, about whom Miss Ball once said this: “She and I competed for years – one of us would be the lady executive and the other would be ‘the other woman.’ They were the same roles, for we’d walk through a room, drop a smart remark, and exit. I called us ‘the drop-gag girls.’ I didn’t dig it at all, for in such parts you lose your femininity. That was one of the reasons I wasn’t too fond of staying in pictures.”

Miss Ball’s first featured role was as a housewife in GO CHASE YOURSELF (’38) who is weary of the shenanigans of her crooner-bankclerk husband (Joe Penner). Two pictures later she had another featured role in THE AFFAIRS OF ANNABEL, in which she played a fading actress with an over-enthusiastic press-agent (Jack Oakie). This did so well RKO quickly threw a sequel together (ANNABEL TAKES A TOUR).

In ’39 she was in five pictures, including FIVE CAME BACK, a taut melodrama in which she played a hard-boiled dame on the rebound, and DANCE, GIRL, DANCE, in which she did a strip-tease while singing (dubbed) “My Mother Taught Me.” She was so much on the verge of “being boxoffice” refugee producer Erich Pommer began talking of her as “a new find.”

It was on a set of DANCE, GIRL, DANCE that she met Desi Arnaz,* and they were together in her next film: TOO MANY GIRLS. After that picture was finished he went on a tour with his band and she did a nation-wide personal-appearance tour. They met in NYC and on November 11, ’40, eloped to Greenwich CT. They were later re-married in a Catholic ceremony, and their two children were reared as Catholics (Miss Ball is a Protestant).

She says Hollywood gave their marriage six weeks. They bought a ranch in the San Fernando Valley and were apart from each other much of the time after their marriage – first because of his tours with his band, and then because of his Army service (’43-5).

* Desiderio Arnaz y de Acha was born 3.3.17 in Santiago, Cuba, where his father was mayor. The ’33 revolution forced his mother to flee, with him, to Miami (the father was jailed). Desi did what work he could find and finally landed with a 7-piece rhumba-band that played the Roney-Plaza Hotel. Two years later Xavier Cugat hired him as a vocalist, and shortly thereafter he formed his own band. While touring with it George Abbott offered him a third lead, as a Latin lover, in Abbott’s stage production of TOO MANY GIRLS, and used him in the same part in the film version of it. Arnaz was in several other movies (FATHER TAKES A WIFE; FOUR JACKS AND A JILL; THE NAVY COMES THROUGH; BATAAN; CUBAN PETE; HOLIDAY IN HAGANA). After his divorce from Miss Ball he married (’63) Edith Mack Hirsch. Two years later he formed his own company for the production of tv-shows (Desi Arnaz Productions Inc.)

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