Tweet

RKO was paying Miss Ball $1500 a week during the war years but except for THE BIG STREET, the pictures it put her in were routine programmers. And if it hadn’t been for Carole Lombard RKO might not have put her in THE BIG STREET.

Lombard introduced Ball to Damon Runyon, author of the story on which THE BIG STREET is based, and Runyon insisted on RKO casting Ball as the vixenish nightclub singer who is crippled by a gangster. It was her best performance up to that time. “The girl can really act,” said “Life,” and James Agee added: “Pretty Lucille Ball, who was born for the parts Ginger Rogers sweats over, tackles her ’emotional’ role as if it were sirloin and she didn’t care who was looking.”

It was after THE BIG STREET that MGM offered her a contract, which she hastened to accept. She was given the dressing room that had once been Norma Shearer’s, and some of MGM’s best make-up people were assigned to her. Her “strawberry pink” hair was one of their inventions.

Her first MGM film was Cole Porter’s DUBARRY WAS A LADY, in which Ethel Merman had starred on Broadway. It was Red Skelton’s picture – he buffooned as Louis XV – but Miss Ball’s footage proved she understood musical comedy (her singing, however, had to be dubbed). In fact she did so well MGM substituted her for Lana Turner, whose pregnancy had begun to show, in BEST FOOT FORWARD, in which Miss Ball played a movie star who accepts an invitation to a college prom.

In THOUSANDS CHEER she, Ann Sothern and Marsha Hunt had an amusing sequence when, as prospective Waves, they were medically examined by Frank Morgan. But she and Dick Powell, and the bands of Vaughn Monroe and Spike Jones, were not able to surmount the tedium of the “message” musical called MEET THE PEOPLE. Thereafter, however, she received third billing for WITHOUT LOVE (’45), which, though it starred Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, had some scenes that she dominated (as a wisecracking real estate agent).

The separations World War II necessitated affected Miss Ball’s marriage with Desi Arnaz and in ’44 she obtained an interlocutory divorce decree. But it was never finalized, and when Arnaz got out of the Army they decided to try again. He became the musical director of Bob Hope’s radio show.

In ’46 Miss Ball had what many, myself among them, consider her best screen role – as the dumb, red-headed butt of the contrived situations in EASY TO WED, a re-make of LIBELED LADY, in which Jean Harlow had the role Miss Ball performed in EASY TO WED. Its plot – a newspaper sued by a tycoon’s daughter for $2,000,000 attempts to tangle her in scandal via Van Johnson – was enlivened with every form of humor, including songs. The best laughs came from the duos between Miss Ball and Keenan Wynn. Van Johnson, incidentally, says he owes his movie career to this picture and to Miss Ball. Warners had just refused to renew his contract and he, having decided to return to Broadway, called at the Arnaz home to say goodbye (he had been with Arnaz in the stage version of TOO MANY GIRLS). Whereupon Miss Ball telephoned MGM’s head talent scout (Bill Grady) and MGM hired Johnson for EASY TO WED.

Since Miss Ball does not sing, the filmusicals in which MGM used her did not seem to her to provide the kind of comedy and character roles she considers her forte. So she decided to free-lance, but except for LURED (’47), in which she is the bait by which Scotland Yard traps a sex-killer, she was in nothing that advanced her career. So in ’47 she signed a contract with Columbia, which put her in HER HUSBAND’S AFFAIRS, in which she and Franchot Tone made a pleasing team as husband-wife advertising executives.

But when Columbia had nothing equally good to offer her she turned to the legitimate stage and earned $2000 a week for 22 weeks touring in Elmer Rice’s DREAM GIRL. She then embarked on a radio show, which was the forerunner of her great television success. Called “My Favorite Husband,” it ran from July ’47 to March ’51. Richard Denning played the husband.

While she was doing this radio show Columbia lent her to Paramount for two Bob Hope pictures, which reinforced the image of her the radio show was creating. She worked well with Hope, and the films themselves were good vehicles. The first, SORROWFUL JONES, is a witty remake of LITTLE MISS MARKER, and FANCY PANTS (’50) is a very funny re-make of RUGGLES OF RED GAP.

Her work with Hope at Paramount prompted Cecil B. DeMille to try to borrow her for THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, but he and Harry Cohn could not agree on what Columbia would get for her services. Furthermore, Miss Ball was pregnant. So the role went to Betty Hutton. The final irony: Miss Ball mis-carried (she had also mis-carried in the first year of her marriage).

Continue to page: 1 2 3 4 5