March 15, 1974
Phil Donahue (Host) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1935. After a stint
as a TV newsman, he took over a slot on a local television station
which became “The Phil Donahue Show.” After moves to Chicago and
then New York City, the show ended in 1996. In 1958, Phil Donahue
married Marge Cooney and had five children. The marriage ended in
1975, less than a year before this interview with Lucille Ball. In
1980, he married the daughter of Ball’s good friend, Danny Thomas –
Marlo Thomas, the star of TV’s “That Girl” (1965-71). Donahue was
awarded 20 Emmy Awards during his broadcasting career, ten for
Outstanding Talk Show Host, and 10 for “The Phil Donahue Show.”
He received the prestigious Peabody Award in 1980, and was inducted
into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame on
November 20, 1993.
“The Phil Donahue Show” aka “Donahue” started out in 1967
as a Dayton, Ohio, local call-in show aimed at women. In 1970 it
started to be seen nationwide, and by 1980, was seen in 218 cities
across the country. In 2002, “Donahue” was ranked twenty-ninth
on TV Guide’s list of the fifty greatest television shows of
all-time. In 1985, Donahue left Chicago for New York City with a
studio in NBC’s Rockefeller Center facility. In 1992, Donahue
celebrated the 25th anniversary of his long-running television
program with a NBC special in which he was lauded by his talk-show
peers. To some he was seen as having been eclipsed by both Oprah
Winfrey and Sally Jessie Raphael. After 29 years (26 in syndication)
and nearly 7,000 shows, the final episode aired on September 13,
1996, the culmination of what continues to be the longest continuous run
of any syndicated talk show in US television history.
Three days later, March 18, 1974 “Here’s Lucy” airs the last
episode of its sixth and final season, ending Lucille Ball’s nearly
23-years on television.
Mame had its world premiere at Radio City Music Hall on March 3,
and set and all-time one week box office record for the venue at
$400,000. The film opened wide on March 27, 1974.
This interview took place in the last months of “The Phil
Donahue Show” while in Dayton. By fall 1974, they had moved to
Chicago. True to his original mission, the audience is made up of
women, and there is only one male caller.
Note: Images from the interview are of poor quality so have been supplemented with associated photos culled from the internet. The author’s observations are in [brackets].
After introducing Lucy, Donahue first says that – if he could sing
– he would sing “You coax the blues right out of the horn…”
and Lucy reminds him that it was written by Jerry Herman. She is
grateful that she didn’t have to sing it, but that it was sung to
her. Donahue mentions her co-star in Mame, Robert Preston, whom Lucy
calls her ‘Rhett Butler.’ Lucy said she made the picture for the ladies, feeling that it has been too many years since they had a picture where women were regaled with the love and affection that Beauregard (Preston) gave Mame.
Lucy praises 10 year old Kirby Furlong, who played young Patrick
Dennis, Mame’s nephew.
Donahue goes out on a limb to say that Lucy never really fit in in
Hollywood. Lucy agrees, saying that she loves Jamestown and New
England and that at heart she is a farmer with a green thumb.
Donahue: “The picture cost nearly ten million bucks.”
Lucy:
“I don’t know how much it cost and I don’t care. Just so it’s good.
And it is.”
Donahue can’t wait to show a clip from the film. It features the
title song, set on Beau’s southern plantation and stars Lucille
Ball (Mame), Robert Preston (Beau), Kirby Furlong (Young Patrick),
Lucille Benson (Mother Burnside), Ruth McDevitt (Cousin Fan), Burt
Mustin (Uncle Jeff), and Joyce Van Patten (Sally Cato). Lucy says that the scene was shot on the Disney Ranch.
Lucy recounts that Warner Brothers was ready to make the picture a
year and a half earlier, but Lucy broke her leg skiing in Aspen. Phil
says that the film Hello Dolly (1969), another Jerry Herman stage
musical translated to film, lost money, which Lucy isn’t too sure
about. When Donahue wonders if a film version of Mame was needed,
Lucy reiterates that she made it for the ladies, and that they
deserve it, just like The Great Gatsby (1974), which premiered in New
York City on March 27, the same day Mame opened wide across the
country.
When Donahue asks her if negative reviews bother her, she quickly
says “Yes, I’m vulnerable. But so far the good ones have outweighed
the bad ones.” [When the dust settled, this was not the case.]
Lucy says the film has gotten off to a great start and Donahue
mentions that Radio City broke a box office record.
Donahue asks if she’d rather be home sipping orange juice on her
patio, Lucy emphatically says no, that this isn’t a terribly hard
promotional tour. She spent a week in New York, a week in Chicago,
and is now in Dayton, after which she will go on to Atlanta for a fox
hunt brunch at a plantation. She tells Phil that on several of her
stops, she wore various wigs (just as Mame does in the film) and
played charades. In Chicago they had a speakeasy party and she met
Mayor and Mrs. Daly.
Rushing to get some questions in before the break, Donahue
mistakenly says that “Here’s Lucy” has been canceled. Lucy rolls
her eyes and corrects him “In my whole life I have never been
canceled.” [Sadly, that would not hold true for Lucy’s final
series “Life With Lucy,” which was canceled by ABC in 1987 after
just eight episodes.] Lucy says she has “laid it aside,
temporarily” and that she is going to do some specials. [The first
of these specials, “Happy Anniversary and Goodbye,” aired six
months later.]
Lucy says that she needs to fatten up [Jackie] Gleason to play
Diamond Jim [Brady] in a script she’s had written. [This is a project
that never happened Instead, Ball starred him in one of her specials, “Three For Two” in 1975.] She mentions that her daughter,
Lucie Arnaz, is on a six-month national tour of the musical See Saw
and that Desi [Jr.] is doing the play Bus Stop, coming soon to the
Dayton area.
Cringing lest it be an inappropriate question, Phil asks if Desi
Jr. is going to get back together with Liza [Minnelli]. Lucy calmly says that
she doesn’t think they’ll get back together, but she loves Liza. Lucy
reminds Phil that she knew Liza before her children were born. [Her
father, Vincente Minnelli, directed Lucy in two films.]
Lucy: “You cannot domesticate Liza. Liza’s a very special person
and she cannot be tamed.”
After a commercial break, Donahue does what made him famous, goes
into the audience to create an interactive interview with Lucy.
A woman asks if Lucy’s goal when she first came to Hollywood was
to become the Queen of Comedy, to which Lucy answers that she just
wanted to be part of the business. Lucy says the she chose comedy
after a two or three week period of reviewing television scripts that
were “all wrong.” Lucy says that she liked being “typed” as a
middle class housewife. It was not happenstance, it was by choice.
Another woman praises Lucy’s physical fitness and youthful
appearance. Lucy claims to be twenty years younger in her head.
After breaking her leg, she has been very conscious of staying fit.
She says she doesn’t care for food in general, but that she likes to
cook. Except for breakfast, she only eats when she is hungry.
Someone asks where Lucy calls home. She says she’s lived for many
years in Beverly Hills and has a place in Palm Springs, and in
Snowmass, Colorado, which her mother [Dede Ball] loves to visit. She
says she keeps the Palm Springs place because her husband [Gary
Morton] is a golf nut.
A telephone caller (also named Lucy) asks Lucy how she feels about
following in the footsteps of Angela Lansbury in the role of Mame and
how she felt about Rex Reed’s negative review. Ball says she hasn’t
read it but that she and Reed are friends. Ball is curious how the
caller read the review because she was told it wasn’t out yet. The
caller admits she hasn’t read it, but flatters Lucy that it can’t be
correct because everything Lucy is in is good. Lucille Ball is
appreciative, although she can’t quite figure out that the woman is
on the telephone and not in the studio itself.
Donahue directs the question back to Angela Lansbury. Lucy says
that she told the studio for several years that Lansbury should do
the film version and was told that Lansbury didn’t want to do it
because she was caring for her son who was very ill in Ireland. [He
was a recovering addict. Lansbury re-emerged on the London stage in a
revival of Gypsy that moved to Broadway in the fall of 1974. She made
no films between 1971 and 1978. In 2009 Lansbury gave an interview
saying she was upset about being “passed over” for the film.]
A caller asks Lucy about the greatest experience in her life, and
the lowest point. Lucy unequivocally says that having children after
a ten year wait was the greatest. The lowest point was her divorce,
but she admits that she doesn’t have many low points.
Phil wonders about Lucy’s longevity in the business. Lucy mentions
John Wayne and Jack Benny as examples. Lucy feels that movie stars
were in a much more glamorous business than television.
Lucy: “I dig my work. And I know how to do it. I’m proud of
that.”
An audience member asks Lucy about Vivian Vance. Lucy says that
she’s married to publisher Bill Dodd, living in North Salem, New
York. She adds that she is writing a book and is very happy. [Vance’s
book was never published. In the summer of 1974 Vance returned to her
stage roots appearing in such shows as Everybody Loves Opal and Barefoot in the Park.]
When she is asked about retirement, Lucy denies that rumor saying
she wouldn’t know what to do if she retired.
Regarding reruns Lucy says “Three generations can turn me on
with the water faucet.” She adds that she has six years “product”
(“Here’s Lucy”) still to go into reruns. [Although “Here’s
Lucy” was syndicated, it did not do as well as Ball’s previous
sitcoms in reruns.]
One audience member says her favorite is the Candy Factory, which
Lucy says is hers, too. That and the one “in the great vat.” The
audience instantly knows that she is talking about “Job Switching”
(ILL S2;E1) and “Lucy’s Italian Movie” (ILL S5;E23).
A woman praises Lucy for working ‘clean.’ Lucy admits that Mame is
rated PG because there are lines from the original play and film
Auntie Mame and the stage musical that are considered classics,
despite containing mild expletives. [One of them is is likely to be
“Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to
death” which was changed to “poor suckers” for the 1958 film
Auntie Mame starring Rosalind Russell.]
Lucy says she is not fond of ‘excess’ and is constantly donating
things to charities, recycling them rather than throwing them away.
Lucy says that charity begins at home, and at Christmas she donates
to her surrounding community and her employees. [Despite this Lucy
was deeply committed to national and international charities like
Easter Seals, the Heart Fund, and the March of Dimes.]
Regarding her iconic red hair, Lucy surprisingly says she might
change it, possibly to a black wig like Mame wears. There were seven
different wigs used in Mame to reflect the changing times. [Ball did
indeed wear a black wig on television in a 1975 interview with Dinah
Shore. Lucy Ricardo flirted with a change from her usual henna rinse
in “The Black Wig” (ILL S3;E26).]
A woman from Jamestown, New York, calls in to say that she has
home movies of when Lucy and Desi visited the town in February 1958.
She says she also knows the Van Vlacks and other people Lucy
frequently mentioned on her shows.
Regarding the fate of Desilu Studios, Lucy tells a caller that she
bought Desi out and sold the studios years ago and now just operates her own
company [Lucille Ball Productions aka LBP], renting space at Universal.
About Mame, Lucy says it took more than two years to make,
including a five month shoot. Lucy denies that her singing voice was
dubbed but readily admits she doesn’t have a great voice. She says
she subscribes to the philosophy as the composer Jerry Herman that
what the songs say is most important. As an aside she says to the
woman who asked “I wish it had been better.”
Unfortunately, Donahue chooses this moment to screen the second
clip from Mame, the opening number “It’s Today” featuring Lucille
Ball as Mame and Kirby Furlong as a wide-eyed Patrick. Jane Connell
is seen as a nervous Agnes Gooch shielding Young Patrick from the
rambunctious revelers: “If any of these people are your Auntie
Mame, better you never know about it!”
An audience member asks why Lucy doesn’t do a nightclub act. Lucy
responds that she’s not a singer or a dancer and that her voice won’t
hold up to the rigors of continual performance. [When Lucy did
Wildcat on Broadway in 1960, a subject not broached in this
interview, Lucy was often out sick and dropped twelve pounds.]
A woman asks about the child who played Little Ricky. Lucy says
that his real name is Keith Thibodeaux and that he is now 22 or 23 years
old and takes care of his family of seven (brothers and sisters).
Lucy adds that he is a close friend of Desi Jr.
When asked if she ever wished she had a more private life, Lucy
thoughtfully says yes, especially when they [the press] are mean and
really try to be hurtful. [The critics’ reception of Mame was not the
last time she would be upset by cruel comments. The cancellation of
“Life With Lucy” in 1987 was a crushing blow to her pride. She
felt nobody wanted her kind of comedy anymore.]
Lucy mentions that she has a brother [Fred Hunt] living in Arizona
and a first cousin [Cleo] who is like a sister to her, and is also
her producer.
About Gale Gordon now that “Here’s Lucy” has ended, Lucy says
that he travels and take care of his Borrego Springs ranch. She is
keeping him in mind for her upcoming specials but he is indifferent
about working again. [Gordon only starred in one of her specials,
1977’s “Lucy Calls the President.”]
For relaxation, Lucy says she just learned backgammon and she
loves word games. She still swims and rides her bicycle, but has had
to curtail some of her physical activity. [Lucy was obsessed with
backgammon and promoted several box games.]
Phil asks about being introspective and refers to when Desi Arnaz
was on his show. Lucy says she gets introspective but isn’t as
public about it as Desi.
Lucy says he works at Universal, is happily remarried, and has a place in Del Mar.
[Arnaz wrote the autobiography A Book in
1976. It will soon be released on audio book as well.]
As the credits roll, audience members come up to have their
photograph taken with Phil and Lucy.
In 1978, Lucille Ball and Phil Donahue met again when NBC televised a special celebrating the 25th Anniversary of TV Guide.
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