“WHY IT TOOK ME TEN YEARS TO BECOME A MOVIE STAR”

November 7, 1943

Mayme Ober Peak (ghost writer) became the first President of the Hollywood Women’s Press Club, and was cited by the Hollywood Reporter magazine as the “Number One Outstanding Screen Critic” in 1940. Parkinson’s disease slowed her down in the 1940s, but she carried on courageously, before retiring in 1947. She died in her childhood home in Upperville, Virginia, just days before her sixty-sixth birthday.

At this point, Lucille Ball is still asserting that she was from Butte, Montana. She was asked to join the Hollywood Victory Cavalcade to raise money selling US war bonds in September 1943. 

On the same date (November 7, 1943), critic Clyde Rowen took a look at Ball’s new film Best Foot Forward.