LUCILLE BALL IS ON THE WARPATH

January 15, 1973

By ELAINE SHEPARD, HOLLYWOOD (WNS) 

Faint-hearted TV and film executives had better start circling the wagons. Lucille Ball is on the warpath. 

Lucy never does anything by halves, and is feisty enough to take on the whole show business establishment. She has become one of the television industry’s richest, most influential leaders, and she has a very personal set of moral weights and measures. 

“A lot of dirty old men have been on a ragged, jagged toot of making money and pandering to an audience’s basest instincts. As soon as they are not making money which is happening already those pictures will sit in the vault.” 

"I know my audience is still out there so I’m not worried. But it’s a terrible thing as a mother or father to try to shape your children morally and in every other way and have it torn down in one short season of movie-going. Because once they are 15 and a certain height they are allowed in to the theatres and everything they were taught to believe in is ripped apart. All this permissiveness has put tremendous responsibility on young people’s shoulders. At least you and I had guidelines. Now they are not even allowed a conscience that tells them right from wrong." 

Tacky pictures are something to be avoided like drafts and bad cooking, says Lucy. "At home, I’ve stopped many movies in the middle and sent guests and projectionists home.” 

"Violence has gone beyond the bounds of tolerance. Today’s films leave the young people in a spiritual wasteland. No direction. Everything is dirty, smelly, icky, lousy. They should have something to hope for, to dream about. We need a little fantasy. Not just sexual fantasies. We give them no hope any place." 

Lucy was one of the first to demolish forever the cliché that beauty and brains are incompatible. Her energy is atomic. Smoking cigarettes at a cancerous rate, she was on the phone arranging last-minute details for her 80-year-old carrot – topped mother, Dede, to go fishing in Colorado. "My condominium is at 9,800 feet. You should see Dede going down the mountain with the kids on a belly-whacker at 40 miles an hour." 

Tall and handsome Gary Morton says his 11-year alliance with Lucille is "the most wonderful thing that ever happened to him.” It is a marriage that hums. You can sense the little waves of approval and the love arrows going back and forth. He gave Lucy a white juiced-up golf cart with her name on the door to carry her around the Universal Studios lot. Gary is executive producer of “Here’s Lucy.” This season represents his wife’s 22nd year as a major CBS Television Network star. 

With every rung of the theatrical ladder greased and the most slippery one at the top, Lucille keeps her watchful big blue eyes on 21-year-old daughter Lucie, a costar on the program. “She is quite serious about her career." 

Lucie and her brother Desi IV (20 this month) have been raised with every advantage that wealth and love could provide. "Their father (Desi Arnaz III) is proud of them. He has a Moroccan palace in Baja. The kids, including Liza Minelli, visit them there. My son loves Liza very much and so do we. I knew her before I knew my own children. Our family is so close now it hurts. Very close. So close that the telephone bills from Desi’s movie locations in Japan and Israel are astronomical." 

She has no plans to retire. "I don’t know what I’m going to do from one minute to the next. When it’s time to make a decision I make it. I don’t feel any need to change the comedy format. Response from the fans indicates it works." 

How did movie standards get twisted? "Some producers have been given so much rope they are hanging themselves. A lot of pornographic stuff is going begging. We have good directors but no big studios with jobs for them. No ‘papas’ around anymore; nobody to set standards and give direction. Among the exceptions in this town are Disney and Ross Hunter. I say ‘thank God’ for them.”

Former waitress, soda jerk, wholesale garment model and chorus girl, Lucy became the first woman president of a major Hollywood film producing company (Desilu Productions) with an estimated annual gross of $25,000,000. In 1967 she sold her interest in Desilu to Golf & Western Industries and is a substantial shareholder in that financial empire. 

In 1968 she formed Lucille Ball Productions. Headquarters is rented from Universal Studios. “I am happy to be a tenant and not interested in being a big tycoon anymore. We will create new TV programs, specials and movies.” 

We didn’t discuss Women’s Lib. For Lucy is Women’s Lib personified. 

She also is Auntie Mame. The movie starts this month, will make a fortune for Warner Bros., and be a coronation for the queen of comedy. 

Monday, January 15, 1973, also saw the premiere of “Lucy and Her Genuine Twimby” (HL S5;E17) guest-starring Robert Cummings. 

On the same date, UPI reported that “Here’s Lucy” would return for a sixth season, marking Ball’s 23rd year on TV. Coincidentally, the following item reports that Lucy’s friend and frequent co-star Mary Wickes would recreated her Broadway and film role in a television version of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” for Hallmark Hall of Fame. 

[January 15, 1973, was also just before production began on the film musical Mame. Joan Crosby reported on the press event.]

It was like the old days of Hollywood. The red carpet was laid at Studio One at The Burbank Studios (nee Warner Brothers) and 200 people showed up for lunch with Lucille Ball and the cast of “Mame,” the day before production. 

Lucy made a great entrance in her silver-and-black outfit, with long earrings, cigarette holder to match, close cropped black hair and tightly wound silver turban. If you wonder why Mame couldn’t be, like Lucy, a redhead. Lucy says a lot of thought went into the color, which will be used in the early scenes. Before the 20 years of Maine’s life are finished she will also be seen as a blonde, redhead and finally, blue-tinted, silver-haired lady. Told that it’s hard to get used to her with dark hair, Lucy smiled and said, “I can’t get used to me, either." 

Lucy will have about 45 costume changes in the musical, which delights her and should please the ladies. 

Robert Fryer, who is co-producer of "Mame,” said they needed an actress for the role who was “chic, humorous, warm and loving,” and Lucy mugged her way through that. 

Lucy said she was delighted to do “Mame” because it is “a four-letter word and so is love, so is care and so is hope.” She added that so many films today lack these qualities. “Also, they don’t give us anything to hum unless you want to come out of the theater humming a manure pile.”

Lucy introduced costars Robert Preston, Bea Arthur (who played Vera on Broadway and will recreate it here), Jane Connell, the original Agnes Gooch, and darling Kirby Furlong; who will turn 10 during production. 

Kirby, who is very small for his age, was wearing a tuxedo and director Gene Saks said, “Kirby always dresses that way. He gets up in the morning and jumps into his tux.” Kirby laughed. 

Meanwhile, in other papers, Mame’s casting was reported, concentrating on adult Patrick, played by Bruce Davison. The release incorrectly lists Madeline Kahn, who was initially cast as Gooch, but left the production, reportedly due to a conflict with Lucille Ball.