RECONVERSION

February 3, 1946

By ERSKINE JOHNSON, NEA Staff Correspondent 

HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 3 (NEA) ~ Lucille Ball is reconverting and we do not mean her hair is changing color again. It is natural blonde and not the shocking pink which M-G-M insisted upon for Technicolor and which caused prop boys and junior scenarists to wear blinkers last season. 

Reconversion is necessary even in Hollywood, Lucille said, when a gal’s husband gets out of uniform. Lucille’s just did. He’s the Cuban conga cut-up, Dezi* Arnaz, now beating maracas, cabacas, bongos and people’s ears to pieces every night as the leader of his own band at Ciro’s. 

Things have changed at the Ball-Dezi manse since Dezi came home from three years in the army. Among other things, Lucille moaned: “He gets out of the army and what happens? I have to get dressed up, put on orchids and pay a cover charge to talk to him.” But when she is working it is another story.

Lucille gets up at 5:30, gets home at 7 at night. Dezi sleeps all day, goes to work at 7:30 p.m. and gets home at 3:30 a.m. 

“We meet at the door,” Lucille said. 

There are other things, too. 

Lucille sleeps with all the windows open. Dezi sleeps with them down. They are now down. Dezi likes hot Cuban dishes and cooks them himself. Lucille doesn’t like them. They are now eating hot Cuban dishes. Dezi likes to go fishing. Lucille gets seasick. “But,” said Lucille, “here we go fishing.” 

As for her movie career, Lucille said that had been reconverted, too. Or will be when M-G-M gets around to releasing a new comedy, “Easy to Wed”. Lucille has the role she has been waiting 10 years for – a wacky, fast-talking, hip-swinging actress. 

She’s now working in a new 20th Century-Fox flicker, "Dark Corner." 

We were amazed to discover that both Lucille and Dezi are a couple of very sentimental people. They go every year on their wedding anniversary to the same booth in a Hollywood restaurant where they met. 

Learned the Hard Way 

They say in Hollywood that Lucille is the gal who knows all the answers. She ought to. She learned them the hard way, working as a New York model before Hollywood discovered her. A photographer sent her to Hattie Carnegie. Lucille was wearing something pink and all wrong. Hattie took one look and said, "Good grief.” But she hired her. Lucille’s first job was to model a mink coat. 

“I slinked that mink all over the place,” Lucille recalled, and Hattie thought I was wonderful. “But she fired me five times while I worked for her – but always called the next day to bawl me out for not coming to work." Finally Lucille had to tell her she had a film offer from Sam Goldwyn. He had seen her photograph in a cigarette poster. 

"Hattie was wonderful about it,” Lucille said. “She fired me again, saying, ‘You’re fired, Lucille, and this time I mean it. I won’t be calling you in the morning.’”

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*The article consistently misspells Desi’s name as ‘Dezi’. 

Lucy and Desi weren’t far from wrong. Although they were consistently trying to get pregnant, they had no luck until late 1950 – five years after this column was printed!