TOP OF MY HEAD: WAX OF BALL

May 16, 1964

Last summer I was engaged to write a one-hour special comedy program starring this glamorous bouquet of names: Jack Benny, Danny
Thomas, Garry Moore, Lucille Ball,
Andy Griffith, and Phil Silvers. (1)

I am not going to single out any certain name, but one of these stars gave
me plenty of trouble. If I play my cards
right, I may never have to write for her
again.

These six television personalities are
all under the sponsorship of one advertiser and appear weekly for separate
products in their own respective half hour niches. To herald the opening of a
new season a week before their first
shows appeared. General Foods gathered them all together into one huge
bowl to serve up a mighty chef’s salad.
It was only natural that some ham should
have slithered in. 

It was at once discernible to the writers that to accommodate this array of
disparate talent the script concept would
have to include two important factors.
One, a plot in which they would all be
concerned. Two, jokes distributed in
equal portions among the six performers. Give one comedian, working with a
group of other comedians, fewer lines
than the others and you have an actor
on your hands who, as rehearsals go
along, sinks lower than the second f in
Schrafft’s. (2)

The plot we came up with was a simple and workable one. Five of our stars
see a news item in Variety that General
Foods has just hired Phil Silvers to do
a new half-hour show. 

“It is rumored,” says our Variety story,
“that General Foods may drop one of
the other five.” If that sounds contrived,
it was. We put a piece of paper into the
typewriter and contrived it. I don’t quite
know what critics mean when they write
that a story line was contrived. I like to
think it was conceived. We certainly
went through enough labor to bring it
into the world. 

In due course an outline in some depth
was written and presented to the advertising agency, and there was joy in all the
cubicles up at Benton and Bowles. They
phoned to say they had engaged as producer a man from the theater with a
long list of distinguished plays he had
nurtured through their out-of-town
tryouts to Broadway successes—Leland
Hayward. Mr. Hayward and I were to
make the trip to the West Coast and
articulate our outline to the stars. Which
we did, to unanimous approval. The
agency men were quite pleased, and at
lunch Ed Ebel, vice-president of General Foods, insisted I have a second
dessert. 

Then back we came and the script was
written. You know that line about everything being fine at the theater until the
curtain went up? In the purified vernacular of television, all heck broke
loose. Miss Ball found it highly incompatible with her public image to pretend
that she would worry about losing her job to Phil Silvers because everybody
knows she is president of Desilu Productions. She wanted a slight change—the
script to state explicitly that she is president of Desilu and she wasn’t worried. 

Well, this played hell with our premise
—excuse it, I’m getting steamed up now.
We watered the plot down to “although
Miss Ball was president of Desilu and
was not worried about losing her job she
would pretend to have some concern for
the other stars who might lose their jobs
and she would help get rid of Mr. Silvers.” Some of the enchantment of doing the show was now slipping away.
But it got worse. My good friend Jack
Benny, when he saw the changes, reminded us that everybody knows he’s
quite wealthy and he wouldn’t be worried about losing his job either. To keep
it from spreading through the cast, Mr.
Hayward explained that they were playing the parts of people about to lose
their jobs—a crisis with which viewers
can all identify. 

The point was finally made and the
script went into rehearsal. Word came
back to us from the Coast that Miss Ball,
who evidently wasn’t finding it very rewarding laugh-wise to be the public
image of president of Desilu, had ordered other changes into the script—
among them a scene with Mr. Silvers
known in burlesque as “Again I Turn” (3) —ending with the pie-in-the-face bit, in
which the president of Desilu pretended
to be an old scrubwoman.

After the show went on the air I
heard to my sorrow that some viewers
found this scene quite hilarious. This I
can attribute to only one unfortunate
thing—Miss Ball happens to be one of
the country’s most talented and prolific
comediennes. 

The other Sunday night Miss Ball appeared in an hour show with Bob Hope. (4) She played, of all things, the president of
Desilu. Also, she was an actress for
Desilu. She appeared in one scene as
the actress trying on a top hat, white tie,
and tails. 

“This is what I wear in the magic act,
isn’t it?” she asked the tailor. “Where
are the tricks?" 

"In the suit,” he replied, as the public
image of the Desilu president went off
gaily to a board of directors’ meeting. 

Well, if there was a message in a
television program, this was it. No sooner had she arrived at the meeting than
she removed the top hat, and there,
nestling in the hutch of all that red hair,
was a rabbit. Desilu stockholders will
please not assume that this is her public
image. 

Also, the very next night the president
of Desilu appeared in her usual weekly show. (5) The premise: “Lucy takes a job
as a summons server to earn vacation
money." 

~ GOODMAN ACE

Goodman Ace (1899-1982) was born as Goodman Aiskowitz, aka "Goody” (as he was known to friends) had a low-key, literate drollery and softly tart way of tweaking trends and pretenses made him one of the most sought after writers in radio and television from the 1930s through the 1960s. In 1957 and 1959 he was Emmy nominated for writing “The Perry Como Show.” He and his wife Jane had a long-lasting radio breakfast show called “Easy Aces” that transferred to television in 1949 – where it lasted just six months.  As per his desires, “General Foods Opening Night” was the first and last time he collaborated with Lucille Ball. 

This article appeared in the May 16, 1964 issue of Saturday Review, a weekly literary magazine published from 1920 to 1986. 

Norman Cousins was the editor from 1940 to 1971. It was described as “a compendium of reportage, essays and criticism about current events, education, science, travel, the arts and other topics.”

FOOTNOTES TO HISTORY

(1) The TV special that Goodman Ace was employed to write was titled “Opening Night” airing September 23, 1963 on CBS starring Phil Silvers (“The New Phil Silvers Show”), Lucille Ball (“The Lucy Show”), Jack Benny (“The Jack Benny Program”), Andy Griffith (“The Andy Griffith Show”), Danny Thomas (“Make Room for Daddy”), and Garry Moore (”I’ve Got A Secret”).

(2) Schrafft’s was a chain of moderately priced New York restaurants which often attracted ladies who were out for shopping trips. It was one of the first restaurants to allow un-escorted females on a routine basis. In 1981, the Boston-based candy company that owned the chain ceased operations, leaving just a few remaining restaurants in private hands. Schrafft’s was mentioned in “Lucy Does the Tango” (ILL S6;E20) and ““Housewarming” (ILL S6;E23).

Ace writes “sinks lower than the second f in Schrafft’s”.  This is a reference to the company’s distinctive logo.  

(3) The vaudeville routine is most commonly known as “Slowly I Turned” or “Slowly I Turn” or even “Martha”, but not “Again I Turn,” as Goodman writes.  Perhaps this mistake is intentional to show his displeasure of the age-old vaudeville routine being inserted into his script – or perhaps not.  Lucille Ball had performed “Slowly I Turned” as Lucy Ricardo on “The Ballet” (ILL S1;E9) opposite Buffo the Clown (Frank J. Scannell) in 1952. This time, Lucy takes the role of the clown, and Phil Silvers is the one with the kind face. For plot purposes, Lucille is dressed as a charwoman.  

(4) The show Goodman Ace is referring to was titled “Mr. and Mrs.” aka “The Lucille Ball Comedy Hour” and was aired on April 19, 1964.  As he points out, the premise has Lucille Ball playing ‘Herself’ as the head of a studio named Consolidated Pictures (not Desilu). Like the real-life Ball, she also has a popular TV show in which she plays a wacky redhead named Bonnie Blakely (not Lucy Carmichael).  

(5) Ace is referring to “Lucy is a Process Server” (TLS S2;E27) aired on April 20, 1964, in which Ball plays Lucy Carmichael, a single mother of two who takes a second job as a process server to make enough money to go on vacation with her best friend and roommate Viv (Vivian Vance).  Her first summons must be served to Mr. Mooney.  

Original 1964 article by Goodman Ace, transcribed verbatim.  Footnotes by Michael T. Mooney.