LUCY LIKES ADVENTURE!

May 23, 1938

Girl Once Selected as Ziegfeld Beauty Is Skillful Flyer – Using Own Airplane She Saved Boy From Icy Lake and Has Shot Crocodiles From the Air

By MONROE LATHROP, Special Correspondent of the St. Louis (MO) Globe-Democrat  

HOLLYWOOD, CAL. – “I was with Ziegfeld.” That brief sentence helped Lucille Ball as it has other girls to get a foothold on Broadway and in Hollywood. Selection by the great , impresario commands high, respect any where in the world of entertainment. But before Lucille got that imprimatur she had her full  share of hard knocks and high adventure of her own choosing high – because she’s a pretty skillful flyer. 

The ruggedness of the mountain country around Butte, Mont., her birthplace, entered Lucille’s spirit early. This daughter of an electrical engineer with the  Anaconda Copper Company in her first school days began to show a daring and determined nature with an almost total lack of fear; and it was later to lead her up into the air and down into the South American jungle. (1)

The Ball family moved to Jamestown, N.Y. where Lucille was graduated from high school and a music institute. Her mother, a concert pianist, hoped to train the girl into her own profession but the girl chose the theater and after training in a New York dramatic academy joined a stock company and went on her own. Too proud and determined to ask help from home, Lucille existed on short rations much of the time before Ziegfeld found her. 

She lived in a hall room, fifth floor back, and prepared her food over a gas jet while working as a mannequin with Hattie Carnegie’s models to save for the vicissitudes of her theater efforts! Back in Jamestown, Lucille had her own plane. On a week-end visit the cry went up that two boys were missing with an iceboat on Lake Chautauqua. Without waiting for details Lucille hopped into her plane. (2)

The weather was 20 below when she soared into the sky, searching for signs of the boys. Within an hour she discovered them, grounded her plane on the ice, and pulled one of the lads from a hole. It was too late to save the other boy. (3)

On a visit to Colombia, Lucille, avid for new adventure, went with friends Into the jungle, meeting a flood that had swollen the streams and overrun the banks with huge crocodiles. Instead of heeding the natives’ warning, Lucille went to wireless station, ordered an airplane and rifles, and spent a day pumping lead into the big green saurians. Natives rewarded her with a generous helping of crocodile steak later. (4)

After such exploits Lucille takes Hollywood just in stride but with undimmed dramatic ambition. Samuel Goldwyn brought her West as one of a group of noted poster girls for his "Roman Scandals.” Steadily she rose to a long-term contract with RKO. She has big blue eyes and natural blond hair. She weighs 120 and “diets” on plenty of hot biscuits, potatoes, candy and French pastry. (5) She has a hearty interest In everything that’s going on, likes hard sports and even plays polo. Also, she owns and operates an artificial flower shop in Hollywood to help in giving outlet to her abounding energy. August 6 is her birthday. (6)

EDITOR’S FOOTNOTES 

Just about everything in this article was the product of a publicists’ imagination.  It would almost be easier to note the kernels of truth than to separate the fiction.  

(1) Lucille was not born in Butte, Montana, although her father did briefly work in Colorado – as a lineman for the Bell Telephone company, not as an electrical engineer with the Anaconda Copper Company.  In other early biographies, it was said he was an ‘executive’ of a Copper Company. 

(2) Lucille did not own a plane – nor was she a qualified aviatrix.  She was an actress and a model. 

(3) The story about her rescuing a boy from Lake Chautauqua, while one died, is unsubstantiated by local reports. 

(4) The story about Lucy going to Columbia to fill ‘saurians’ (crocodiles) with lead (bullets) is the stuff of adventure films.  It never happened.  Crocodile steak? Hmmm.

(5) It is highly unlikely that Ball lived on a diet of starches and sweets and maintained her movie-star figure. 

(6) Yes, she played polo – on donkeys – for charity – and publicity.  She was not a traditional polo player.  But her birthday really is August 6th!