PERSEVERENCE

June 20, 1943

THE FEMININE STAR of the big musical, “Du Barry Was a Lady,” is a girl who survived the acid test of repeated hard sledding. 

Theatrical success didn’t come to Lucille Ball the way it arrives for lots of fictional heroines of Hollywood movies. She battled every inch of the way, hanging on in the face of discouragements that would have sent the vast percentage of young hopefuls back home. 

Home in Miss Ball’s case was Jamestown, N.Y. She was born in Butte, Mont., where her father was an electrical engineer, but the family moved to central New York when Lucille and her brother Fred were in their early school years. (1)

Mrs. Ball was a concert pianist and hoped that Lucille might follow a musical career, Lucille, however, was fascinated by the stage. 

After a year and a half of dramatic school in New York, she found a job with a traveling stock troupe. This was good experience and led, indirectly, to an audition with Florenz Ziegfeld, who was casting for “Rio Rita." 

A friend of Ziegfeld had seen the vivacious and shapely Miss Ball in a small stock role and recommended her for the new show. Ziegfeld approved. The new part was just a chorus job but at least it meant Broadway.

After “Rio Rita” Miss Ball found herself up against a long hard pull. She admits that for weeks on end she skipped more meals than she obtained. 

Twice she got chances with new shows, but no salaries were paid till after five weeks of rehearsals and she just couldn’t hold out that length of time. 

Then she would get a job as a model and when she had saved up a little, money she would make the rounds of the producers’ offices again. She had a hall room, fifth floor back, and cooked over a gas jet while keeping a wary eye open for the landlady. 

But a diet of canned soup soon lost Its appeal and after repeating this routine several limes she decided to confine herself to modelling and really learn the business. 

She became one of Hattie Carnegie’s star models, then her career seemed definitely finished through a blow delivered by fate. A car in which she was riding skidded on icy pavement and she was thrown to the street. 

HER BACK WAS INJURED AND DOCTORS SAID SHE WOULD NEVER WALK AGAIN. 

Later they said she might regain the use of her limbs in six years but through sheer, dogged determination she shortened this time to a little more than three and one-half years. After many months of hospitalization her mother took her home to Jamestown. 

"I think my most vivid recollection of the experience,” Lucille says, “was the dread I had of being taken through Grand Central station in a wheelchair when I was taken home. I didn’t want people to pity me." 

Many months of faithful attention to exercising and therapeutic treatments followed. Lucille was determined to walk again. Even now her mother tells of healing Lucille get out of her wheelchair in her upstairs bedroom, attempt to walk and fall to the floor with a heart-breaking crash. BUT HER GRIT WON OUT.

 Resuming work as a Carnegie model, she posed for many of the country’s leading commercial photographers on the side. She attracted widespread attention as the girl on a cigarette ad. 

One day she was feeling rather glum after a disagreement with her boyfriend when she encountered an agent she knew. The agent asked if she would like to go to Hollywood and she immediately sold yes. 

That was in 1933 and Lucille has been in pictures ever since, with the exception of eight weeks in 1938 when she played a featured role in "Hey Diddle Diddle” on Broadway.

RETURNING TO HOLLYWOOD following her success in this musical (2), she found herself definitely established as a clever comedienne in “Stage Door." 

During the filming of "Too Many Girls,” in which both appeared, Lucille met Desi Arnaz, then a young Cuban band leader and singer. 

They were married in Greenwich, Conn., on November 30, 1940. 

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FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) Again, the timeline of Lucille’s birth has been altered to insist that she was born in Butte.  After being born in Jamestown, the Ball family did hit the road for parts west, including Montana, but young Lucille and her mother did not return to Jamestown until after the death of Lucy’s father. Her brother Fred was born after their return to New York. 

(2) Ball was cast in the Broadway-bound play (it was not a musical) Hey Diddle Diddle in early 1937 (not 1938). It opened in Princeton NJ and played a couple of other out-of-town engagements before it was to open in New York, but the play never got to Broadway due to the serious illness of its leading man, Conway Tearle. It would take Ball until December 1960 to perform on Broadway with the musical Wildcat. 

On the very same page as this article about Lucille Ball, was an item about the film Hi Diddle Diddle (not Hey Diddle Diddle) starring Pola Negri.  The 1943 film was not associated with Lucille Ball’s failed Broadway-bound play.  The film also featured future “I Love Lucy” players Chick Chandler (Billy Hackett), Byron Foulger (Friend of the Friendless), and background players Bess Flowers, Jack Chefe, Don Brody, Mike Lally, Hans Moebus, and Harold Miller.