INTERFERENCE

June 26, 1948

On June 26, 1948, Dorothy Manners’ column reported that Lucille Ball was cast in Interference, a film about pro football starring Victor Mature, to be produced by RKO. Manners remarks that when she saw Ball on stage in Dream Girl, she sat next to famed suspense director Alfred Hitchcock, who praised Lucille as “one of the best actresses in Hollywood.” 

If the title of the film seems unfamiliar, that’s because it was changed to Easy Living. The film was based on a screen story by Irwin Shaw, Education of the Heart. RKO purchased it in April 1946. In June Robert Sparks was assigned the job of producing and Charles Schnee the job of writing the screenplay. In May 1948 the title was changed to Interference and RKO announced Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum would play the leads. Neither ended up in the final film.

Victor Mature was under contract to 20th Century Fox but had an obligation to make a movie at RKO which dated from before the war. 

In June 1948 Jacques Tourneur was assigned as director.  Filming began on July 12, 1948, but not released until September 2, 1949, by which time its title had been changed to Easy Living. It was Lucille Ball’s 71st film. 

Alfred Hitchcock’s compliment of Ball may well be apocryphal – or true – we will never know. Although he though Ball “one of the best actresses” in Hollywood, he never hired her for one of his many films. Of course, Lucille was not what was not Hitch’s type – icy but curvaceous blondes. He cultivated a type that was later known as “the Hitchcock blondes”: Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint, and Grace Kelly, to name a few.  

Dorothy Manners was substituting for Louella Parsons. Manners (no relation to Miss Manners) was her assistant for 30 years and took over her column in 1965 after Miss Parsons retired. She wrote the column until 1977. She died in 1998 at the age of 95.