LUCY: BLACKJACK ACE & TOILET CLEANER!

August 16, 1967

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Two hundred and sixteen miles from Kanab, Utah (1) as the crow flies is this lovely sin-ridden town. Leaving the crows to fly it, I made the trip in an air-conditioned sedan across the desert and through the magnificent mountain scenery of Zion National Park (2), and before I knew it, there I was at the blackjack table In the Sands Hotel (3), with Lucille Ball sitting next to me and faring no better at drawing to a split pair of sevens. 

No one ever will mistake Lucy for a Vassar girl from Long Island’s north shore (4), with tweed skirts and cardigan sweaters. She had on a white silk brocade dress with brown pinto-pony spots, a couple of clanking gold bracelets and a mammoth gold wedding ring looking like a beehive. Even my Picasso blue sports shirt from Honolulu couldn’t take the play away from her. 

Between cards, Miss Ball commented not griped; just commented on the drawbacks of being well known. “You know when you go into those airplane washrooms and there’s a sign saying ‘Please leave this area clean for the next passenger’?” she asked. “Well, I must spend half my time in the air cleaning up there, because other people have been sloppy. If I come out and leave it the way I found it – everybody starts yakking ‘Lucille Ball was just in there. What a slob!’”

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FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) Kanab, Utah is located on Kanab Creek just north of the Arizona state line

as “Little Hollywood” due to its history as a filming location for many movies and television series, prominently westerns.

(2) Zion National Park is located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale and just thirty miles from Kanab. 

(3) Sands Hotel was a historic hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip that operated from 1952 to 1996. The Sands was the seventh resort to open on the Strip. During its heyday, the Sands was the center of entertainment and hosted many famous entertainers of the day, most notably the Rat Pack. The Sands was prominently featured in “Lucy Hunts Uranium” (above) in 1958 and was briefly glimpsed in a montage that opens “Lucy and Wayne Newton” (HL S2;E22). The Sands would be razed in 1996 to make way for the The Venetian Resort and Casino.

(4) Vassar College is located in Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded in 1861, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. It became coeducational in 1969. The college is one of the historic Seven Sisters, the first elite women’s colleges in the U.S.

Mel Heimer was a television and New York columnist for King Features Syndicate. He wrote “My New York” from 1948 to his death in 1971. His work appeared in some 130 papers throughout the country.