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HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU
July 27, 1941
Every star of our acquaintance has some system of aids to good grooming, but the set-up we like best is Lucille Ball’s. Lucille designed a wooden tray with sides and a handle, the tray divided into compartments. In one compartment is make-up, in another manicure utensils, in another brush and comb; one contains a mending kit, another whisk broom and shoe brush, another cleansing tissues. Everything Lucille needs is there. It goes back and forth to sets, into her dressing room with her. While the average girl’s beauty needs are less peripatetic, such a tray is still a good idea. Have such a set-up in your dressing table at home; have another, in miniature, in your office desk.
With this set, Lucille can use bits of time to keep herself together. Between professional manicures she gives herself a “clean-up” manicure. Perhaps she doesn’t even need to remove the polish.
# # #
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PEOPLE LOVE LUCY
July 26, 1952
PEOPLE LOVE LUCY
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz daren’t go to their studio these days. It’s flooded with mail. Seems everybody wants to know why they stopped their “I Love Lucy” show through the Summer.
Nothing on our TV these Monday evenings.“ writes one woman "Too bad if, it’s on account of the new baby,” sympathized another. “I can’t write to all these good people,” Lucille says, “but I want them to know we think it’s wonderful about the baby. Little Lucy Desiree is just one year old and our next bundle should be here by New Year’s. (1) What’s any family show worth without a family anyway?"
Blessings suddenly poured on this couple. They once had fair breaks in films. Then they just coasted. Lucille did a radio program. (2) Out of it grew the "I Love Lucy” television series which they put on film, six weeks ahead of time. (3)
It went like a prairie fire. It has topped the American Research poll in New York for five consecutive months; holds first place on the Hooper poll and rates 72, the highest, on the Los Angeles Teleque rating. ‘It’s well ahead of other popular family shows like “Burns and Allen.” (4)
The Neilson report months ago showed that 11,055,000 homes see “I Love Lucy” every week. That pans out at over 30,000.000 people a time.
Now the movie people, who didn’t think much of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, want them back for films. They’ll have to be satisfied with a feature picture which director-producer Ed Sedgwick is making out of three of the “Lucy” TV films. (5)
They just can’t turn out enough of this family entertainment, which ought to convince the Hollywood movie people that public tastes are on the up-beat and that too many sordid “down beat” films provide one reason why the movie box-office is so “beat-up” these days.
Many have asked me whether Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are Catholics. Well Desi is and Lucille isn’t although he tells me she has nothing against it; is Interested in fact.“ Desi, Jesuit-educated in Cuba, first took Lucille as his wife by civil ceremony, November 30, 1940. For nine years they hoped in vain for a family.
On June 19, 1949, they were married by Father John Hurley, at Our Lady of the Valley Church, Canoga Park. Within the year Lucille lost her first baby. Then last July, little Lucy Desiree arrived. It seems she will have a brother or sister come January. "Some people may wonder,” he told me, “but to me there’s only one explanation. Our marriage in the Church meant we had been blessed."
P.S. – "I Love Lucy” begins filming again August 1, ready for the next TV series starting September 1. (6)
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) Desi Arnaz Jr. was not born before New Year’s, but on January 18, 1953. Ball’s caesarean birth allowed her to schedule the birth to coincide with the arrival of Little Ricky on “I Love Lucy.”
(2) Although it is true that Lucille Ball did a husband and wife sitcom on radio (”My Favorite Husband”) it was not the same show that became “I Love Lucy.” In fact, “My Favorite Husband” also become a television show, although Ball did not star in it, nor was it overwhelmingly successful.
(3) This seems to suggest that the premiere of “I Love Lucy” was schedule for late November, not on October 15th, when the first episode was aired.
(4) “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” (aka “Burns and Allen”) was another early sitcom that came directly from radio. It featured the comedy team and real-life husband and wife, George Burns, and his simple-minded, yet kindly wife, Gracie Allen. Bea Benadaret, one of Lucille Ball’s radio co-stars, played Gracie’s best friend (the Ethel Mertz character).
(5) “The ‘I Love Lucy’ Movie” was simply three episodes (all Season One shows:
“The Benefit”, “Breaking the Lease”, and “The Ballet”) strung together by the premise that a family had finally scored tickets to a filming of “I Love Lucy.” The film included the in-studio warm-up and the cast’s curtain call, as well as footage of the Desilu Studios. The film was finished and given one preview, when it suddenly was withdrawn and never shown again until it showed up on DVD. There may have been some pressure by MGM for the Arnaz’s not to dilute their popularity with a feature film, as they had already signed a contract to make pictures for them.
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EXPENDABLE to EXPENSIVE
July 25, 1943
BY EDWIN SCHALLERT
She called herself an “expendable star” until about a year ago. This was because Lucille Ball thought she might be consigned to ultimate oblivion. Now she has a greater hopefulness about everything.
“I was,” she said, “old Mother Ball the worrier. A louse if there ever was one. Now I let somebody else do the worrying.”
But there’s one thing that Lucille won’t do – she won’t go high hat. She has a brittle, brisk quality that might be taken for the semblance of hauteur. But it hasn’t anything to do with herself. It’s just a protective sheath she’s acquired because she came through the school of hard knocks that sometimes practically amounted to wallops on the chin.
“I’ve discussed my sensitiveness before with you,” she told me, somewhat as if she didn’t want to recall all that again. But she opined: “It develops when you’re a show girl and battling around as an extra and a bit player. There’s nothing like that to take, all the ego, heart and courage right out of you. But I don’t want to talk about all that now. It’s past, I hope."
SHE WAS BORROWED
This Lucille Ball Is being currently seen in the picture that marked the turning point, namely "Du Barry Was a Lady.” This was produced at M.G.M. She was borrowed from R.K.O. and her contract has just been taken over by the other studio.
Most people thought she’d belonged to Metro for the past half dozen months but actually the deal wasn’t closed until a few weeks ago. And Lucille vociferates that Charles Koerner, head of R.K.O., has been a prince about it all.
M.G.M. has successfully put her in two other musical pictures, one “Best Foot Forward,” which received much praise recently in New York, and “Meet the People,” which is in the midst of shooting now. The studio intends to keep her in these melodious comedies for the present.
Every studio today wants good “release entertainment" stars and Lucille is reckoned one of the best by the organization which is furthering her career. Her name just went up on the top-flight stellar list, you see, about a week ago, and I hear that Louis B. Mayer ordered that everything Lucille (now a strawberry blond, with upsweep hair-do and ringlets) does henceforward shall be garnished with color photography, as were “Du Barry” and “Best Foot Forward.” That’s naturally more costly. So instead of expendable Lucille is becoming definitely expensive.
TOO MUCH WORRY
Her present idea of life if one should want to put It that way is to regard a change of environment as the best key to progress. It’s worked in her case. She was so happy at R.K.O., where she was under contract for seven years, that she might have stayed there always, she avers. She had grown to like everybody who was at the studio, and even when there was a change of regime she seemed to fit right into the new situations.
“But the trouble with me was that I was taking everybody else’s problems on myself and not concerning myself with what Lucille Ball was doing at all,” she continued. “You get that way when you know people too well.
"Furthermore, you’re likely to have your own way in a lot of things, and that isn’t good for you either. When I said worry a while ago, I meant worry, but you worry about the wrong things. At least I did.
LET THEM FRET
"Here’s a case in point. When I came over here and saw myself in a color test I started right away getting in a dither about how I looked and over doing something about it.
"Arthur Freed, the producer, calmed me down. ‘Take it easy.’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to fret about. If your test doesn’t look right to you we’ll change your make-up, fix things up, make it good, but don’t you start worrying. It can all be straightened out’ – and right away that took a load off my mind. Now I let somebody else do all the bothering.
"It went much further than such a thing as a test, though, because I was concerned about everybody, whether they were having illness at home, major or minor, their domestic troubles, transportation difficulties, whether they were getting the right vitamins and correct breakfast cereals. I was taking everything on my shoulders.
"Now I sort of figure, ‘Well, most people can take care of themselves better than I can in the long run,’ and let it go at that.” She’d probably never admit it but there is a strong thread of humanism running through any Lucille Ball conversation. She’ll
never lose that because it was too much associated with her early trials in the show business; her fight for recovery after a very bad auto accident, when it looked as if she might be relegated to a wheel chair, and various other vicissitudes.
HER PATH STORMY
Decidedly she has come the stormy way to success and she’ll probably never lose those attributes of frankness and earnestness which are peculiarly hers. Moreover, to these must be added her remarkable gratitude to the people who’ve helped her. She can be a spitfire when the occasion demands. She had one encounter with a member of a ration board when he trailed her while she was traveling to the studio, which is a classic as she narrates it. And she’s likely to come off first best rather than second best in any contest of wits.
She’s also very devoted to the chap she married, Desi Arnaz, who is now in the service. She feels secretly happy, I think, that he hasn’t been shipped overseas, owing to a leg injury which he recently suffered, but regrets that this injury, plus also an old one, has prevented him from fulfilling his ambition to go in the Air Corps.
In a word, she balances emotion (joy over his still being here) with intelligence (appreciation of what might prove best for him personally) with considerable accuracy. It’s like that with her in most things.
# # #
Edwin Francis Schallert was the longtime drama critic for the Los Angeles Times. He was married to Eliza Emily Schallert (née Baumgarten), a magazine writer and radio host. They had one child, William Schallert, who became a well-known character actor best known as Martin Lane on “The Patty Duke Show” and as Mr. Cresant on “The Lucy Show.” Edwin died in 1968.
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BITS & BOBS
July 25, 1938 – 1949
Keeping Lucille Ball’s name in the paper while she climbed the ladder of success often meant that the items were about everything and anything but her film career! Here’s a collection of miscellaneous news items that all appeared on the date July 25th, from 1938 to 1949.
1938 ~ Smart Jewelry
1939 ~ Hot Weather Salad
1940 ~ Ear Clips
1940 ~ Atomizers
1941 ~ Hand Massage
1942 ~ Fashion ‘Don’ts’
1943 ~ Kisses
1946 ~ Hats
1947 ~ Lucille Ltd.?
1948 ~ Albino Mink
1949 ~ Powder Blue Convertible
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MANIKINS ENTER MOVIES
July 24, 1933
Manikins (aka mannequins) implies that the girls were chosen for their looks, not their talents. Indeed some reports called the seven ‘poster girls’ because most of them, including Lucille Ball, were familiar faces from appearing as models on posters for various products. Casting New York-based models was a publicity ploy by Goldwyn. The press followed the seven familiar faces on their cross-country journey to Tinseltown.
Katherine (aka Katharine) Mauk was born in Texas, and came to New York City to write about Broadway, becoming a performer in the process. Her first role was in the revival of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Show Boat. She was then chosen to be in the chorus of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when she was convinced to go West for Roman Scandals. After that she did only one more film, Hell Cat in 1934. Mauk appeared in posters and print ads for Lucky Strike Cigarettes as well as a brand of chewing gum.
Rosalie Fromson started as a secretary, before moving to New York to work at the Hollywood Restaurant. She was a poster girl for Pond’s cold cream. Her only film was Roman Scandals.
Mary Lange was successful model and a Ziegfeld girl, before she was invited to Hollywood to become a Goldwyn girl. Her husband was a marketing executive for Standard Oil.
Roman Scandals was her 3rd of 15 films, 4 of which were with Lucille Ball.
Vivian Keefer was born in 1909 in New York City. She was the poster girl for Listerine! Roman Scandals was the first of her 5 films, 4 of which were with Lucille Ball.
Barbara Pepper was the poster girl for Gotham Hosiery. Scandals was her screen debut, but would go on to appear in hundreds of films and television shows, including episodes of “I Love Lucy”. She became best known for playing Florence Ziffel on the TV series “Green Acres.”
Theo Phane (aka Theo Plane) was a shoe model who only did one film.
Lucille Ball (aka Diane Belmont) was the Chesterfield cigarette girl and a model for Hattie Carnegie. She had been fired from the chorus of Ziegfeld’s Rio Rita.
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OLD FORMULA
July 24, 1957
Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball’s new format next year [five one-hour filmed shows] won’t be flamboyant star-crammed musicals. (1) They’ll use same characters, including William Frawley and Vivian Vance, in same type of stories. The first program, for instance, with Ann Sothern, Cesar Romero and Rudy Vallee as guests, will describe how Ricky and Lucy met in Havana 17 years ago. (2)
All five films will be completed in January. (3) Asked what she and Desi will do the rest of the time, Lucy shrugged, “We might appear in spectaculars or do some guest shots,” she supposed. In the following graph Lucy probably sums up why ‘I Love Lucy’ is consistently top show in ratings:
“Instead of giving up TV for other things, we gave up other things for TV, and we’ve been richly rewarded. "We haven’t asked people to look at us on TV, in the funny papers, on the stage and in a movie at the same time. We stick to the one medium.” (4)
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) The new format was called “The Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Show” (aka “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”). The statement that they “won’t be flamboyant star-crammed musicals” is untrue. The very first episode featured stars Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee and Ann Sothern and two original production numbers. The fourth episode showcased Betty Grable and Harry James in a production number called “The Bayamo”. The other three episodes may not have had musical numbers, but they were also star-crammed: Tallulah Bankhead, Fred MacMurray, June Havoc, and Fernando Lamas.
(2) The premiere episode explained how Lucy and Ricky first met in Havana in 1940. It was titled “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana” and first aired November 6, 1957. Filming was completed on June 28, 1957. Some location footage in Cuba (without actors) was used in the final program.
(3) Actually, the fifth episode, “Lucy Goes To Sun Valley,” was completed sometime in February 1958. For this episode, the actors went on location, causing the editing of studio and location footage to take extra time.
(4) “We haven’t asked people to look at us on TV, in the funny papers, on the stage and in a movie at the same time. We stick to the one medium.“ Lucille is really stretching the truth here. Yes, their main claim to fame was television, but by 1957 there had been an “I Love Lucy” comic strip in the newspapers, the feature films “The Long, Long Trailer” and “Forever Darling”, and a stage adaptation of “I Love Lucy” that was available to produce at school and community theatres! So much for sticking to one medium!
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SEEIN’ STARS!
July 23, 1938
“Feg” Murray was an American athlete, radio host and Olympic medalist who was also active as a sports cartoonist. His best known feature was the Seein’ Stars column (1933-1951), which featured trivia and news about Hollywood stars and their latest pictures.
Lucille Ball previously appeared in Feg Murray’s Seein’ Stars on August 14, 1936.
Lucille Ball also appeared in Seein’ Stars on August 25, 1940. Because it was a Sunday, the strip was in color. He depicted her in her hula skirt from Dance, Girl, Dance, with the interesting fact that she had to have guards with fire extinguishers standing by due to the fact it was highly flammable!
On February 1, 1942, Feg commented in art about how long it took Ball to get into costume for the period film Valley of the Sun.
On October 4, 1942, her costumes were once again the subject of Feg’s pen. Her feathered dress in The Big Street took six workers eight hours a day for a week to create!
On January 10, 1943, he wrote about how Lucille Ball’s use of a wheelchair in The Big Street mirrored real-life, claiming she spent three and a half years in a wheelchair after an automobile accident at age 17.
What Feg doesn’t say, however, is that Ball had a stuntwoman to do most of the physical sequences.
Lucille Ball learning jui-jitsu for The Affairs of Annabel would not be the last time she learned martial arts for a performance.
In 1963, Ball learned Judo for an episode of “The Lucy Show.”
Judo is a Japanese grappling sport derived from jujitsu while karate is primarily a striking unarmed martial art. Judo, however, is used primarily as a sport, while karate can be used practically for combat. In Louis Coppola’s book, he notes that the reason the writers titled the episode “Lucy and Viv Learn Judo” instead of “Lucy and Viv Learn Karate” was so ‘karate’ wouldn’t be confused with carrots, diamonds, or the carotid artery! For the episode, Ball employed professional martial artists to teach her, and to be on screen in the episode.
In “A Home Is Not An Office” (HL S5;E4), temp secretary Miss Quigley (Susan Tolsky) tells Harry that at secretarial school she learned typing, shorthand, and karate! She demonstrates a few moves, much to the surprise of Kim and Harry.
in “Kim Cuts You-Know-Whose Apron String” (HL S4;E24), the episode was centered around Kim and her neighbor Sue Ann learning self-defense from a book. The authors of the real-life book were the show’s technical advisors!
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COURTSHIP BECOMES TV
July 23, 1957
BY MARGARET McMANUS, Free Press Special Writer
NEW YORK – Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz will present the first of their new series of five musical comedy programs at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WJBK-TV. The shows were each scheduled to be one hour long, but this premiere offering will actually run one hour and 15 minutes. (1)
Hubbell Robinson, Jr., executive vice president of programming for CBS-TV, announced that when the network high echelon saw this film they decided it was much too good to cut any of it.
In a highly unprecedented move, 15 minutes will be borrowed from the Steel Hour, (2) which will go on the air at 10:15 p.m., instead of its customary 10 p.m.
“The heart of the show is in the last 15 minutes,” said Miss Ball.
“All I hope is that everybody realizes we’re going to run over the hour. It would be awful if I thought everybody was rushing out to the kitchen on the dot of 10 o’clock."
In New York for a brief stay, Lucille Ball made herself comfortable in her suite at the Hampshire House.
She is a tallish woman – about five feet six, with orange-red hair piled high on her head and very blue eye that miss nothing.
She was wearing a blue and white polka dot dress over stiff petticoats.
On a finger of her right hand was an emerald-cut aquamarine ring of notable size, and on her left wrist was a gold watch set with aquamarines.
* * *
HER CHILDREN, Lucy Desiree, six and a half, a solemn, black-haired little girl, and Desiderio Alberto Arnaz, wandered in and out of the room, fidgeting with small toys and stealing a piece of pastry.
It was incredible that the sturdy, mischievous boy was the famous baby for whom the television public watched and waited with the mass impatience of an expectant father, not quite four year ago.
Lucille Ball is obviously a doting mother, hiding the extent of her devotion beneath a brisk matter-of-factness. She is direct, outspoken and amusing, with a lightning-fast facile mind which goes in so many directions that at times her words can’t keep up with her thoughts.
But she is more than bright. There is also about her the quality of a poet.
* * *
I LOVE BEGINNINGS,” she said. “I love the beginning of a day. I love a new season. I love empty apartments. People are always asking us now if we have achieved everything we want. We haven’t nearly achieved all our dreams. I’m not talking about material things, of course. I love working toward any hope, any goal. The struggle is inspiring."
There sat Lucy, a woman who, with her husband, has probably amassed a greater fortune from television than any other performer in the business, quite genuinely lyrical about the joys of the perilous climb to the top of the mountain.
* * *
THE TOP-RATED show, ‘I Love Lucy,’ had a comparatively long life and they wisely quit it while it was still very popular. Although reruns are being seen each Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. over WJBK-TV.
Their new series promises to be as successful. The Desilu Production Company is a fabulous money maker, yet Lucille Ball hasn’t a thought of retiring on her laurels and her annuities. "I’m not happy unless I’m working,” she said, “What would I do if I weren’t working? I’m hardly the type to play bridge with the girls.
"I may not work as steadily, but I must work. In my spare time, there are so many things I want to do.
* * *
"I’M AN EASTERN girl at heart and I miss the change in seasons. I can take just so much sunshine. I’ve a deep yearning for New England. I want to spend a winter there, and be snowed in.
"I want to live a while in Paris, Rome and Switzerland, not just to visit, but really to live for a few months, so that the children can go to school in those places. "I’m the darndest contradiction. I have a longing to know parts of my country which are strange to me, to get the feeling of belonging to them, yet I cling so hard to my roots that Desi can hardly move me out of the living room."
* * *
LUCILLE BALL said that the television characters of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo and the private characters of Lucy and Desi Arnaz are so closely related that it is impossible to tell where the Ricardos start and the Arnaz couple stops. This first show of the new series, which includes in the cast Ann Sothern, Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee and Hedda Hopper, is the story of Lucy and Desi’s romance and courtship. It will have original music, a dancing chorus and a 26- piece orchestra, and the old regulars of the I Love Lucy show – William Frawley, Vivian Vance and Richard Keith.
* * *
IT IS FICTION, based on fact, and Lucille Ball, an unabashed sentimentalist, gets misty-eyed just talking about It.
"Boy! Desi and I just pushed time away and went right back when we were making this show. We lived through the beginning all over again when we were filming this show.
"I’m a little sentimental. I spent most of the time looking for a handkerchief. Life was much simpler for us.
"Now we have a house In Beverly Hills and other dwellings at Palm Springs and – at the beach. There seems always to be a caravan of cars going somewhere, with children and equipment.
* * *
"WE KEEP the beach house open until October. Then we start going to Palm Springs every weekend. I told you Desi has a terrible time getting me to move. Wherever I am is where I want to stay."
Although this is contradictory with her wish to travel, Lucille Ball doesn’t pretend to be a simple, uncomplicated woman. Like most highly intelligent, talented people, she is complex, sensitive, and has conflicting qualities.
She is efficient, well organized, a planner.
"I love people who know much has to be done, and go about getting it finished,” she said.
* * *
IT IS REPORTED that she has a temper to go with her hair, and that she can deliver a deadly, well-aimed blow when the occasion demand.
She is known to be equally kind and compassionate, is generous with praise of her co-workers and writers.
“Desi is responsible for our success,” she says flatly. “He runs the production company. The only thing I help with is personnel.
* * *
“HE MAKES all the important decisions about our shows. He has perfect taste. We couldn’t survive without him."
Miss Ball said her only recreation and relaxation are her children.
"I work – I have three houses to run,” she said. “Weekends, evenings, days off, we spend with the children. Wherever we go, we take them.
"I’m forever anticipating them at older ages, especially when they get to the age where they start to criticize their mother.
"All girls criticize their mother, don’t they? I can hear Lucy now when she’s about 11. She’ll probably look at me and say ‘What kind of hair do you have?’"
* * *
"BY THAT TIME, I’ll look her straight in the eye and say, ‘It’s gray, dear – plain, drab gray.” (3)
It may be gray, but there will never be anything plain and drab about Lucy, She’s as luminous an only a candle can be, which is burning at both ends and is a little aflame in the middle.
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) The program in question was the premiere episode of “The Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Show” (aka “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana” not aired until November 6, 1957.
(2) Desi insisted that the program required the added 15 minutes and convinced U.S. Steel to delay the start of their “The U.S. Steel Hour” program “The Locked Door.” Both shows received record ratings. When the show was re-run, however, it had to be trimmed to one hour. The show is framed in a flashback: In 1957 Westport, Hedda Hopper visits the Ricardos and asks how they first met. In syndication and reruns, this scene was generally cut out, and the show begins with the boat to Cuba in 1940.
(3) Lucille Ball never allowed her hair to go gray in real life. She maintained her signature Henna-dyed orange until her death in 1987. For public events she typically wore wigs.
Margaret McManus (Free Press writer) was a lifelong journalist. Her second husband was sports broadcaster Jim McKay. Like the Ricardos, they settled in Westport, Connecticut.
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LUCY IS A CHAMELEON PARENT
July 22, 1963
Lucille Ball confesses that she Is an inconsistent mother. In psychology we call this type of person a “chameleon parent.’’ Children will not hate you if you punish them wisely and judiciously but try to be an “expressive" mother instead of a chronic “no no no" or “repressive" parent.
CASE Q-401: Lucille Ball is known to most Americans for her superb acting and TV shows.
Recently she was interviewed about her new marriage to Gary Morton.
Notice her very shrewd appraisal of Gary’s parental psychology.
“Gary” she began “now gives the children the kind of discipline they never had before. And they love it. The children really dig him! I can be strict— for about — 60 seconds. Then the children can wind me around their little fingers.
“But you can really rely on the person who properly disciplines you because he is dependable. He is always the same way.“
Parents, Beware
Parents please take a lesson from the animal trainer! He always rewards the right behavior and always penalizes the wrong. And he never permits exceptions to occur! Take note of that fact! For millions of parents arc inconsistent in their punishment and scoldings. Like Lucille Ball they may say “No” yet if the child wheedles and whines and coaxes they will soon relent and change that “No" into a “Yes.”
A good parent does not say “No" unless necessary. But if it is really indicated then that “No” should remain a ‘‘No.’’
Chameleons are those little lizards that have the faculty of changing their color according to the hue of their background. Alas, many parents are “chameleon fathers and mothers” for they also change their tune if the child whines and coaxes. Occasionally, a wise parent may alter the rules if new data are introduced. But it is “bad” parents who usually produce bad children! And bad parents are generally the inconsistent or “chameleon” variety.
So resolve here and now to follow these standard rules of smart child psychology:
1) Be an “expressive” instead of a "repressive” parent. Give a child proper outlet! for his excess energy and encourage his probing mind which generates incessant questions. Remember leg action in outdoor games drains off his energy faster than seatwork or sitting games. So channel his activity constructively.
(2) Be consistent. Don’t encourage a child to tear old magazines or books to pieces and then punish him when he also mutilates a current magazine or book for a child below reading age doesn’t know the difference between "old” vs “new” magazines. So teach him to respect all printed matter.
(3) Pain is the major educator of a youngster so when it is necessary to punish him don’t smack him on the bottom which may be padded so heavily with sired results even with toddlers
diapers rubber pants and rompers or a snowsuit that he doesn’t even feel pain. Instead snap him with a finger or a flick of your pencil as on the back of the hand so he will fed some sharp pain. This doesn’t dislocate his spine with an adult smack, but gets the desired results even with toddlers Send for my 200-point “Tests for Good Parents” enclosing a long stamped return envelope plus 20 cents. Discuss them at PTA or Mothers’ Club Meetings.
George Washington Crane III (1901–95) was a psychologist and physician, best known as a conservative syndicated newspaper columnist (Worry Clinic, Test Your Horse Sense) for 60 years (he had previously written campaign speeches for Calvin Coolidge), and published at least three books.
One of Crane’s long-standing philosophies theorized that the reason for marital conflict was a lack of sufficient quantities of "boudoir cheesecake,” (aka connubial bliss).
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LUCY SHUNS AUDITIONS
July 21, 1950
[In the below article, reprinted verbatim, Johnson writes using a lot of imagery and insider jargon. This sort of article was common in trade papers like Variety, but seems odd in a daily newspaper.]
Hollywood—(NEA) Lucille Ball slipped me the lowdown on her failure to pin to the canvas the dumb chick role in “Born Yesterday” and make it holler uncle. (1)
She’s got a touch of Francis the mule in her when it comes to auditions. (2)
Instead of scrimmaging for the role with Evelyn Keyes, Judy Holliday, Marie Wilson, Shelly Winters and Jan Sterling, (3) Lucille went bolting the other way.
The “let’s-see-if-you’re-it” boys pleaded and cajoled.
But Miss Anti-Auditions wasn’t having any of the competition, thank you.
“I figure if they want you, they want you,” Lucille plainspoke it. If you’ve got to read and test for it, to heck with it.’
She isn’t chronicled in Hollywood history, but once, badgered by her RKO bosses, Lucille went tripping over to David O. Selznick’s office for a whack at the Scarlett O’Hara role in “Gone With the Wind.”
That’s what curdled her in the first place.
“It was awful,’’ Lucille shudders. I was shaking all over when I hit Selznick’s office. My knees gave way. I did the whole audition in scrubwoman position. Selznick laughs and says thanks a lot. (4)
Judy Holliday landed the junkman’s doll role and Lucille grabbed a railroad ticket for a personal appearance tour with hubby Desi Arnaz. She strutted to Latin rhythms, swung a glittering purse in a manner dear to runaway girls and wisecracked for the customers. (5)
MIMICS OSCAR WINNER
At the last moment she nixed a dancing and singing routine. The star with the forest-fire hair shrugged:
“I decided it would be silly to compete with Grable.” (6)
A lot of movie queens laid in fresh supplies of smelling salts, ice beanies and copies of “Release From Nervous Tension” when word got around that Lucille was about to whoop it up on the six-a-day circuit. (7)
She’s a blister-raiser from way back and the air was shrill with ouches about a year ago when she whipped up an impression of an Academy Award winner.
But the girls can go back to worrying about other things—like shrinking from larger-than-life to television screen size.
Lucille didn’t let any “furriners” see the routine.
“It’s for Hollywood only,“ she said. “I should take radio-active material on the road?”
Her Oscar-grabber routine is strictly for unreal anyhow, she says. and no blood relation to Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman or any other Screen Duse. (8) She insisted:
“She’s any movie star, even me. This character has to go up on that stage and act surprised. She’s only been rehearsing what she’s going say flor eight weeks. So she says, ‘Ye gads, me? But I’m so unprepared. Really, I didn’t dream…”
Lucille is generally is as unflinching about the movie queen business as Pearl White was about onrushing trains. (9)
But her knees executed some wobbles that aren’t in Arthur Murray’s rhumba dance book when she checked into her first vaudeville dressing room. (10)
“Those stages—they’re so big.” she gasped. “Hey, I’d hate to get caught in the middle of one of those stages without bread and water.”
Lucille didn’t take any chances with out-of-town press interviews, either. “I once did a personal appearance tour with Maureen O’Hara and had to show up at a press party,” she grinned. (11)
My sinus – I just die from it – was acting up. The reporter next to me didn’t understand my puffed eyes and cold sores. He called Maureen a lady in his story. But he referred to me as a whisky tenor with red-runny eyes.”
Lucille’s brain cells work on direct current and she’s not one to make with the figure eights when a straight glide to home base would get her there quicker.
They still laugh about her exit line to Louis B. Mayer. (12) Mayer always referred to her as a thoroughbred and sometimes compared her to his famous horses. "Yes, and like your other nags, I’m leaving your stable,” Lucille said when she decided to bow out of her contract.
She has high hopes for her new picture “The Fuller Brush Man.” Not that she enjoyed it: (13)
“Honey, this ones that I don t enjoy turn out be the best ones. This one put me in the hospital. My feet are still bandaged up. I’m a mess. No more physical-type pictures for me.”
# # #
FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE
(1) The 1946 Broadway hit comedy Born Yesterday by Garsin Kanin was bought by Columbia Pictures. Things got complicated when its stage star, Judy Holliday, swore she would not do the film version. Columbia used this as fuel for publicity about who would win the role. Naturally, Lucille Ball was considered a top contender. As the article states, she was not eager, however, to prove her worth to the ‘let’s-see-if-you’re-it’ boys (aka producers). There was talk of Lucille performing the play in London, or summer stock, but her film contracts would not allow her time off for a stage run.
(2) Mules are supposedly notoriously stubborn animals – just like Lucy. Francis the Talking Mule was the star of seven popular Universal-International film comedies. The character originated in the 1946 novel Francis by David Stern III, adapting his own script for the first entry, simply titled Francis. On “I Love Lucy” Fred Mertz sometimes called Ethel “Francis” to indicate she was being stubborn about something.
(3) These were some of the Hollywood stars looking to play the part of Billie Dawn in the film Born Yesterday. Evelyn Keyes (1916 – 2008) was best known for playing Sue Ellen, Scarlett O’Hara’s kid sister, in Gone With The Wind (1939). Judy Holliday (1921-65), changed her mind about playing the role she originated on Broadway, but by then the casting net was cast, and she was just another performer on the short list. She eventually got the role, which defined her career. Marie Wilson (1916-72) was a zany comedic actress in the style of Gracie Burns. She was widely known as the star of radio and TV’s “My Friend Irma”. Shelley Winters (1920-2006) would be nominated for an Oscar the year after this article. She was adept at playing drama and comedy, and had a long-lasting career in Hollywood. She appeared on “Here’s Lucy” in 1968; Critics raved about her Jan Sterling’s portrayal of Billie Dawn in the Chicago touring company of Born Yesterday and Columbia brought her out to the West Coast to test for the film. At one point, she was actually announced to play the part but the role ultimately went to Holliday.
(4) Lucille Ball did indeed read (not screen test) for the role of Scarlet O’Hara, just like nearly all of the women in Hollywood in 1938. Ball told the story several times on television, each time with varying details, but probably most completely on “Bob Hope’s Unrehearsed Antics of The Stars” (1984).
(5) This is a vivid description of the “Cuban Pete / Sally Sweet” portion of Lucy and Desi’s nightclub act to convince sponsors to buy them as a couple.
(6) Betty Grable (1916-73) was considered one of the most famous pin-up girls in history. In addition to her million dollar gams (legs), she could sing, dance, and act, too. She guest starred with her then-husband Harry James on
“Lucy Wins A Racehorse”, an installment of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” aired on February 3, 1958.
(7) “Release from Nervous Tension” was an actual best-selling book by Dr. David Harold Fink, published in 1950. Vaudeville and Burlesque shows were often known as the ‘six-a-day circuit’ because sometimes there would be as many as six performances of the same act in a day. Naturally, this did not apply to Lucy and Desi, who were big film and radio stars at the time.
(8) These were some of Hollywood’s top-line dramatic actors. Bette Davis (1908-89) had won two Oscars, and was nominated for several others during her long career. She was supposed to guest-star on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” in “The Celebrity Next Door” in 1957 but dropped out after a horse-riding accident, leaving the role to Tallulah Bankhead; Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020) had also won two Oscars, the second the year this article was published. She was best remembered for playing Melanie Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939); Ingrid Bergman (1915-82) was a Swedish-born actress, who, by career’s end, had scored three Academy Awards. When Johnson talks about “any other screen Duse” he is referring to Eleonor Duse (1858-1924), an Italian-born stage actress known for her grand, dramatic style.
(9) Pearl White (1889-1938) was best known as the silent film actress who was tied to the railroad tracks in “The Perils of Pauline” (1914).
(10) Arthur Murray (1895-1991) was a ballroom dancer and businessman best known for the chain of dancing schools that bear his name. Murray was often a punchline on “I Love Lucy,” especially when the subject of dancing came up. The Rhumba was a Latin dance that took America by storm in the late 1940s and 1950. Desi Arnaz often called his orchestra a ‘rhumba band.’
(11) Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015) and Lucille Ball had starred in Dance, Girl, Dance in 1940. As a result, the two went on a promotional tour that took them to several US cities, including the nation’s capitol.
(12) Louis B. Meyer (1884-1957), along with Samuel Goldwyn and Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures, had formed a new motion picture company called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1918. Over the next 25 years, MGM was “the Tiffany of the studios,” producing more films and movie stars than any other studio in the world. Mayer became the highest-paid man in America, and one of the country’s most successful horse breeders. Both he and MGM reached their peaks at the end of World War II, and Mayer was forced out in 1951, just a year after this article was written.
(13) Erskine Johnson gets the title wrong. Lucille had madeThe Fuller Brush Girl, a sequel to The Fuller Brush Man (1948). The film was released in mid-September 1950.
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