Lucy had quite the eventful life, i thought i'd start a thread on the various stories we've read about her over the decades, some are funny, some are sad, few are boring. When Lucy was a kid, they tied her to the clothes line so she would not wander off the property, she'd beg passers by to set her free by saying she got tangled up in the line by mistake.

At 15, Lucy quit school and with her mom's permission and money sowed into her blouse, she went to New York to study acting and was too shy, the star pupil there was Bette Davis. Bette later was hired by Lucy/Desi to star in an episode of The Lucy Desi comedy hour but had a bad fall in her house and was replaced by Tallulah Bankhead. Which was ironic, as every Broadway show Tallulah had succeeded in that got made for the movies then went to Bette who was a much bigger name.

This is a funny one, always cracks me up. Lucy always but always went out and sold savings bonds on war drives. She was part of this contingent one time that went flying in this small plane. Along with her was this leacherous womanizer who went after every good looking woman. Also along was a lesser known but very well endowed blonde who kept turning down the advances of this annoying character. He kept bugging her to sleep with him but she kept saying NO! But he would not take NO for an answer. They got to a point where the plane had serious engine problems and started a nose dive, it even looked like they were going to crash and they all got real scared and thought it was the end. So the buxom blonde turns to the sex starved guy and screams OKAY, NOW! :lol:

Short one: Lucy had this lunch, where she invited some female friends who had slept with Desi, WONDER IF IT WAS HELD AT THE ROSE BOWL? During the lunch, she announced, i want you all to know that Sheilah MacRae is the only one here who hasn't slept with my husband. Wonder how she could be so sure she hadn't? lol!

One time, in the sixties, Lucy and gary were entertaining Sheilah MacRae at the Roxbury street mansion and they were all upstairs when they heard someone coming in downstairs. Afraid it was an intruder, Sheilah suggested to gary that he call the police but Lucy knew better, she said it was probably Desi. She said he often did that, come to the house, forgettting he no longer lived there or missing the house, how sad is that?

Lucie had trouble with friends when in school. She found herself surrounded by throngs who befriended her just because she was Lucille Ball's daughter. Once Lucy found out she was friends with this one girl simply because they had been in neighboring bassinets in the hospital. Lucie was always in tears saying she only was friendly with me to come and see the house or to meet YOU!

At Halloween, Lucy would stand at the door of her mansion and hand out candy to the neighborhood kids, with a Desilu security guard at her side. At Christmas, they decorated the whole house with lights. Later, when gary replaced Desi in that house, it was said that in the kitchen, the tortillas were replaced by bagels, LOL!:lol:

Lucy one time had a show to do and no time to go home and change, so she went to Hollywood friend's house, there she spotted some COOL cigarettes with no writing on them, when Lucy complimented the hostess on the great tasting ciggies, the hostess said they were MENTHOL, Lucy knew better. At party a bit before that, one of this type of CIGGIES had been passed around for the guests. Lucy was not a prude, she'd try anything once. Or in this case, at east twice, LOL!

Lucy and the HOT pants: Lucy loved being au courant and WITH IT. She, along with Kaie Hepburn were among the first to wear pants in public and on shows, Lucy used to be criticized for going on talk shows in pant suits, but she was always way ahead of her time. So she hears the latest rage are HOT PANTS, so she wore themn to her next Hollywood party. In comes Sammy Davis with his new young wife, Altovise, also wearing HOT PANTS. Altovise did not know anybody there, she was new to that group of A listers Sammy hung out with. She spotted Lucy in a corner and ran to her. Lucy talked to her all night and made her feel comfortable and totally at ease, especially being the only two females there wearing the HOT PANTS. Lucy and the couple soon became fast friends. Lucy took Altovise under her wing and prepared her for the crowd she would now be hanging out with.

One time, Sammy decided to treat his Hollywood friends to a showing of a THEN HOT movie called Deep Throat, he rented out the theater and asked all his superstar friends to attend. Lucy could be very prudish when it came to on screen nudity but not being able to say no to Sammy, she and gary went along with Sinatra and many other luminaries of that period. Sammy took great joy knowing Lucy would be very uncomfortable at the sight of what was happening in that porn movie. When people left the theater, he couldn't wait to question Lucy about what she had just seen and what she thought about it all. Lucy calmly stated, I NEVER KNEW A WOMAN COULD OPEN HER MOUTH THAT WIDE!:lol: :lol: :lol: I'm pretty sure that must have been the only porno Lucy ever witnessed.

When Lucie had her big birthday bash one year, she wondered how she could top it the following year so she decided to get married to her beau, who was referred to as a documentary filmmaker. Mama invited the 200 guests and the reception was held in Beverly Hills at the mansion on Roxbury. The neighbors were quite upset that the celebrity watchers were traipsing all over their manicured lawns so they set off their sprinklers at one point. I was so pleased to see Lucy and Desi on the cover of the New York Daily News that day with the bride and groom, it was so seldom you'd catch a glimpse of Desi at that point in time.

At one point, when Lucy and Desi were the King and Queen of television and Hollywood royalty, they got kidnapping threats against their kids. So, they decided they had no choice than to sell their little Ranchito in the Valley and move to the Hills of Beverly. They had bought the house on 4 acres of land when all there was out there in the Valley were orange grives and their neighbors like Clark Gable and his wife, one of Lucy's mentors. Desi left the chore of finding a place in Lucy's capable hands. She toured site after site and never found anything to her liking. Then, she noticed one that she loved across the street from where she was with the agent. She went and rang the bell and offered to buy the place. Luckily, the owners wanted to sell as their son had just died in the service. Lucy made an offer on the spot, they waited for the husband to come home and he added 5 thousand to Lucy's offer of 80 thousand. They sold the place for 3 and a half million 34 years later, but it had been offered at 7 and a half million but stayed on the market for two years as it needed lots of work. They replaced the beautiful white Colonial with a grotesque and ugly monstrosity but kept the foundations and every window and door was in the exact same place, they just redid the whole LOOK of it, but took away all the lush landscaping that made the house a beauty. Anybody got pictures?

Enjoyed the stories!

Enjoyed the stories!
Happy to hear it, i have like a thousand, so that should keep me posting for a while. Got tired of the word games.

Jimmy Stewart owned the house across the street from Lucy's. He had his mansion and decided to buy the lot next to his so he could plant vegetables, he loved gardening. There's one funny story about him bringing some of his vegetables to Lucy's and her COUPLE not recognizing him and thinking he was just a guy selling vegetables, so they said, no thanks, we have vegetable man already, LOL! Gary warned them to let him in next time and give him a dollar for his veggies. Problem with digging for a garden meant all the rats went across the street to Lucy's. One night she was invited to a party there and the guests wondered why she was late when she lived so close. She came in and gave a cursary hello and sat down, then she explained that she was not going to go at all as she had spent the day with exterminators because of the rat problem caused by Jimmy's gardening interests, LOL!

All the BIG stars in television got MONEY under the table to stay with a network or just be happy and not move elsewhere. Gleason used his CBS hidden stash to buy a train and Skelton got his also. Lucy got 600 thousand one year and had to plow it back into her Desilu studio to save the place after Desi had run it into the ground while drinking. Lucy knew the money was needed to finance two little pilots her people were very optimistic about, Star trek and Mission Impossible. Those two shows and their subsequent movies ended up making about two billion dollars for Paramount in the long run. All because Lucy wanted to pretect her investment and her employees at the studio. What's really funny though is that Lucy always thought that Star trek was about old vaudevillians travelling around. To her Star meant Hollywood people, not other worlds, LOL! :lol:

There was this famous comedienne in old movies called Zasu Pitts and Lucy, like everybody else, knew of her. One day, sometime in the late thirties, Lucy is walking down the street when she sees her, she was eating some fruit at the time, so she goes up to her and practically spits in her face while saying OH MY GOD, ZASU PITTS, I'M SO THRILLED TO SEE YOU. Spraying her with pits and juice in the process. Then, as she walks away, she suddenly realises her error. It was actually silent screen legend Lillian Gish. Lucy later met her at a party in the fifties and asked if she remembered the incident and she DID!

Lucy and gary were at a party in the late sixties or early seventies and they saw two of the other guests were Liz Taylor and Dick Burton, two of the most famous stars at that time in movies. They actually asked Lucy from across teh room why she had never had them on her show? Lucy sent over gary to make sure they were serious and then promptly got an episode written for them and got the ok from CBS to pay these huge movie stars. The show was very funny although neither star was that adept at comedy, and Lucy got herself some huge ratings. She later tried for Elvis Presley, but CBS balked at the cost so soon after the Taylor/Burton debacle. Would have been great to see those two icons together in something.

When Lucy retired from her last series, she did not know what to do with herself. She started cleaning her house after letting most of her staff go, then she went on to other people's houses, like Desi jr. Did you know that Lucy always got her home furniture made in Jamestown? She really liked these huge comfortable sofas with matching ottomans that were large in size also. She had these all over her many houses. She had the huge mansion in Beverly Hills, the house in Palm Springs, later she had the apartment in New York City and then there were the condos in Snowmass Colorado. Three one on top of the other, one for her, one for her mom and one for her kids.

Lucy usually always stuck with the script, she very rarely ad libbed. If someone like Viv came up with something funny, then she'd leave it in of course, Lucy considered Viv a great show doctor, like Desi, who always knew what aws funny or if there aws a way of making a scene even funnier. The one time everybody remembers Lucy ad libbing though was when she did the show with Bill Holden, there, when her nose caught on fire, she ad libbed the part where she dunks it in a cup of coffee. Whenever she told the story she made it sound like Bill and the others did not know the nose would light on fire, but the truth is there was a wick in the silly putty that made it safe for Lucy to do that scene, i guess she forgot about it all after so many years and kept spreading the story that it was all unexpected.

I'm enjoying these stories. Wish she had have gotten Elvis on the show.

I love your stories too Splain! Keep em coming.

Thanks, i love telling them, she had such a fascinating life. Desi knew their studio had to expand if they wanted to compete with the big guys in Hollyweird. He asked Lucy if she wanted to retire or get bigger. Of course, he knew the answer before he even asked her, Lucy would never retire, she lived to work and had finally achieved a success she never dreamed of reaching. So he heard that General Tire was selling RKO, once a giant in filmmaking. He asked Howard Huges about it and Howie advised him that even if he turned it into a parking lot, it HAD to make money as the real estate alone was worth millions and all they wanted was 6 million something. So he sold the rerun rights of I Love Lucy to CBS and bought RKO. He told Lucy only on a break from shooting the Tallulah episode. Lucy's first reaction was WE HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY RKO??? He answered that no, they didn't but the bank would back them up with a loan for the difference as he only got 4 million plus for the reruns, the biggest mistake of his life. If he had kept those shows, he'd have died a very rich man but nobody knew the value of reruns back then. And Lucy and Desi would never have been big studio owners.

ILL was filmed at Motion Picture Center which they already owned and RKO had it's Hollywood lot next door to Paramount, seperated only by a fence. They also owned the other RKO lot in Culver city where Gone with the Wind had been filmed. So, now, they owned THREE studios, they were now bigger than MGM. The three studios became Desilu Gower, Desilu Culver City and Desilu Cahuenga. Lucy used to tell a funny story about the Culver City one, she never could find it and always got lost on the way there. The first time she had gone there aws whenshe auditionned for the role of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. Lucy later would get annoyed when interviewers would ask, when you were struggling at RKO as a starlet, did you ever think, one day you'd own the place? She'd frown and answer, OF COURSE NOT, WHO THE HECK THINKS THAT ONE DAY THEY'LL OWN THE PLACE WHERE THEY ARE WORKING? :lol:

As a gimmick to plug the new film Gone with the Wind, they proceeded to audition every working actress in the US of A. Lucy went to MGM's Culver lot thinking it was pointless to go because she would never get the role but she always did what she was told, BACK THEN anyway, LOL! So she drives in her convertible to the lot, proceeds to get lost as she could never find that place. While on the way there, she gets caught in a monsoon, the skies just opened up and she got totally drenched. She walks in to the studio office of the one and only David O Selznick looking a mess. Thank God, his secretary gave Lucy something to put on her as she got out of her wet clothes, Marcella would later marry Dr Rabwin and become really good freinds with both Lucy and Desi. Lucy is drying by the fireplace and kept being given brandy glasses to warm up while clinging to her huge towel. In comes Selznick and he has her audition and Lucy did her best Scarlett imitation batting her eyes and drooling with that Southern drawl of hers. Mr Selznicjk said her audition was very interresting, she hadn't realized she had done it on her knees. Needless to say, she did not get the part. While they were filming the burning of Atlanta with extras, Lawrence Olivier brought his then wife to the set, the beautiful Vivien Leigh was glowing in the fire reflection and she caught the eye of everyone around her who knew they had finally found their Scarlett.

When Lucy started out at RKO, Ginger Rogers' mom was her mentor and she taught her everything she knew. So, when Lucy owned RKO, she asked Desi if she could start a workshop for young performers as a sort of thank you to Lela Rogers. And the Desilu Playhouse was born, it cost a fortune but Lucy was always about pay back. She got some hundreds and hundreds of kids from all over and eventually settled on the ones that were the most promising and she even had a Desilu Playhouse special airing to show off their talents. Robert Osborne who does commentaries at TMC was one of her students as was the incomparable Carole Cook, her real first name was Mildred but Lucy asked her to change it to her former friend and mentor Carole Lombard. Carole was Clark Gable's wife and they lived near Lucy and Desi in the valley. After Carole died in a plane crash while selling war boands during the war, Clark would ride over to Lucy and Desi's on his motorcycle to cry and reminisce about her. Lucy later claimed that when she was thinking about going in to TV, she had seen Carole in a dream who told her to GO AHEAD AND GIVE IT A WHIRL.

Carole Cook was and still IS a very funny woman. Lucy was taken with her immediately. She asked Carole to stay over at her mansion. Carole came in with her tattered clothes and one suitcase and stayed in a guest room. The maid asked for the key to her luggage and Carole told her, JUST CUT THE STRING. Lucy later was matron of honor at Carole's wedding, as word got out that Lucy would be there a huge crowd formed, so Carole gets there and quips GEEZ, I HAD NO IDEA HOW POPULAR I WAS. Lucy had this habit of giving away her clothes when someone admired them, so you can see Carole in many of the shows, wearing Lucy's old outfits, even in her private life.

The elements played havoc with Lucy and Desi's life over the years. One time Lucy was coming out of the pool in Palm Springs when the earth opened up with an earthquake and she fell in a hole before she made it back to the house. One time in Northridge at their ranchito in the Valley, a fire engulfed the area where they lived, Mama Arnaz told desi to save the pictures, the only thing you can never replace. Desi spent the night on the roof of the house with a hose running water all over the property. The famous earthquake of '91 happened in the same place but they had sold the house and moved long before, they were both gone anyway. You've seen the scene in Home Movies where they had snow on their property, another very rare occasion.

One of Hollywood's finest acting families were the Barrymores. Lionel, Ethel and John. Lucy used to tell the story of when Lionel stayed with them in Chatsworth, in the guest house, and being a heavy smoker, set fire to the place and Lucy could hear all the cats he owned as they burnt in the place. Lucy was a great lover of animals, God knows she worked with so many of them on her shows, not to mention being married to gary all those years, LOL! Lucy used to say God took her dogs just as she had her kids as they all happened to die around the same time. Lucy's last dog, TINKER was a toy poodle. When she went for her last fitting for her Oscar dress a month or so before she died, she went in her robe and had her dog with her, she found the dress very very heavy so she warned the dog to stay away from her as she tried it on, she said, GET AWAY TINK, IF THIS THING FALLS ON YOU, YOU'RE A GONER!

I'm enjoying these stories. Wish she had have gotten Elvis on the show.

now THAT would have been one memorable episode. the closest the show got to elvis though was mentioning ethel mentioning his name when the ricardo's moved to the country & fred & ethel went to visit them.

but ditto splain! i love reading these stories!

Well, if you guys ever want to bring up particulars on any story it might warrant a discussion on that particular aspect of the story. I'm just giving generalisations, but i can amplify if there are questions, LOL! The thing with having read every book and article and listened to all of them tell these stories on talk shows or in interviews is you get a general idea. BUT, we all have to remember that these people are remembering the way THEY want to remember it or as in Martin Short's airplane story, they lie and embellish to make a funnier story. Or some, like men who cannot stand women in power tell tales that make her look like an ogre, the fact is that that there were very few powerful women at that time and some men could not stand taking orders from a mere woman, especially fifty years ago. Don't forget when she started out, producers would seek women who would sleep around to get ahead and very few women achieved the heights that she did. And i also think that Lucy Bette Davis and Kate Hepburn were all from New England and were all three NO NONSENSE types who told it like it was and refused to take crap from anyone, they broke the barriers. Whether it was smoking in public or wearing slacks, or telling salty stories or demanding better parts or running their own shows, this was all new at the time and these three trailblazers really had their work cut out for them. They also suffered from that AGE thing, when they got old and Hollywood refused them parts, they demanded to keep on working and refused to just go away and retire. One of my pet peeves is when you hear the same exact story from three different people who were there but nobody remembers it the same way, LOL!

Lucy by the numbers: Within weeks of being shown on Monday nights on CBS, the ILL series was being watched in 10 million homes, a record high for the fifties when so few homes even HAD televisions. I think the baby show had two thirds of the entire viewing audience. You've all heard the stories that stores changed their shopping hours in major cities so as to not be up against LUCY, or that water levels would go down drastically when commercials were on or when the show ended each Monday. There were no cabs available for that half hour in New York, EVERYBODY watched the fab foursome on Monday nights. It's hard to think that back then, there were no reruns and they did almost 40 shows a year sometimes as opposed to the 20 or so they do now.

Speaking of the BABY show, the one where Lucy Ricardo has the baby, it was such a HUGE media event that it took over the front pages of every newspaper around the world, but even more so in the US of A. Eisenhower's inauguration had to settle for second spot, and as was often quoted everywhere, Americans liked Ike but they LOVED Lucy. It also surpassed the coverage of the crowning of Queen Elizabeth at that time. It is also a FACT that Queen Elizabeth herself was a huge Lucy fan. In a Royal documentary, the family is seen sitting in the living room, well, ONE of the many living rooms at The Palace, watching lucy on television, over protests from Prince Philip, I never liked him anyway, now i know why, LOL! Over the decades the previous Pope has stated that he loved watching Lucy on television and every President since Roosevelt has professed their love for Lucy. The Reagans were close friends as many Presidents were because Lucy hung out with the Hope/Sinatra crowd in Hollywood and Palm Springs. Lucy had shown shown her compassion when Nancy dealt with breast cancer at one time so they were both quoted saying nice things when Lucy passed. Lucy met every President since Roosevelt, was one of the few celebrities visiting the White House when Truman was there, Desi even suggested doing a documentary on him at the time, Lucy entertained the Eisenhowers, went to parties with the Fords, was not fond of Nixon and gave Sammy Davis heck for hugging him and being used by his campaign. She loved the Carters and often mentionned Presidents on her shows, everyone from Kennedy and Johnson to the later ones were joked about re taxes and the like. She received her Kennedy Center Honor from Reagan and the Congressional medal of freedom from the elder Bush.

More numbers: Desi sold the rights to I Love Lucy to CBS for 4 and a half million dollars, he added to that sum and then spent 6 million 150 thousand for RKO and renamed it Desilu. After five years of running the place, initially a success story that had more sound stages than any other studio including MGM, and having 16 shows on the air at the same time to five years later where the studio was not doing so well. Lucy bought him out when his drinking took over his life, and she ran it for five years also. She became the first woman ever to own and run her own studio. Mary Pickford had been one of many when she owned an interest in United Artists years before. Lucy did not relish being a studio head, she hated firing people, they had a nice family run operation with thousands of employees but the fact was she knew she had to build the place back up if she could ever hope to sell it and get her money back. With help from trusted friends and new management, she succeeded in getting it back in a good position so she could sell. Next door neighbor Paramount made an offer of 17 million dollars and owning 60 percent of it herself, her stake amounted to 10 million, but she still owed Desi his 2.5 million she had given him for his share, the rest was owned by shareholders and trusted friends and employees.

In hindsight, this too turned out to be a mistake. After spending her own 600 thousand dollars to finance Star Trek and Mission Impossible pilots, those shows took off and initially became hits that saved the studio. She also had made this movie caslled Yours Mine and Ours that was her biggest HIT ever, grossing like 20 million or more, but her share was 25 percent and another 25 percent went to the studio, meaning their 17 million was really a lot less than that factoiring in Lucy's hit movie's 25 percent stake. But Lucy was happy to go back to being an actress wife and mother instead of studio head. Enough of taking meetings on breaks from the show or attending sessions in curlers or taking work home, all to save her investment. To show that she was a regular person deep down, she'd have interviews at the studio and would proceed to dust the board room table while talking, LOL! On the set of Y M and O she told film critic Rex Reed that these stories of her turning into a man were nonsense. She was tough but only when it came to business. Problem is in business, men who were efficient and to the point were considered great but women doing that were considered beeatches. Lucy was not a woman's libber, she used to say EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK, YES, THAT SHE BELIEVED IN, but the rest was not important to her because she HAD been LIBERATED her whole life and that was nothing new to her.

Just typed in 1000 North Roxbury Drive Beverly Hills California 90210 in Search and got the house and four views as well as the estimated value today, for the 7500 square feet mansion with 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, as well as pool tennis court and guest house, VALUE was 11 million plus!

When Lucy died, the house was listed at 7.5 million but only fetched 3.5 million two years later. Too much renovation was needed as the house was hopelessly old fashionned. Gary lived in the house until it sold and it took Lucy's ghost to get him out of there. First of all, i think he expected to get the house in her will but she said it should be put up for sale and she left her second husband the one in Palm Springs instead, which made sense as he was forever golfing there. Today, his widow, a golf pro he later married owns that house and even has Lucy's last dog TINKER, although at this point, it has to be a descendant, or that dog would be pretty old, LOL! Gary outlived Lucy by ten years passing away due to the same culprit, CIGARETTES, in '99Before he died, he told one story of Lucy appearing to him and telling him he had to move on with his life and get out of that house. He said she looked lovely, same as when she had passed and after talking to him a little just faded away. The story made the tabloids at the time. There was no mention of if he asked to borrow money from her though, LOL!

Lucy was always a big fan of John Wayne. She liked his type of movie, westerns with no sex were perfect for her, not on the same level as classic musicals with awesomely talented individuals but she admired Wayne's longevity. He was a fan of hers also. Not only did he appear on her shows and they did a special together but his daughter remembered in a book she wrote how he loved to come home tired from a day on the set and sit back and relax while watching the Queen of Comedy do her stuff. She said she could hear his howls of laughter all through the house. Clint Eastwood was another Lucy admirer. When he got his Variety Clubs tribute, it was Lucy who organized it, she even sent out the invitations and noticed and even mentionned on the show that aired that some prominent people in the industry were unable to get tickets for the show as Eastwood had given out freebies to all his friends in the business, not superstars but grips and technicians and other people lower on the Hollywood film totem pole. Lucy always gravitated towards people, who, like her, were genuine and caring and compassionate towards others.

Just typed in 1000 North Roxbury Drive Beverly Hills California 90210 in Search and got the house and four views as well as the estimated value today, for the 7500 square feet mansion with 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, as well as pool tennis court and guest house, VALUE was 11 million plus!
No floor plan?

Lucy was one of those entertainers who felt it was wrong to criticize other performers. She made an exception of course for someone who had a show on the Desilu lot. B actor Jack Palance, who later won an oscar for his comedic performance in a Billy Crystal comedy had a show on that was not doing well at all. It was called The Greatest Show on Earth but clearly wasn't, LOL! Lucy agreed to appear on an episode to boost ratings. Whenever Lucy appeared on someone else's show, the ratings went sky high. She did this one as a favor but also the show was filmed at her studio so . . . She played this woman who later adopts this little boy, it was well received even though Lucy was in a drama again, not her forte, her fans wanted her to be funny. On the set, while filming the show, she discovered that Jack was a pain in the rear, a real prima donna who threw his weight around and took to screaming and throwing tantrums like a five year old. She yelled back of course, was upset she had ever agreed to help him and his show out and the show got cancelled quickly. Later, she was quoted as saying that she hated working with tempermental people like Palance and she added, YOU CAN QUOTE ME! Later, maybe three decades later, Lucy was inducted into the T V Hall Of Fame. An auditorium filled with celebrities saw clips of her shows as well as other luminaries who were honored that night, including Milton Berle and the founders of CBS and NBC with three others. Each got a small tribute, Desi jr came out to introduce his sister who sang a song that brought Lucy to tears, MY MOTHER THE STAR, surely the best tribute Lucie ever gave her mom, Carol Burnett came out to introduce Lucy who got a standing ovation coming and going, her trophy and said she saw dozens off friendly faces that had meant so much to her over the years, she cried as she finished her speech adding, i wish some of them could be here tonight, a clear reference to Desi and Viv and others who had already passed on, or too ill to attend, but were fondly remembered by her on this beautiful occasion. As the camera panned over the audience, only one person is seen sitting on his hands with a sombre look on his worn and ugly face, yes, good ole Jack Palance was there for the Paddy Chayefsky tribute that night. It was obvious their fight from decades before was still playing in his mind, LOL!

Lucy was asked countless times in her illustrious career to name her all time favorite show. When you have done over 500 of them, that's not an easy question. Over the years, her choices changed a bit, she usually named the BABY show as her all time fave, but also mentionned The NOSE ON FIRE Holden one, or the Dean Martin appearance on The Lucy show. The baby show was a fave because of the sentiment attached, the other two were because she just loved working with both Holden and Martin. Lucy had sent a script to Dean, hoping to get him on her show. She was impatient waiting for an answer so she took matters into her own hands at one point, becoming very Lucy Ricardo ish in her behavior. Dean's son Dino and her own son Desi jr were best friends, he had been to the Martin house and had misplaced his Vicuna jacket so Lucy pretended to go there looking for it, got access to the house through servants and rummaged threw the mansion looking for her son's coat. The real reason for her being there was her wanting to check to see if Dean's script had notes on it, meaning he would probably do the show, she checked his office but could not find it and she finally gave up and left. Later telling the story to Dean after he had accepted to do the show, he told her she had made a mistake, he never kept scripts at home but only in his business office, they had a good laugh over it and they went on to do a great show, one she one time considered the mnost fun she ever had doing a show. Maybe it was partly because she knew Dean HATED to rehearse whereas she loved to rehearse everything to death. Dean was like Gleason in that respect, too much rehearsal meant staleness on show time. Lucy usually did a show from Monday morning thru Thursday night, but Dean could only fly in from Hawaii on Wednesday and Lucy was petrified the lack of rehearsal would doom the show. Instead she found Dean came in all prepared and the show was a breeze and a very funny one at that. Lucy ALWAYS has a better show if she's enjoying the company of people she works with and this was a perfect example.

Short one: Lucy had this lunch, where she invited some female friends who had slept with Desi, WONDER IF IT WAS HELD AT THE ROSE BOWL? During the lunch, she announced, i want you all to know that Sheilah MacRae is the only one here who hasn't slept with my husband. Wonder how she could be so sure she hadn't? lol!
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yeah, i laughed too when i read that story, LOL! He probably covered everybody from Eleanor Roosevelt to Charo in his lifetime, LOL!

Speaking of that, womanizing i mean, Lucy had another great quote when she discussed gary's hobbies of collecting cars and watches. he ahd cars all over town in garages including the huge one on Roxbury Drive. And one time someone, i forget if it was Herbie Kenwith, who recently died by the way, who saw teh boxes full of watches and said he thought he was selling them on the side, LOL! Anyway, back to Lucy, when someone asked about his constant car collecting, she answered that it was a harmless vice, better than cheating, to her anyway.

Steve Allen's wife, Jayne Meadows, sister of The Honeymooners Audrey Meadows used to tell the story of when she visited her native China and saw on some lonely village road that every shack had this group of people huddled in front, sometimes these mini crowds of people watching television, OUTSIDE, she stopped near one of them and sure enough, they were watching Lucy. In India, at one time, because of the tremendous success of the show, the most popular girl's name for new babies was LUCY. The only plce we know if that did not like the show was Saudi Arabia, why am i not surprised? They refused to air the show when they saw that Lucy weilded much too much power in her marriage and wasn't subserviant enough to her husband. Well, these people ARE 2000 years behind the rest of the world so they should start liking it in the next century or so.:lol:

Ok, i leave you today with a real funny one and a favorite of mine. Desi was famous for almost never wearing underwear. And he used to claim, even in his autobiography that this might cause problems when auditioning other stars at RKO or anywhere else for that matter. He would do these kissing scenes at the studio with these huge and well endowed ad very curvy and attractive stars and he claimed his bird could fly, that was the term he used to describe what could happen under these circumstances. Anyhoo, Lucy and Desi were summoned to the office of the head of RKO, that position changed often depending on the fortunes of that studio. I think the man's name was Schaeffer. He was talking to both of them when he suddenly noticed that Desi's fly was open. So he proceeded to do everything he could to get Desi's attention so he could warn him to zip up. But nothing he tried worked and at one point Lucy noticed what he was doing so she turned to Desi and said, honey, Mr Schaeffer is trying to tell you YOUR FLY IS OPEN. Then she casually turned to the President of RKO and added, HE BELIEVES IN ADVERTISING!

Another funny one. Again Lucy Ball behaving like Lucy Ricardo. Gary's mom taught Lucy how to make this Jewish dish, and she was coming over for dinner with a few other people. So, Lucy knew it took two hours to make this thing, so she prepares everything and just as they're driving into the driveway she thinks to salt the platter, but the cover fell off leaving a mountain of SALT all over her dish. So, as Lucy told Barbara Walters in that great interview they had, she proceeded to do the worst thing she could possibly do, she put the platter under the tap and RINSED IT, so everything went down the drain and needless to say, they went out for dinner that night, LOL!

Lucy was always very friendly with most of Hollywood's gossip columnists. Her friendship with Hedda Hopper started when the old lady kept coming by Lucy's place looking for dirt. Lucy proceeded to confide in Hedda, many things about her personal life, trusting her to keep it to herself. Hedda even helped Lucy out later on when she would keep Desi's drunken escapades out of the papers when the police would drop him off at the side door of the Roxbury mansion, in their darkest days together from '55 to '60. One day Lucy found Hedda crying and asked what it was all about but Hedda was afraid to tell Lucy. Lucy reminded her that trust was a two way street so Hedda confided in Lucy that her only son, who played Mr Drake on Perry Mason was leaving his wife, her daughter in law, for another man. Lucy was even more shocked to find out that the other man was her old Magic Carpet co star, Perry Mason himself, Raymond Burr. When Hedda died a few years later, Lucy bought her Rolls Royce from her estate for 8000 dollars and proceeded to drive it for years. Her staff would constantly stick notes on the steering wheel to pick up bagels for gary or call this one and visit that one on the way home.

Heres one of my favorites.The language is a little vulgar but here goes:
Lucy and Vivian were very good friends for the most part, but their relationship had its ups and downs. I remember one story I read somewhere – while Lucy was pregnant – she took Vivian’s dressing room, which was closer to the stage. Lucy also had people helping her with costume changes. Meanwhile, Vivian had to crawl across props and cables, change by herself, and get back to the stage. One time, she missed her cue. "You’re late," said Lucy. "I’d tell you to go **** yourself, but Desi’s already done that," was apparently her response.

Kay Ballard talks about a trip to Palm Springs to visit Lucy: "Lucy and I were riding bikes when a dog came out of the woods, foaming at the mouth. She just looked at the dog and yelled, "GET THE **** OUT OF HERE!" The dog ran back into the woods. I turned to her and said, "That is why you are queen of the world and I am nothing."

Wow, i have competition! LOL! Ok, seeing as you brought up ****ing, here's one that will be hard to get past the sensors, LOL! Lucy wanted to be in Cecil B DeMille's Greatest Show On Earth. She admired Mr DeMille's work. Lucy was working for Columbia at the time, she had done two of the three movies on her contract but Harry Cohn who ran the place was a real ***tard who wanted to avoid paying her the 85 thousand he'd have to fork out if she did the third movie. But Lucy wanted to do a third movie, or at least be LOANED out to i think Paramount so she could do the Greatest Show movie. So Harrykept sending her these lousy scripts that NOBODY in their right mind would do, contract breaker scripts. So Lucy gets this crap called The Magic Carpet, it co starred Raymond Burr, but lucy's salary alone would take up most of the film's budget. To Cohn's shock and amazement, she agreed to do the lousy movie so she'd then be free to do the one she wanted Greatest Show on Earth. She didn't count on finding out she was pregnant though, so she'd have her HAREM outfit enlarged every day on the short shoot so she could finish the movie and pocket the 85 grand and be free of Columbia's Cohn. She finished the film in days, pocketed the cheque and called Harry to tell him she was pregnant, he called her every name in the book, as back ten, an actress being pregnant meant she could be fired or at least have her contract cancelled. Then she and Desi went to Mr DeMille's office to tell him that because of her pregnancy, she could no longer do his FILM. Mr DeMille, famous for his BIBLE pictures is said to have suggested they GET RID of the baby, but Lucy and Desi had waited too long for a baby, there was no way they'd do that. De Mille then said his famous line, he turned to Desi and told him, dear boy, you are the first man ever to F*** his wife, Cecil B DeMille, Columbia's Harry Cohn and Paramount studios, all at the same time, LOL!

LMAO!!!! That was hilarious.!!! All of your stories are great.Thank you. Where did you manage to hear all of these? Ive heard some from various books and websites but some of these are new and fresh and really so funny. Thanks splain.

Heres one of my favorites.The language is a little vulgar but here goes:
Lucy and Vivian were very good friends for the most part, but their relationship had its ups and downs. I remember one story I read somewhere – while Lucy was pregnant – she took Vivian’s dressing room, which was closer to the stage. Lucy also had people helping her with costume changes. Meanwhile, Vivian had to crawl across props and cables, change by herself, and get back to the stage. One time, she missed her cue. "You’re late," said Lucy. "I’d tell you to go **** yourself, but Desi’s already done that," was apparently her response.
:rofl:

LMAO!!!! That was hilarious.!!! All of your stories are great.Thank you. Where did you manage to hear all of these? Ive heard some from various books and websites but some of these are new and fresh and really so funny. Thanks splain.
I've been a fan for fifty years plus, have read every book about them, every article, every interview, have heard all of them telling these stories over the decades. Like i said, sometimes they change depending on who you hear it from and sometimes people change details to make it more interesting. Even Lucy could get it wrong, thinking the nose on fire was NOT planned when we all know it was, there was even a wick in her nose putty. Anyway, thanks for saying you enjoy them and anybody want to hear about a specific story, just say so, and i also admit that i can make mistakes too as i remember these and share them here, but i try . . .

Desi always vetoed people's requests for interviews with Lucy. He thought it would shatter the illusion that existed between Lucy the character and Lucy in REAL life. They expected the childlike chracter they saw on tv and instead got this very blunt and direct person who never shied away from answering anything honestly. I'm talking about tv interviews, like on talk shows. Which is why Lucy did lots more talk shows AFTER her divorce from Desi. Desi did appreciate Lucy's honesty though and even mentionned one interview she did for LOOK magazine where she admitted to cheating also. She had said that the MACHISMO never bothered her as she loved playing games also, and she added that she was not talking about SCRABBLE. Lucy thought, and i agree, that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. When she saw for herself that he fooled around on her all the time in their early marriage, she showed him she was capable of doing that also. At the end of their marriage, it was the same thing, she knew he had girls in houses all over the hills, on his boat, at the studio, everywhere, so she did it too, to prove to herself that even though her husband had tired of her and would sometimes not come home for weeks at a time, she could find love elsewhere also. It started being an issue when she realized she lost self esteem thinking she could not make him happy.

As a young starlet at RKO, Lucy double dated with her friend Ginger Rogers. Lucy's date was Henry Fonda and Ginger's was Jimmy Stewart. One time they went out to dinner and danced till dawn. They were wearing very heavy make up for the evening but when the morning sun came up, they looked bad with all that goo on their faces in broad daylight. It appears Mr Fonda took one look at Lucy in the sun and uttered the exclamation YUCK! He never forgot that story and would inavriably tell it at these big Hollywood occasions like his American Film Institute tribute that Lucy attended. She came on stage passing Charlton Heston and saying into the microphone that he had just parted her hair to a BIG laugh as he had played Moses parting the RED SEA. Anyway, Mr Fonda had his turn, told the story of their first and only date and then mused that if he had not uttered that famous word YUCK, maybe then, that studio would have been named HENRYLU.

Lucy did not have enough of 507 tv shows after a radio series and radio guest shots and 80 movies and guest appearances on other people's shows and talk shows and game shows and a load of specials on her own and other star's specials too so she tackled a radio interview show called Let's Talk to Lucy. She'd always have a tape recorder with her and she'd ask friends to talk with her wherever she went, it was only 15 minutes, this was in the sixties and Lucy heard of this new kid who everybody said was multi talented and would one day be a superstar so she was anxious to meet her and ask her how it felt to become HUGE so fast. The woman replied "NOT MUCH"! That kind of COOL floored Lucy who worked hard her whole life to succeed. The woman was Barbra Streisand. Lucy went to her apartment and Babs was making something to eat, she was stirring this concoction and the noise was covering her replies to Lucy's questions. So Lucy asked her to get closer to the microphone and Barbra proceeds to get closer all right but with the stirring now next to the machine. Lucy did not dare ask her again, LOL! So the audio consisted more of stirring sounds than Barbra's answers to Lucy's questions. So Lucy went back to her FRIENDS like Danny Kaye and Dean Martin instead. LOL!

It is really hard to understand why a conservative mom like Lucy would allow her 12 year old boy to go around the world touring with a band. True, Lucy's mom let her go to New York at fifteen, but . . . And Desi okayed it also, they must have had some adults with them that they trusted would take good care of them as they toured with their band, Dino Desi and Billy. The bank started slowly, they played for friends and family, Dino was Dean's son and Desi's best friend for years. Billy was a friend of both. They started playing professionnaly, mom wanted them for her own show but Sinatra got them a contract and Dean got them on his show first, by that time, after playing Sullivan, Lucy could no longer afford them for her show. They toured and had some hit records, I'm a Fool was one of their hits, Desi jr used to complain that he had all these companies but no money, LOL! Groupies would throw themselves at them wherever they appeared. Desi jr being slightly pudgy would be the last one running away as he would get winded. They knew they had to make their escape to a waiting helicopter after shows and would have to get out fast or they would be stormed by young teens. This is where Desi jr really started drinking and doing drugs.

We forget how rampant drug use on movie and tv sets was back then. When Desi jr got popular again with his appearance on his mom's tv show Here's Lucy in '68 and afterwards, he was offered movie roles and he left the show after three seasons and his drug use intensified. Later, when the movie roles dried up and the tv movies ended, he had a tv show called Automan for a while. When he finally took care of his alcohol and drug habit, the entire family was asked to go into therapy with him. Lucy, who had always been very concious of bad publicity went because nothing was more important to her than her kids, she could not have cared less about what people would say, she adored her son and knew she had to be there. The first day, all the other families showed up wearing I Love Lucy buttons, so Lucy knew this would be unconventionals at best, LOL! Desi jr credited this organisation he belonged to, The Vernan Howard group i think it was called, for helping getting him clean. Lucy was of course afraid that these people were only after the Ball money, but Desi jr later worked with the group to get other people off drugs.

Lucy brought Oscar winner Patty Duke over to the house, she was enamored of her because she considered her this huge talent. She had no idea Patty also had many mental problems though. She proceeded to seduce Desi jr and their affair began. Lucy did not like the age difference and thought Patty had led Desi jr down the garden path as Patty later put it. Patty got pregnant and said Desi jr was the father. Lucy no longer aproved of Patty, especially as the two women tangled in the newspapers for over a year, Lucy being painted as an ogre for not letting them marry. Patty proceeded to have the baby and it is rumored that Lucy went, covered in a veil to see it and she fed and changed the baby. Lucie bought things for the baby but Patty said they ended up on HER charge. Papa Arnaz said the baby looked like his son and even gary went to visit. Later, Patty said the baby's father was Mike Tell, a man she married after a week of knowing him and later still she claimed the father was Addams Family star John Astin who later adopted the kid. You probably know him as the star of RUDY and The Lord Of The Ring trilogy among many other movies, Sean Astin. The kid went around for years thinking he had THREE dads but later tests or Patty's honesty or both established that he was NOT Desi's child. Lucy thanked Patty for two years of bad publicity, useless notoriety Lucy called it. Patty later went on to write a book about her mental illness. She's much better today. I remember one year wondering why Lucy did not attend the TV Hall of Fame celebration but understood when i noticed Patty was there. Desi sr had taught Lucy to IGNORE people rather than have words or scenes with them in public. Act as if they do not exist was Desi's way.

I'm loving these stories, SPLAIN! You are a rocking storyteller... it's almost like having our own personal Lucy columnist, Walter Winchell! Thank you for sharing them with us! :wave:

I'm loving these stories, SPLAIN! You are a rocking storyteller... it's almost like having our own personal Lucy columnist, Walter Winchell! Thank you for sharing them with us! :wave:
Thanks for that, you always wonder about these, maybe people don't care to reread what's been said a thousand times, you know? Like the time Desi jr stayed in the guest house with Liza Minelli and they did not come out for a week and Lucy was worried about what they were doing in there, can you imagine? What did you THINK they were doing, Lucy? LOL! What you used to do with Desi for years and years, LOL! Things to look out for: When Liza got her Oscar for Cabaret, she looked straight at Desi jr in the audience. Same as Patty did whenshe got her Emmy for My Sweet Charlie and she thanked him specifically.

I found it really funny that Lucy did not like the 6 year age difference between her son and Patty. The exact same age difference between her and Desi. It seems she also did not like Lucie marrying an OLD MAN as Larry Luckenbill, her second husband is much much older than she is. Well, that one was hard to understand also when we found out Lucy and gary had quite the age difference themselves also, LOL! Something like 13 to 15 years. I loved the fact that Lucy and Desi stayed so friendly after the divorce that their kids adopted teh exact same attitude regarding their former spouses. Lucie worked on that Home Movies tv movie documentary with her former hubby, documentary filmmaker Phil Vandervoort, whom she had married in the backyard of the Roxbury mansion. Larry used to be married to daytime tv actress Robin Strasser and they would always all get together for special occasions. Lucie even raising Larry and Robin's two older sons on top of their own three kids. One of the highlights of Lucie's second wedding, it was held on their farm in upstate N Y, was daddy serenading everybody with the beautiful song FOREVER DARLING, while Lucy wiped tears from her eyes.

When Lucy got remarried, she joked with everybody that they all did it too, marry a second time, just because they were copying her, LOL! Funny that both her kids married twice also. Viv did it FOUR times, and Bill once i think although i think it was obvious he was really gay as at least Viv's last husband was, or i think bisexual anyway. Bill was with his male companion nurse when he dropped dead of a heart attack. It's only now that we keep reading they were companions and Bill might have been gay, back then, nobody talked about such things. Desi jr married the actress Linda Purl, in a synagogue although neither was Jewish, there was a downpour also as it was in January. They only lasted a year but he's been happily married to his current wife for decades, a ballet teacher, they run a school together, as does Little Ricky himself, exact same set up. Even gary was married before and after Lucy. Gary was married to the sister of the woman who had the affair with Sam Giancanna and JFK, Judith Cambell Exner. Here's a funny one about gary, when his Jewish mom heard that he was marrying Lucille Ball, she feared she would be kidnapped. The one good thing i have to say about gary, is that like Lucy and Desi, he took care of his sister and his mom, buying them condos and making sure they had everything they could ever want, of course he did this with Lucy's money, but still . . . :lol:

When Lucy was a teen, she dated a mobster in jamestown called Johnny Davita. It was rumored for decades that Lucy had had a child with him or an abortion after giving birth to his child, of course that CHILD would be a very old person by now and this was never proven anyway. I always wondered if that aws the reason Lucy's will was not made public. Another mob connection for Lucy was that when she got to Hollywood, mobster connected movie legend George Raft lended her money for her rent and she ended up dating his bodyguard Mack Grey. Lucy always had a fondness for BIG not so handsome but very imposing men. Mack fit that description to a T. One time, when George learned that Lucy was expecting her mom to come and visit Hollywood, he loaned her his fancy car. Lucy picked up her mom at the train depot and took her to see the sights. She ended up at a major lookout point in the hills where people used to go to make out and a cop tapped on Lucy's car window telling her to take her FRIEND elsewhere, thinking they were lesbians. Lucy's mom started to cry and Lucy consoled her while they went elsewhere for their sightseeing. LOL!

Ok, so this is how it all went down. Lucy was doing a radio show called my favorite Husband. NBC was bringing all these superstars from radio in to TV so CBS decided to follow suit. They wanted Lucy but she insisted on having Desi play her husband, that they did not want, claiming nobody would even understand him. She told them no Desi, no show. They fought back saying nobody would believe an All American woman was married to this Cuban. So Lucy and Desi went on the vaudeville circuit and armed with a couple of sketches they toured and scored so well that CBS had to relent. When the couple saw that the public did love their antics, why would the tv viewing public be any different. So they got the show. The whole point being that Lucy figured Desi was always on the road with his band and she was making movies so that the first ten years of their married life, they were together only a year or so at best. They used to meet on Mulholland Drive, she going to work early in the morning and he returning from a nightclub gig.

Lucy and Desi got a call from CBS asking them when they'd be moving to New York to do the show? They answered that there was no way they'd be leaving their little ranchito and going there. Which meant the show would suffer as most of the country west of Chicago would be getting this bad kinescope if the show were done in California. So Desi said they would film it then, many people have said they really don't know whose idea it was to FILM the series but Desi claimed it was his idea. He proceeded to roadblock after roadblock. No studio would allow an audience in for filming a show, none had bleachers anyway. But Desi knew very well that Lucy worked best in front of an audience. So he finally found a place that was about to go bankrupt. General Service studios, which later became the home of many tv shows including the Golden Girls was far from perfect. Desi had to tear down walls to accomodate the bleachers and eventually, after lots of work and anguish, everything was in place. Even at the last minute the police and firemen were involved saying crowds like that INSIDE a studio would require restrooms and although there was one for men, none for women were available, a compromise was reached when Lucy offered her dressing room toilet for that purpose. Finally, after a long time and lots of work and expense, the series could start shooting and the first show done would be seen six weeks later on the CBS television network.

Much has been written about the fact that Viv was cast after Desi went down with show director Marc Daniels to see her in a show. Lucy was now pregnant and could not go. Desi hired her right away, praying she and Lucy would get along fine. Viv usually played OTHER WOMEN type roles so the role of a housewife was not her forte. Viv had even roomed with Make Room For Daddy co star Marjorie Lord at one point. Bill Frawley telephoned and asked for the job, he had worked in over a hundred films and was a well respected character actor, Lucy had worked with him in the past and only his drinking proved to be a stumbling block. Desi heard from everybody not to hire Bill but the more they knocked him down, the more he wanted him. He just warned him that if ever his drinking interfered with the series, he would lose the job, it never did. What WAS a problem however was that Bill had it written in his contract that if his BELOVED N Y Yankees ever made the playoffs of the world series, he could get off work to attend the games. Over the course of the series, THEY DID, many times.

We all know the original choices for the roles of Fred and Ethel were Gale Gordon and Bea Benadaret, but both were already signed to other shows, so they could take the parts. Both had worked with Lucy on her radio series and both would later work with her anyway, Bea one time but Gale on four other series. Bill and Viv were perfect in their roles though and were even offered a spin off at one point, but Viv refused to do the show with Bill and he hated the fact that she made him lose all that money. They had tangled on the set many times, mostly because she hated the fact that he was much too old for her to play her hubby and he hated the fact that she could not sing to his satisfaction. Bill had even introduced some well known songs in his long and varied career, seems he had been a barbershop singer in real life, not just on an ILL show. Viv and Bill's hatred of each other was very well known, but we have to wonder if it was maybe exaggerated over the decades. Seems that one story went that when Bill was doing My Three Sons, where he played the grandfather, was close to the set where Lucy and Viv did The Lucy Show and the story goes that Bill would encourage the kids from My Three Sons to make a racket whenever Viv was doing her dialogue on Lucy's show, LOL! I dunno about you, but i can see him doing that, LOL!

World War Two was on, it was the early forties and Desi was entertaining the troops at Birmingham hospital near his little ranch where Lucy was staying, although she often went out on bond tours and also entertained the troops, either at Birmingham hospital or even doing patriotic films and such. They both courted their friends to get them to appear at the shows they staged at the hospital. One time, Desi bought a new car, they were very very hard to get in wartime. Lucy did not know that Desi had worked long and hard to get one on the black market. The guy comes to deliver the car and Lucy sees it's RED, and she thought it clashed with her orange hair so she refused it, the guy was incredulous, he could not believe someone was refusing delivery of a new car, so he left. Desi blasted Lucy on the phone and she had to beg the guy to come back after she apologized profusely. it was while Desi worked at the hospital that their marriage was severaly tested as Lucy was supplying him with show girls, Copa type girls and bingo girls and he was having sex with most of them. When she found him with one of them on a surprise visit, they divorced, this was 1944. But, as Lucy stated many times, it was a very short divorce. Desi showed up one night, the night before she was to go in front of the judge to get rid of him once and for all. They went out for dinner and then he slept over, the next morning Lucy got dressed up to go to court. He couldn't believe she was still going, but she did not want to dissapoint the press. She told him she would not say too many bad things about him. She got all dressed up and testified, got the divorce, came back home and went to bed with him again which basically cancelled the divorce. California law said that any plaintiffs who get together in the Biblical sense while the divorce is being granted canel out the divorce so they stayed together another 15 years after that.

When Desi ran Desilu, the Christmas party was nicer, they served champagne, when Lucy owned and ran the place she gave that duty to gary who proceeded to serve beer, needless to say people were not overjoyed, Lucy had to go up and have some herself to break the ice, and Lucy did not even drink beer. Lucy had always left her husbands IN CHARGE and her house reflected this, all her welcome matts, towels, dinner napkins, everything that could be engraved or in some way sporting the man's initials. It was all Arnaz everywhere nad then it became the big M everywhere when it was really the big L that ran and paid for everything. In Lucy and Desi's day, they split expenses, but with gary, she was the one making the millions and she gave him jobs at her studio or in her production company but he was definitely Mr Ball. Desi was overly generous, it was desi who paid for the fancy vacations to Hawaii or elsewhere, it was Desi who built the nice big fancy houses, at least he enjoyed his money. And this forced Lucy to do it also. When gary came along, she was using plastic flowers when she lived in California, she was using plastic glasses instead of the fine crystal, everything was simple and cheap. They reused old furniture, never updated anything. Lucy was the only big star left in california with rotary dial phones.

The second time Lucy got a Friar's roast, Johnny Carson was the M C. He came out and warned everybody that no woman had ever been honored before and that their raunchy style would have to be reigned in, they would have to show more respect as this was a lady they were honoring, the Friars were known for being really devestating in their remarks, anything goes at a roast, and some of the most shocking language and stories are told there. So, in keeping with this warning, Johnny came out and introduced Lucy, he said, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce, Lucille Testicule.:lol: Lucy was once on a Merv Griffin show and during the commercial break, Merv brought up her name to her and what some people were doing with it, and just as the sound came back on and they are back from commercial, Lucy is heard telling Merv, well, that's because they can't do that with YOUR name and they both laughed, an obvious reference to the popular joke of the time, DOES LUCILLE BALL? Or when Lucy and Viv were derided as lesbians on The Lucy show because they hugged and kissed so much. It was actually Viv's horrible hubby Phil Ober who told her about the backstage talk, which did not help Viv's fragile mental health. The joke in the industry was that they called it The Dyke sans dick show.

:lol: More great stories!

It's good to hear some of Desi's good points (his generosity), because goodness knows we all know the bad ones!

Thanks, SPLAIN!

Oh Des had many great things about him. He was a charmer, was a great host and a terrific BOSS, generous to everybody. A good husband, most of the time and a fantastic father who played a lot with his kids, he had them for the summer when they were off school, so he taught them to swim and ride horses among many other things. He took care of his mom till the day he died, she lived after he passed away. He made sure his best employees shared in the monetary success of the show and his kids had trust funds. Lucy did the same, took care of her entire family and made sure her kids were provided for for the rest of their lives but she wanted them to learn and have experience in show biz so BOTH parents encouraged them to develop their many talents. Back to Desi's generosity, one time, when Lucy was robbed of her jewellery, Desi replaced every single piece. When they divorced, he tried to get out of the 450 bucks a month he had to pay for each child for support, knowing that Lucy had lots more money than he ever did, but Lucy replied, sure, if you want it to make the papers, so he kept paying, LOL!

When Lucy admired someone in show biz, she'd keep going back to see their shows. One time she had to turn down an invitation to Frankie Avalon's show saying that she was tired and if she went one more time, they'd say they were in love with each other or something, so you see, those types of stories happened even back THEN, LOL!

Every Christmas, i tell this story of when Lucy heard a friend was all depressed at Christmas time. She went over there, to the person's apartment or house and had bought a Christmas tree and all the ornaments and proceeded to decorate the tree ans stayed until everything was just perfect, then she left the friend telling her, ok, that's all you get now, SNAP OUT OF IT!:lol:

In Jim Brochu's book, Lucy in the Afternoon, he tells the story of Lucy having one of those Make a Wish Foundation families over as the kid is dying of cancer. Lucy greeted the family at the door and had them in for refreshments as they all watched her shows with her actually seeing herself on the screen, that was the kid's request. Lucy found these types of things heart wrenching. She spent hours with them and hugged and kissed the kid before he left, then she proceeded to dissolve in tears afterwards, saying to Jim, AND WE THINK WE HAVE PROBLEMS. When she did one of her specials with Hope, she stayed at this hotel, i think it was the special where she and Bob did that duet I REMEMBER IT WELL, in '87 i think. Lucy would come back to her hotel to find cards and letters and pictures to autograph and requests for things which she would then spend hours taking care of. All had been slipped under her hotel door or left at the lobby or accumulated at the door entrance. It might have been lots of work but Lucy loved the fact that this proved she was still loved and remembered by her fans.

Lucy, who had been poor as a kid, was very careful with money her whole life. She wasn't like Desi, squandering everything to have a good time. She even hated it when people sent her flowers, finding it too extravagant. Tom Watsn, who runs the We Love Lucy fansite claims that she'd thank him for the flowers but then tell him he shouldn't have wasted all that money. Lucy would receive bouquets all the time at the house and if there was a phone number, she'd call to say thanks. Lucie would say that she heard many times from people saying thanks, as their loved ones were dying, they'd watch the shows and the last thing people heard or saw were her priceless comedic moments that made them forget their illness for a while. Even Desi sr went through that scenario. It's said that Lucy would never laugh at her own antics but rather would comment about how great the other three were. It is also said that Lucy never knew what was funny upon first reading hte script, but she sure managed to find the humor as she tackled with the material for a week and then when she finally was ready to do it, she sure milked all the laughter out of it with expertize.

Still enyoying the trivia & all the great stories!

Thanks, glad to hear that. Did i ever tell the one about Lucy and Desi getting that Friars Roast? They got honored there by all the famous comics of that time, Milton Berle on down, they were ALL there. This famous comedian of the time did his act and while getting this huge laugh proceeded to get a heart attack. The show stopped of course and they called for a doctor from the audience and many came up. They tried to rescussitate him with plugs from lights but could not bring him back to life. Comedians were still doing their shtick on stage while this slew of people backstage were doing their best to keep the man alive, his wife was there. His name would mean nothing to us now, it was Einstein, and just to show what a great sense of humor he had, he named one of his two sons Albert. They later both became famous, one was comic Super Dave Osborne on the Smothers Brothers show and the other was comic actor Albert Brooks who made films and often appeared on tv. They say the man died while getting huge laughs, but it spoiled the evening for Lucy and Desi though. Lucy could not even gp up and speak, Desi did but he said THEY SAY THE SHOW MUST GO ON BUT WHY SHOULD IT? There aws no way anybody could be funny or even try after seeing a man die on stage. Lucy did get another Friar's Roast later in her career and that one went without incident. I was thinking that this reminds me of their visit to Jamestown where the skies opened up and all those Jamestown ladies' fur coats were drenched by the monsoon as Lucy and Desi rode in the motorcade through town. Obviously two times that their luck ran out in their careers.

These stories are GR8 Splain--I'm just lapping them all up! Many thx.

Thanks so much. I just go with whatever i remember on any given day and there are so many to choose from, trouble is i've done these stories on other boards too and i always want to find some that are interesting and prove what an exceptional life this woman had and the people around her also.

April's coming up, and for Lucy fans, that's the anniversary of her passing. It all started a week before when Lucy was still making plans to go to Buffalo for some tribute, she got up and felt faint, was white as a sheet. Gary had already gone to work but had to be called back as they tried to convince her to go to hospital. Lucie came over from her own house nearby and with tears streaming down their faces, both Lucie and gary tried to convince her to leave the house. She finally said yes,k after putting on some lipstick and wearing a turban to hide her hair which she was about to get dyed later. They ahd taken her pulse and had trouble registering anything. She got there and they rushed her in the emergency room and prepped her for surgery. They found she had a rip in her aorta, the main heart valve, and they found a donor right away, an accident victim. The operation lasted for hours and believe it or not, she was making a great recovery. She was even starting to walk around the room a little. Her kids pointed out the sign at the Hard Rock Cafe across the street from Cedars Sinai, as Lucy finally was transferred to a regular room, her progress being so good. The sign said WE LOVE YOU LUCY! Saturday Night Live asked her to host a show once she got better. Hope wanted her for his next special. She had a nurse with her but the nurse left for the night.

One of the funniest parts of this unfunny occurence is what happened right after Lucy came out of the operarion and spoke for the first time. She asked gary about her dog Tinker and then she motionned for Lucie to come near her. So as Lucie is talking to her mom before she left, Lucy has this oxygen mask on her so Lucie has to come close to her mom to hear what she is trying to say to her. Lucy tells her WOULDN'T YOU KNOW, TODAY WAS THE DAY I WAS GOING TO GET MY HAIR DYED! Even at this time, Lucy was concerned about how she looked for her fans, LOL! Anyhoo, a week later, even as the world heaved a collective sigh of relief that she was getting better, at 6 a m in the morning, Lucy woke and went into cardiac arrest, it seems her aorta ruptured elsewhere, not where they operated. They tried reviving her for hours but to no avail. It wasn't like today, where the internet would bring the news to the world in seconds, this was 19 years ago. But still, the news went around the world in no time.

Lucy died alone, although she had seen her husband and kids the night before she passed. People often ask me why i have not much love for gary, this is one of the many reasons. Things like paying for a nurse around the clock were deemed too expensive, so Lucy died alone. Thank God at least it was instantaneous, she did not have time to think about much. The hospital claimed that they had never seen such an outpouring of love and affection, thousands of cards and letters, faxes that jammed their machines, flowers everywhere, that were sent to other hospitals as per Lucy's wishes. Gary fielded calls from The President and ex presidents, superstars and friends. They hired guards for the mansion to receive some who went there, Carol Burnett, Dinah Shore among many others. Many big names were interviewed for the news shows, everybody shared their many Lucy stories. The whole world mourned. They showed the hospital with all these camera crews from around the world sharing space like at The Oscars. Some of the best things that were said were that nobody had to ask Lucy who when they heard she died, the whole world knew and LOVED Lucy. The other, was that the movies had Chaplin and TV had Lucy. The three news anchors for ABC CBS and NBC all smiled as they showed Lucy clips that night and they all shared remembrances of growing up laughing at that lady.

That night at ten, CBS ran a one hour tribute special anchored by Dan Rather with interviews with Reagan and Bush and CBS chairman William Paily among many others. The next morning, it was all over the morning news shows, again, everybody sharing memories of how they grew up with the show and how they laughed at her antics, some adding, and the four are ALL gone now. Bob Hope planned a Lucy tribute special with their best sketches together and it aired around the same time that the Emmys did, bestowing their most pretigeous honor, The Governor's Award, gary accepted on her behalf. When Lucy got the Kodak award, her daughter and Carol Burnett were there in her place. It went on for weeks and then months. Lucy's People cover was the biggest seller of that year, i guess she'd be happy that she beat Bette Davis who died that same year. They showed her pic at the Oscars that year as well as The Emmys, end of year tributes, specials, new casettes of her work came out and magazines and tabloids were filled with stories of her appearing to gary or a little girl being her reincarnation, well, tabloids will be tabloids i guess. People forget that she was considered old hat by many at that stage of her career, but it seems when she passed on, people realized what they would be missing. She proceeded over the next two decades to become just as famous as she had been at one point, getting tributes everywhere, museums, statues, busts, awards and buildings named after her, parks theaters and even an office building on the Paramount lot. And thanks to her 500 plus shows and 80 movies plus hundreds and hundreds of hours of guest shots and tributes and the fact that she saved everything she ever touched in her life, that her legacy will indeed live on forever as she has now become one of the top ten icons of all time. Not bad, for someone who was once told to quit and go home because she had no talent.

Lucy said she wanted the house on Roxbury sold, they asked for 7 and a half million and waited two years to get 3 and a half instead, bad real estate market at the time, same as what's going on NOW. Gary stayed in the house for almost two years and practically had to be kicked out, it's thought he assumed he would one day own that house, instead Lucy left him the Palm Springs one, which for an avid golfer who spent more time on the golf course than with her, made sense. Gary later married a golf pro and she owns that house today. The Roxbury street mansion is considered to be a monstrosity today, having been remodeled and looking nothing like it used to in Lucy's day. She spent 34 years there. While Lucy was still the Queen of television, one time, this rich man left millions to his son who then squandered every penny within a year. Lucy swore then and there that would never happen with her kids. She used to say if i leave 40 cents, they'll each get 5 cents a year for 4 years, LOL! Ended up that she left millions but not as many millions as people thought, i mean very little money was coming it in her later years, but she was living off the interest and never squandered any of it on extravagances, she always lived very simply for the most part. When she chartered a jet to take her to her condo in beloved Snowmass, lee Tannen claimed that if she had known the cost of that charter, se never would have gone for it, LOL! Lucy's likeness on mugs and calendars and her status as a real global icon guarantees her estate millions for decades to come.

Lucy died alone, although she had seen her husband and kids the night before she passed. People often ask me why i have not much love for gary, this is one of the many reasons. Things like paying for a nurse around the clock were deemed too expensive, so Lucy died alone. .

Most of us "die alone". Anyway Lucy was getting BETTER and then things turned for the worst. Gary was probably home in his bed comfortable with her care and fully expected to see her again. Blaming him for not being there at the exact moment of her death is unreasonable. I wasn't at my dad's bedside when he passed early in the morning in hospital. I was tired and exhausted and looking after my mother at home. That's where I felt I'd be most useful. My dad was in a coma anway and had no knowledge of our being there.

Huh, it is not about that single incident that i despise gary, i despise him for the many reasons like leaving her alone all the time to go play golf, mooching off of her for decades and then being too cheap to get round the clock nurses saying that was too expensive when he had some of his family members on her payroll and used HER money to live on and also help his family. That he elliminated everybody from Desi's day and installed his crew instead, cutting her off from real friends who would have counselled her that gary was using cheap writers and ruining her career with his lack of knowledge about comedy, or at least TV Comedy, like her ex husband was. One thing i'm still debating though and i currently give him a free pass on is the fact that he knew she had very high, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE, yet he would constantly say, LET HER HAVE THE SALT. Is that a good husband who knows she does not have much time left and should enjoy anything she likes or is it someone anxious to be rid of her so he can spend the money she would leave?

Like i said, my argument is that a NURSE should have stayed with her for her entire hospital stay, i never said anything about gary not being there and that being the problem, i stated that he had visited the night before as her kids did, yes, nobody knew she would then die unexpectedly, but a husband who married money and then denies her a full time nurse to save money just says the type of man we are talking about here. Lucy had wealth, and obviously insurance to pay for the nurse, instead she was told to go home and Lucy died alone. While i fully understand your comments about your own personal experience and have gone thorugh the exact same thing myself, i therefore question why cheapness interfered in this case when Lucy deserved to have round the clock care, she sure worked her whole life to warrant getting everything she could have had at the end of her life.

Speaking of Cheapo, er i mean gary, here's another example of his greed . . . Lucy was going nuts at home, not working, so she found that the success of her tv movie Stone Pillow which did very well in the ratings meant that she could still pull an sudience. No less than mega producer Aaron Spelling offered her a new show, he sold it so fast he claimed it was the easiest sell for any of his shows, and this man had produced everything from Beverly Hills 90210, LUCY'S OWN ZIP CODE by the way, to Dynasty and loads of other really successful series that had made him a multi millionnair beyond his dreams, not bad for a man who had a bit part in an I Love Lucy episode while an actor in the fifties. He offered Lucy a show without need for a pilot, with her having total control and the show could not be cancelled for 22 shows or a whole season. ABC picked it up but instead of having this new show follow an established hit like Who's the Boss, they had it lead it's Saturday night line up instead. Even shows like Cheers, Seinfeld or classics like The Dick Van Dyke show were almost cancelled in the beginning because nobody tuned in, shows need time to find an audience. But ABC wanted Lucy to save Saturday nights for them. It did not happen. The series was ill conceived. Gary had just gotten all her OLD people together and they came up with something quite stale. Although when you view the shows today, they seem better than the garbage we are being fed right now. Anyway, the show faltered and Lucy was devestated, especially by some reviews that questionned her coming back at her advanced age of 75. Doing physical humor at that age was deemed inappropriate, even dangerous. Headlines of THE QUEEN IS DEAD in national newspapers signalled the real end of her career. The show's reviews were awful and the ratings worse, they kept sliding till the show got the axe after airing eight eps and 5 others filmed never aired. Lucy was shocked, dissapointed and felt so bad for the staff she had hired who were now without jobs. It was definitely the worst period of Lucy's life, feeling unwanted by her fans, she retreated to her bed and crying non stop, waiting to die. Gary was thrilled that his NO CANCELLATION clause meant they had to pay a million dollars to close the contract. As executive producer, he was getting 125 thousand a week to Lucy's 100 thousand for starring, which i never understood. But this meant gary was set to live off of her, in better style for a period of time. He was delighted with the money but the toll on Lucy's reputation was worth lots more.

While Lucy was 75, she still had that great energy, but it was sapped by Desi's calls in the middle of the night asking for forgiveness for what he had put her through during their marriage. Desi had cancer and he knew the end was coming, so he'd call Lucy and there was no way she would not take the calls from the love of her life, so she wound up tired on the set the next day. Lucy was doing Password with Betty White when she heard Desi had passed on, cradled in his daughter's arms. Losing Desi and her show were too much for her, the saving grace was her getting the Kennedy Center Honor a week later. After feeling like the widow at Desi's funeral as his Edie had passed a year earlier, while Desi recouped in Lucy's guest house in Beverly Hills, now Lucy finally had something to look forward to. A trip to Washington to receive the highest civilian honor an artist can get. But even on the show, tears came, as Robert Stack had to deliver the remarks that Desi was to have made but could not due to his untimely end. Robert who had starred on The Lucy show one time, doing a take off of his UNTOUCHABLES show that ahd been filmed at Desilu, had to read the lines meant for Desi. Something to the effect that the NY Times once asked him about the success of ILL and how would he split a hundred percent among the stars or behind the scenes people. He answered give Lucy 90 percent ans split the rest among the others. And he added, I LOVE LUCY WAS NEVER JUST A TITLE.

Then there was the time early on in their relationship where Desi celebrated her birthday in a few places, with flowers and cakes at all the places they went that evening, talk about ROMANTIC. They also knew how to USE their relationship to advantage publicity wise. One time, Desi was quoting some of his love letters to Lucy to a reporter who did not get the exact line right and Desi kept repeating, and i said I LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE, . . . When Lucy was robbed of her jewellery, he replaced every single item after having them duplicated and he was quite original in his choices, hence the heart becoming their lifelong symbol. For their wedding ring however, he was not so lucky as he forgot to get one and only Woolworth's was opened on the day of their wedding, so he got one of those cheap rings thinking he'd replace it later but Lucy insisted on keeping the cheap ring because it meant more, so he had it covered in platinum.

One of the things i admire the most about Lucy and Desi is the way they treated family and friends. An example i the way they took care of their mothers. Lucy would get something for hers, Desi would follow up with his mom. One time Desi got his mom a mink coat and Lucy jokingly called him a name, meaning she knew she had to get one for her mom also. Desi even got his mom a car, which she couldn't even drive. Lucy got her mom a house, near hers. Her major domo, used to be De De's driver, he's still alive and keeps saying he will write a Lucy book, we're anxiously awaiting that one. Frank, like many insiders like Tom Watson, her publicist, know where the bodies are buried, LOL! Paula Stewart, who played Lucy's sister in Wildcat and was a lifelong friend, she was once married to comedian Jack Carter is credited with introducing Lucy to gary, but we won't hold that against her. if Lucy stayed married to him for 23 years, he must have done something right. Like it was said on one of the Lucy documentaries, Desi's mom only cared about her bedroom and appearance, they were her life. Whereas Lucy's mom was outspoken and the most beloved member of the family. Even though she was not fond of either of Lucy's husbands.

One time, Lucy was auditioning for a part and this casting guy just kept his eyes focused on her breasts the entire time she was with him, she got so upset at one point that when she was done reading the part, she took out her FALSIES, these were worn back then to augment what was lacking in the upper chest area, and the she plopped them on the table in front of him, the guy's eyes are still not back in their sockets to this day, LOL! :lol: Lucy once saw this young stralet putting on airs of superiority and just could not take it anymore, so she goes to the girl and just says, OH, WHY DON'T YOU JUST BE YOURSELF! Lucy would go to parties when she was older and she'd survey teh older crowd of face lifts and masses of wrinkles and she'd call the people there the WAXWORKS, LOL!

Regardless of how Lucy aged herself over the last years of her life, it has been said many times that at least, unlike many of her contemporaries, she did not have to be wheeled in and out of a car. Lucy always kept in shape. When they were younger, they played tennis, they always swam, rode horses, and even in her later years, Lucy loved to ski. She even bought this series of condos in Snowmass, near Aspen. Lucy always bought property where she knew it wasn't ridiculously priced like at the main place whether it be Aspen or Palm Springs, but she'd go a little out of the way in the places she heard would ONE DAY be the IT places, like Snowmass or Rancho Mirage. She had three condos, one for her and gary and one for her mom and one for the kids. She lovede to ski because she loved the cold weather and the snow reminded her of her childhood. Desi, loved the HEAT, they were total opposites in that respect and would spend the night opening and closing bedroom windows as one liked it warm and the other liked it cold.

Lucy always claimed that she would ski SPOOKED, because if she had an accident, thousands would be out of work. Well, it didn't happen quite that way. While she aws skiing one day, this woman plows into her breaking her leg in several places, which required screws to be inserted in her knee. Lucy was doing Here's Lucy at the time and was about to start Mame. Thank God, the producers were willing to wait for her for a year, to let her recuperate and she did, she exercized so much that she wound up kicking higher than ever before. The Film Oliver's choreographer Oona White took charge of her and MADE her gain back her strength and her dancing capabilities. While shooting Mame, Lucy and Oona would check the grounds of that georgia mansion making sure the gopher holes did not make her trip or hurt herself further. As fof Here's lucy, scripts were rewritten to accomodate her condition, shows about her in the hospital, in a wheelchair and finally in a small cast freshened the humor on the show. For once, the supporting players had to step up to bat as Lucy was mending. When they brought lucy down that ski hill, in excrutiating pain, she couldn't even be given something right away as she ahd just eaten a burger. When they put big clunky casts on her leg, Lucy would take a cane and break them off, she was never a happy camper when ill or disabled. But some of those shows filmed while she had her broken leg were some of the best of the entire series.

Wow. Where do u get all this stuff from? Are you copying it or do u know all this? You should write a book about Lucy with all this information.

Also are you obsessed with Lucille Ball? Because it seems like it. No offense of course.

Lucy always claimed that she would ski SPOOKED, because if she had an accident, thousands would be out of work. Well, it didn't happen quite that way. While she aws skiing one day, this woman plows into her breaking her leg in several places, which required screws to be inserted in her knee. Lucy was doing Here's Lucy at the time and was about to start Mame. Thank God, the producers were willing to wait for her for a year, to let her recuperate and she did, she exercized so much that she wound up kicking higher than ever before. The Film Oliver's choreographer Oona White took charge of her and MADE her gain back her strength and her dancing capabilities. While shooting Mame, Lucy and Oona would check the grounds of that georgia mansion making sure the gopher holes did not make her trip or hurt herself further. As fof Here's lucy, scripts were rewritten to accomodate her condition, shows about her in the hospital, in a wheelchair and finally in a small cast freshened the humor on the show. For once, the supporting players had to step up to bat as Lucy was mending. When they brought lucy down that ski hill, in excrutiating pain, she couldn't even be given something right away as she ahd just eaten a burger. When they put big clunky casts on her leg, Lucy would take a cane and break them off, she was never a happy camper when ill or disabled. But some of those shows filmed while she had her broken leg were some of the best of the entire series.



I :heart: these SPLAIN! More! More!

Wow. Where do u get all this stuff from? Are you copying it or do u know all this? You should write a book about Lucy with all this information. I swear to you, all from MEMORY of reading every book and every article for over fifty years and following every part of her career and being fascinated by this ICON who gave the world laughter for generation after generation. And i'll leave the writing of the books to people who actually knew her and can contribute something we don't already KNOW. All these recollections of mine are flawed because they are memories and we all know memories fade or are enhanced or are diminished in some way as they are retellings of stories told by some who saw things differently or had an axe to grind or have a much different version than 15 other people who were there at the time.

Also are you obsessed with Lucille Ball? Because it seems like it. No offense of course. Obsessed? No, i have a life, but i come on HERE to have these stories written down somewhere for those who don't read those books and always get the facts distorted. Like when she's called a communist for registering to vote that way for her grandpa a few years before he died and then did not vote in the election. Or when she's called a beeatch because she was way ahead of her time and could do anything a man could do before it was accepted and some old fashioned men can't accept that, they couldn't THEN and still can't NOW. Or when one of her children points out the bad more than the good. Things like that. When a person's life is over, it is remembered differently by all who shared in that life. For me, she was just the best and she helped raise me for years with that tv show and the others that followed entertained me then and still do now. As she once said, YOU CAN GO THOUGH YOUR WHOLE LIFE AND LEAVE NOTHING BEHIND. That certainly was not the case for her, she gave laughter to the world for decades and continues to do so beyond the grave.

I :heart: these SPLAIN! More! More!
Ok, here goes. A month before she died, Lucy had been asked to appear on the Oscars, with her good friend Bob Hope. Although she now hated to appear anywhere fearing her looks had vanished and she would disillusion people or her fans, there aws no way she could refuse the spotlight on THAT show. She got a special dress made and learned the banter she'd be doing with Hope. They would be introducing the STARS OF TOMORROW, a group of 19 young performers who would sing and dance and get a standing ovation for their work. Lucy feared she'd screw up something and embarrass herself as she had done one time at the Emmys and as older stars like Bette Davis had done at The Oscars. But everything went very well. The theme of the show was friends couples compadres whatever. Goldie Hawn was on with Kurt Russell, the three actors who had played Bond were there together. So Hope and Ball who had made four movies together and countless tv shows made sense. As they were about to go on, Lucy was nervous and Hope said her hand felt clammy, she asked how she looked and one of Hope's people answered correctly that people like Lucy and Hope would shake 30 years off their lives when the camera hit them and the applause started. They got a standing ovation from the elite crowd for their half century each of entertaining the world. They did their shtick, a few jokes and lots of talk to introduce the youngsters. One of the films nominated that year was Dangerous Liaisons and one of Lucy's best jokes was when Hope mentionned they had done four movies together, Lucy replies, YES, TALK ABOUT YOUR DANGEROUS LIAISONS. They introduced the 19 and out came Ricki Lake and Joelly Fisher, daughter of Connie Stevens and Eddie Fisher, Blair Underwood and Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsy and Tyrone Power's son and Carol Burnett's daughter and so many others. It was Lucy's last public appearance, she died about a month later. So she joined Susan Hayward and John Wayne and so many others whose LAST public appearance was on Tinseltown's biggest show.

Although the reviews for Bob and Lucy were great, the show was not one of the best, the '89 show is best remembered for the fiasco of Rob Lowe singing with Snow White and a lawsuit by Disney for their work. But the show at least had something the current ones don't, STAR POWER. Grease producer Allan Carr had asked BIG names to appear on the show again instead of just the nominated people and newcomers that are featured nowadays. He had set up a number in the middle of the show in a cabaret style like the Cocoanut Grove with Lucy friend Merv Griffin introducing singers and other old time stars from Lucy's era. But Lucy was most struck by one thing as she attended and sat center about tenth row back, that Hollywood was mostly GONE, her era was Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn, not Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, who appeared that night also in a dress she had designed herself. At least Lucy did not have terminal cancer like Wayne or a brain tumor like Hayward, they did not give a standing ovation out of pity but out of love and respect.

At the Emmys one time, it was not so pleasant for Lucy. She had presented before many times and had been there for most of her 13 nominations and 3 out of 4 wins but she would later be asked to present the most important awards like the final one for best comedy series. A few minutes before she was to go on, she got a phone call telling her that a nurse from a hospital was advising her that Desi jr had been in an auto accident and lay dying. She immidiately had gary call the house to check and Desi jr was fine, but this did rattle her composure as she stepped out to do her chores. She could not see the prompter and she had no glasses to help her, she called out for glasses and Milton Berle comes on with wine glasses as a joke, she was not amused and said I'M IN TROUBLE HERE. Then as she was to read the winner, she had loads of envelopes on the podium left by previous winners and none of them was the right envelope with the winner's name on it. Finally, someone woke up and brought her the name and Lucy announced the Mary Tyler Moore show as best situation comedy for that year, it's first win ever. Mary tells a story in her book of Lucy checking out her acting from high in the rafters at Desilu where The Dick Van Dyke show was filmed. They recognized her well known LAUGH and Lucy came down to shake hands with the cast telling Mary and Dick how great she thought they were. Later, Lucy would be cheering them on when they were almost cancelled. Lucy said they begged CBS to stay with the show, it then ran four more years. Neither Mary or Dick ever forgot the encouregement they got from Lucy.

Lucy worked at RKO and the two biggest female stars there were Ginger Rogers and Kate Hepburn. One day, Lucy was getting made up for a photo shoot and she had gotten permission to be made up by the best make up man there who was waiting to do Hepburn for a costume picture she was doing. He had warned her that the minute Hepburn would show up, she would have to leave immediately and she agreed. Hepburn arived and Lucy was practically thrown out to make room for La Hepburn. Unfortunately, she left behind some caps for her teeth that gave her a perfect smile. Lucy came back and tried to get the guy's attention, but he totally ignored her, and Lucy would not leave without her caps, she needed to wear them for the photo shoot. She kept trying to get him to hand them to her and after trying many times, she left in frustration and anger, so much so that she threw a cup of coffee at him in revenge, but it landed on Hepburn along with an entire tray of dishes and liquids. Kate was not amused, she left, drenched and angry, and went home. Losing her for shooting that day cost the studio a fortune and normally Lucy would have been fired but Lela Rogers, Ginger's mom went to bat for her and Lucy got to keep her job after much apologizing to everybody on the lot. She later saw Hepburn and Katie told her she'd have to be a little bit more famous before she could start throwing stuff around like that, LOL!

When Lucy ad Desi bought RKO, they discovered they now owned everything in that studio, which meant they owned the colthes worn by stars in movies, furniture used in films, EVERYTHING. One night Desi got home and was furious that Lucy had just bought a piano, telling her they could get twenty of them for free at the studio, he then proceeded to offer pianos to friends and family, VEEV, WOULD YOU LIKE A PIANO? He had asked Viv.:lol: Lucy loved going through her old costumes from her films at RKO in the wardrobe department. Howard Hughes' old office was now used by Desi and five years later by Lucy herself. Lucy did find however that the studio was old and decrepit and they would need to upgrade everything. While making Yours mine and ours many years later she still found the place old and musty. She told critic Rex Reed that the place seemed to still have the flees from the old Hopalong Cassidy westerns.

Lucy and Desi were the loves of each other's lives, they loved each other even after their divorce, they even got along better then. They mostly remembered the good times instead of the bad. The fights they had were legendary. Screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs and everybody ducking for cover, including the kids, Lucy claimed that when she saw it was affecting the kids, she saw them squirming in bed, she knew enough was enough, it had to end. Even after the divorce, the kids noticed that both parents calmed down a bit but still ranted and raved at the slightest provocation, they were just naturally passionate about everything they did. Slamming doors were common, Desi would get drunk, misunderstand things and assume the worst and get furious about it. But both parents loved their kids to pieces and made it up to them by providing parents who listened, counselled and could get them out of any problem and supply them with help for anything they wanted. They helped them get careers and got them jobs and followed their progress, attending every show and even supplying them with a theater to perform in for friends on Roxbury. And they stayed supportive for the rest of their lives.

When Lucy met Desi! Lucy was filming Dance Girl Dance at RKO and she had just done a fight scene with Maureen O'Hara when she was seen by Desi for the very first time. He said she looked like a whore who had just gotten badly beaten up by her pimp. Producer George Abbott told him Lucy had been cast as the ingenue in Too Many Girls, the film version of the Broadway musical. Desi was incredulous. How could she play that part when she looked so tough, it was a sweet virginal girl. Ann Miller says she was there when they met at the commissary of the studio. This time Lucy was all dolled up in beige slacks and a tan sweater Desi remembered. She was blonde then, he added. It was love at first sight for both. Lucy had heard about him of course, the Latin lover type who danced till dawn and romanced every woman he met. He asked her if she knew how to rhumba, making her think she'd need to know for her role, and they went out dancing that night. They later met again at Eddie Bracken's house, he was in the film also, and had a house on the beach. Desi arrived with his current girlfriend FRECKLES, and Lucy was living with director Alexander Hall at the time. They left together that night, leaving their dates to the feeling that the relationship was now over. Al moved out, Desi moved in, Freckles moved on to. Desi wanted to marry Lucy but she knew better and asked that they just live together. Desi said she was way ahead of her time. Lucy just figured it would be a fling and would not last, most people in Hollywood thought the same. But Desi later proposed and Lucy accepted, they met each other's families. Lucy's dad thought he was a mite dark as Desi was always well tanned. Lucy's mom never liked either of Lucy's hubbies but she grew to respect and like him.

After the divorce, Desi lived in Del Mar and he had a beautiful very modern home there, Malibu style, right on the beach, you can see it on the net. One night, some youngsters were hollering and making lots of noise and wouldn't leave his area so he went out and to scare them, fired some shots. The youngsters called the cops on him and he told the cops they were blanks he was shooting. Just to make sure he would get out of all this, Lucy sent someone with blanks just to help him out. That's the thing with Lucy, once you were in, you were IN for life.

I dun't remember if i told this one about Desi. He was in Baja where he had another home and things were pretty but also very rustic down there. They had people over to the house and so many people were crowded on the balcony stairs that they gave way and Desi fell onto a tree, the tree branches piercing his abdomen. He was bleeding like a stuck pig, and there was no hospital in that small town. The only thing that saved his life was the fact that he was rich enough to call for a helicopter to take him to the closest hospital emergency room and they fixed him up. Lucy was frantic when she heard the news, as were his kids and everybody else. This was sometime in the sixties and the story of Lucy worrying about Desi made the papers of course. Same as he had done when she got hurt on the set of Facts of Life with Hope. Desi felt that the hand of God had played into all this and he had a small hospital built near his Baja residence so this type of thing would not happen to anyone else. When Desi heard about Lucy hurting herself on the set of Facts, he sent a telegram to Bob Hope saying, I WORKED WITH HER FOR YEARS AND NEVER HAD TO RESORT TO HITTING HER, WHY COULDN'T YOU CONTROL YOURSELF? LOL!

Someone on another board reminded me of this one. Lucy was shocked to see her kids had tens and twenties that they claimed they had gotten by selling LEMONADE outide her Roxbury street mansion. She gave her kids a very small allowance, but everything they wanted was paid for anyway. Until one day when her maid told her that she had come across some strangers in the house who told her THEY WERE ON THE TOUR. Seems the kids were charging for tours of the house when nobody was there. It is not said how Lucy reacted to all this, maybe she was just happy someone in her entourage was actually making money on their own for a change but she was quite upset when she found out this EXTRA MONEY routine also involved Desi jr getting into strangers' cars to show them where the biggest stars lived in Beverly Hills.

At Desilu, they had a whole FAMILY type setting, people were appreaciated and well paid, you all heard of the famous company picnics where everybody brough their families and they ate and played games for the day, they'd eventually be so big that they had to take over parks to do them. Then eventually, they got to be TOO BIG and they had to stop. Every birthday was acknowledged with cakes and parties. When Lucy gave gifts to her won kids, she also included the actor who played little Ricky who became a close friend of both her kids but especially Desi jr. They would have these huge parties with ferris wheels and clowns and everything else you can imagine where the kids would dress up according to the theme of the party. The house on Roxbury was also always decorated for Christmas and even Halloween where Lucy would give out candy to the kids herself with a Desilu guard standing by for protection. Lucy never had a gate in front of her house so people woul always drive by and even stop and ring the bell or at least get photos and trample her lawn and pick flowers and even steal the doormat which she had to nail down at one point. But she never complained as she considered it very complimentary, after all, Lucy Ricardo did that sort of thing all the time, LOL!

One critic noted that Lucille Ball was born to play the parts that Ginger Rogers frets over. Lucy herself said that she got the parts that Ann Sothern turned down. Lucy was wanted by Sinatra fro the role that got Angela Landsbury her Oscar in Manchurian Candidate, the director preferred Angie. Lucy was slated to do Ball of Fire and from that name alone you'd think she'd have the inside track, but the minute Barbara Stanwick heard Lucy wanted it, she took the rolw she had earlier refused. Later in life, Lucy was offered these old lady victim roles with violence that Lucy could never accept. She automaticaly refused any role with excessive sex or violence. She had been known to stop a film playing at her house if she saw too much skin. One time, having a fit over a James Bond movie because her kids were there. it did not matter that her kids told her they had already seen it at friends' houses. She said bring me a WESTERN and as she's watching that, Rod Taylor starts having sex with an indian girl and Lucy had a fit, LOL! In her last year on earth, the producers of Wicked Stepmother were having a very hard time with Bette Davis on her last film, they asked Lucy to take the part instead, Lucy refused but the producers had asked Lucy because she had a reputation for being a hard worker and not trouble like Davis. Driving Miss Daisy is another film Lucy was considered for but knowing she'd never pass the physical as it was done right after Lucy had a stroke after doing a Bob Hope special. Lucy told columnists to take her name off the list of possible lead actresses and the part won an Oscar for Jessica Tandy instead.

Lucy always offered advice as to the raising of Lucie's kids, and one day she reminded her daughter that those expensive knick knacks she had on her furniture should be removed as the kids might break them. But Lucie would have none of that. She thought there is no way i will store things because my kids might break them. However, when Lucy went back to the house to visit, all the knick knack breakables were suddenly gone and she saw that her daughter finally saw the light, LOL! Lucy always admired how Lucie would take her kids out on her tours with her, she not only had three kids but she also helped raise Larry's two older sons from his previous marriage to a soap actress. So she had 5 kids and a house to take care of and she still managed to do some shows and at her farm in the country she'd be an earth mother and grow these huge vegetables and then can them also. Lucy admired all that because that's how her own grandmothers were.

From one of Lucy's writers comes this short line. One time, Lucy tripped over some wires on the set, Desi yelled out for someone to catch her saying loudly, GUYS, ANYTHING EVER HAPPENS TO HER AND WE'RE ALL IN THE SHRIMP BUSINESS!:lol: :lol: :lol:

When Lucy's brother Fred worked for Desi, he would arrange for the ladies who kept Desi happy along the way, he probably did that for the rest of the band also. When Lucy was first starting out, she would be starving half the time, she had this doughnut story she used to love telling. She'd go to these doughnut places, and wait for someone to leave to grab their seat. Hopefully, they left a nickel tip and she would use that to order another coffee and she prayed they left some of their doughnut so she could finally have something to eat. She said she especially looked for a one doughnut man, that way, she'd take his seat the minute he left, grab his tip, order the coffee and eat his other doughnut, she cliamed she lived this way for a very long time. And yes, just like Lucy Ricardo would have done, she would line her handbag with foil and whenever she went to parties, she would load her bag with everything she could get her hands on, this is what all starving models used to do back then. Nowadays, they don't need to as they never eat, LOL!

They asked Lucy to follow Carol Channing in Hello Dolly on Broadway. Not for a long run, just to keep the show going, as they ahd done with many other famous actresses, like Pearl Baily who was the Black Dolly, Betty Grable i think did it too, Ginger Rogers did it, in England, many others. Anyhoo legendary Broadway producer David Merrick even went to see Lucy at home to try and convince her to do the show for a short run. Lucy received him in her living room on Roxbury and told him she'd do it, but only under one condition, that she get the role when they made the show into a film. Unfortunately, he could not do that he told her, as the role had already been promised to Barbra Streisand. The movie bombed anyway, directed by movie legend and Lucy friend Gene Kelly, BIG overblown musicals were by them considered OLD HAT by the public. Streisand was much too young for the role but she had THAT VOICE at least to do the songs justice. Lucy would have to console herself with MAME instead, five years later. Lucy always LOVED movie musicals, and she adored any entertainer who could sing and dance. It was fitting that her early roles at RKO were with Rogers and Astaire in their famous pairings there.

Gary Morton claimed that he only slept on the couch ONE TIME in his 28 year marriage to Lucy. A severe rainstorm had damaged the house in Palm Springs, so gary thought this was a great opportunity to do everything differently. Water damage had ruined all the carpeting and everything had to be replaced so he proceeded to do the whole house over without checking with Lucy who was away at the time. When Lucy came back and saw the house she was livid, she did not speak to him for a while and went out and had absolutely everything he had done, REDONE over exactly as it had been before. Lucy absolutely hated CHANGE of any kind, she was always like that. So se got the items replaced with exact duplicates at great cost, but it all looked the same as it had BEFORE the flood. Lucy also had a fear of paintings or wallpaper with birds or even Indians. One time she aproved the purchase of this expensive wallpaper and then after it was put up, she noticed small birds on it and had to have it removed and replaced. Her fear of birds might have had something to do with a bird flying through a window when she was a kid right after her dad died of typhoid fever when she was only four, but we never did find out why she was afraid of Indians. I guess that scene in ILL where she is frightened by some was not acting after all, LOL!

When Lucy and Desi finally decided to move to Beverly Hills in '55, it was because they had received death threaths about the kids. They ahd to leave their beautiful little RANCHITO in the Valley for the security of Beverly Hills, where nobody could even walk around at night without being stopped by police. They sold their ranch to actress Jane Withers who later sold it also, today that four acre spread has been subdivided so many times that everybody lives on top of one another. In '91, when that earthquake hit the area, it was exactly where their ranch had been. When they finally moved to Beverly Hills, the water pipes had burst just as they were walking in the front door. So De De had to take the kids away as Desi had a fit and screamed his head off at their bad luck, she told the kids their dad was just rehearsing for a show.

I love your stories Splain! Thanks for taking the time to post them. Did you ever save your ones from Lucytalk? Or are they just gone forever?

Yes, they are gone forever and i had a better memory back then, LOL! I figured they'd last longer HERE, LOL! Seeing as Chuck Heston died, here's the ONE Lucy connection i recall. When Henry Fonda got his American Film Institute tribute, Lucy, who had done three films with him, was there, to speak, so as she went up and started talking she was touching her hair saying she had met Charlton backstage and that he had PARTED her hair, a reference to his parting of the Red Sea as Moses, LOL!

RERUN, because of Heston's death. I mentionned the classic story much earlier about Heston, or at least about his movie, The Greatest Show On Earth. Lucy so wanted to act in a movie with the great director Cecil B Demille. But she got pregnant instead and lost the role of the Elephant girl which went to Gloria Graham and won her the Oscar. To get out of her contract with nemesis Harry Cohn at Columbia, she got 85 thousand to shoot a horrid movie called The Magic Carpet so she could be done with the contract there, it was a contract breaker and she knew that but she figured she'd get 85 thousand for a couple weeks work and be available for Demille's picture. She would have gotten to work with Chuck Heston who died yesterday. But as Demille said to Desi, you are the only man tlo have ****ed Paramount, Columbia, Harry Cohn and your wife, all at the same time, LOL!

A year ago, Sean Penn starred in a remake of All The King's Men, which had originally won an Oscar for Broderick Crawford back in the fifties. Broderick had also starred on TV in the show Highway Patrol. Back before Lucy married Desi, she was actually engaged to Broderick. When they broke up, i think because HIS family did not approve of Lucy, she would not give him his engagement ring back, so he actually BEAT her up to get it back. I'm thinking now that maybe his family did not approve because she was dating RKO producer Pan Berman, who was married and had kids. I think she was just dating him to make Pan jealous and he'd leave his wife. It is said that Pan's wife got back at Lucy by getting her OUT of RKO. But her reviews from The Big Street got her a contract at MGM instead which was way better. MGM had the biggest star roster in town. Many times Lucy posed with other MGM stars for that group picture they took once a year and the names there were incredible, everybody from Garland and Gable to Hepburn and Skelton. Even Desi joined in at one point.

When Desi came back to tv to create and produce The Mothers In Law, he asked Lucy what she thought of Kaye Ballard as the Ethel Mertz to Eve Arden's character, Lucy loved Kaye so she thought she would be great. Desi hired Bob and Madelynb to ensure the show's success, unfortunately, being on opposite the second half of Ed Sullivan sealed the show's fate, it was cancelled in it's second season. There was ONE scene where Eve is dancing and her hubby asks who's dancing and she replies well, IT AIN'T LUCILLE BALL. Eve and Lucy were great friends from their movie days together and then they were neighbors for years as their shows were shot next to one another. When Eve died years ago, she said she was anxious to see Lucy again in heaven. Eve had that cameo on ILL of course but they never worked together again. Desi guest starred on his show Mothers In Law and i think even Desi jr was on one time. Reminds me of the time Desi sr and jr as well as Lucie appeared on Kraft Music Hall together and the time father and son both showed up on Saturday Night Live, it's out now on DVD, as part of SNL's first season, Desi was terrific as host and Lucy was mentionned all through the show, people kept hoping she'd appear as a surprise guest. One more funny story about Kaye Ballard to wrap things up, one time, Kaye said she and Lucy were bycicling in Palm Springs when this vicious dog attacked them, Lucy screamed so hard at the dog that it then ran away with it's tail between it's legs, LOL! Can't repeat what she said on a family board though, LOL!

Lucy double dated with Ginger Rogers when they were first starting out. Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart were living together at the time and they all dated. Hank was Lucy's date and Stewart went with Ginger. I told the story of their infamous first date earlier. I think Lucy was always attracted to Fonda and there was more to it than most people thought. They showed up at tributes for each other later on and they starred in three films together. After Hank died, it was Lucy who helped his widow get back in the swing of things socially, she had promised Hank on his death bed that she would do that for him. Hank was married 5 times and was not easy to live with. Jane Fonda on a documentary one time hinted that her dad and Lucy had BEEN together in the biblical sense and i tend to agree with that asessment. As for Stewart, he was her neighbor across the street and they saw each other a lot socially and even worked together on a Christmas special a couple of years before Lucy passed away. Stewart's wife Gloria died before he did and he passed away in that house on Roxbury a few years after Lucy. These people were REAL stars, not like today.

Lucy just loved people who could sing and dance. When she loved a performer she'd even go see their act in nightclubs or theaters. One of the many she encouraged over the decades was singer Frankie Avalon who even appeared on here's Lucy one time. At one point, in the sixties, she went to see his show so often that she had to refuse an invitation to go again at one point. She said, if i go see his show again, they'll think we're having an affair. He wasn't her type anyway, much too short, Lucy liked her men BIG, Desi was the only exception, LOL!

Did i tell the one about Lucy watching tv and she got upset at the way they had edited this war movie, she wondered why it had to be so violent and so much blood shown. Then someone pointed out to her that she was watching the NEWS and seeing the Vietnam war.

Nope! I don't think you told that one. What movie was it?

Nope! I don't think you told that one. What movie was it?
Huh, that's the point, Lucy was NOT watching a movie, she was watching THE NEWS and seeing news footage of the then current Vietnam war. And here she was thinking that shot is going on too long, they need to edit this better . . . :lol:

Lucy was one who HATED change. When furniture got too old, she moved it to another house or repaired or recovered, when it finally HAD to be replaced she would call Jamestown furniture companies who would fly the stuff in for her, always ordering these HUGE siofas and huge matching ottomans, she had those everywhere, in all her houses. She had these paintings covered with lights everywhere also, she liked scenes of homes and mountains, lots of scenery, many reminiscent of her upbringing in Jamestown. The house in Chatsworth was all American furniture, bu the mansion in Beverly Hills was all modern and comfortable with formica and shag carpeting even after they were out of fashion. Heavy brocade drapes, plants everywhere, the same things she had forty years before she kept and made sure they lasted forever. The only woman in Beverly Hills still using rotary dial phones when everybody else was on push button ones. LOL! If you saw pics of her in her kitchen in the early sixties, you knew if you saw the same pics in 1989, nothing had changed. So it looked modern in the sixties but very dated in the late eighties. The only beautifully done place Lucy ever had was her New York apartment, which her Wildcat co star and lifelong friend Paula Stewart had decorated, all elegant and replicas of masterworks on the walls, it even made Lucy the cover of an issue of Architectural Digest for that one.

It was LUCY who gave Jackie Gleason his nickname of THE GREAT ONE. When they asked Lucy to name her all time favorite TEN shows, she listed The Honeymooners as one of them. She adored working with Gleason although she loved to rehearse and Gleason hated it. She always wanted to do Lilian Russell to his Diamond Jim Brady, but by the time they were both set to do ot, he had lost way too much weight to play that heavy set man. Lucy even escaped to Florida and Jackie when Paramount was offering 17 million dollars for Desilu. Lucy could not make up her mind so she went to Florida as an excuse to have more time to think it over, but her lawyer tracked her there and she eventually accepted the offer. One time, on The Jackie Gleason show, Sheila MacRae went backstage saying she was about to come out imitating Lucille Ball, Sheila could do Zsa zsa and several other celebs, but when the curtain opened, out came Lucille Ball herself, as a surprise for Jackie on his birthday. Jackie and Lucy loved working with each other and respected each other's many talents, they did a couple of specials together that were very well received. Lucy worked with Carney also, in a cameo in a movie and in another special.

One more funny story about Kaye Ballard to wrap things up, one time, Kaye said she and Lucy were bycicling in Palm Springs when this vicious dog attacked them, Lucy screamed so hard at the dog that it then ran away with it's tail between it's legs, LOL! Can't repeat what she said on a family board though, LOL!


Hahaha I love the stories SPLAIN!!!!
Ive actually read this one and Lucy screamed "GET THE **** OUTTA HERE!!!!" to the dog and when it left Kaye turned to Lucy and said "This is why you are the queen of the world and I am nothing."
I Love these stories though. Keep em comin!!!!

Hahaha I love the stories SPLAIN!!!!
Ive actually read this one and Lucy screamed "GET THE **** OUTTA HERE!!!!" to the dog and when it left Kaye turned to Lucy and said "This is why you are the queen of the world and I am nothing."
I Love these stories though. Keep em comin!!!!
Certainly not MORE than i LOVE your colorized pics of Lucy and the gang from her shows, they are truly A M A Z I N G !

One time, late in her life, Lucy got a dose of her own medicine. A fan actually scaled that high back wall and hid in her guest house. She heard noise and called the police, she was alone at the time, they came and checked and being policemen, found nothing, so they left, after getting her autograph no less, LOL! She then got a call from the fan who got access to all her personal numbers. She chided the guy and made him swear he would forget those phone numbers, leave and never call her again, and then she would not call the cops back and not press charges. He never did but he lived in her guest house for a few hours and actually spoke to her on the phone, now THAT's a Lucy Ricardo wannabe, LOL!

Paula Stewart keeps saying she's writing her book on Lucy. Paula was in Wildcat with Lucy, playing her younger sister. She was married to comedian Jack Carter, a comic who appeared regularly on Sullivan and was very well known and quite funny. It was Paula and Jack who introduced her to gary morton, well, we won't hold THAT against her, LOL! Paula was the one in Lee Tannen's book who had her stuff stored at his apartment and Lee blasted her on it in the limo with Lucy being frightened by his outburst and they did not talk for a year or so. Paula was also the decorator who did that beautiful job on her New York apartment, that made the cover of Architectural Digest. She is one talented decorator, she should have done her Roxbury street mansion too, God knows it really needed the update. Jack Carter, when he divorced Paula got an unexpected visit from Lucy, she drove all the way to his house from the set of her show just to see if he was doing ok, and he loved that gesture. HOWEVER, he was not so pleased when she also showed up in court to testify for Paula saying what a rotten husband he was. She even warned Jack's new girlfriend about him, LOL! Jack had a few memorable stories about Lucy, he once said that trying to direct her, which he did, twice, was like stopping the Super Chief, with a Zippo lighter. Another time, he said that Lucy served sandwhiches on paper plates at Lucie's wedding on Roxbury, never knowing the classy or chic thing to do. The only rebuttal i have for that one is that Lucy also served some of those sandwhiches on trays to the crowd of fans who showed up that day to see the stars, she ahd sent over the wall in the backyard, that was thoughtful which i prefer to chic sometimes, LOL!

Splain, you are awesome, I love reading your posts on here :D
Keep up the good work :)

Splain, you are awesome, I love reading your posts on here :D
Keep up the good work :) Awwwwwww thanks, that is so nice of you to say. Problem is i wake up in the middle of the night and i think oh yeah, tomorrow i'll tell THAT one and then come morning i've forgotten what the heck the story was, LOL!

Here's a CLASSIC one told many times by Lucy herself. Lucy called Viv over on a Saturday, they would do each other's hair at the Roxbury mansion. Lucy had a mini beauty parlor there in the garage. They were alone, and Lucy had had work done on her toes so both her feet were laid up on a coffee table as the dye was working on her hair. Suddenly, there was this terrific noise of sirens and cars everywhere. Lucy told Viv to check out the front window on Roxbury and she saw this parade of limos and police cars everywhere. They parked in front of the house and were coming up the walk and soon rang the doorbell. Lucy at first thought he commotion was next door at Jack Benny's house but now she panicked when she heard it was at her place. They were both dressed in ratty clothes and looked a mess as they also had facials and curlers all over the place. I forget if they answered the door or if it was just unlocked as was the custom there but they all came in and went through the entire house, upstairs and downstairs and ignoring the two people they must have thought were maids or something. After taking the grand tour, they thanked their hosts for letting them examine every inch of the place as they knew the Queen of comedy resided there. They finally asked who had just been in their house and were told it was the King of Siam. And Lucy laughed at Viv's remark to them when they said their thanks yous, Viv said well maybe we can check out your place when we visit you someday, LOL!

Gary was a clotheshorse who liked to dress nicely. He also collected cars that he stored in garages all over town, he was the Jay Leno of his day. He also collected watches and one time, when he was showing off his collection, the guy thought he sold them or something, LOL! He was also big on paintings and Lucy had them everywhere in her homes, lit from the top, they gave a nice look to their ordinary looking home. It has been said many times that gary elliminated from Lucy's life everybody from Desi's era. He had to be kind to her mom and her kids though, nothing he could do about them. Desi used to refer to gary as Barry Norton instead of gary morton. One time, the two met at a golf tournament and Desi's car broke down so instead of being seen by gary/Barry, he made sure he got a nicer car for the occasion, probably because he knew that gary collected cars.

Here's a CLASSIC one told many times by Lucy herself. Lucy called Viv over on a Saturday, they would do each other's hair at the Roxbury mansion. Lucy had a mini beauty parlor there in the garage. They were alone, and Lucy had had work done on her toes so both her feet were laid up on a coffee table as the dye was working on her hair. Suddenly, there was this terrific noise of sirens and cars everywhere. Lucy told Viv to check out the front window on Roxbury and she saw this parade of limos and police cars everywhere. They parked in front of the house and were coming up the walk and soon rang the doorbell. Lucy at first thought he commotion was next door at Jack Benny's house but now she panicked when she heard it was at her place. They were both dressed in ratty clothes and looked a mess as they also had facials and curlers all over the place. I forget if they answered the door or if it was just unlocked as was the custom there but they all came in and went through the entire house, upstairs and downstairs and ignoring the two people they must have thought were maids or something. After taking the grand tour, they thanked their hosts for letting them examine every inch of the place as they knew the Queen of comedy resided there. They finally asked who had just been in their house and were told it was the King of Siam. And Lucy laughed at Viv's remark to them when they said their thanks yous, Viv said well maybe we can check out your place when we visit you someday, LOL!
LOL! I love this story!

Yeah, it's one of my all time favorites also.

Lee Tannen told a great story in his book about Lucy having a massage therapist at the end and his being from Israel and not knowing her at all from her shows. When he showed him some of her best work he could not believe the old lady he was massaging was actually Lucy. He kept wanting to take Lucy outside to jog around the block or something, but Lucy kept telling him they'd be mobbed and he did not believe her so one day she gave in and they went out. Within minutes, one of those Hollywood tour buses descended upon them and they were mobbed with autograph seekers. Lucy ran home and yelled I TOLD YOU SO at the guy while still furious and she went to her bedroom and slammed the door. :lol:

It was on the way to a HUGE tent party at Dean Martin's house that Lucy and Desi had one of their final BIG blowouts. Lucy asked Desi if they were going to be the last to leave again and he screamed back YES, as in Cuba if a party lasted till dawn that was a GOOD party, and what was wrong with that? Lucy just hated the fact that he'd get plastered at these parties and embarrass her, in her mind, the head of a big studio should be more refined and concious of his image, Desi said. So that set the tone for the evening and they kept fighting when they got home, knowing they would never go to another party or even have one at their own house for fear of that fight happening again. Just different ways of looking at things, Desi was a fun loving guy who wanted to have a good time and who cares what people think and Lucy thought parties were a waste of time and she was always making sure she behaved correctly worrying about what people thought. It was Jerry Lewis who once said that Lucy was always the quiet one in a corner, never saying anything unless spoken to, very demure and reserved. Only lighting up is she told a story about herself and that was the only way she'd make these people laugh, if she acted out what happened as she was never funny on her own, which is what people expected from her.

Lucy was forever asked which one of her shows she liked the best. She knew which ones were the most loved or the biggest laugh getters but her all time favorite was the baby show, because of the emotion involved. Then later in life she said the Dean martin Lucy show was her favorite of all time, of all her shows. I think because she had a ball making it, she loved Dean, like most women do, and it was very funny and she looked sensation in that longer wig, made her look younger. Between her answering the baby show and then mentionning Dean's, her usual answer was the Bill Holden one with the nose on fire. She kept saying at the end of her life that she had no idea the nose would catch fire, nobody had the guts to tell her it was all planned, not an accident, she even had a wick IN her nose to burn instead of her real nose. But she told the story so often she started to believe it had been a fluke, instead of being all written down and like has been said many times, one of the few ad libs by her on the series was when she dunked her nose in the coffee to put the flame out, it was done in rehearsal and they wrote it in the show for the actiual taping. Because it got a huge laugh. She also loved working with Holden, they had done a movie together and got along great, his wife appeared in The Fashion Show also of course.

Jess Oppenheimer mentionned in his book that he kept seeing Desi take credit for many of his ideas. Jess was the smart one in that he never sold HIS share of the show to CBS, he even gave some of his share to Bob and Madelyn and they became wealthy overnight with those, there's lots of money in reruns, ask Ray Romano or Roseanne or Seinfeld, LOL! I wonder who really came up with the idea to FILM the series, which is why we have it today to enjoy over and over, most shows back then were done on Kinescope and they made terrible copies, that's how Johnny Carson's early Tonight Shows disapeared forever, they actually used the film to tape something else over them. Red Skelton got so angry when he could not get top dollar for HIS shows that he said they would be buried with him, thank God, that did not happen and some of them are there for us to buy. In his book, Desi said that when CBS told him he'd have to do the show in New York on Kinescope, somebody said FILM in his ear, wonder who that genius was. Whoever it was ensured enjoyment for the audience the world over for generations to come.

It has just been announced that Lucy is the most BELOVED dead celebrity. They post these Q ratings, they ask the public to identify these celebs, living and deceased and Lucy, back in her day was always at the top of the list, EVERYBODY knew who Lucy was not everybody loved her, but she was still the highest rated back then. Now, 19 years after her death, she polled second most recognized in the dead celebs after Elvis. Elvis got 98% and Lucy got 95%, nobody scored higher than these two icons. BUT, she scored higher than Elvis for beloved, he got 36%, but she beat him at 52%, not bad for someone who's been gone almost to decades. Others who rated high were Walt Disney, Red Skelton and John Wayne and Bob Hope. Founder and Chairman of the board William S Pailey of CBS used to say that there was a lot of importance attached to the likeability factor for a character on TV, they wouldn't watch you if they didn't like you, and that sure seems to be the case for Lucy.

Here's a CLASSIC one told many times by Lucy herself. Lucy called Viv over on a Saturday, they would do each other's hair at the Roxbury mansion. Lucy had a mini beauty parlor there in the garage. They were alone, and Lucy had had work done on her toes so both her feet were laid up on a coffee table as the dye was working on her hair. Suddenly, there was this terrific noise of sirens and cars everywhere. Lucy told Viv to check out the front window on Roxbury and she saw this parade of limos and police cars everywhere. They parked in front of the house and were coming up the walk and soon rang the doorbell. Lucy at first thought he commotion was next door at Jack Benny's house but now she panicked when she heard it was at her place. They were both dressed in ratty clothes and looked a mess as they also had facials and curlers all over the place. I forget if they answered the door or if it was just unlocked as was the custom there but they all came in and went through the entire house, upstairs and downstairs and ignoring the two people they must have thought were maids or something. After taking the grand tour, they thanked their hosts for letting them examine every inch of the place as they knew the Queen of comedy resided there. They finally asked who had just been in their house and were told it was the King of Siam. And Lucy laughed at Viv's remark to them when they said their thanks yous, Viv said well maybe we can check out your place when we visit you someday, LOL!

This doesn't even make sense. You can't just break into someone's house and go all through the house. If this really was the King of Siam why didn't he call ahead of time and request if he see Lucy and her house? Then Lucy could have said yes or no.

This doesn't sound right so are you sure Lucy didn't just concoct this fairy tale or if the true story is somewhat different?

This doesn't even make sense. You can't just break into someone's house and go all through the house. If this really was the King of Siam why didn't he call ahead of time and request if he see Lucy and her house? Then Lucy could have said yes or no.

This doesn't sound right so are you sure Lucy didn't just concoct this fairy tale or if the true story is somewhat different?
I don't think she concocted the story as Viv was there too. They didn't break in, i dunno if the door was unlocked or if they let them in but they proceeded to go through the house because both Lucy and Viv LET THEM, hoping they would just leave afterwards.

Lucy told that story, on Dinah Shore's daytime talk show and ET replayed it not too long ago. Of course, in the reteling of a story that happened decades before, details could get distorted or the story could be embelleshed a la Martin Short, you never know. But i just retold it the way i remember Lucy telling it. And Viv adding bits here and there, she was on that Dinah show also, she came on as a surprise guest for Lucy.

There's this old relic in Hollywood called mr Blackwell and although nobody knows anything this guy's ever designed, he issues this list of the ten best and worst dressed performers. Every year, it's a status thing to actually appear on the list because he only names the biggest stars to the top ten. Lucy's appeared on his list back in the day, more than once, he even had her topping the list one year. Liz Taylor's been on many times also. Like i said, he only names the top people, or the most popular or talked about, i'm sure this year he's got Britney on there and he's even had joke people on there like Milton Berle or any man who dresses up as a woman. Lucy's excuse for being on there, she said at the time, was that she never had any time to go shop for clothes. She said that invariably, whenever she had to go to a party, she'd go to her closet and like Lucy Ricardo, would lament that SHE had NOTHING TO WEAR. One time, Lucy co hosted the Mike Douglas show for a week, and one day, as gary attempted some banter with Mike, Lucy went backstage and kept coming out in various outfits. At the end of it, she even came out in a MINK DRESS. She looked sensational of course, but every time i'd see her in that MINK VEST of hers that she wore in her later years, i always wondered if it was the mink dress that she had cut down to a vest, a la Lucy Ricardo again, LOL!

At the end of her life, Lucy would venture out for the occasional favor for friends like appearing at a Betty White booksigning or a special for Hope, that type of thing, or giving or receiving an award somewhere. But she also went about her regular life like going to doctors or the dentist, things like that. One time, she's in the elevator on the way to one of these appointments, wearing her usual HUGE sunglasses and made up as best she could to preserve the Lucy legend when this person in the elevator recognized her and screamed out YOU'RE LUCY!!!!! Lucy jumped and screamed also, prompting laughs from everybody in the elevator, so you see in some ways, her Lucy character was that much a part of her that she couldn't leave it completely, even out of that soundstage where they filmed, LOL!

LOL! I never heard that one. How funny.

LOL! I never heard that one. How funny. Well, my favorite story as far as the public is concerned is that famous one about the fact that she and Desi went to see a Broadway show and got there just before the lights went up and the show started. They hear this commotion going on and people whispering and then speaking loudly and then applauding and they look around them wondering, Eleanor Roosevelt came in? But it was for THEM and they had no idea how famous they ahd become within weeks of the show premiering on tv. Now where the Lucy Ricardo part again comes in is that Lucy wanted to show this to one of her friends so she takes her there and nothing happened, so she figured it was because it was when the lights were about to dim and she tries that and again nothing, so her friend says yeah, sure, that happened all right, sarcastically but while laughing her head off, but most times this happened, it was the usual, people going nuts because they saw her in person.

I am really loving these stories, Splain!!! I have always been intrigued by Lucy's life!!!!
Keep on going, please!!!! :D These are great!!!!!

I am really loving these stories, Splain!!! I have always been intrigued by Lucy's life!!!!
Keep on going, please!!!! :D These are great!!!!! Why thank you, i always wonder if people get tired of these. Ok, let's talk about Lucy's grandpa. Lucy lost her father at four, he was a lineman and got typhoid fever, Lucy's mom De de was pregnant with her brother Fred at the time. Lucy remembered a bird flying into the window at the time of her father's death, maybe that's what prompted her lifelong fear of anything with birds on it, like wallpaper or paintings. Lucy's mom later remarried, his name was Ed Peterson and he hated kids. De de later said that she left him because he hated her kids and drank too much. She went back to work and left her children with Ed's parents who were a very strict Swedish couple. Lucy said she would be in bed very early and hear the other kids playing outside, she absolutely hated living there, and complained about it for years afterwards. Until she heard it upset her mom, who told her she had only stayed there for six weeks or so, not the two years she aws telling everybody. Lucy later grew to appreciate Mrs Peterson and would visit her on her trips to Jamestown. Remember the scene in I Love Lucy where Lucy put egg shells in the coffee, saying her grandmother was Swedish? :lol:

So, back to grandpa. Seeing as Lucy had lost her dad so early, she grew very attached to her grandfather, but he was a real character who caused her lots of tsuris in her life. Grandpa was a socialist and he insisted his daughter and her kids register to vote as communist back in '36. He had already had a stroke so to make him happy, they all registered but never voted anyway. This came back to haunt Lucy in the fifties communist whichhunts, but when they saw the information, they concluded it was indeed as she had said, only done to please grandpa and nobody voted that way in the end. Lucy never voted again and hated everything about politics her entire life because she could have lost it all because of that one act of kindness done to make her belogved grandpa happy. When Desi would date Lucy and grandpa was there, he would try and convince his granddaughters' date that socialism was the way to go and Desi would politely decline and only politely feign interest. He had after all been driven out of Cuba and lost everything they had there because of communism.

When Lucy was a kid back in Jamestown, she always remembered Christmas as the time grandpa would MAKE all her gifts, he was an excellent woodcarver and would make her sleds and dollhouses and the like, all expertly crafted by a man who had done this type of work for decades. She later got him a job in the prop department at RKO and he proceeded to get all the unionized workers organized in a strike for higher pay, he was always for the little man and this again caused Lucy to almost lose her job same as the Kate Hepburn incident had before that. So grandpa lost his job there and spent his remaining years at home where he would lecture the maids that Lucy got for the household telling them they weren't paid enough and were treated shodily. Lucy would give him this five dollar spending money every week for cigarettes and candy and he would then give it to the local prostitutes saying GO AHEAD HONEY, TAKE THE NIGHT OFF. When the war came, he helped by being one of those air raid wardens but because he had had a hernia,. it would take so long to get him in his truss that the warning had subsided by the time they got him up and dressed AND READY TO GO. When the news came that he had passed on after yet another stroke in '44, the whole family went back home to Jamestown to bury grandpa.

Lucy LOVED Milton Berle and his wife Ruth, they saw each other at parties and events and they even went to Lucie's wedding on Roxbury. Before she passed away, Lucy would call Cedars to get news about Ruth who was dying of cancer there. She would speak to Ruth's mom or Milton and get all teary eyed as they told her about her condition and the fact that she would never improve, it was only a question of time. As luck would have it, Lucy wound up in that same hospital a week later and nobody dared tell her that Ruth passed away while Lucy was recuperating from her heart operation, they were practically in neighboring rooms too. Gilda Radner, another Lucy fan, also died at that hospital after getting cancer. Gollda had met Lucy and they each said how they admired the other's work. When Desi hosted Saturday Night Live, Gilda did LUCY in a few sketches, even her famous cry, LOL! There's a dvd out now about Gilda that featured her saying how much she loved Lucy. And Ruth Berle can be seen as Milton's wife in a very famous Lucy show. It was one of the funniest and one where an ad lib made it on the show. As Lucy thinks Milton's fooling around with Ruta Lee, she dumps a messy salad on his head and Milton has a very tough time delivering his lines as they all laugh their heads off. You can tell Lucy is trying to get him to do his lines before she also cracks up and laughs. I recall at one point as the salad drips all over him down his eyes and glasses, she sternly says LISTEN TO ME and he says, LISTEN TO YOU? I CAN'T EVEN SEE YOU! :lol:

One person Lucy did NOT love was Jack Benny's wife Mary. I never found out why, but assume it had to do with Mary's demeanor. One time Lucy had Jack on the show and Lucy herself portrayed Mary as she supposedly was too nervous to appear in front of an audience, although she always worked on radio with Jack. I remember one story about Mary, that she was bragging about this silver service Jack had given her and she remarked to George Burns' wife Gracie Allen that she hoped Jack would have another affair so she could get a matching silver piece to go with the one he had just given her. Implying that it was a gift to keep her quiet about the affair. One time, after the Bennys had sold their house next door to Lucy, saying they could not afford it any longer and moving into a condo instead, Jack invited Lucy to come visit, she waited for a time when Mary would be out of town, so that she would not have to see HER. As she toured the place, she noticed that there aws no door in Jack's bedroom and she told him so, saying it was the MAID's room. Jack listened but would not complain, he merely added that that was the way these rooms were built nowadays. Lucy knew better and hated the way Mary treated Jack. She said that Jack hated leaving that home on Roxbury and talked about how much he missed that hosue till the day he died. When he did pass away, not too long after doing a show on tv, everybody who was anybody gathered at that condo to say goodbye, everybody from Lucy to Carson was there, Jack was very well liked in show business circles. Jack's best friend of course was George Burns and George LOVED pulling practical jokes on Jack. If they were about to listen to an opera singer at a party, he's warn Jack not to laugh at her and of course that made Jack scream with laughter while the poor lady sang her heart out. One time, he told Jack he was coming up to his room in a hotel, so Jack wanted to get back at him for all the jokes he had pulled on HIM, so Jack gets naked, stands on top of the bed with a book in one hand and his violin in the other and waited for George. George had a feeling Jack was planning something of that nature so he sent the maid up instead, LOL!

The most funny story involving Jack Benny and Lucy is of course the most famous one, where Jack would dress up as a gypsy violinist and come in through the kitchen door at Lucy's while they were having dinner and serenade the group with his violin without uttering a word as he walked around the room and they all laughed hysterically at the sight if this world famous comic playing for them and rushing to get back home before the next tour bus would catch him. One time, he forgot his keys and he was screaming for his wife Mary to open the door for him as autograph seekers swarmed closer to him by the minute, LOL! Lucy worked with both Jack and George on many occasions and events, they all admired each other's many talents. And as we all know by now, Lucy worked better with someone if she admired them and looked up to them as performers, she was in awe of talent and these two were masters as she was. Burns and Allen were a hit on tv and competed for Emmys with Lucy at one point, but i don't think Lucy ever got to work with Gracie, which is a shame because both perfected the dimwit character on tv to perfection.

Lots has been said about Lucy's teeth getting Japanese morris code during the war. At the time, they said one Japanese gardener was arrested because of Lucy getting the code coming in through her recently fixed teeth, the fillings supplied her with this radio signal and she went to the dentist and then to the police. Since then, Myth Busters has said this was all impossible, but it was a huge news item at the time. Another story about Lucy's war effort, LOL! She sold war bonds, entertained at The Hollywood Canteen, supplied entertainment for the Birmingham Hospital where Desi was stationed, supplying returning troops with a much needed boost in morale. But her biggest contribution was her teeth getting radio signals about Japanese involvement, LOL! Shame she did not get her teeth fixed BEFORE, she might have averted Pearl harbour, LOL!

Lucy LOVED Johnny Carson, she watched his show every night before bed. She appeared on his show many times over the years but when she appeared the last time, around the time that Mame hit theaters, she surprised Johnny and one should never do that. He had everything scripted and knew everything he would talk about, i was shocked when i read Here's johnny and discovered all his great ad libs were all written by the writers on the show, even his many routines were rip offs of other people's work like his aunt Blabby being a replica of Maude Frickerd, made famous by the great Johnatan Winters. When Lucy showed up that last time with a brown wig on from Mame, he had just introduced her as the most famous redhead in the world, i hope that wasn't the reason he stopped asking her, probably it was more the fact that she was too old by then, but he never seemed to have a problem asking Jimmy Stewart to vcome on and recite his poetry though. More likely, it was the fact that she never refused when Johnny replacement Joan Rivers asked Lucy to be on when she guest hosted the show. Lucy appeared with her at least four times and the shows were all great because Joan was a real Lucy fan. When Lucy appeared with Joan on her Fox show, which ran up against the Tonight show, that must have been the last straw for Johnny, he simply blacklisted any guest that appeared with Joan on that competing network show. Johnny's flap with Joan is well documented. Joan thought she would succeed Johnny as the permanent host when he retired but NBC decided to go with a middle America favorite instead, Jay leno, who himself will be replaced next year by Conan O'brien.

Johnny appeared on Here's Lucy is one of her best shows, they worked very well together, the reahearsal footage of the show even making the dvd. Both performers adored Jack Benny and so both had appeared together on a Benny special called Carnaval Nights which was very well received. It was Johnny who had introduced Lucy at the Friars roast in her honor, where he told everybody to be gentler and more careful with their obsceneties as this was a woman instead of the usual male entertainer being honored. Then he brought her out by saying, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LUCILLE TESTICULE! Lucy later joked to Merv Griffin on his show as they got caught talking while coming back from a commercial break, WELL, YOU DON'T MIND BECAUSE THEY CAN'T DO THAT WITH YOUR NAME! LOL!

So, if you're lucky enough to catch any of the Lucy interviews on talk shows, look out for the one with Barbara Walters which was sensational. The ones with Joan Rivers were great also, one plugging Stone Pillow,, one for The All Star Party for Variety Clubs and one too late for Life with Lucy. The ones with Merv Griffin are among her very best, there's one for Mame and one for a tribute to Ethel Merman and one for her writers Bob and Madelyn as well as many many others. She did a whole week as well as many other appearances with Mike Douglas also, out of Philadelphia, plugged Mame with a great interview with Phil Donahue and did this great show at a University called America Alive which i loved. One many of us fans are looking for was with Tom Snyder on the Tomorrow show. A good one with Dick Cavett ran the whole show but Dick asked some pretty lame questions. That one's out on dvd along with many other famous comics ranging from Burnett to Benny. Lucy did interview shows or talk shows in London and Canada also and was a favorite guest on Dinah Shore's daytime show as well as Virginia Graham who had a show in her day. I have many of these on dvd as i copied some when they aired. My favorites are the Joan and Merv ones as well as Barbara's as it shows the house inside and out. The Merv Mame one is one of her best ever as she was in an excellent mood that night having just taped her Here's Lucy show and plugging her favorite movie, Mame and her kids and Gale and Gary and even Bob Hope guested on that one too. Desi used to stop Lucy from doing talk shows as he knew her blunt personality and lack of expected humor might shock the audience so when they divorced, Lucy took to the chat shows with a vengeance, LOL!

Saturday, is the anniversary of Lucy's passing, April 26th. Can't believe it's almost two decades already. The major networks' newscasts, the networks' morning shows, the entertainment shows, CNN, specials, then the newspapers and magazines also, coverage went on for a full week and then kept going with memorial issues of special magazines and more articles and news bits for months. Then came the Emmy broadcast and her getting the Governor's award posthumasly, presented by Bob Hope and accepted by her then husband, gary morton. She received the Kennedy Center Honor three years before and appeared on the Oscars a month before she passed, again, presenting new young talent with her good friend Bob Hope by her side. The theme at the Oscars that year was friends, compadres and famous duos and couples. They received an extended and loud standing ovation that night, which really pleased Lucy, as she had stated many times, in Hollywood, you are nothing if you do not appear in movies. The crowd remembered that night that she ahd made over 70 of them before she tackled television and made the medium her own, becoming The First Lady of Television and the Queen of Comedy, from her work in over 500 television programs and countless specials and appearances on other shows. Most of the people in that crowd had grown up with her and she had entertained them the way she did hundreds of millions around the world for generation after generation and thankfully, STILL DOES.

So, the best story about that day comes from Carol Burnett, who said that every birthday, Lucy would send her some flowers. That whole week, Carol had gotten news from the family and heard the many reports and prayed fro the best, that she would keep getting better and eventually be released from the hospital and go home but that was not to be, when her aorta burst again at a different place at 5 a m that morning, Carol got up and heard Lucy had died on the news and cried, and a few hours later Lucy's flowers came to her house. Carol has since called Lucy her mentor, she has accepted awards on her behalf, talked about her, reminisced about their friendship and said how she loved working with her and at the TV Hall of Fame presentation to Lucy, Carol added that she wished she were half the woman Lucy was. She has also said many times that not a day goes by that she does not think of Lucy at one time or another.

Carol Burnett's most famous story about Lucy is one she has told repeatedly over the decades, i have heard it so often that i actually wish she'd come up with a different one at one point, LOL! Sounds like when Lucy got tired of Ethel telling that one story about her being loyal to her favorite tenant, LOL! Carol was doing her Broadway show, Once Upon A Mattress, and Lucy always took in the best Broadway shows. Carol said that when she came out, she recognized Lucy in the audience right away, with her red hair and that infectious laugh of hers. After the show, Lucy went backstage and offered encouregement and advice and also told her that if she ever needed her for anything, to just call and the answer would be yes. She later called Lucy when CBS told her they might back her new variety show if she could land a major star to guest on the show. Carol called Lucy and before she could get the question out, Lucy answered WHEN DO YOU WANT ME? The pilot special called Carol Plus Two with Lucy and Zero Mostel as guests was a riot and did so well, Carol got a series out of it that lasted over a decade. Carol then guested on Lucy's shows and also had Lucy on her series and they always had a ball working together and Carol never forgot that. Lucy loved talent and was very nurturing to young talent, Carol also heard that from many others and she also knew that if you proved your loyalty to Lucy, she would be your friend for life.

Lucy loved Betty White because both loved to work and both had the same values. And both were very close to their moms. When Lucy lost her mom in '77, she was devestated and blamed herself for having stopped doing her show, she felt this gave her mom something to look forward to, she'd get her all dolled up and send a car for her and her friends and send them to the taping every Thursday, her mom looked forward to it all and she'd never ask the friends back if they didn't laugh it up appropriately, LOL! When Lucy's mom died, Lucy did not know what to do, she asked Betty, Betty told her the pain would go away with time. But Lucy decided to adopt Betty's mom as her substitute, she started sending the flowers she'd send to her mom to Betty's mom instead. De De had been a pioneer herself, working from day one and taking care of her family when her first husband died while she was pregnant with Fred, Lucy's brother. The kids all had jobs to do at the house, setting the table, cooking the food, washing dishes, even feeding the animals. Even later in life Lucy would sometimes panic when thinking her mom was about to get there and something wasn't completely done yet. To the members of Lucy's family, De de was a Saint, but she was blunt and direct, she never liked either of Lucy's husbands but tolerated them becauyse they made her daughter happy. More than once, Lucy would go looking for her mom and she'd be in the local tavern having a good time. Lucy would go in and greet her with SO, BOOZING IT UP AS ALWAYS HUH, I JUST FOLLOWED THE SAILORS IN HERE, LOL! All done in a joking manner as they were very close.

Liza Minelli was the daughter of Judy Garland of course. Lucy admired Judy's talent and she was often in the audience for her shows, but her medication addictions and constant boozing took a toll on her performances and it was lucy who took Liza in when Judy was going through one of her many bad periods. Vincente Minelli just complained to her about it and Lucy offered to take her in. Liza stayed with Lucy for quite a while. Lucy knew Liza was wild, but again, she respected her many talents. Liza later dated Desi jr for years and even thanked him when receiving her Oscar or Emmy or Tony, i forget which. They once stayed in Lucy's guesthouse for a week without ever coming out, which made Lucy wonder what the heck they were doing in there, LOL! Lucy stayed in touch with her to the point that after Judy died, Liza started calling her momma. It was Lucy who told her to make sure, as she was paying off her mom's many debts, that they were actually HER debts and REAL, as well as getting receipts for everything. I think Lucy had substitute moms her whole life, so eventually she got to be a mom for others also, or a mentor if you will. I recently watched Lucy on the Phil Donahue show promoting Mame and Phil asked her if Desi jr and Liza would ever get back together, to which Lucy replied, NO, no on can ever domesticate Liza.

Lucy always had LOADS of friends in Hollywood, she was so beloved by all. Her friends weren't only the superstar types like Berle and Hope either. Lucy stayed friends with people for decades. Friends from her old studio days like Ann Sothern and Eve Arden to name but two. It was Ann that Lucy called for help when her marriage first started coming apart, they saw priests together for advice and saw shrinks BEFORE she ever saw marriage counselors with Desi there too. It was Ann that Lucy called when Life with Lucy got cancelled, she was crying on the phone saying THEY DON'T WANT ME ANYMORE, I'M TOO OLD NOW. It was Ann who had helped Lucy decorate her first house in Hollywood. It was gary who elliminated many of her friends once he became Lucy's husband because he did not want people from Desi's day there. He couldn't do anything about her mom or her kids but he tried to get rid of most of the others, Carole Cook always said that was the reason she seldom saw Lucy later on. Much later, Lucy became close friends with Dick Van Patten of Eight is Enough and his family, his kids even playing tennis with her son. She was also very fond of Ross martin of Wild Wild West and his wife. Later Sammy Davis and his wife Altovise became very close friends, even dining out at each other's homes every week, with Sammy being a gourmet cook and Lucy doing the cooking when it was her turn. That was the thing, if you were friends with Lucy, you were friends for life.

Dick Van Patten? I never knew that. Cool!

Yeah and he's still around too, i saw a pic of him at Perezhilton.com. I think Ross martin was different, i think somebody died or something there. Of course Lucy often worked with killers, O J Simpson was on a Here's Lucy ep and the producer of her Lucy in London special was Phil Spector and Robert Blake was in the audience at one of her events too, so she got the trifecta of killers, LOL!

Lucy always had LOADS of friends in Hollywood, she was so beloved by all. Her friends weren't only the superstar types like Berle and Hope either. Lucy stayed friends with people for decades. Friends from her old studio days like Ann Sothern and Eve Arden to name but two. It was Ann that Lucy called for help when her marriage first started coming apart, they saw priests together for advice and saw shrinks BEFORE she ever saw marriage counselors with Desi there too. It was Ann that Lucy called when Life with Lucy got cancelled, she was crying on the phone saying THEY DON'T WANT ME ANYMORE, I'M TOO OLD NOW. It was Ann who had helped Lucy decorate her first house in Hollywood. It was gary who elliminated many of her friends once he became Lucy's husband because he did not want people from Desi's day there. He couldn't do anything about her mom or her kids but he tried to get rid of most of the others, Carole Cook always said that was the reason she seldom saw Lucy later on. Much later, Lucy became close friends with Dick Van Patten of Eight is Enough and his family, his kids even playing tennis with her son. She was also very fond of Ross martin of Wild Wild West and his wife. Later Sammy Davis and his wife Altovise became very close friends, even dining out at each other's homes every week, with Sammy being a gourmet cook and Lucy doing the cooking when it was her turn. That was the thing, if you were friends with Lucy, you were friends for life.
Gary seemed very controlling. I always wondered about Lucy and Betty ever since I seen Password, they were both good at that game. I always thought the two of them could pull off a sitcom, too bad they didn't cast Betty in Life With Lucy even though Betty was already working on The Golden Girls.

Gary seemed very controlling. I always wondered about Lucy and Betty ever since I seen Password, they were both good at that game. I always thought the two of them could pull off a sitcom, too bad they didn't cast Betty in Life With Lucy even though Betty was already working on The Golden Girls.
Yeah, seeing as BOTH started in tv at the beginning of the medium, Betty did many shows over the decades, they HAD to become friends, and then, seeing as Lucy lived for playing games and Betty was married to Password host Allen Ludden and Lucy appeared on the show, even with her family and friends every chance she got, they really became close. Both their moms were very close to them so that was another point where they bonded. I know Lucy was there for her when Allen died and maybe it was Betty who was behind that offer of a role on Golden Girls. Lucy was to play Rose's blind sister, but she ended up never doing it in the end. It's funny, even though Lucy never did appear on GG, she worked with Bea Arthur in Mame and did quiz shows with Estelle Getty and Betty. One of Lucy's last public appearances was when she went to a Betty book signing, that's how close they were. Ever see that CBS series of specials about their 50th anniversary? Lucy and Bea come out in evening gowns and sing and they look sensational, it's all classy as they walk over closer to the camera and just as they get to the last line, two huge cream pies are thrown in their faces and all over their beautiful gowns, it was hilarious because it was totally unexpected, LOL!

Oh and of course the best Betty White story is the the one where they did this week of Password shows together and that was when Lucy got the call that Desi had passed away and Lucy condided to Betty, THERE HE GOES, I HAD NO IDEA I WOULD TAKE IT THIS HARD or words to that effect. The only thing that saved Lucy from the depression of the failure of the Life with Lucy debacle, all engeneered by idiot gary, AND the passing of Desi at the same time, is the fact that Lucy was honored at the Kennedy Center for her lifelong achievements in comedy and entertainment in general. When Robert Stack introduced the ladies there doing a musical tribute and he starts off with Golden Girl Bea Arthur, all of us wished the next person would have been Betty White, but it was Valerie Harper instead, i wondered if that supposed feud between Bea and Betty that we heard about so often was the cause of Betty not being there that night. I watched it this past weekend and you see the tears welling up in Lucy's eyes as The Untouchables' Robert Stack reads words that were meant to be read by Desi, who could not appear for obvious reasons and he says, THE NEW YORK TIMES ONCE ASKED ME TO SPLIT THE CREDIT FOR THE SUCCES OF THE SHOW AMONG THE WRITERS, DIRECTORS AND CAST, AND I SAID, GIVE LUCY 90% AND SPLIT THE REST AMONG THE REST OF US. LUCY WAS THE SHOW, VIV BILL AND I WERE JUST PROPS, MIGHTY GOOD PROPS, BUT PROPS NONETHELESS and he concluded with I LOVE LUCY WAS NEVER JUST A TITLE.

I did see the specials they were great. I'd like to meet Betty White and talk to her about Lucy, as well as her own career.

I think the reason they always got along so well is that they're both the same, they love to laugh, have a raunchy sense of humor, know what's important in life and share the same values. Lucy and Betty BOTH lost the loves of their lives, and both to cancer. Both loved playing games and had long and varied careers too. I always wondered if those stories about a feud between Betty and Bea on Golden Gilrs was fabricated or real. Because whenever powerful women get together on a project, the stories and rumors start about fights that are only made up for publicity purposes, rarely are they ever REAL like on the Whatever happened to baby Jane set with Crawford and Davis, usually it's more like Sex and the city and Golden Girls, a great way to drum up free publicity for the show. Lucy had those same rumors with Bea on the set of Mame, as Bea's hubby was the director, but that was all bull also as Lucy and Bea loved working together.

all engeneered by idiot gary

LOL! Come on Claude, tell us how you really feel about Gary. :lol: :lol:

I'm usually quite fair, but in this instance, HE was the main reason the show failed. He was greedy and wanted money and he used her to get it, he did not work hard to make the show a success because he had a contract that said he'd get paid whether it worked or not. He was great to protect her and hold her arm, but he kept people she loved from her because they were from Desi's era. He looked ok and was the type she liked, tall and ugly/handsome she liked calling it, he was much younger and kept her happy in the sack, but he got so much money out of her to finance his car collecting hobby and he got the lifestyle he never would have gotten without knowing HER, his second class comedy musings never would have gotten him the connections and contacts she got for him. He was great with her kids though and she knew she could trust him and rely on him. He was the rock she needed to depend on and so quiet after the hectic period with Desi, but he was TOO DULL and was always away playing golf instead of staying home with her. She wanted someone to hold her hand and she got that, but a YES man was not what she needed and he got class through her and got jobs also, even sitting on the board of directors of 20th Century Fox at the end. But she should have chosen someone who would have made her later years better, travelling and going out to parties and having fun although he did make her laugh. Is THAT fair enough? LOL!

I watched the Home Movies last night and saw that there are so many stories about Desi i never got around to as i'm always more interested in HER life, not his, but they are surely worth telling so i'm gonna tackle some of those as of now. There's no denying that she fell head over heels in love with him and they worshipped each other, that's fer dang shur. LOL! Keeping his love letters till the day she died and Lucie finding them in her bathroom cupboard was a nice touch. The funniest story about their early life together is the fact that they were always away from each other and kept calling each other on the phone, through operators and N Y operators were notorious for listening in on conversations. Many is the time, they would call, accuse each other of infedelities and then call each other back to apologize and claim undying love. One time, after a particularly nasty fight, Lucy did not call him back, but she got a call from the operator who told her to forgive the louse and call him back, that made Lucy laugh so hard she did call him, to gloat and tell him about what the opeartor had said, LOL! They once jokingly claimed they had spent so much on long distance charges that the word WHAT? alone had cost them 70 thousand dollars as they could never each other and kept screaming WHAT? LOL!

When Desi was in the army, entertaining the troups at Birmingham hospital and BOINKING all the females Lucy was helping to send there like the Bingo girls and the Copa girls and so on, she finally filed for divorce. It was 1944, they had been married all of four years and were always apart, she was making movies and he was touring with his band. When she made the BIG MOVE while he was stationned at the hospital, a short distance from their ranch, he went to see her the day before she'd testify in front of the judge. They reconciled and slept together. The next morning, to his astonishment, she got dressed to keep her court date. He was incredulous, she explained that she had bought a new outfit, photographers were waiting for her and she was not going to dissapoint the press, LOL! She did add however that she would not say too many mean things about him, LOL! When she got her divorce, she had to stay away from him for a year, so when she came back to Desi and slept with him that night, that cancelled the divorce, LOL!:lol:

The most famous story Lucy told about herself was the following, how she got to Hollywood in the first place. She was standing outside the Palace theater in New York city on a very hot July day. This famous agent saw her and asked what she was doing in NY in July? She added nobody stayed around town in that July heat. Lucy asked her what she could do and the lady told her about this job that just became available. They were sending Goldwyn girls to California on the train and they had a dozen of them but one of the girls' mothers plucked her from the group, said she couln't go so they were looking for POSTER GALS and Lucy was one, she was the Chesterfield cigarette girl at the time, they had no time to test but this was Wednesday and she had to board the train on Saturday. It would lead to a part in an Eddie Cantor picture, the job was for six weeks, but the picture took six months instead and Lucy never went back to New York and stayed out in Hollywood for over 55 years.

I like that story. It's a classic. Kind of like being discovered in a malt shop or something. :lol:

True. As i watched the Home Movies the other day, i was reminded of the one where this photographer in Jamestown said you could never get a great picture of Lucy Ball, she just wasn't photogenic, can you imagine, Pauline Lupus, Lucy's childhood friend quoted him and added, yeah, FAMOUS LAST WORDS, LOL! And the other one about that teacher and the main people at the Murray Anderson school telling Lucy she was wasting her time and would never amount to anything in show business. All it was is that she was too shy and she had an accent or a funny way of pronouncing certain words, due to the area she hailed from. Of course the star pupil at that school when Lucy was there, Bette Davis, certainly wasn't shy and she succeeded right away. I always thought Davis, Lucy and Hepburn had this similat trait about them, they were all three TOUGH as nails, they persevered when times got rough for them and they all had that New England thing about them, telling it like it is and being no nonsense about everything. All three could be counted on to wrok hard and they sure had longevity in the business.

Lucy worked with Hepburn in Stage Door of course, they all sounded real in that film because the writer incorporated their speaking style in the movie and they even improvised some dialogue. She then worked with both Tracy and Hepburn in Without Love. Hepburn once called her house in their later years, Lucy said gary nearly dropped the phone when she identified herself. It was all to ask if it was true that Lucie had named her new daughter Katharine after her, it was. She told Lucy she might one day show up at her door, but she never did.

Lucy and Desi lived near Clark Gable and his wife in the San Fernado Valley when they had their ranchito. Clark was married to movie icon Carole Lombard at the time and he'd often ride his motorcycle over to Lucy's place. The two couples would have dinner together or go to movies. It was Carole who died while selling bonds during the war, Clark took a long time to get over it. Lucy credited carole with coming to her in a dream when she was thinking of doing TV, she said Carole told her, go ahead honey, give it a whirl. Lucy respected Carole for her taste, she always dressed smartly and although she swore like a lumberjack, she could still look or appear classy to everyone.

Ok, here's one for Mother's Day. Lucy FINALLY, after several miscarriages, had a baby daughter on July 17th 1951. Months before the premiere of I Love Lucy. Lucy was heartbroken every time she lost a baby. One time, she met the actress who dated the dad on Laverne and Shirley, i forget her name, she was married at the time to Larry Parks who had portrayed Jolson, anyhoo, she met her at a stop light and they screamed at each other, Lucy said she was jealous, had heard she was pregnant, so the other one yells back yes, she was and Lucy should get her legs up after having sex, the crowd listening to all this started to laugh. Anyway, Lucy had her baby, finally, after a decade of trying. They brought her little girl to her in a blanket and Lucy says that she'd cry so much that she'd sometimes drop her, one time, she's holding her and as she's burping her, Lucie went behind her on the hospital bed. The doctors started denying her holding her baby because she couldn't stop crying, they were happy tears though, she just couldn't believe that she got her dream of having a baby. I think her name was supposed to be Susan, but Desi changed it to Lucie at the last minute. This caused lots of trouble later on in life with two similar names like that, Lucy and Lucie. When they'd get a phone call and ask for little Lucie and big Lucy would hand her the phone. Lucie started getting annoyed at all this and at one point asked to be called YOUNG Lucie, so one day, Lucy grabs the phone and says, HELLO, THIS IS "O L D" LUCY.

Ok, here's another THEME one, seeing as many shows are wrapping up their seasons right now, he're the series finale for the Arnaz marriage . . . Lucy and Desi fought a lot in the last five years of their marriage, Desi would leave the house for weeks at a time, spending his time on his boat or with his many floozies, never or rather very seldom having sex with his wife, making her think she was unapealing, so she started seeking the attention of others as well. After one particularly nasty brawl at the studio, they continued it at home, as Desi told the story, he simply told her he wanted a divorce. When they got home, Lucy went to see him and asked if he had meant what he said. Then she started screaming at him and threatening him, saying she would hang him with everything she had on him, he fought back by showing her the name address and phone number of the man she was seeing at the time. Lucy blushed redder than her red hair, she pointed a gun at him and he lit a cigarette on it's flame. He then told her that she could sue for divorce and it would all be very amicable but that she should NEVER threaten him again. This divorce took, it wasn't like the one in '44. When Desi wrote his book, he even called Lucy to ask her why she had divorced him then, she told him honestly that it was because he was screwing every woman at Birmingham hospital and what upset her the most was the fact that SHE was supplying the women there to entertain the troops and besides she added, it was the shortest divorce on record, they made love hours later and cancelled it by California law. This time, in 1960, it was a different story, they could see the end of their professional commitments and both had grown tired of their routine, his seeking others and her resentment of his not wanting HER. Lucy always said that she considered her divorce, the one most important failure of her life.

They shared joint custody of the children and split everything down the middle, the studio, the houses, the cars and money and stocks etc . . .they even used the same lawyer for both of them, that's how amicable it was. The hardest part for both of them was telling the children as they were both very young at the time, i think it was little Desi who said, CAN'T YOU TAKE IT ALL BACK? It's funny that both remarried within a few years but their love for each other never disapeared. They consulted each other to get the other's aproval before marrying their new spouses. And later, they came to realize that they were much happier living apart and they got along so much better after the divorce. The ring is also a famous Lucy story. Desi never wore his ring, i guess it cut down his dating chances, so he wore it around his neck on a chain, and one time, on a Hawaiian vacation, he lost it. While Lucy was doing Wildcat on Broadway, a couple brought her the ring on a chain as they had read the inscription on the back of the ring and their names were there, they had found it on the beach somewhere. As she held the ring, she realized it brought back only unpleasant memories about their relationship and that's when she knew she had made the right decision in divorcing. I am one of those broadminded and fair people who thinks that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Desi cheated on her thousands of times so she found happiness with someone else also at the end, to this day i think it might have been gary morton she was seeing and then she fabricated that whole story about meeting him over pizza, introduced to her by Paula Stewart and Jack Carter.

A few years later, as Desi's drinking sank Desilu into trouble, Lucy was told to buy him out, she took over and ran it for five years the way he had run it for five years. She hated every minute of it though, she hated firing people, she said it was easy to get rid of the sycophants making 70 thousand a year but she hated seeing others lose their jobs. She'd actually cry when firing someone. She took over the President's office from Desi, the former office that Howard Hughes had occupied when he owned the place. Desi took his money from the sale and lived off of it instead of investing the money and living off the interest. So things got tight for him after a while, hence his return to tv to produce The Mothers In Law. He even asked Lucy to forgo the 450 dollars he sent her each month for each of their children. She told him, FINE, if you don't mind it making the newspapers, he withdrew the request. Lucy was not paid the money she should have gotten for her later series because she poured all her money back in the studio. Running the studio gave them both a certain cachet in Hollywood, but both were thrilled when their tenure ended, as neither enjoyed doing that job for the five years that each did it, neither looked back fondly on their years running the place.

LOL! Come on Claude, tell us how you really feel about Gary. :lol: :lol:
:lol: I'm glad I'm not the only one who never liked that man.


These stories have kept me from going to sleep! They're great.

I watched The Big Street and Yours Mine and Ours years ago. I had a little suspicion about Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball but more of a curiosity. I watched the movie The Big Street and the last scene between them dancing closely seemed like Henry was into it. So, I just thought he liked her. I read about their double date in the 1930's how it didn't end on a good note and I read the commentary about The Big Street and how Henry wanted to work with a known name actress and how he was remote and unhelpful towards Lucy on the set. My final conclusion then was nothing went on between them. I just read about Jane Fonda's comment about her father and Lucy growing close during Yours Mine and Ours. So needless to say I was blown away. Then I see that Henry was at Lucy's Roast and she was at his honorary tribute and funeral gathering. After reading about how they were in the earlier days (not close) I was wondering when they became friends.

When Desi was in the army, entertaining the troups at Birmingham hospital and BOINKING all the females Lucy was helping to send there like the Bingo girls and the Copa girls and so on, she finally filed for divorce. It was 1944, they had been married all of four years and were always apart, she was making movies and he was touring with his band. When she made the BIG MOVE while he was stationned at the hospital, a short distance from their ranch, he went to see her the day before she'd testify in front of the judge. They reconciled and slept together. The next morning, to his astonishment, she got dressed to keep her court date. He was incredulous, she explained that she had bought a new outfit, photographers were waiting for her and she was not going to dissapoint the press, LOL! She did add however that she would not say too many mean things about him, LOL! When she got her divorce, she had to stay away from him for a year, so when she came back to Desi and slept with him that night, that cancelled the divorce, LOL!:lol:

How many women do you think Desi slept with in his life? From everything I've heard he was a serial philanderer so it must've been over 1000 you know? After all, he was a musician and Gene Simmons claims 4600 and he has the photos to prove it! LOL!

Hi all! I'm a longtime Lucy & Desi fan who just found this board. I've really been enjoying this thread. :)

From everything I've read about Lucy's life, nobody really liked Gary all that much. Even Lee Tannan, who spent much time with Lucy in her last decade of life and who was related to Gary said that he didn't like him. To me, Gary just seemed like a pill. He probably didn't sleep around, but it seemed like he ignored Lucy a lot, especially during the last 10 or so years of their marriage. He seemed to be obsessed with money and golf.

Despite the tragic way their relationship ended, it does warm my heart to know that Lucy and Desi never stopped loving each other for the rest of their lives. Paula Stewart (Lucy's Wildcat co-star) relayed a story that a few days after Lucy's death, even Gary admitted, "I guess she's happy now. She's with Desi."

Hi all! I'm a longtime Lucy & Desi fan who just found this board. I've really been enjoying this thread. :)

From everything I've read about Lucy's life, nobody really liked Gary all that much. Even Lee Tannan, who spent much time with Lucy in her last decade of life and who was related to Gary said that he didn't like him. To me, Gary just seemed like a pill. He probably didn't sleep around, but it seemed like he ignored Lucy a lot, especially during the last 10 or so years of their marriage. He seemed to be obsessed with money and golf.

Despite the tragic way their marriage ended, it does warm my heart to know that Lucy and Desi never stopped loving each other for the rest of their lives. Paula Stewart (Lucy's Wildcat co-star) relayed a story that a few days after Lucy's death, even Gary admitted, "I guess she's happy now. She's with Desi."

Lucy gave birth to Desi Jr. by ceserean section in the early morning hours of January 19, 1953. Desi was on the phone with Jess Oppenheimer (head writer and producer of ILL) at the time. Jess had asked Desi to keep the line open so he could be the first to hear whether Lucy had had a boy or a girl (in those days, you couldn't determine the sex ahead of time).

When Lucy woke up later in her hospital room, she found Desi sitting on the side of her bed weeping (with happiness). Desi later went to The Brown Derby, threw up his hands and said, "now we have everythin!"

I am currently reading "Ball of Fire" which is one of the few Lucy and/or Desi biographies that I haven't read. I thought I knew all the stories from my years of fascination with Lucy and Desi, but there is one anecdote in this book that I hadn't heard before...

It said that during Lucy's last visit to Desi before he died, Lucie put them together and ran ILL episodes for them (this I knew). But it also said that after an afternoon of reminiscing and laughing and talking (according to Lucie, "like they were on a first date"), Lucy got up to leave. Supposedly Desi said to her, "where are you going?" She said, "I'm going home" and then Desi replied, "You ARE home."

I don't know if this exchange positively took place or not, but it was described in the book. It made me tear up when I read it. They loved each other so much, that they just didn't know how to completely let go, nor did either of them ever want to.

If that was Lucy and Desi's idea of deep and everlasting love, I'll pass. They cheated on each other, although I suspect Lucy's flings were more for retaliation. I think if Desi behaved, so would Lucy. He drove her nuts. That's not my idea of love, but to each, their own. They also were married for decades to other people. Hollywood people can be so weird.

I think there are plenty of people out there (celebrity and non celebrity) who love each other, but who just can't live together. I do believe that Lucy and Desi truly loved each other despite their flaws. If they didn't, why would they stay together for 19 years, during 10 of which they were childless and relatively unsuccessful in the professional realm? They could have gotten sex from anyone. There had to be more to their relationship than just that.

The problem with Lucy and Desi is that they were just too different - came from completely different backgrounds and cultures, and therefore had completely different views of relationships and of marriage and of life -- and that's what ultimately did them in (along with the pressures of skyrocketing fame). Lucy couldn't live with his cheating, and I don't blame her. But Lucy was no angel herself and certainly no bargain to live with.

Still, life (and love) isn't simply black and white. I guess it would be a lot simpler if it was. These two people could not let go of one another emotionally right up until the very end. If there's not some semblence of real love in that, I'm not sure what to call it.

There's a great quote from Fred Ball (Lucy's brother) in the book Desilu in which he talks about the two of them and their relationship and how Desi was really responsible for protecting and promoting Lucy in just the right way when it counted. He goes on to say that Lucy realized how important Desi was to her own success, and that she counted on him in ways that are difficult to put into words. Finally, Fred Ball claims, "I can't explain it -- love is funny that way." Certainly the relationship was destructive and tragic in many ways, but that doesn't necessarily negate the fact that the love was real and at times, very powerful.

I don't doubt they loved each other, just saying it's not my idea of love, at all. Desi with his serial cheating and drinking kinda takes the romantic edge of it, for me. I just get a kick out of this love of the century baloney I often hear (not from you). Desi disrespected his wife in so many ways. His idea of love, not mine. Lucy was married for three decades to another man at the time of her death, and Desi was married for decades to someone else. I'd say those spouses matter too. It seems to me that Lucy and Desi remained good friends after their divorce, which was smart as they had children and grandchildren together. That sure beats a bitter divorce.

Some people just remain attached. I had an aunt and uncle like that. They divorced but stayed connected until his death, some 40 years later, spending holidays and other gatherings together. I never romanticized it though, and neither did their kids. We just figured they liked, even loved each other, as friends and parents. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, now that was true love. I've often felt that if Lucy didn't re-marry so fast, that she and Desi might have reunited. I guess we'll never know. It seems Lucy couldn't catch a break with men, as from what I've read, Gary's mistress was golf.

I don't doubt they loved each other, just saying it's not my idea of love, at all. Desi with his serial cheating and drinking kinda takes the romantic edge of it, for me.

Hey, listen Janice, I hear where you're coming from, believe me. I'm a lifelong fan of ILL and of Lucy & Desi's romance, but do I believe she should have left him? Sure I do. Do I understand why she did? Certainly! I don't really think she had any other choice.

I just get a kick out of this love of the century baloney I often hear (not from you). Desi disrespected his wife in so many ways. His idea of love, not mine.

Without a doubt. Sleeping with prostitutes is not many people's idea of marital love. For a Catholic, Desi sure didn't respect his marriage vows.

Lucy was married for three decades to another man at the time of her death, and Desi was married for decades to someone else. I'd say those spouses matter too.

I'd say they matter, but there is question in my mind as to whether they were any better for Lucy and Desi (particularly Gary Morton) than Lucy and Desi were for each other. I mean, Gary was married to golf and obsessed with money. He did not put Lucy first, that's for sure. And did Desi's philandering stop after he married Edie? I doubt it. So I guess she put up with it too. Sometimes there is a difference between being in love and being with someone you love/care about. I think for Lucy and Desi it was the whole package. For Lucy, Desi, and their second spouses, I think it was closer to the "caring" kind of love than the passionate love. Is there anything wrong with that? No. A lot of people choose this option and their marriages last longer. It is a rare combination when you can find both and have the temperments to stay together.

Some people just remain attached. I had an aunt and uncle like that. They divorced but stayed connected until his death, some 40 years later, spending holidays and other gatherings together. I never romanticized it though, and neither did their kids. We just figured they liked, even loved each other, as friends and parents.

Sure. But I think it's possible for people to remain in love, even if intellectually they know they should never get back together in that sense. Life isn't all black and white, and love certainly isn't.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, now that was true love.

I gotta love when people say this. It's not that I necessarily disagree, but I perpetually wonder why people leave out the fact that Paul left his wife and first family to be with Joanne. Do people not know that -- or do they forget? Or do they conveniently forget? Again, love is complicated, and so are human emotions. Even for Paul and Joanne. ;)

I've often felt that if Lucy didn't re-marry so fast, that she and Desi might have reunited.

I agree with you. I think they would have reunited -- probably during Wildcat or soon thereafter. And you know what? They would have divorced again -- I'm sure of it. These people could NOT live together. They just couldn't do it. They struggled for 20 years, and it had nothing to do with love. The love was always there imo. But sometimes love isn't enough. That's the truth.

It seems Lucy couldn't catch a break with men, as from what I've read, Gary's mistress was golf.

I think Gary was a pill. According to what I've read, nobody liked him, and even Lucy was having major problems with him at the end of her life. They almost never saw each other, and she spent almost all of her last 5 years of life with Lee Tannen and Jim Brochu. Gary couldnt' wait to remarry after her death either. I don't even think it was a year before he did. Even today, Gary's third widow owns the house in Palm Springs that Desi built for Lucy. IMO, that's just wrong, but sometimes life is what it is.

All I'm saying I guess, is that I think the love was there and I think it was real. Was it destructive and abusive? Yeah, I think it was. Was it also genuine and sweet and passionate and true? Yeah, I think it was all that too. Is there a contradiction there? I don't think so. Life is complicated. Lucie Arnaz claims that Lucy talked to Desi on the phone on November 30, 1986 -- 2 days before he died. Lucie supposedly held the phone to her father's ear (because he was too weak to hold it) telling him, "it's the readhead." According to Lucie, Lucy kept repeating over and over, "I love you, I love you, Desi. I love you." Lucie says the intonations changed with every repeat, like each one was a different interpretation of the phrase. Is this story true? Only Lucie knows. Do I believe it? Sure I do. And almost everyone who ever knew them acknowledges that Lucy and Desi remained in love with each other until the day they died (from Fred Ball to Lee Tannen to Marcella Rabwin to Betty White -- all folks -- with the possible exception of Lucy's brother -- who really have nothing invested in this claim). All those testimonials can't be complete bull. Love is a very powerful force. According to Lee Tannen and Lucie Arnaz, Lucy kept Desi's love letters hidden in an old manilla envelope in a drawer in her private bathroom at home. Letters that were 50 years old and obviously too private for her to include in the 100 scrapbooks she had. Right or wrong, the woman was still in love with him till her very last hour on earth.

I know about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and I think most people don't know it or choose to ignore it. Even when you tell them it, it falls on deaf ears. You can see that here, years ago.

Post #40
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=147105&page=3&highlight=Paul+Newman (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=147105&page=3&highlight=Paul+Newman)


Post #21
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=187653&page=2&highlight=Paul+Newman (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=187653&page=2&highlight=Paul+Newman)

It's been said that you can't build happiness on the unhappiness of another person, or something to that effect. Major paraphrase there. I don't find that to be true, as many people fall in love with someone while married to another, and it ends up working out. I could be wrong, but I doubt that Paul Newman was still hung up on his ex wife. Bogie and Bacall are another example. Despite their lousy beginnings, these couples did remain in love and devoted to each other. I never heard a word about any cheating.

I agree that life and love isn't black and white, but I do believe that marriage should be, for the most part, the most important part. Only two people belong in the romance part of a marriage. Life and love are complicated, messy and everyone's different; however, when it comes to marriage, there's no room for other people. This is non-negotiable to me. If that makes me me old-fashioned, so be it. I feel that the foundation of marriage is based on TWO people in love. It's sacred. I'm in my 25th year of marriage. No third wheel rolling around here, and I'm his third wife. It's not as bad as it sounds. First wife, high school sweethearts. They were 19, and it was the thing to do back then. It was over before it began. Second wife, now he loved her, but she liked to drink, but he did try to make it work. He's 18 years older than I am. When we married, I was 27, and he was 45.

If I thought for one minute that my husband and one of his exes had this undying love going on, until death, I would have run for the hills and left rubber, lol. Fortunately, both of his ex-wives remarried and everyone moved on. I always say the best kind of an ex-wife is a remarried ex-wife, lol. They were parents of younger kids back then, so of course there was contact, but no residual unresolved feelings. His second wife died four years ago. Very sad, malignant melanoma. She was only 57. My husband felt bad; heck, even I felt bad. They had a grown son. I had recently lost my mother, so I could relate, and I had some warm talks with my stepson about losing our mothers. My husband and I talked about his own feelings, and I believed him when he told me that he felt sad about her dying, but not devastated. They were together for 14 years, had a passionate history together, and he wouldn't be human if he didn't feel something.

I guess what I find distasteful, confusing or whatever is that there were three marriages that got the short shrift here. Lucy and Desi, Lucy and Gary, and Desi and Edie. I guess it worked for them, but as I said, it's not my idea of love. It was a giant emotional mess, and I could never be involved in that double triangle, as I have too much respect for myself. Kind of makes a mockery out of marriage, in my opinion. My husband is MY husband. He's not on loan, and I'm not the consolation prize. He's not still in love with anyone else, and nobody's still in love with him, that I know of anyway, lol. It's just us, as it should be. :love:

Princess Diana said there were three people in her marriage. Another mangled paraphrase, I'm sure, but she got caught in the web of a couple in love.

My opinion on this whole Lucy and Desi thing most likely comes from the fact that I'm a third spouse. I've never been given reason to be insecure, but I'm sure it was hurtful for Gary and Edie. I wonder if they knew what they were signing on for. Most pictures I see of the two couples, poor Edie looks like she feels like she doesn't belong there, and from what I'm reading, she may be right. Lucy and Desi were often front and center.

One more thing, off topic, but you mentioned Gary's widow living in Lucy and Desi's old house. I was reminded of Marilyn Monroe's estate. You seem to know your old Hollywood, so this probably isn't news to you. Apparently, Marilyn left the bulk of her estate to her mentor and acting coach, Lee Strasberg. He then married a woman less than half his age. Upon his death, his widow got it all. Bottom line, a woman who never met Marilyn got her estate, and more than that, she owns the rights to everything Marilyn, all the copyrights, you name it.

Well this has certainly turned into a lively discussion! Come to Chit Chat, and we can discuss lots of interesting topics. :)

I could be wrong, but I doubt that Paul Newman was still hung up on his ex wife. Bogie and Bacall are another example. Despite their lousy beginnings, these couples did remain in love and devoted to each other. I never heard a word about any cheating.

No, me neither. I don't have any doubt that both these couples truly loved one another.

I agree that life and love isn't black and white, but I do believe that marriage should be, for the most part, the most important part. Only two people belong in the romance part of a marriage. Life and love are complicated, messy and everyone's different; however, when it comes to marriage, there's no room for other people. This is non-negotiable to me. If that makes me me old-fashioned, so be it.

Well I guess that makes two of us, cause I agree with every word you said.

If I thought for one minute that my husband and one of his exes had this undying love going on, until death, I would have run for the hills and left rubber, lol.

LOL. Me too. Although I always like to say never say never about anything in life. Knowing myself as I do, I would certainly say that I would not put up with a husband who was still hung up on his ex -- I assume we're speaking on an emotional level, not a physical one. On the other hand, I speak only from my own perspective, my own upbringing, my own beliefs, and my own life experience up until this point. Would I ever change my stance on this or perhaps find myself in a specific circumstance where it was easier to ignore or turn the other way? I hope not (for my own integrity), but I can't say it's impossible. I think it was Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird who said that you can never really truly understand another person until you climb into their skin and walk around in it.


I guess what I find distasteful, confusing or whatever is that there were three marriages that got the short shrift here. Lucy and Desi, Lucy and Gary, and Desi and Edie.

Well, considering Desi literally stole Edie away from her husband, I guess we'll have to say that FOUR marriages that got short shrift.

Gosh, I don't know if you're Catholic (I am), but did Desi break every single rule of the church (not to mention common human decency) or what?? LOL!

It was a giant emotional mess, and I could never be involved in that double triangle, as I have too much respect for myself. Kind of makes a mockery out of marriage, in my opinion.

Well, it certainly made a mockery out of the Lucy/Gary and Desi/Edie marriages, that's for sure. Desi made a mockery out of his marriage to Lucy long before. Granted, I don't think Lucy and Desi ever actually slept together after their marriage ended. I think it took Lucy a long time to let go of the anger she had towards him. But Desi living in her guest house after Edie died must have been a peculiar situation, although at that point (1985) Gary was doing his own thing and didn't spend too much time with her anyway.

My husband is MY husband. He's not on loan, and I'm not the consolation prize. He's not still in love with anyone else, and nobody's still in love with him, that I know of anyway, lol. It's just us, as it should be. :love:

As it should be, indeed! That's wonderful. :)

I also think fame and wealth and celebrity makes all of the life temptations that most of us "little people" are able to resist all the harder for those who are well known. Not an excuse (everybody has or should have willpower), but I do think it's simply a fact.

Parts of our conversation here make me think about women in general who often make comments like, "I don't know when he's going to marry me" or "I'm trying to convince him to get married" etc. Why in the WORLD would you ever (as a woman) want to beg or coax someone into marrying you? That's crazy, imo! And yet it happens all the time. If you have to "convince" or "coax" a man to marry you, then you are in trouble before you even begin! It's interesting how different people just see life so differently.

My opinion on this whole Lucy and Desi thing most likely comes from the fact that I'm a third spouse. I've never been given reason to be insecure, but I'm sure it was hurtful for Gary and Edie.

Maybe, maybe not. Money eases a lot, and by marrying Lucy, Gary got plenty of it. Edie was already wealthy before she married Desi, so it wasn't quite the same situation.

I wonder if they knew what they were signing on for.

It's said that Gary, who worked as a stand up comedian by night and slept by day, had never even seen one ep of ILL when he met Lucy in 1960. Just a guess, but I tend to doubt that either new spouse figured on Lucy and Desi's feelings for each other lasting for the next 25 plus years. Certainly because of the two children, they had to expect that these two would always be tied to each other in many ways. Did they anticipate though, that it would be a lifelong emotional affair? I'd say no.

Most pictures I see of the two couples, poor Edie looks like she feels like she doesn't belong there, and from what I'm reading, she may be right. Lucy and Desi were often front and center.

Pictures of the four of them are very rare. I think I've seen only one (from Lucie's wedding in the early 80s). From what I read, Desi treated Gary like he didn't exist. When forced to mention him, he would ask Lucy, "how's that guy?" In front of the children, Desi would call Gary "Barry Norton" like he couldn't remember his name. LOL! These kinds of anecdotes only serve to crack me up and root Desi on. I guess I'm supposed to feel sorry for Gary, but I don't, mainly because he struck me as a real jerk. I think he used Lucy, and although he apparently never cheated on her with other women, I think he treated her shabbily in other ways. Did he bring her some measure of happiness? Sure he did. Lucy longed for family life and stability, without having to worry about alcoholism and being publicly humiliated. Gary gave that to her. He behaved himself -- at least on the surface. I think it says something though, that most people who were close to Lucy never liked him.

You seem to know your old Hollywood, so this probably isn't news to you. Apparently, Marilyn left the bulk of her estate to her mentor and acting coach, Lee Strasberg. He then married a woman less than half his age. Upon his death, his widow got it all. Bottom line, a woman who never met Marilyn got her estate, and more than that, she owns the rights to everything Marilyn, all the copyrights, you name it.

I actually did NOT know that, but it's very interesting -- and WRONG! LOL. What a shame! I love biographies, particularly those that deal with individuals from the entertainment industry and American history. But I've never read one on Marilyn. Most of my info on her comes from the Kennedy bios I've read. ;) That copyright thing is awful!

Well this has certainly turned into a lively discussion! Come to Chit Chat, and we can discuss lots of interesting topics. :)

I'd love to! I'm brand new to this board, so still finding my way around, but I will meander over eventually. It's always nice to discuss with intelligent, interesting people! :)

BTW, of all the Lucy and/or Lucy/Desi books I've read, I would definitely recommend "I Loved Lucy" by Lee Tannen for a unique perspective. He spent the last 5-6 years of Lucy's life with her, and he does a wonderful job of being honest about her flaws while still presenting her as a caring and talented individual. It is a fascinating read, and Tannen is very humorous too. Lee is the one who, along with Lucie, found all the Lucy/Desi love letters hidden underneath Lucy's bathroom sink a few days after she died. He was helping Lucie clean things out, and there they were, 50 years later and never thrown away.

I do know how to use the quote feature, just too lazy, and at 4 am, I'll just toss it all out, lol. Things I didn't know. I didn't know that Edie left her husband for Desi, nor did I know that she was rich. The pictures I saw of them were posted on this forum. I'll see if I can find them. They didn't look like any sort of wedding had taken place. Other photos were just Desi and Edie. To me, she never looked secure. I've may have too much third wife mentality going on to be objective, lol. Yes, I'm Catholic.

LOL at Desi calling Gary, Barry Norton. Sounds like Endora on Bewitched, calling Darrin everything but, Dumbo, Derwin. Why would Desi sleep in Lucy's guest house after Edie's death? Surey it wasn't for lack of money, and I'm sure his kids would have helped him through the rough period. You're right about money and fame. They don't call it Hollyweird for nothing. :)

Those letters under the sink, that just tears me up. It's a shame those two couldn't just make it work. I saw their home movies, the one Lucie compiled together, and it showed some very tender moments. I remember Lucy and Desi in the pool with a grandson, I believe. I've always read biographies myself. Never been fan of fiction. I read one book that you may have read, and if not, it might hold your interest. It's called, The Last Days of Dead Celebrities. Don't let the tabloid sounding title discourage you. It focuses on the last week or so of about 15 celebrities. Lucy was one of them. You learn every single thing that went on in her final days. Lee Strasberg was profiled as well. That's how I found out about Marilyn's estate. If you want to sample the book, I actually typed out the chapter on John Ritter's final days for the Three's Company forum. As you can see, I'm devoted to this site. :D

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=175823&highlight=Janic (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=175823&highlight=Janic)


I hope to see you at Chit Chat soon. You would certainly bring a lot to the forum. :)

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=154 (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=154)

Things I didn't know. I didn't know that Edie left her husband for Desi, nor did I know that she was rich.

Edie was indeed still married when Desi started "wooing" her. She was married to Mr. Hirsch (his first name escapes me) who was the Kal Kan dog food magnate. Hirsch hired a private detective to follow Edie and Desi, and when Desi found out, he hired a detective to follow Hirsch. LOL. Anyway, Edie got a quickie divorce (I think she went to Santo Domingo to get it) and the next day she married Desi in Las Vegas. Desi supposedly told her, "just divorce him. I'll take care of you for the rest of your life." Turns out, Edie made a terrible mistake -- at least in terms of finances. Desi squandered most of his fortune on gambling and alcohol, and by the end of their lives, they could barely pay their bills.

Maybe it wasn't so much that Edie was insecure in the pictures, but just plain unhappy. According to Marcella Rabwin, wife of Desi's personal physician Marc Rabwin (and lifelong friend), Desi's behavior in the latter part of his life was even more destructive and pitiful than his behavior while he was married to Lucy. I think it took a while for him to become a full-fledged alcoholic, and by the time he married Edie he was one. That just fueled all his other addictions like gambling and women/hookers. Marcella said they had to drag him kicking and screaming away from the tables in Las Vegas, even on his wedding night. He won $25,000 and lost it the next day. I think he was drunk most of the time in those later years. At one point, Lucie begged Marcella to stop giving him a drink when he came to the house. Marcella finally told him, "no more - you can't drink here." She said he walked out and didn't speak to her or her husband for almost a year.

Why would Desi sleep in Lucy's guest house after Edie's death? Surey it wasn't for lack of money, and I'm sure his kids would have helped him through the rough period.

I don't know about that. It's well documented that it did happen, but I don't know how long he was there. Edie died in 1985 and Desi the next year, so he could not have been there too long. I get the feeling that maybe he just stayed for a little while after the funeral - just to recover emotionally. In terms of finances, I think he did squander his entire fortune. He died in his Del Mar beach house, but in the end, I think he had little else besides that house.

Those letters under the sink, that just tears me up.

Me too. I think it's just the saddest thing. So bittersweet. They really did love each other, but I think more than anything else, Desi's alcoholism destroyed them. If he hadn't turned into a raging alcoholic, he may have mellowed in terms of the gambling and the women, but the alcohol just made those addictions worse. I also think the pressures from work really turned him into a different person. I don't think he ever wanted to work that hard, and he even proposed to Lucy (I think it was in 1956) that they stop and retire. Lucy wouldn't do it. I think she thought her work was the only thing she could depend on. It made her happier than anything else -- even her husband or her family. They couldn't compete with the love she had for her work.

Yes, that footage of Lucy and Desi in the pool with Lucie's son Simon comes from the documentary that Lucy and Larry produced in 1991 -- Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie. They did it to counteract the poorly made biopic that CBS put out called Lucy and Desi: Before The Laughter. That footage at the end of the documentary is very sweet. You can still see the affection between them, and I have to smile when Desi starts beating the water and singing Babalu, and Lucy walks out and stands next to him clapping. Performers to the end. That little baby had no idea that he was being entertained by two of the best entertainers of all time. According to Lucie, it was the last time they were ever photographed together.


I will definitely check out your recommendation -- The Last Days of Dead Celebrities. Sounds like something I'd enjoy!