Ball of Fire Read online

  But Lucy was too far away to have much influence on the company’s future, and she was too exhausted to spend much time worrying about it. Through the long run of I Love Lucy she had worked a four-day week; in New York she was on her feet—learning lines, lyrics, melodies, steps—six out of seven days, and sometimes Sundays as well. The demands of rehearsal are difficult enough for young Broadway gypsies; for a newcomer nearing fifty they were nearly insuperable. Kidd felt that for all of Lucy’s inexperience and flaws, she had “an amazing ability to know what was going on onstage at all times.” Lucy failed to return the compliment. The director, she was to say, “didn’t direct me into the show, he directed the show around me.” For other actresses this might have been a flattering idea; for Lucy it was disconcerting, and for Wildcat, destructive.

  The Philadelphia tryout was met with tepid laughter and mild applause, except when Lucy stepped out of character and reverted to the Ricardo persona: on one occasion she asked a supporting player in funny costume, “Say, do you know a fellow named Fred Mertz?” Recalled the star, “The slightest bit of Lucy that I would throw in would get the reaction I was looking for.” But this triumph of personality came at a cost; the show’s “through line”—its plot and drive—were leached away. Lucy blamed Nash: “Nothing that man wrote got any laughs, and I was getting desperate and Kidd didn’t tell me not to, so I did.” The out-of-town Variety review helped to buck up her spirits: “Miss Ball sings acceptably, dances with spirit, shines as a comedienne, and even does a couple of dramatic scenes with ease and polish.” But Philadelphia was a long way from New York and there was much work to be done on the book and score.

  Still under treatment for the contusions she had received on The Facts of Life, Lucy remained on antibiotics. They depleted her physical and mental energies when she needed them most. Changes had to be memorized on a nightly basis, and as if these were not complicated enough, the choreography called for her to be vigorously whirled and tossed by Andes and members of the chorus. On more than one occasion the dizzy, disoriented star held up her hand and stopped in mid-performance to let the audience know she had lost her place in the dialogue or the lyrics, and needed to begin the scene again. Ironically, the one stalwart friend she had was Desi, who journeyed to Philadelphia, watched the show, and gave advice to Kidd and Nash. The writer reluctantly allowed that Desi “had good dramatic instincts.” On Thanksgiving Desi thrilled theatergoers by going to the apron of the stage and throwing Lucy an orchid as she took her curtain call. “The least you could have done was take the pins out!” she shouted, pleased with herself for the first time in weeks.

  But Desi could not memorize Lucy’s new numbers or boost her flagging energies. Each night the exhaustion seemed to be getting harder and harder to shake off, and by the time the show was deemed ready for Broadway Lucy had grown impatient with almost everyone—especially members of the press. Don Ross, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, considered her “hard-boiled” when the unsmiling actress showed up for his interview at the 1918 Restaurant on Chestnut Street. Under her mink coat Lucy wore a black jacket and pants, and the famous red hair was hidden beneath a blue kerchief. Hardly had she begun her chianti on the rocks when she complained to the management, “Goddam it, why don’t they make tables so you can put your legs under them?” Ross thought it “difficult to detect any spiritual qualities in the Ball public personality.” Happily, she had brought along DeDe and the children and mugged at them during the interview, forcing the concession that “when she looks at Lucie and Desi IV and listens to their gabble, her hard public face turns almost soft and misty.”

  What Ross did not know, and did not care to investigate, was Lucy’s backstage personality. The cast of Wildcat saw an entirely different side of Lucille Ball, a woman who never pulled rank, and who cared extravagantly for her coworkers in the theater, as she had for her Desilu family. Television star Valerie Harper, starting out as a chorus girl in the musical, remembered the day that Lucy checked out the dressing rooms for the lesser players. “She said, ‘Oh my God, what a dungeon! This is terrible! We gotta fix up the chorus dressing room.’ ” And when Lucy said “we” she included herself. “She had the place painted. She fought it through. She was very direct, very warm, very giving.”

  The critics felt that warmth on opening night, December 16, 1960, and almost to a man they showed affection and respect for the star. And almost to a man they held the show at arm’s length. “As one who has loved Lucy even before she was Lucy,” wrote Walter Kerr in the Herald Tribune, “—back in the days when she looked like a raffish but elegant sea horse in many an RKO picture—I’m deeply, deeply confused. Is it simply the unsmiling libretto of N. Richard Nash? Can it be that director Michael Kidd hasn’t been able to find a big enough outlet for Miss Ball’s zanier talents? There’s a moment in which we catch a glimpse of the pop-eyed clown we know best: a moment in which she takes a big slug of tea and comes out of it with the spoon in her mouth. But these cartoon-like goodies are few. . . . It’s the time, it’s the place, where’s the girl?” In the Times, Howard Taubman complained of a “tame Wildcat, ” noted the boisterous enthusiasm of Lucy fans in the opening-night audience, praised the song “Hey, Look Me Over,” and then excoriated what he had just seen: “Wildcat went prospecting for Broadway oil but drilled a dry hole.” At the end Taubman went soft, as if he needed to reassure the poor woman who played Wildcat Jackson: “Don’t you care, Miss Ball. They all still love Lucy—and you, too.” Variety called the show a “failure” and predicted that its duration depended entirely on “how long Miss Ball and the advance sale can keep Wildcat running at the Alvin.” Variety’s reviewer also threw a bouquet to accompany his brickbats: “One further word about Lucille Ball: she should come again another time.”

  Desi answered the critics in the revered Broadway tradition: he ran a full-page ad in Variety using unattributed quotes (“Hoopla and boffola to satisfy the millions who love Lucy.” “Wildcat proves a gusher!”) along with a photograph of avid patrons waiting in line to buy tickets. The promotion worked. After nearly every show hundreds of fans waited for Lucy to show up. She never disappointed them; their collective energy and affection kept her engine running. Indeed, they may have caused her to go into overdrive. She stayed up for hours after every performance, unable to relax. On Wednesdays, instead of taking a break between matinee and evening performances, she went out to cocktail parties and dinner. Nothing seemed to calm her down. Was the script still inadequate? Did Nash let her down by failing to supply enough gags? Well, then, Bob and Madelyn could fix it. She brought them in with Nash’s permission. “Anything to keep Lucy happy,” he said. “I know she is up there suffering.” Madelyn Pugh Martin and Bob Carroll Jr. came to town and supplied a dozen opening jokes. “She had the most appalling experience,” Nash recalled, not without some satisfaction. “Not one of the lines got a laugh.” He and Michael Kidd went backstage to inform her: “It’s a different medium, Lucy. It’s early in the show, they can hardly hear you, they haven’t accustomed themselves to the acoustics of the theater, to your voice coming over the orchestra.” Nash observed: “She took out the lines instantly. That was a bad shock for her. In television, those lines had worked.”

  Other new lines did work, however, especially when she ad-libbed them. The show had one nonhuman actor, a Yorkshire terrier named Mousy. During a matinee, Mousy lost control onstage. Mops and brooms happened to be featured in that number, so Lucy kept singing and dancing as she acted the part of pooper-scooper. “It’s in the small print in my contract,” she told the audience in her best Lucy Ricardo mode. “I have to clean up the dog shit!” The explosions of laughter were like the ones she used to get on Lucy.

  For the most part, though, the yocks were hard to come by. Lucy got colds easily and couldn’t shake them off. The slightest difficulty drove her to tantrums and crying jags. She began, rather irrationally, to miss Desi, to wonder whether even now a reconciliation was possible. Evidently he felt the same w
ay; there was a tentative proposal of remarriage. Her yearning intensified until a retired couple came backstage and introduced themselves. Instead of wanting an autograph, they had something to give Lucy. During a recent vacation in Hawaii they came across an object shining in the sand. “The lady opened her purse and pulled out a gold chain with a Saint Christopher medal and a wedding ring,” Lucy told a friend. “I looked at the ring and it read, ‘To Desi with love from Lucy.’ I thanked them, kissed them both, and then closed the door and wept. Just closed the door and wept. It’s funny, but it was then that I knew it was really over. Having that ring in my hands didn’t bring the good times back to me, it brought the terrible times back, and I knew it was right. I knew Desi and I could be friends, but that we shouldn’t be married.”

  Early in February, Variety stated what the rest of Broadway already knew: Wildcat had to shut down for “an abrupt fortnight’s layoff to permit star Lucille Ball to take a Florida rest on the advice of her doctor. Miss Ball has been suffering from a virus and chronic fatigue.” Lucy returned to the show as promised, after appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show to sing Wildcat’s best number, “Hey, Look Me Over,” but she was not the same woman who opened the show a couple of months back. On Sundays, to bolster her flagging spirits, she attended services at Marble Collegiate Church. There the celebrity-hunting Norman Vincent Peale dispensed commonsense advice. Lucy supplemented it with readings from The Art of Selfishness, by the self-styled psychology writer David Seabury. Students of Ayn Rand would recognize the similarity to that author’s approach: “Here is a mysterious contradiction. Those who toil for the good of others often lose the respect of those for whom they sacrifice. As we change, under the stress of helping, others may blame us for the lessening of our strength, health, ability to cope and our charm.” For Lucy’s bruised ego, here was the perfect salve, the assurance that she had no reason to feel guilty about taking care of Number One. “This little book revolutionized my life,” she would maintain. “It taught me to worry less about all the outside factors in my life and take command of me. I learned to subject everything in my life to these questions: is this good for Lucy? Does it fill my needs? Is it good for my health, my peace of mind? Does my conscience agree, does it give me a spiritual life?” A paragraph in which “my” comes up seven times, “me” three times, and “Lucy” and “I” on each indicates that altruism was not very high on her agenda just then. Yet all this self-absorption did little to fend off the terrors of ill health, of encroaching age, of the feeling that she was losing her place on the board. In the past she had been bolstered by her Los Angeles circle. New York offered no such intimates; she had to make do with her mother and with members of the Wildcat cast. Keith Andes served as an escort for a brief time; the fling concluded as fast as it began. A more lasting relationship was forged with supporting actress Paula Stewart, who played Wildcat’s younger sister. Stewart thought about appropriate gentlemen for Lucy and struck oil the evening she and her fiancé, comedian Jack Carter, brought along their friend Gary Morton. Morton (né Morton Goldaper) was a well-built, genial third-tier comedian who had come up the traditional route. He began spouting one-liners in Brooklyn, where his father drove a truck, then graduated to the Borscht Belt and small nightclubs, and finally appeared in larger venues including the Palace and Radio City Music Hall, where he was then performing. Morton usually sported a tan and a toupee, and on this night he sat back smoking and watching his date with some amusement. In between postures she loudly advertised her fatigue. He thought she needed to be taken down a peg or two, and when Lucy tossed a cigarette in his direction and ordered, “Light me,” he threw the thing back in her direction and told her to light it herself. No one had spoken to Lucy like that in years. She laughed with a grudging admiration and asked how he earned his salary. “I’m a nightclub performer,” Morton said. “What’s your line?”

  As the evening progressed, Lucy found herself intrigued more than attracted. “When I fell in love with Desi,” she was to recall, “it was at first sight—my love for Gary was slow growth. I liked him before I loved him.” They continued to see each other and to correspond in the winter of 1960–1961 without commitment on either side. Morton had out-of-town engagements, and Lucy continued to struggle in the role of Wildcat Jackson, unable to shake off exhaustion and various ailments. DeDe, who customarily kept her own counsel, felt obliged to speak out. “Lucille!” she advised her daughter. “The Man Upstairs is trying to tell you something!”

  As usual, Lucy ignored the warning. She also paid no attention to another omen. In order to keep their star—and their show—going, the producers ordered an oxygen tank to be kept waiting in the wings. Lucy took hits from it between acts. Since she also took hits on cigarettes before, after, and sometimes during performances, however, any help she received was immediately neutralized. Hedda Hopper wrote about the night William Frawley attended a performance: “He created a minor sensation. ‘It’s Fred Mertz!’ they all said. I went backstage to see Lucille when Bill came in. When he saw how thin Lucy was there were tears in his eyes.”

  On April 22, 1961, in the middle of a vigorous dance number called “Tippy Tippy Toes,” Lucy collapsed onstage. Dancer Edith King reached out to break Lucy’s fall—and fractured her own wrist in the process. From then on, every realist in the company of Wildcat knew that the end was near. Lucy’s understudy, Betty Jane Watson, finished out the week while the producers scrambled to find a replacement star. They approached Gwen Verdon, Mitzi Gaynor, even Ginger Rogers. The women gave a uniform response: “Follow Lucille Ball. Are you crazy?” On May 24, Lucy gave her final Broadway performance. The next day a press release went out, guaranteeing ticket buyers that the star would rest up for eight or nine weeks, then reenter Wildcat on August 7. Lucy’s return was crucial; at the time of the shutdown the advance sale was larger than it had been on opening day. Few personalities could have accomplished her feat: by dint of fame and grit she had made the critical barbs irrelevant; audiences came to the Alvin to see Lucille Ball, not Wildcat Jackson. For the first time, a television personality had proved to be an outsized box office draw.

  B ut there would be no resumption. Lucy resigned in June, returning $165,000 of her own money to the box office. The sum would compensate for tickets that had been bought and would have to be returned. She had lost twenty-two pounds during the run and was now in a state of psychological depression and physical exhaustion. Upon hearing of Lucy’s situation, Hedda Hopper wrote: “Let’s hope Lucy stays in the hospital until she regains her health, strength, and peace of mind. Lucy’s one of the most vital girls I know but so weak now she can scarcely hold a teacup.”

  Hedda was misinformed. Lucy was not in the hospital. She had settled on a new panacea. The way to escape trouble, she had concluded, was not merely to quit Hollywood or New York, but to leave the whole country behind her. She would set up residence in Switzerland, settle there for a while with the children. There was plenty of money in the bank. She was nearing the half-century mark. Who needed all this show business madness, this sickness of the body and soul? “I felt so awful,” Lucy wrote in her autobiography, “I honestly thought I was going to die. I flew to London and eventually to Capri and Rome, determined to die in a scenic atmosphere.”

  She returned to Beverly Hills with DeDe and the children, slightly improved but still dispirited, determined to sell the houses and get the hell out of town. Somehow, though, she could not break away. Friendships were resumed, parties attended. And then there was Gary Morton, who showed up one day and settled into the guest house for several weeks. Lucy took him to a series of social gatherings where he said he felt like “some strange lamp” with people circling around and examining him from every angle. One of them was Desi himself, who annoyed his ex-wife by expressing approval of her new man. Other reports were not so favorable. Friends noted that, like Desi Arnaz, Gary Morton was younger than Lucy by six years; unlike Desi, however, he was very much a second banana who made a decent living but har
dly the kind of income Lucy earned just by collecting dividends from Desilu. And he was Jewish; that would bring additional complications in the unlikely event that they married. It was widely assumed that this would be a short-lived affair, a rebound Lucy needed after the depressing divorce and the abrupt close of Wildcat.

  Minds were changed after several weeks, when Lucy began to perk up and regain the weight she had lost—and even put on a few extra pounds. Clearly she was recovering, and Gary seemed to be the main cause of her happiness. His stay at the guest house lengthened. Speculation began. Lucy did a good job of pretending to be a truly independent soul, ordering friends not to mention the word “marriage” in her presence. A canny reporter heard the scuttlebutt and cornered her one day: “I’d like to bet that you will marry Gary Morton.” Lucy countered: “You’ll lose your money. Don’t bet. It’s nice this way.” Lucy was kidding the journalist, and herself. She dreaded the approach of fifty and of finishing her life, as she had once confided in cousin Cleo, “loaded and lonely.”

  DeDe had very little use for men; one had died on her, the other had been a crank and a loser. Yet she knew Lucy was not quite her mother’s daughter: she needed a man around, a reliable one this time, someone whose ego could be subordinate to a star’s. No more famous men; no more egotists; no more boozers. Gary looked to be a viable candidate, and he might just be Lucy’s last, best chance. Here was a comedian who was neither a loser nor a headliner, who had never met a payroll, never run a studio, never dominated a scene. He had been peripatetic since early manhood; his sole attempt at marriage had lasted less than a year and ended in an annulment. He was not much of a drinker or seducer and had no particular interest in the business end of things. Amiable, honest, a good listener, and something of a recessive personality, Morton was, in essence, the anti-Desi. If only some way could be found to make certain that the suitor wasn’t a fortune hunter, he just might make a fine second husband for Lucille Ball.