Redheaded woman with the inner glow - Lucille, the domestic showgirl

It was the preview of "Easy to Wed" in the Westwood Village
Theater and excitement crackled in the air like lightning in a
Mississippi Valley storm. Police reserves were on hand early to
control the crowd. The junior misses on the sidewalk were
practicing swoons and the wolf cubs were woo-wooing in
close harmony. Van arrived in style and ten seconds later
was barely intact. Esther's crossing of the lobby could only
be compared to Little Eva's crossing the ice floes, but this
time there were wolves in pursuit, not bloodhounds. Lucille
Ball's reception was all right, too. After all, no one knew for
certain then that she was going to be The Other Woman.

Now, playing The Other Woman in a Johnson-Williams
picture is a composite of Daniel walking into the lion's den
and a girl with a sprained ankle bucking a department store
sale of nylons. If she's lucky, the venturesome actress will
be hissed on the screen and mobbed off it. And well aware
of it on that night was Lucille's bodyguard - which included
husband Desi Arnaz. Mechanically they noted the nearest
exit and mapped a line of retreat as the house lights dimmed
and the picture began.

Lucille nervously ran a hand through her hair as the flamboyant
Gladys Benton came on the screen. Mr. Arnaz and the other
members of her bodyguard exchanged understanding glances;
they felt the tension too. And then a giggle ran through the
theater, chased by a chuckle and followed by a guffaw.
Gladys was doing fine - with everyone except Lucille. She
kept running her hand through her hair, pushing it back,
and back, and back.

"Take it easy," Desi whispered once or twice, extending a
restraining arm. "They like sweet." He was brushed off,
literally. Lucille kept biting her lips, tugging at her hair.

There was no vengeful mob waiting to get at her in the
lobby when the picture had raced to its howling climax.
The kids were grinning, and a bit respectful. Lucille had
been the other woman, but she was a good sport and a
good loser - and funny as the dickens. They asked for
autographs and grinned at her hair-do.

"It was that darned hairdresser!" she explained. "I had
no idea when we were making the picture that my bangs
were so low. So all through the preview, I just naturally
kept pushing my bangs back. And out there in the lobby
they were so far back it looked like an off-the-face hat!"

The Bouncing Ball was probably exaggerating. No one
could possibly mistake that pink-gold thatch of hers for
a hat. But it's no exaggeration to say that "Easy to Wed"
is her best picture to date and a shiny red apple for a girl
who has been handed more than her share of lemons
in her twelve years in Hollywood.

LIFE started bouncing Little Lulu against its brick walls
from the time she was a red-headed fifteen-year-old in
Celeron, New York, a tiny resort town on the shores of
Lake Chautauqua. Stage struck from the start, Lucille
had prevailed on her widowed mother to enroll her in
John Murray Anderson's dramatic school in New York.

"Previous experience?" asked the admission director.

"School plays and summer stock," said Lucille, fingers
crossed behind her back.

"Say 'horses and water' " ordered the diction coach.

"Horr-ses and watt-er," said Lucille in the flat accents
of upstate New York. The coach shuddered and for the
next six months her nickname was "Miss Horr-ses and
Watt-er."

They tried her on comedy. ("I had no animation.") They
tried her on tragedy. ("I was completely stunned.") They tried
her on love scenes. ("I was very shy.") They sent her to a
class in ballet. ("I couldn't stand on two feet, no less one
toe.") They bit their nails and started her on eccentric
dancing. ("I thought I was pretty good until they put me in
a room lined with mirrors. I got one look at those big feet
and skinny legs, ran out of the room and cried my eyes out.")

After three terms of this all parties agreed to call it quits.
There followed troubled times when Lucille tried to be a
chorus girl, failed again and turned to modeling, winding up
as Hattie Carnegie's pride and joy. Then came the skidding
car in Central Park, the smash-up, the blanket of oblivion
from which she slowly emerged a paralytic.

For three long years of bed, wheel chairs and crutches
she fought the fear that she could never walk again as a
normal human being and won "Your old job's waiting for
you, honey," wrote Hattie. "Come on back."

So the Bouncing Ball began practicing the mannequin's
glide with a cane in each hand to steady her. Lucille never
has forgotten her debt to Hattie, still marvels at the modiste's
kindness to her.

"I guess it was because I was always the dumbest of her girls,
knew less, had to be helped more," she says.

And then there came that hot July day in Manhattan, soon
after she had gone back to work, when a friend told her
they were looking for one more Goldwyn Girl to round out
the dozen they were sending to Hollywood for the Eddie
Cantor musical, "Roman Scandals."

"But I'm no show girl," Lucille said.

"You could use some sunshine," the friend countered.
"Besides, Hollywood won't know the difference!"

And Hollywood didn't, nor does it yet. Give the average
producer a script with a part in it for a show-girl type and
he automatically begins thinking of Lucille Ball. You can't
blame him either, for on screen or off the Bouncing Ball is
a show girl to the life - except that she may be a little whackier.

Like ninety nine out of a hundred show girls, she looks
dumb - and isn't. She tries to be hard-boiled, yet gurgles
over babies, puppies and kittens. She knows all the angles
and is a push-over for anyone with a hard-luck story. She
can stand at the top of a night-club stairway and rivet
every masculine eye in the place (and pretend not to
know it), but she has more fun next morning wearing a
pair of blue jeans trowelling fertilizer around a rose bush.

Show girls, when they're not dreaming of Park Avenue
penthouses, like to picture themselves in the doorway
of a rose-covered cottage tossing popcorn (or whatever
it is) at a herd of chickens. Lucille has her five-acre ranch
in Chatsworth with a rose-papered living room, fluffy
white curtains and a small flock of chickens who die of
old age. Or because a weasel gets into the coop. Lucille
refers to the weasel as "a dirty old thing" but, since she
hasn't the heart to kill off any of her flock, it probably
is just as well that the weasel is around to keep the
population down.

She had a cow for a while, had raised it from a calf
and couldn't understand why it suddenly began acting
so strangely. Her handy man sheepishly informed her
that the Duchess had reached the age when - well, when
it ought to be introduced to the nice, gentlemanly bull
who was living a mile down the road.

"But she's just a baby!" wailed Lucille and later, with
trembling lips, stood leaning over the fence rail as the
Duchess philosophically - or was it eagerly? - waddled
down the lane to keep her date with destiny. Lucille
went to visit the Duchess some time later, but she didn't
like the change that had come over her. Something about
the gleam in her eye. The Duchess never was invited back.

Show girls have a sense of humor, too. Captain Ken
Morgan, husband of Lucille's kid sister, Clio (she's a
cousin, actually, but the two were raised together
and consider themselves sisters), became one of the most
popular men in his outfit overseas because he would read
aloud Lucille's twelve-page letters retailing all the
Hollywood gossip and family news with footnotes that
not even the chuckling censors had the heart to delete.
She also sent him a pin-up to end all pin-ups: A shot of
herself at her swimming pool wearing a 1908-model
bathing suit with black cotton stockings and bloomers,
her wet hair plastered down the sides of her face and
her front teeth blacked out. It was autographed "From
Your Glamour Girl, Luci."

Then - still in keeping with successful show-girl tradition -
there's her maid, Harriet, a small-scale Hattie McDaniel who
has been part of the Ball menage for the last eight years.
When Lucille and Desi were married, Harriet went along
on the honeymoon and referred to him then - as she does
now - as "our husband." The porter had warned Mr. and
Mrs. Desiderio Alberto Arnaz de Acha III to have their shoes
outside their drawing-room door by midnight if they
expected to find them shined the next morning. It is quite
possible - honeymoons being what they are - that the couple
might have forgotten all about it had there not come a loud
knocking on the door and a hearty voice crying:

"Cinderella, get out of those shoes! It's gettin' near to midnight!"

Harriet remembers everything.

PERHAPS it is only in her marriage that the Bouncing Ball
doesn't suggest the show girl. And this is a laugh on Hollywood
which winked knowingly when the zany redhead ran off with the
volatile Cuban. "Boy!" said the town. "Will those temperaments
clash!" Strangely enough, they seem to have meshed. Lucille's
best friends remark enviously that she's simply "maa--aad"
about Desi, and Desi's best friends repeat that he's just as
"maa-aad" about Luci.

It must be love when a gal exchanges a swimming pool, a
comfortable house and California's climate for a small apartment
in a New York hotel during the hottest months of the summer.
That is exactly what Lucille did when she elected to be with
Desi this summer when his band was booked into the
Copacabana and the Paramount. Of course, she won't
exactly be roughing it. That would be too much to expect
of Hollywood's foremost show girl.

She spent the week before she left on a shopping tour. Let's
see now: There were three fox stoles, one white, one platina
and one dyed periwinkle blue. There were twenty-five (count 'em -
twenty-five) John Frederics hats, minimum price $49 apiece.
There were six basic outfits, three black and three in colors.
There were the gowns Travis Banton had designed for her in
"Lover Come Back" and which she managed to buy from
Universal after the picture was made. (Report was that the
Banton wardrobe had been budgeted at $75,000, but she
didn't have to pay that, naturally.) Anyway, these - plus some
old rags she happened to have at home - required one trunk,
five bags and seventeen hat boxes. And, in case she ran short,
there was Hattie Carnegie's - a sure stop on the Ball shopping
itinerary.

Lucille was happily describing her New York wardrobe to
some palpitating pals at the studio when a bystander cruelly
suggested that she seemed to have overlooked the most
important item, the one item without which no show girl
can be happy.

"What," he asked, "about a mink coat?"

Little Lulu batted her blue eyes and looked demurely
at the carpet.

"Oh I couldn't wear a mink," she said. "Not unless my
husband bought it for me. I made up my mind about that
long ago. And naturally, with Desi in the Army for three
years - well, you can't buy mink coats on a sergeant's pay."

They agreed that was unfortunately true.

"But now," she resumed confidingly, "with Desi back in
pictures and doing so well with his band, well..." and
she smiled serenely at her smiling friends.

Careful, Desi! The Ball is getting ready to put the bite on you!

-END-

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