cocoa-plantation owner kidnapped by bandits and rescued by daring pilots; in the melodramatic
Panama Lady
she plays a conniving cabaret dancer out to separate an alcoholic oilman from his money. Buried in that sump of cinematic clichés, she still managed to attract critical attention: The New York
Daily News
critic deemed
Panama Lady
“another minor triumph for Lucille Ball . . . It is high time RKO recognized her potential and put her in something more deserving of her ability than the last things she has appeared in. I don’t contend that she is a Duse, but she is one of the most up-and-coming players around.”
The comer did win a role in
Room Service,
playing an aspiring actress and straight woman to the Marx Brothers. In theory, the Marx Brothers feature should have been her breakthrough. Pandro Berman thought so highly of the Brothers he paid half a million dollars for the rights to film the stage hit. That money included the salaries of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, borrowed for this occasion from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Unfortunately, the producer failed to notice something vital: every one of the previous seven Marx Brothers movies had been built from the ground up, the scenario carefully shaped to their talents and idiosyncrasies.
Room Service
was a Broadway comedy hastily rejiggered to fit the trio. The plot concerns a theatrical con man who refuses to leave his hotel room until he can find a backer rich enough to pay his bills and underwrite a new play. Audiences and critics were more tolerant than Groucho. “It was the first time we tried doing a play we hadn’t created ourselves,” he complained later. “We can’t do that. We’ve got to originate the characters and situations ourselves. Then we can do them. Then they’re us. We can’t do gags or play characters that aren’t ours. We tried it and we’ll never do it again.”
Lucille learned only one skill from her Marx Brothers experience: how to eat an exotic vegetable. At a dinner at Sam Goldwyn’s palatial home she was seated next to Harpo. When an artichoke was placed before her, Lucille panicked. She had never encountered one before, and thought to go at it with knife and fork until Harpo quietly showed her how to peel the leaves one by one. Harpo’s kindness was not duplicated by his younger brother. Privately, Groucho appraised Lucille Ball as “an actress, not a comedienne. There’s a difference. I’ve never found her to be funny on her own. She’s always needed a script.”
Here the usually astute comedian was wrong. Granted, Lucille would never be as furiously amusing as the Brothers, who could turn any occasion into a comic sketch. They were already notorious for squatting nude and roasting potatoes in Irving Thalberg’s faux fireplace when the production chief was late for a meeting. During the filming of
Room Service
they picked up where they had left off at MGM. RKO had promised to close the set of the movie, then reneged. Angry that visitors were on the way, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo prepared themselves for a scene in which they were to run after Lucille. That they did—but they had removed every stitch of clothing. The astonished tour group, composed of priests and nuns, averted their eyes.
But if Lucille could not match the Brothers for bare lunacy, she was not above making some memorable mischief of her own. Frank Albertson, who had played the hapless playwright in
Room Service,
booked himself into a local hospital. There he underwent a long-delayed hemorrhoid operation. Painfully recuperating, Albertson looked up one afternoon to see a group of his fellow performers, led by Lucille. She had talked the head nurse into allowing a visit. They were on a lunch break, she lied, and had only an hour before shooting resumed. They would be the very essence of sympathy and dignity.
Frank “knew we were up to no good the minute he saw us,” Lucille said, “and he begged us to leave. Well, that’s all we needed.” At her
Panama Lady
she plays a conniving cabaret dancer out to separate an alcoholic oilman from his money. Buried in that sump of cinematic clichés, she still managed to attract critical attention: The New York
Daily News
critic deemed
Panama Lady
“another minor triumph for Lucille Ball . . . It is high time RKO recognized her potential and put her in something more deserving of her ability than the last things she has appeared in. I don’t contend that she is a Duse, but she is one of the most up-and-coming players around.”
The comer did win a role in
Room Service,
playing an aspiring actress and straight woman to the Marx Brothers. In theory, the Marx Brothers feature should have been her breakthrough. Pandro Berman thought so highly of the Brothers he paid half a million dollars for the rights to film the stage hit. That money included the salaries of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, borrowed for this occasion from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Unfortunately, the producer failed to notice something vital: every one of the previous seven Marx Brothers movies had been built from the ground up, the scenario carefully shaped to their talents and idiosyncrasies.
Room Service
was a Broadway comedy hastily rejiggered to fit the trio. The plot concerns a theatrical con man who refuses to leave his hotel room until he can find a backer rich enough to pay his bills and underwrite a new play. Audiences and critics were more tolerant than Groucho. “It was the first time we tried doing a play we hadn’t created ourselves,” he complained later. “We can’t do that. We’ve got to originate the characters and situations ourselves. Then we can do them. Then they’re us. We can’t do gags or play characters that aren’t ours. We tried it and we’ll never do it again.”
Lucille learned only one skill from her Marx Brothers experience: how to eat an exotic vegetable. At a dinner at Sam Goldwyn’s palatial home she was seated next to Harpo. When an artichoke was placed before her, Lucille panicked. She had never encountered one before, and thought to go at it with knife and fork until Harpo quietly showed her how to peel the leaves one by one. Harpo’s kindness was not duplicated by his younger brother. Privately, Groucho appraised Lucille Ball as “an actress, not a comedienne. There’s a difference. I’ve never found her to be funny on her own. She’s always needed a script.”
Here the usually astute comedian was wrong. Granted, Lucille would never be as furiously amusing as the Brothers, who could turn any occasion into a comic sketch. They were already notorious for squatting nude and roasting potatoes in Irving Thalberg’s faux fireplace when the production chief was late for a meeting. During the filming of
Room Service
they picked up where they had left off at MGM. RKO had promised to close the set of the movie, then reneged. Angry that visitors were on the way, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo prepared themselves for a scene in which they were to run after Lucille. That they did—but they had removed every stitch of clothing. The astonished tour group, composed of priests and nuns, averted their eyes.
But if Lucille could not match the Brothers for bare lunacy, she was not above making some memorable mischief of her own. Frank Albertson, who had played the hapless playwright in
Room Service,
booked himself into a local hospital. There he underwent a long-delayed hemorrhoid operation. Painfully recuperating, Albertson looked up one afternoon to see a group of his fellow performers, led by Lucille. She had talked the head nurse into allowing a visit. They were on a lunch break, she lied, and had only an hour before shooting resumed. They would be the very essence of sympathy and dignity.
Frank “knew we were up to no good the minute he saw us,” Lucille said, “and he begged us to leave. Well, that’s all we needed.” At her
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