and had no intention of marrying again. He was middle-aged, dour, and physically unattractive, but he had been a child star in vaudeville, had great stories about the old days, and knew almost every local and visiting comedian. Hall introduced Lucille to radio headliner Fred Allen and his wife, Portland Hoffa, and to George Burns and Gracie Allen. He also cleared up an old misunderstanding when he brought Lucille to meet Ed and Ebba Sedgwick. Several years before, Lucille had snubbed Edward Sedgwick, convinced that the Keystone Kops director was just another dirty old man. Now she realized that he was a true believer, an expert in knockabout farce who thought Lucille Ball could become as big a luminary in her day as Mabel Normand and Constance Talmadge were in theirs.
Like any other actress, Lucille doted on praise, but she knew better than to rely on the flattery of an emeritus director. Work was the important thing, whether it was in light comedy or in such melodramas as
Five Came Back.
Directed by John Farrow from a script by Nathanael West and Dalton Trumbo, this was a suspense film about a plane crash in the jungles of South America. Of a dozen passengers who survive, only five will avoid the tribe of headhunters who surround them. Lucille Ball, playing a world-weary trollop, is one of the five—a plum role in what seemed to be a cursed production. First, torrential rains delayed the shooting. Then one character actor, John Carradine, fell ill. Another, Chester Morris, confused his costar Lucille’s onscreen role with her private life and kept pawing her whenever she let down her guard. Farrow displayed his sadistic side, arguing with and humiliating whatever cast member got in his way on a given day. Lucille became his unwitting victim one afternoon when she leaned on some tropical vegetation brought to the set for verisimilitude. It housed two tarantulas, and both fell onto her hair. She had hysterics and had to be assisted to her dressing room, much to the derisive amusement of the director.
A few months later Lucille found it in her heart to forgive him. Farrow had bullied his cast into tense, convincing performances, and
Five
Came Back
turned into the sleeper of 1939. The
New York Times
called it “as exciting as a pinwheel” and singled out Lucille Ball for her “gripping realism.” The front office began to regard Lucille in a different way. Studio press agents came around, hinting that big things were in store—perhaps the A films she had been striving for. In December she was sent east to make a series of personal appearances in New York. While in the city, she was told, it would be a good idea to see the new Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical. RKO had just bought
Too
Many Girls,
and casting would begin just after New Year’s Day. Was this the studio’s way of telling her that Lucille Ball was at long last an A-picture talent?
Because of her own foolhardiness, two weeks went by before she got tickets to the show. Studio publicists had set up a shoot with Lucille skating at the rink in Rockefeller Center. They asked her to do a pratfall and she obliged them: anything for a laugh. “After so many years in California,” she reflected, “I guess I’d forgotten how hard ice can be. I landed with a slight crack on my sacroiliac.” She was carried off on a stretcher and spent the next ten days of her holiday in a hospital. Friends dropped in and told her about
Too Many Girls.
It was not much on plot, they said, but how could you beat songs like “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and “I Like to Recognize the Tune”? And the cast wasn’t half bad. There was an outstanding new comedian, Eddie Bracken; a promising blond chorus boy, Van Johnson; and a good-looking Cuban kid who stopped the show with a conga dance at the end of act 1. As soon as she could walk, the visitors urged, Lucille had to go down to the Imperial Theatre and catch Desi Arnaz in person.
Lucille hobbled to her orchestra
Like any other actress, Lucille doted on praise, but she knew better than to rely on the flattery of an emeritus director. Work was the important thing, whether it was in light comedy or in such melodramas as
Five Came Back.
Directed by John Farrow from a script by Nathanael West and Dalton Trumbo, this was a suspense film about a plane crash in the jungles of South America. Of a dozen passengers who survive, only five will avoid the tribe of headhunters who surround them. Lucille Ball, playing a world-weary trollop, is one of the five—a plum role in what seemed to be a cursed production. First, torrential rains delayed the shooting. Then one character actor, John Carradine, fell ill. Another, Chester Morris, confused his costar Lucille’s onscreen role with her private life and kept pawing her whenever she let down her guard. Farrow displayed his sadistic side, arguing with and humiliating whatever cast member got in his way on a given day. Lucille became his unwitting victim one afternoon when she leaned on some tropical vegetation brought to the set for verisimilitude. It housed two tarantulas, and both fell onto her hair. She had hysterics and had to be assisted to her dressing room, much to the derisive amusement of the director.
A few months later Lucille found it in her heart to forgive him. Farrow had bullied his cast into tense, convincing performances, and
Five
Came Back
turned into the sleeper of 1939. The
New York Times
called it “as exciting as a pinwheel” and singled out Lucille Ball for her “gripping realism.” The front office began to regard Lucille in a different way. Studio press agents came around, hinting that big things were in store—perhaps the A films she had been striving for. In December she was sent east to make a series of personal appearances in New York. While in the city, she was told, it would be a good idea to see the new Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical. RKO had just bought
Too
Many Girls,
and casting would begin just after New Year’s Day. Was this the studio’s way of telling her that Lucille Ball was at long last an A-picture talent?
Because of her own foolhardiness, two weeks went by before she got tickets to the show. Studio publicists had set up a shoot with Lucille skating at the rink in Rockefeller Center. They asked her to do a pratfall and she obliged them: anything for a laugh. “After so many years in California,” she reflected, “I guess I’d forgotten how hard ice can be. I landed with a slight crack on my sacroiliac.” She was carried off on a stretcher and spent the next ten days of her holiday in a hospital. Friends dropped in and told her about
Too Many Girls.
It was not much on plot, they said, but how could you beat songs like “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and “I Like to Recognize the Tune”? And the cast wasn’t half bad. There was an outstanding new comedian, Eddie Bracken; a promising blond chorus boy, Van Johnson; and a good-looking Cuban kid who stopped the show with a conga dance at the end of act 1. As soon as she could walk, the visitors urged, Lucille had to go down to the Imperial Theatre and catch Desi Arnaz in person.
Lucille hobbled to her orchestra
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