I am 35 years old, and I grew up watching and loving "I Love Lucy." As a child, I was fixated on Ms. Ball, and I was disappointed during my adolescence to learn that she was known to be difficult and that she was unliked by many people in the television industry. According to a television movie I saw many years ago, Desi Arnaz was the comic genius, and Lucy was little more than an actress who made funny faces on camera and who bullied people around off camera.
I started watching reruns of the show recently and was struck, now from an adult perspective with more experience behind me, at Ball's absolute brilliance as an actress. The "I Love Lucy" scripts often were nothing special, and in my opinion--although Arnaz, Frawley, and especially Vance were quite talented as well--the show really depended on Ball's performance and little else. I've always remembered the Vitameatavegamin episode as the funniest, and I remember laughing uproariously as a child at it, but having just rewatched it several times, I am astounded by Ball's absolutely true-to-life reactions that convey the taste and intoxicating effects of what was most likely just corn syrup.
But that's all personal. The only point of the preceding information is to state that I was have had mixed feelings about Lucille Ball for much of my life due to rumors about her place within the entertainment business. "Love, Lucy," though...I mean, wow. Did she write this book herself? If so, Ball was far more than an actor; the back cover quotes someone as stating the memoir is "full of light and laughter," and it absolutely is--that's not just the effect on the reader, but also the tone of the language. Many celebrities hire ghost writers for their books, but if that was the case here, then that writer really captured what feels to be an authentic personal voice that conveys Ball's place in time and country. The stories meander in a way that can sometimes be a little irritating--you'll read one or two sentences that beg for greater detail, but then that's all Ball gives you--but also delightful; in fact, the prose reminds me of my own grandmother's stories, just moving along with the pull of Ball's memories. And what memories.
If I ever had known, which I must have because of the aforementioned television biopic, how difficult Ball's upbringing was, then I'd completely forgotten. Ball tells us that she was passed around from mother and father (the latter of whom died tragically at too young an age) to grandparents (one of whom also died far too young, at age 56, I believe), to step grandparents, and then back again, and then about her adventures and struggles as an actress in New York, which failed, and her rheumatic arthritis (who knew?!) and "experimental horse shots" (!!!!!) that she received as treatments, and then her success as a model, etc., etc.
As an aspiring writer, and not incidentally a gay man, rejection and hardship have been daily experiences for me, and at age 35 I already feel that I have become more bitter than Ball comes across in her book. I believe that her optimism and faith in herself, bestowed upon her by a loving mother and grandparents and her sheer talent and intelligence, carried her through her challenges, and who can blame this woman if she did become "difficult." She states in her memoir that she would not have hired the shy wallflower that she had been as a young Broadway starlet; she had to become harder and more assertive in order to make her talent known, and good for her. This book has absolutely returned me to Team Lucy, one hundred percent. I only wish she were still around to give us more. And my only complaint about the book is (sorry) its cover--the strange 70s/80s lighting and soft focus aren't the Lucy who we know and love from the "I Love Lucy" days, but more importantly they also suggest a woman who needs softening, who was afraid of her flaws, and that is not the woman who comes across through these pages.
jen florida
David M. Conner
Belloria