Lucy on Desi: "I married a loser"

This was already a thread, wasn't it?

Was she bald underneath that wig?

So what Lucy? I married Joan.

She was going to throw hot coffee at Baba Wawa, but Gary Morton wisely talked her out of it.

She was a complete bitch to Joan Crawford.

She was?

[quote]She was a complete bitch to Joan Crawford.

Atta girl!

I thought Desi was considered a pretty hot pinga!

Oh, and Gary was a winner.

If you saw Gary in "Lenny", he was really, really effective as the hateful Milton Berle-esque comedian.

The interview isn't bad at all. Lucy makes it literal. Desi built everything up and felt he had to lose it all.

R9 are you anti Semitic?

Lucy might have been a never was second banana in Bob Hope movies without Desi. Every thing "I Love Lucy", including the groundbreaking three camera live audience filming was his idea.

Where would Gary Morton have been without Lucy, realistically?

r13 No where except the Catskills doing his shtick during the tourist season.

Lucy was a hardworking, heartbreaking character that just happened to be in show business. She didn't really have the temperament or natural talent for it. If anything she became too successful and it probably ruined any lasting chances for happiness.

She just meant that he was self destructive, she obviously knew what a multi talent he was.

Desi was the genius behind her original show. If you don't believe it, take a look at her shows when he was no longer involved.

I have always thought Lucy wore her discontent on her sleeve- with everything- she seemed like a bitter woman that last 20 years of her life- and why? Kind of like Lauren Bacall years later. I mean, can you get much luckier than these two? I'm sure both took their knocks, but no more or less than most.

Tired cunt

Damn you, Carlotta Romera!

Of course Desi was a genius. Everyone including Lucy understood and publicly acknowledged that. She was making a comment about his personality, which perhaps she shouldn't have but it was her reality. As for Gary, he must have been a saint to put up with her at that stage in her life. Desi got pussy but poor Gary.

By her own standard, she was a loser as well.

She was beloved, successful, wealthy, and behaved as a miserable cunt the whole time.

A 'winner' wouldn't have stuck with a younger man while he slept around for 2 decades.

R21, it was a different time.

[quote] I thought Desi was considered a pretty hot pinga!

Highly smegmatic however.

I also found it amazing how different Lucy was from her television persona. Where she was able to pull that character our from, I have no idea. It wasn't just the writing. She pulled off child-like innocence and she was anything but. She was brooding in reality. It's really amazing.

She had the soul and mannerisms of an oil rig worker in reality.

My doctor's wife was from Jamestown, NY, and she said Lucy was known as the "Jamestown Hussy", read slut. I admire any woman like Lucy or Joan Crawford who climbed from the pits of hell to reach stardom.

She loved Desi until the day she dropped dead. He may have been a loser but he was her loser. I'm not sure why she ever made those distasteful comments about him. At the point in which that interview took place, it was unnecessary and in bad form.

Well r26 - Her last name WAS Ball. What did you expect?

What happened to the troll that was obsessed with her and her fear of birds?

r28 You're insane.

And you r30 are flatulent....

Her words about Desi were very cruel. He produced a brilliant television show, for her. This was "I Love Lucy", of course. He was a pioneer in television and he produced high quality television. Furthermore, Desi always spoke well of Lucille Ball, always giving her more credit than she deserved.

So what if he drank and screwed around! Anyone married to that vile cunt would do the same! She would have been much better to have shut her mouth and dealt with it.

I'm a huge fan of Astaire / Rogers movies, and a young blonde Lucille Ball shows up in a bunch of them, as a wisecracking, very tall, very young "dame". While Ginger Rogers' mom had a legit down side (House UnAmerican Activities testimony which even the McCarthy side rolled their eyes at), she was an asset as a stage mom, since she did her own thing, trained the young green ones on the lot while being a sounding board for her kid (and staying out of her personal life) AND managing their money (neither she nor Ginger Rogers was a big spender on jewelry, clothes and cars). Lucille Ball is full of praise for Leyla Rogers, about how she'd go out and take classes and then come back and teach what she learned to the contract players on the lot who were under her tutelage. When Lucille Ball talks about this time, I see no drive whatsoever. She talks about being just excited to have the contract, how she was thrilled beyond belief when she saw a script breakdown calling for a "Lucille Ball type" and all of that. I hate to give Desi all the credit, but there is no sign Lucille Ball would have become some big mogul on her own. In fact, I bet she ended up with the career that would have been more suited to Carole Lombard. Lombard was fascinated with everything behind the camera, knew a lot about it, and I think had the beginnings of her own, not sub-studio, but people she wanted to work with to develop her own projects at the time she died. Every time I read about her, she has a real enthusiasm for the movie business, not just the business of being a star, and she knew how to make supporting characters look good in the parts that showed them off. I see and read none of that about Ball at the time. I think it was Desi.

Maybe she was a bitch because she knew it was him, but figured that she was the face of their joint brand, and he was ungrateful screwing around on her.

I love Desi Arnez. Whenever I read about Frank Sinatra, it seems Desi was one of the few people in the business who was not intimidated and took none of Frank Sinatra's shit.

r33 God honey, you should write the book.

Lucy was a cheap hag, talented or not.

Had the displeasure of going to her home not long after that last, bad cancelled show. Furniture was leftover from sets of Lucy shows, dog piss on the carpet, although as my bitch friend said, how do you know it was the dog?

Miss Ball will be issuing no treats this year...

I think that at the beginning of the creation of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball was a relatively happy and content woman and wife.

True, she may not have been anything like Lucy Ricardo but the bitterness and anger did not begin to set in until the grinding years of churning out the series wore on and foreced her to come to terms with Desi's public infidelities and gambling addiction.

I've never found any clips of her on 1950s talk shows but check her out on her early 1950s appearances on What's My Line? as the Mystery Guest and you'll see a very different woman than the one who appears on that same game show in the post-ILL 1960s.

Did she have Bell's Palsy at the time of OP's interview - or just suffering the after-effects of bad plastic surgery? One side of her face looked frozen, making her mouth crooked when she spoke.

Lucy never had plastic surgery. In fact, she was one of the few celebrities who aged naturally in Hollywood.

Gary was a Borscht Belt comedian. They were HUGE back in the day. He also produced one of Tom Cruise's movies.

I'm not sure Lucy ever had plastic surgery. That's why all the wigs with the tape underneath.

What was her real relationship with her children?

If I recall, the condition/quality/whatever of her skin somehow didn't make her a good candidate for plastic surgery.

To know her was to loathe her

R35 More! Was she cunty?

Desi was an alcoholic and womanizer and gambler but he was no "loser." He was a very savvy business man and a very talented performer. Lucy was just being her cunty self.

I remember Lucie going on Joan Rivers show after her mother died, and basically trashed her as a terrible mother and grandmother.

I was a Lucille Ball fan until I read and heard how much of a nasty cunt she was.

Did Lucille Ball have any redeeming qualities? Did she give to charities or certain causes?

Her days were spent chain smoking, belting back booze, and cheating the staff out of their holiday bonuses on the backgammon table

Was Lucille Ball a bad mother?

Compared to me, she was a great mom.

How the fuck many layers of Vaseline did they use on the camera in that BW interview? Yikes! I could hardly make out their features. What an ego Lucy must have had. At least she didn't butcher her face like today's actresses but did anyone buy that foggy look to every picture with her?

Even her maid slapped her face...

I've had sufficient of this cunt.

Gary never shared his hookers,, like my real daddy

R50 Her daughter Lucy Luckinbill (sp?) is friends with my ex's sister. All I know (from a conversation about 10 yrs ago) is their mother, Lucy, wasn't always there for them and when she was there she was often preoccupied with her scripts and her work in general. Lucy's daughter said she felt as though she had to take second place to her mother's career. Otherwise she was a good mother. She wasn't abusive, they just didn't see much of her and when she was around she would take a phone call or have guests over or whatever, at the wrong times when the kids were expecting their mother to pay some attention to them while she was home. They had to take second place is how Lucy and her brother felt.

Their mothers' life revolved more around her career than around her children is what her daughter LL told my ex's sister. But their birthdays were always celebrated and they did have fun family times together, and as I said, no abuse or major drama involving the kids. I guess they felt ignored at times or put on hold which is hard for kids. Apparently, she was the same way when she became a grandmother. LL said she would spend a little time with the grand kids here and there and then it would be like 'times up' and that would be it. Maye she just wasn't into kids all that much. Anyway, I didn't probe and ask questions so that's all I know.

She had 25 years in Top Ten series TV. You don't get there and stay there without being tough, or having a good team of tough people around you. Yes, Desi got it started and he was a genius. But she kept it going after that for more years than ILL was on the air with new episodes. He forced her to "become a mogul" when they divorced. She had 1/2 the company and said "I don't want to quit." She bought him out. She knew she had become hardened--she cited her becoming head of the studio as the time "they had to add an 's' to the end of my name."

Desilu was a studio under her leadership, not just a vanity label for her...between the TV shows that rented their stages and the shows they produced.

All this was following a middling success in movies and a hit radio show. Always a workhorse, even when working for others. Look at her filmography. She appeared in 7(!) films in 1938.

Her major fame, which she had sought for so long, came to her at an age where it must have looked like she wasn't going to get there after all. In 1951 when ILL started she was 40 years old, which was ANCIENT then. But when she died, several sources cited her as the most recognizable face on the planet. That's more than success, that's a phenomenon.

Her friends and even her own children said there was a cutoff (of love, of a sense of fun) when it was time to work. She ran Desilu, she knew time was money. It doesn't justify her ill treament of others, but the backstory makes it make sense why she'd be that way.

As for her children, we should all be so lucky as to have our first real show business job be a supporting role on a Top Ten series in the days when there were only three networks. What they made of that springboard (that is, the work they did and have done outside Desilu/LBP) is the success they really own.

Gary was good to her, he was good WITH her. If the tradeoff was him never having to work again, appearing to be 'kept'...well, plenty of DLers wouldn't turn that down.

R57 = Lucy's Ghost

I had a much longer career in showbiz and I wasn't a bitch

More on Lucy's house, back den area had the furniture from the Hollywood ILL episodes. Dining room bad matching French dining table/hutch. Maids room looked like a prison cell- bed, dresser, ironing board and TV. Kitchen cabinets painted so many times, they barely closed. Rumpus room, guessing converted garage filled with crap, including boxes of Mame mugs. Pool house with towels you wouldn't use as rags. Guest house- shack. Poor Patty/Liza. Pool, bad 50s with lava rock and one of those rotating color wheels.

Desi fucked her good....she felt Cuban inside. Ungrateful cunt.

Both Gary and Desi were said to have massive sizemeat, but is there any verificatia?

After winning an Emmy for the Lucy show Merv Griffin caught her backstage and asked her if she had any regrets. Hand in hand with Gary, she replied - "I should have never divorced Desi Arnaz and let down millions of Americans".

I loved your comment, [R33]! Lots of great information about old Hollywood and its history.

I'm a big fan of Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers as well (thanks TCM!)

I agree that Lucy seemed to lack what it takes to be a big success in her early career and definitely did not came across as a "future star" in any of her roles when young, which I've always found so odd.

You just don't really see the "potential" there with her (even her voice seems off) and it's hard to imagine she would come to headline something as great as "I Love Lucy" (and to be so good in it).

What do you mean about Desi not putting up with Frank Sinatra's shit? What went down between them?

I'm interested because it seems like *everyone* deferred to Frank (for right or wrong--probably wrong); even directors were afraid of him....

Is that a real quote, [R63]? If so, was she being sarcastic and "joking" or did it seem like she really meant this towards the end of her life?

In the 1960 and 1970's interviews, Lucy's comments about Desi were bitter as well as resentful. She, as her own daughter Lucie stated, was a very complicated person. At the end of his life, Lucy made all efforts to be in touch with Desi by phone and in person. The last time she visited him, she drove away telling her best friend with her that - "He was the true love of my life".

Lucy wasn't maternal and it showed in some of the ILL episodes involving little Ricky. To me, it looks like the kid is just another actor in the scene, I see no gentleness or tenderness for the kid coming from her. In fact, I think I remember "little Ricky" commenting on how cold she was to him off camera.

One of the worst episodes of ILL is her missing "the baby" on his birthday in Italy.

R57 is definitely the Lucy troll. Desilu was on autopilot during her leadership--it functioned as a rental studio and made few pilots until she hired Herb Solow to head prduction and he made stuff (perhaps deliberately) that she often didn't understand like Star Trek. Roddenberry said she had no idea what his show was about. There were other female stars on tv like Ann Sothern and Donna Reed who were much more involved with their shows before she was and Reed, in particular, was respected for her integrity.

I understand that she needed to be tough when it came to business, but that did not give her the justification for being a vile cunts toward other people.

There is a particularly cunty story from the taping of Lucy Calls the President: Viv came up to Lucy and held up two dresses, and asked, "Which one do you prefer?" Lucy replied, "What does it matter? You look like a cow in anything you wear."

It's also worth noting Viv was not well, and battling cancer.

There is a great documentary series on youtube about the history of RKO. One of the episodes is devoted to the female stars with insightful interviews from and about Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Lucy and others.

All fans of this thread should check it out. Apologies for not providing a link or even the name of the series (I've forgotten it!) but it is worth your time.

Check out these "stories" at link....amateurish for sure, but damn! I laughed so much I almost peed myself.

Of course Desi was the love of her life. She would have preferred to be married to him forever but he was a man whore. In today's world she would have just looked the other way. But not in those times. He was a loser because he had "everything" but insisted on losing it all. That's what she means by saying he was a loser.

And her kids complaining about being 2nd to her career ? - boo hoo.

Sour grapes, Lucy. Just because a man has a sexual apptite beyond your capacities does not make him a loser. She was madly in love with him for a long time, so that remark is projection.

r64 - Watch Miss Grant Takes Richmond with her and William Holden. She's really charming in it and you get a less broad Lucy character.

We have always suspected that Lucy was a sweetheart and a generou$ gentleman friend who once met her confirmed it to us.

"Ya call this hot?!!"

*splash*

Lucie Arnaz has always been candid about her mother's shortcomings, for instance she says she saw her mother laugh and joke on "the Lucy Show" when actors kept flubbing their lines and how Lucy would encourage them, but by the time "the Lucy Show" ended and on "Here's Lucy" especially Lucy would scream and yell at anyone flubbing their lines for wasting her money.

Clearly Lucy didn't enjoy being the boss and responsible and she was torn between wanting to do it or give it up and let someone else call the shots. She did that with Desi but could not with Gary."

Lucie Arnaz says the only two women who could stand up to her mother and treat her as equals were Vivian Vance and Ann Sothern.

One remarkable thing is if you listen to radio's "My Favorite Husband" the show is absolutely as funny as when it transformed into "I Love Lucy," with different actors. A lot of the scripts are by line the same. So in many ways the writing is the key. Richard Denning had more chemistry with Lucy as a married couple on "My Favorite Husband" than Lucy did with Desi on "I Love Lucy."

What R74. You're witnessing the bitterness of a woman who never got over the love of her life cheating on her.

".....and they call ME a bitch!"

She sounds hurt and conflicted when talking about him, for the most part.

I've never seen (or heard of) it before, [R75], but I'll gladly check it out. Thank you for the recommendation!👍

Lucie and Larry lived in my neighborhood when they lived in LA and their eldest son was so completely undisciplined that he was kicked out of public elementary school. Lots and lots of discipline problems but the final straw came when he hit a girl in the back with a rock in a slingshot during a parent/student night. Maybe Lucie was rebelling from too much discipline in her childhood but her son definitely could have used more of it.

t82 - I just looked but unfortunately it doesn't appear to be on Youtube. Her career was so unique. It's easy to see how she got a studio contract early on. She was beautiful and had great legs. But there were many, more classic beauties to compete with. She could be a comic wisecracker, but Ginger, Blondell, and Arden did it better. I love her in The Big Street, but dramas were never going to be her bread and butter. She couldn't sing, she could move well but wasn't a dancer. Once the hair went red and she developed and was allowed to showcase her amazing talent for physical comedy she became a huge star in an emerging new medium. From a respectable but middling career to #1.....at 40. I can't think of anyone else in entertainment with a similar trajectory.

Didn't Lucy tell Carolyn Applebee she was 33?

R84/Lucy troll: She didn't get a contract until after she'd done a couple turns at Columbia in it's poverty row days, among other places--she never tired of recalling of how she failed to get traction at a major studio early in her career. Her comic acting, no doubt, owes something to The Three Stooges, whom she regularly ran down in interviews. Her affair with Pan Berman was probably the best thing she ever did for herself.

I'm glad that no one ever held it against her that she was a whore early in her career.

It just shows how accepting and understanding show business was.

R86 is the Angela Lansbury troll who lurks in these Lucy threads.

Angela was never going to be considered for the movie version of Mame.. She didn't even want it at the time.

Let it go. Especially since if Bea Arthur had her way, she would have been Mame.

I did not know all of that r86 ....

R88: Nice try, Lucy troll, but I could care less about Lansbury. Other than "The Manchurian Candidate", I don't think I've ever seen a memorable performance of hers, although she does deserve props for giving work to hasbeens on her tv series.

Did Lucille Ball really slap a stewardess? If so, what are the details?

It was horrible r91 ! I had to get reconstructive chin surgery because of that bitch.

I thought the story was that she threw a cup of coffee in a trolley-dolly's face, angry because it wasn't hot enough :(

You can really see from OPs clip that Gary was really the love of Lucy's life. I know people like to romanticize Lucy and Desi, but you can clearly see the mutual respect, caring and tenderness that Lucy and Gary shared.

I remember seeing Lucy interviewed on the Today show after Viv died. They a clip of the two of them singing a song about friendship and Lucy broke down in sobs saying how much she loved her. They had to cut to a commercial.

r80

I still do

She was bawling because she just lost her whipping gal, R95

Lucy was always full of contradictions, she was always criticizing 70s TV as being to focused on sex with no real content but she loved "Three's Company." Lucie Arnaz would laugh when she'd talk about how her mother didn't like nepotism.

She hated everyone else's nepotism for getting in her way as a skank outta upstate NY.

Of course she had to embrace her own nepotism later on as payback.

The cunt was much closer to Dick Nixon than Lucy Ricardo...

Ugh. She would have gone the way of Ginger Rogers if not for "loser" Arnaz. I think what he really wanted to lose was her:

"With Ball, Arnaz founded Desilu Productions. At that time, most television programs were broadcast live, and as the largest markets were in New York, the rest of the country received only kinescope images. Karl Freund, Arnaz's cameraman, and even Arnaz himself have been credited with the development of the multiple-camera setup production style using adjacent sets in front of a live audience that became the standard for subsequent situation comedies. The use of film enabled every station around the country to broadcast high-quality images of the show. Arnaz was told that it would be impossible to allow an audience onto a sound stage, but he worked with Freund to design a set that would accommodate an audience, allow filming, and adhere to fire and safety codes.

Network executives considered the use of film an unnecessary extravagance. Arnaz convinced them to allow Desilu to cover all additional costs associated with filming, under the stipulation that Desilu owned and controlled all rights to the film. Arnaz pushed the network to allow them to show Ball pregnant. According to Arnaz, the CBS network told him, "You cannot show a pregnant woman on television."

Lucy was said to be devastated after Desi's death. He was the great love of her life, they just didn't have a good marriage. She had a good marriage to Gary, but it wasn't the deep love and passion like she had for Desi. Their last words to each other were "I love you."

This was already a thread, but Gary Morton disapproved.

Anybody got any hot pics of Desi naked? That's all I care about. Pinga.

Great stories, [R100] and [R101]! Thank you so much for posting!

I didn't realize that Desi was so much of a television and business pioneer and visionary or that he and Lucy didn't remain forever estranged (on a communication basis) after the divorce. I'm glad to hear both of those things.

Lucy was God awful unfunny without Desi. Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show is an exercise in loud and stupid. Hammed up guest stars and the idea that at 60 Lucy is still a 'girl'. Catherine O'Hara brilliantly parodied her on SCTV.

Stewardess to Tallulah: Would you like some of our TWA coffee?

Tallulah: "No, but I'd love some of your TWA Tea"!

Lucy & Desi needed each other. They were like peanut butter and jelly, you couldn't really have one without the other (you technically could, but it just wasn't the same). Obviously, Gary Morton did not approve.

r105 - Some of The Lucy Shows with Vivian do compare favorably to I Love Lucy. Most noticeably the roof antenna and installing the shower episodes.

Perfectly accurate likeness:

Mysteries and Scandals episode on Desi.

Lucy cheated Desi out of his share of Desilu. He sold it for a few pestatas which he undoubtedly spent on diseased infected whores.

That is why they called him Diseasi Arnaz

[quote] Was she bald underneath that wig?

Worse: her scalp had practically eroded from constant exposure to toxic chemicals.

He sold it for PESTATAS? Well, he definitely WAS cheated then!

Ask Carole Cook about Gary Morton.

SOB.

She clearly said Desi was brilliant & a hard worker & pioneer in the medium of television. But he happened to be someone who had to undermine himself. In those days, psychotherapy wasn’t very helpful. Lucille Ball had faith in Desi & saw him as the brilliant person he was when others didn’t. He betrayed her & swore he wouldn’t do it again & she believed him and he did it again. He lost their money and they were going to lose everything they’d built. They worked very hard & did what they did better than anyone else did, and then he destroyed it all. She was devastated & like anyone who doesn’t gamble, she couldn’t understand it.

Her keeping Desilu productions was keeping what they’d built alive. She didn’t want it to die. I guess it’s like not wanting your child to die even after it’s been in a car accident has been brain dead for years. It’s something sick, but you can’t let it go. I figure that’s what she saw Desi as being....sick, but she didn’t want him to die. She wanted him to recover & to be what she knew he could be, but he never did. That’s why she was bitter. He wore her out but she still cared for him & ultimately had to face that he didn’t have the ability to change, no matter what. She had to face reality & reality sucked.

That would make me bitter.

Bump

[quote] "I thought Desi was considered a pretty hot pinga!"

R8 He was, but only from time to time. Penicillin to care of it.

All of the interviews and talk show appearances of Lucy that I remember seeing were from the latter part of her life, when she always came across as extremely bitter and highly unpleasant. I wonder if, in her younger years, she at least made an effort to be pleasant and engaging in interviews. I'll have to see if I can find some to check on that. Anyway, I've always found is fascinating, if very hard to watch, that she presented as a total bitch in all those latter-day appearances. I GUESS you could give her points for honesty, but really, what does a beloved performer gain by behaving that way in interviews?

R118 well, Desi advised her against talk show appearances because the real Lucy was so many light years away from her tv persona

R119, if that's true, that's all the more fascinating, and it's even more evidence of how smart he was.

*took care of it

Apologies. Right before I typed that, I'd just taken a bite of one of my warm, freshly-made sticky buns, and was overwhelmed with its delicious aroma and flavor. I don't eat much sugar, but when I do, I make it count.

It was worse for me--I married a cunt.

Lucie didn't "trash" her mother on Joan Rivers, R46. It wasn't news to anyone that she was a tough, lonely old broad. Lucie was honest about her and their relationship without being disrespectful, it's actually a great interview. She doesn't mention disciplinary problems with her kids but she does address her own failings as a parent and other emotional issues resulting from her parents' dysfunction.

Lucy apparently was going to divorce Desi a few years after their marriage in the early 1940s because of his behavior with other women while he was touring the country, so she knew early on what she was getting. It's also said she demanded that Desi play her husband on ILL, which may have been to keep Desi local so she could keep an eye on him. Luckily for her, Desi turned out to be a talented television producer. But I suspect that Desi couldn't resist his proclivities, and then his drinking may have increased to the point he couldn't function well enough. In some ways, it's a very sad story, because they were co-dependent on each other, and Lucy has said she had to end it for the children’s sake. I think many people have been in the situation of having a loved one in your life who was not good for you.