Lucille Ball makes comedy out of tragedy as accidents can
and do happen to her in television, the movies and at home.

Standing around a television stage one day, Lucille
Ball burst into flames. Investigation later provided a
rational explanation for this odd behavior. But the wonder
is that anyone bothered to investigate at all - Lucille being
the kind or a girl she is. Accidents come natural to Lucille.

"The trouble with Lucy," a friend of hers once sighed,
"is that her real life is so much like her reel life."

That troubles have their own reward can be seen in
I Love Lucy (CBS, Mon. 9 pm, EDT), television's reel
version of the married life of Lucille and Desi Arnaz,
her handsome bandleader husband.

There has never been a divorce between the public and
private lives of the Arnazes, and their TV comedy is no
exception. The program makes the most of their extravagant
devotion and their extraordinary ability to find humor in any
situation. The combination has resulted in TV's most
popular program.

Both Lucille and Desi like practical jokes and the seltzer dousing
and pie smearing they administer on I Love Lucy is not too
remote from the horseplay that goes on in their home. "I betcha"
is a household phrase at the Arnazes, as well as the theme
of many of their TV skits. Desi says modern women haven't
the spunk of their grandmothers. Or Lucy insists males gossip
more than females. Inevitably they make a bet, and the
program revolves around comic situations that result when
each strives to win.

The couple's biggest real gamble was the chance they took
on television. Between them, they gave up a half million
dollars in yearly earnings from movie, radio and Desi's
band engagements to make the plunge They formed the
Desilu Productions which owns and produces I Love Lucy
because adding up income was becoming meaningless
While they were making a lot of money, a good part of it
was rolling out in taxes. And their double career was making
a relay race of their marriage. As Lucy tells it: "Desi was
driving home from a band date when I was getting up to go to
the studio for a day's work - and that's a dull way to live, brother."

On TV, they work together four days a week and have
week ends at home with their baby girl,
Lucie Desiree, born last July. The pay isn't bad either.
For their CBS series, their sponsor, Phillip Morris, pays them
$30,000 a week, out of which Lucille and Desi pay the other
expenses. Their net take-home pay averages between $5000
and $7000 a week. Since the program is on film, each show
represents an investment.

"Figure it out for yourself," says Desi. "A half-hour TV
show will bring in $100,000. We're doing 39 shows a year
which we can release and run indefinitely."

One-Doughnut Lucille

There was a time when Lucille didn't have a nickel
for a cup of coffee. She was 17 years old and looking for
a job on Broadway. During this period she was dining only
when she could find a "one-doughnut man." "This," she
explains, "is a guy who sits at a counter and orders doughnuts
and coffee. He drinks his coffee, eats one doughnut and puts
down a nickel tip. I'd do a fast slide onto his stool, yell for a
cup of coffee, pay for it with his nickel and eat the other
doughnut."

In the midst of poverty, Lucille met with tragedy. She had
recurring pains in her leg and went to a doctor. He told her:
"In a matter of weeks, you may he paralyzed for life." Alone
and without money, she went to the hospital as a charity patient.
There, she cashed in on her willingness to gamble. She
volunteered to be a guinea pig for a new serum. The experiment
ultimately was a success, and, after three years of bed, crutches
and cane, she was displaying her legs for the chorus line.

A chance encounter with another chorus girl started her on
a career. Exchanging trade gossip, the acquaintance told Lucille
that one of the show girls scheduled to fly to California to be in
Eddie Cantor's movie, Roman Scandals, had decided not to go.
"They have to find another girl in a rush," she said. "They've
got one," Lucille replied and she hurried over to the casting
office and was hired.

For a long time, Lucille's beauty labeled her a show girl and
she was classified with the scenery. In the movies, she was
forever languidly floating down stairways in sparkling gowns
and feathers. Her friend Carole Lombard - with whom she is
often compared - introduced Lucille to Damon Runyon. He
suggested her for the feminine lead in The Big Street. That,
her natural talent and Walter Winchell's column bouquets
helped boost Lucille to stardom.

But even a star over the dressing room didn't ward off accidents.
During the filming of one movie, The Fuller Brush Girl, she had
enough mishaps for quintuplets. She sprained both wrists
(wrestling), displaced six vertebrae (falling from a fence onto
a clothesline), pulled a muscle in her legs (walking with
ankles bent, imitating a drunk). On the final day of shooting,
she had a bad cold (from a wine drenching of three days). She
had agreed to stop for a publicity picture on her way home to
demonstrate a free-to-the-public X-ray machine. While she was
posing, the X-ray technician gasped: "Pardon me, Miss Ball,
the X-ray shows you have pneumonia. Did you know?" Miss Ball
didn't. She was taken straight to the hospital. Television is not
without its accidents, either. During a rehearsal of I Love Lucy, she
set fire to her dress with a cigaret but continued with the scene.
"It was right in the middle of a good rehearsal and I was afraid to
stop." she explains. Luckily, another member of the cast noticed
the smouldering fabric and had no such compunction. Another
time, the script called for a running leap toward Desi. She jumped,
missed him and ricocheted 15 feet. Bruised, she got up and
re-did the scene.

Love-in-the-Limelight

Lucille and Desi have always enjoyed a "love-in-the-limelight"
romance. Their courtship and wedding were as private as a movie
premiere. They long have considered themselves in the public domain
and apparently make every effort to remain there. The only attempt
they ever made to shun publicity was during a flare-up and a
brief separation which followed.

"Lucy and Desi melt into each other's arms every time they see a
photographer," a Hollywood observer commented. "Yet it's not an
act. They're truly in love."

It's logical, therefore, that a Cuban revolution should have played
a part in bringing Desi and Lucille together - eventually. Young
Desi left Cuba with his parents after the revolution. He went to
school in Florida and later became a sensation for his Latin
American music and singing. His soft accent added an extra
something to his rumba. He met Lucille on the set of his first movie,
Too Many Girls. Of their meeting, he says "I thought, what a hunk
of woman." She reports, "He brought out my maternal instinct."

After a seven month courtship, conducted in Hollywood night clubs,
Desi proposed to Lucille midnight on November 30, 1940 in New York.
They eloped at once to Greenwich, CT.

-END-

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