Was Lucille Ball Really a Communist?
Thoughts on the tragedies, acumen, and controversy of a true American icon
I recently subscribed to Fox Nation for a one-week trial after an advertisement caught my eye for a special event on a true American icon, Lucille Ball. As a child, re-runs of I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show entertained my family many nights. I suppose one cannot be disappointed at the quality of the aforementioned special event itself — sure, Lucille Ball was a zany redhead whose physical talent is unsurpassed, especially in these days of runaway entertainment inflation. But below that henna-soaked mop was a woman built on a tragic foundation that prepared her for the pinnacle of success.
The Fox Nation special seemed canned, though not any more predictable than the plethora of Ball remembrances that fuel American nostalgia, complete with clips from the chocolate factory and wine vat. Other aspects of Lucille Ball’s life warrant remembering as well, and here are a few aspects I believe fuelled her desire to make us laugh.
The childhood tragedies that set her back
Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, on August 6, 1911. Her father, a telephone lineman, died in 1915, leaving Lucille and her mother Desiree alone with Desiree’s father and mother, Fred and Flora Belle Hunt. For a time, Lucille’s mother was remarried to a Mr. Peterson. As a child, Lucille was sent to live with her Swedish step-grandparents, an experience she recounts in her autobiography, Love, Lucy: “Nothing had ever prepared me for such hard, sour, cheerless people” as her step-grandparents. “Nothing in this life was ever to be enjoyed, only endured.”
Nothing in this life was ever to be enjoyed, only endured.
After reuniting with her mother, Lucille would develop into an ambitious young woman. An aborted attempt at drama school at the age of 15 would leave Lucille struggling to find the next-best way to stardom. (On the other hand, Lucille’s classmate, Bette Davis, figured out how to make drama school work.)
Tragedy struck the family again in July 1927, when Lucille’s brother Fred received a .22-caliber rifle for his birthday. One of the neighbor onlookers, Warner Erickson, was called home by his notoriously strict mother, who punished him for the slightest infraction. Without warning, Warner suddenly ran through the range of Fred’s rifle as the trigger was pulled: “Warner darted in the direction of his home, right in front of the rifle. The ground went off and Warner fell spread-eagled to the ground, into the lilac bushes.” A judgment of $4,000 was eventually entered against Lucille’s grandfather for the accident, bankrupting the family and forcing them to sell their home.
Lucille’s family did not lose much during the Clutch Plague, having been vanquished before the 1929 stock market crash by the Erickson judgment. In fact, the late 1920s seemed promising for upstart Lucille, until rheumatoid arthritis rendered her bedridden. For over two years, Lucille was dependent on medical treatments, requiring intense physical therapy and experimental therapies including horse serum injections: “I was a guinea pig who survived.”
Upon recovering from her convalescence, Lucille again departed Jamestown for New York City in search of work. It was in New York when she was given her chance to go to Hollywood in the summer of 1933, where she would work and live the rest of her life.
“I don’t know how to tell a joke”
The most important aspect of Lucille Ball’s life is that she persisted until she succeeded in what she loved to do. The tragic aspects of her past fuelled this passionate desire to succeed. “I’m known among comediennes as a stunt girl who will do anything,” Lucille proclaimed in her autobiography. “Perhaps my willingness to be knocked off a twenty-foot pedestal or shot down a steamship funnel goes back to my earliest, happiest days with my father. I knew he was going to catch me; I wasn’t going to get hurt.”
From an early age, Lucille was exposed to comedic talent through silent films. Among her favorites was The Perils of Pauline, a silent film serial starring comedienne Pearl White (notable for doing her own stunts). Buster Keaton was another favorite: Years later, Keaton director Ed Sedgwick would work on I Love Lucy.
Lucille got her “golden ticket” to Hollywood as a ‘Goldwyn Girl,’ a sort of musical stock of female characters, of which there were troops recruited from around the country for annual MGM mega-productions. Lucille was drafted for Roman Scandals, starring Eddie Cantor. In an effort to avoid starvation, Lucille quickly adapted to becoming her own stunt girl. The displays of humor won her no plaudits at MGM. However, she did get a contract with Columbia Pictures, where she was cast in a short film serial with The Three Stooges in “Three Little Pigskins” — her first big break into the world of comedy. Later in the 1930s, Lucille would move to RKO Pictures and appear with The Marx Brothers in Room Service.
Although enjoying success in comedies, Lucille could not achieve A-list stardom. By the end of the 1940s, Lucille had starred in a string of several feature-length comedy films. The most notable included Her Husband’s Affairs with Franchot Tone, Miss Grant Takes Richmond with William Holden, The Fuller Brush Girl with Eddie Albert, and two with Bob Hope: Sorrowful Jones, and Fancy Pants. By 1950, Lucille was aging and seeking to settle down with her husband, Desi Arnaz, when CBS approached her about an opportunity on the nascent medium of television.
I’m not funny. I don’t think funny.
Despite her talent, Lucille insisted throughout her life that she was limited. “I’m not funny. I don’t think funny.” She credited most of her success to her writers; writer Bob Carroll, Jr., recounted that there was no higher compliment from Lucille than her exclaiming, “Who writes this shit?” Perhaps this lack of recognition of her own talent was linked to her tragic earlier times. One Los Angeles Times profile at the height of Lucille’s success ran under the headline Lucille Ball Unhappy About Her Top TV Rating: “I’d rather someone else be at the top of the pile. That way one can’t get pushed off.” Despite her fear of success, I Love Lucy surged to the top of the ratings pile and remained throughout its run.
The business acumen behind the hair and makeup
After a string of successful feature-length comedies and a radio program on CBS, executives approached Lucille about doing a weekly program on television. Sensing an opportunity to settle down and start a family with Desi, Lucille jumped at the chance to venture onto the new medium. Her first requirement for any show, however, was a major sticking point early on: she insisted that her real husband play her husband on television. Executives balked at the prospect.
She knew better than the executives on how to appeal to the public, and the offer of a show on CBS allowed her to prove it. For her new television program, she had specific demands for studio executives. First, she wanted to film before a live audience. She also wanted Karl Freund to be the cinematographer for her new show. Another important demand was to do the show from her home in Los Angeles — unheard of in 1951, when virtually all television was broadcast live (usually from New York). And when it came to the show itself, she and Desi agreed to pay for the increase in production costs, provided they, and not CBS, owned the rights to the film. Executives approved — Who would even want the rights to a show once it was broadcast?
To appeal to the public, Lucille and Desi formed Desilu Productions and booked a string of vaudeville-style performances in clubs and auditoriums across the United States. The one-hour act was critically acclaimed. Variety deemed the act “top fare for vaude houses and niteries.” CBS executives knew when to give up on resisting Lucille and Desi’s demands, and by the spring of 1951, I Love Lucy was in production.
Little did studio executives know that a year later Lucille’s pregnancy would necessitate primetime television’s first “re-run,” a phenomenon which would spawn syndication and residual income after the show was broadcast. Lucille and Desi would later sell the show back to CBS and use the proceeds to purchase the former RKO Pictures studio, from which Desilu would continue to create programs for years to come.
Among the shows produced by Desilu included all of the Lucy productions, The Untouchables starring Robert Stack, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix. Hardcore “Trekkies” no doubt know the value Lucille saw in Gene Roddenberry’s project Star Trek, even though the series concept garnered little interest from other producers. After an original pilot for the series flopped, Lucille ordered a second pilot to be produced, which she financed, over the objection of the Desilu Board of Directors.
Other creators filmed at the Desilu lot in partnership with Desilu, leading to additional hits such as The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons, The Dick Van Dyke Show, My Favorite Martian, Hogan’s Heroes, and That Girl. Lucille sold the company to Gulf+Western in 1967 and would continue to work under a new corporate entity, Lucille Ball Productions.
When Bob Hope once quipped that he thought they were watching episodes of I Love Lucy in heaven, Lucille responded, “Well if they are, they're not paying for them!”
Registering to vote as a Communist
Lucille Ball hit the peak of popularity in her career at the same time as the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings were examining Communist links to Hollywood. Several Hollywood performers and professionals, notably the “Hollywood Ten,” were prohibited from further work in the profession after scrutiny from the congressional committee.
In the fall of 1953, the House committee uncovered a voter registration application from 1936. The application was for “Miss Lucile D Ball” (sic), living at the same address she lived in at the time, registering to vote as a member of the Communist Party. With filming of the third season of I Love Lucy set to begin, mishandling this public relations nightmare could have seen the show canceled.
In an effort to diffuse the Red controversy when warming up the audience that evening, Desi exclaimed about his wife that her hair was “the only thing Red about her, and even that’s not legitimate!” With the introduction, Lucille emerged, and the crowd roared. In 1953, this meant Lucille was too big to fail.
Lucille and Desi arranged a press conference to explain the evidence of her association with the Reds. Lucille explained that in those days, “it was almost as terrible to be a Republican.” She added that she had voted for Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the previous election in 1952.
Throughout her life, Lucille remained relatively apolitical, aside from the occasional references to outside politicians. One such joke is a throwaway line targeting Harry and Bess Truman in the first season I Love Lucy episode, “Ricky Asks for a Raise.” In her autobiography, Lucille observed in herself “a strong conservative, Puritan streak,” and proclaimed, “I’m the most conservative member of my family.” It was for her grandfather, “a progressive and a free-thinker,” that she registered as a Communist. Lucille swore to the House committee that she had never knowingly aided the Communist Party, aside from placating her grandfather’s many requests for room in the garage to organize with friends.
Most people who know of Lucille Ball of her as the typecast ditzy redhead who always got into trouble with neighbor Ethel in thirty-minute bits of beginning-to-middle-to-happy-ending sitcom nirvana. We celebrate and remember the humor and entertainment she and her costars left for us to enjoy. Like all memorable characters, Lucille Ball exists more as a character in our hearts than as a human and an American icon. Fox Nation joined the litany of those celebrating her career as a comedienne. I hope that these thoughts shed light on her raw comedic talent and the reservoir of tragedy from which it was mined.
