Ball of fire : the tumultuous life and comic art of Lucille Ball

A portrait of the comic icon discusses her lonely childhood, discovery of her comedic talents, marriage to and divorce from Desi Arnaz, runaway success on the "I Love Lucy" show, and her painful final years. Abstract: A portrait of the comic icon discusses her lonely childhood, discovery of her comedic talents, marriage to and divorce from Desi Arnaz, runaway success on the "I Love Lucy" show, and her painful final years For more than fifty years Lucille Ball has been television's most recognizable and beloved face. As Lucy Ricardo she was the ultimate screwball housewife, getting herself into and out of scrapes with unmatched comic finesse. Indeed, she was so funny, and so central to the cultural landscape, that we often overlook Ball's role in shaping that as producer of her own show and a cofounder of a major studio, she was a pioneer, rewriting the rules and forging new paths for women in the boardroom and on the sound stage. In Ball of Fire , Stefan Kanfer goes beyond the icon to examine the difficult life and enduring work of the most influential woman in modern American comedy. Kanfer traces the arc of her career from its unlikely beginnings in a lonely and desolate childhood in upstate New York. There she discovered that making people laugh could ease the pains of a fragmented family life. But she was more than amusing. She was also beautiful, and when Lucy's adolescent attempts to crack Broadway ended in failure, she became a runway model and on a fluke, journeyed out to California to be an extra in one film. That led to another, and another, and another bottom-of-the-bill movie, until she became, in her own words, "The Queen of the B's". Ball of Fire tracks Lucy's pursuit of the superstardom that eluded her on the big screen and follows the actress through a series of disappointing affairs and sorrows until she meets a Cuban conga drummer six years her junior, and falls headlong in love with Desi Arnaz. Working with her husband, Lucille Ball becomes a different kind of comic artist in a program called I Love Lucy , the show that is still running in more than eighty countries around the globe. Taking us through the development of television both as technology and cultural phenomenon, Kanfer chronicles the difficult birth of the sitcom that changed the world. He details the early executive meetings, the rocky first productions, the shaky first weeks and the unpredicted triumph. We see all of Lucy's behind-the-scenes battles for creative control of the show; her surprising confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee when it was discovered that she had once registered to vote as a Communist; her groundbreaking on-air pregnancy; and a series of in-depth analyses of the classic scenes and Chaplinesque slapstick that guarantee her a permanent place in the pantheon of American comedy. Finally, we see the aftermath of her hard-won the turbulent marriage and painful split from Desi, the man she never stopped loving; her second marriage; and her sad last years out of the limelight and away from the applause. This is the first biography to examine the legendary Lucille Ball in all her many her personal struggles and the torments that forged a comic genius; and, at last, her posthumous influence on television comedy, on feminist scholars and cultural critics, and on the public at large. Ball of Fire is the definitive biography Lucy fans have been waiting for. As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, “queen of the B-pluses.” But on the small screen she was a superstar–arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the roots of Lucy’s genius and places it in the context of her conflicted and sometimes bitter personal life. Ball of Fire gives us Lucy in all her contradictions. Here is the beauty who became a master of knock-down slapstick; the control freak whose comic alter ego thrived on chaos, the worshipful TV housewife whose real marriage ended in public disaster. Here, too, is an intimate view of the dawn of television and of the America that embraced it. Charming, informative, touching. and laugh-out-loud funny, this is the book Lucy’s fans have been waiting for. Content: Why Lucy? Why now? -- A little world out of nothing -- "This girl's fulla hell" -- "Jesus, what energy!" -- "I'll call you Dizzy" -- "The hair is brown but the soul is on fire" -- "How can you conceive on the telephone?" -- "How can I possibly sell this?" -- "Lucy is enceinte" -- "The only thing red is the hair" -- "Why can't I be happy?" -- "From Cuban to Reuben" -- "What are you trying to do, ruin my career?" -- "Tough, very tough" -- "You think it's funny getting old" -- A Marx sister. For more than 50 years Lucille Ball has been television's most recognizable and beloved face. In this biography, author Stefan Kanfer goes beyond the icon to examine the difficult life and enduring work of the most influential woman in modern American comedy Stefan Kanfer. This Is A Borzoi Book. -- T.p.verso. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [321]-342) And Index.