An Old Timey Podcast - 6: Lucille Ball’s No Good Very Bad Childhood (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Lucille Ball was a legendary comedian. She was a studio executive. Together with her real-life husband, Lucy created the modern sitcom. …but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In this episode, we’ll focus on Lucy’s tumultuous childhood and the years she spent struggling to get into showbusiness. Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from: The book, “Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball” by Kathleen Brady “The Plot Thickens” podcast from turner classic movies American Masters episode, “Finding Lucy”  Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts! Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes for Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso. And I'm local John Brown expert, Norman Caruso. John Brown, I've never heard of her. On this week's episode, I'll be talking about Lucille Ball. Oh, this is such a surprise to me. I had no idea you were going to talk about Lucille Ball.

I've been talking about it for weeks. Yeah, it's not like you've been. hinting at it or talking to me about it for weeks. I've been telling. You've been full on disrobing. What? Well, you know, I do disrobe every now and then, but not when I talk about Lucille Ball. I'm always fully clothed when I talk about her.

I love her. I'm obsessed with her. But Norman, you're jumping the gun, my friend. Oh. Right now, yeah, right now what we need to do is we need to talk about our Patreon. Oh, this is how we live. It is how we live. Everyone, if you want to hear a really good story from Norman Caruso,

join our Patreon at the $5 level or higher. He's doing this month's bonus episode. Yes, I'm very excited about it. He's been really giggly and weird about it. I have a theory about what he's covering. Don't say anything. I'm not allowed to say anything. Nope.

Nope. Okay. Don't say your suspicions. I want to be a complete surprise for everybody. But I guarantee you'll have a ball of a time. Oh. Listening to it. Hmm.

Okay. Anyway, and watching it because at the $5 level on Patreon, they also get the video. Yeah. Of the bonus episode. Yeah, for five bucks, you get a full podcast video. Can you believe it? You'd be a full not to sign up. So we welcome the people who do sign up and we insult the people who don't sign up.

That's how you get them in the door. That's what we do in this. biz. Also, this coming week, we're doing a live stream on YouTube. Yeah, I'm not sure what we're going to do this time, but last live stream, we watched the 1988 National Aerobics Championship. Why not? Why wouldn't you do that? It was a lot of fun. So I'm thinking we might do like 90s commercials, 80s and 90s commercials. Yes. Yeah, I think that'd be fun. So anyway, Yeah, head on over to our Patreon. It's patreon.com slash old-timey podcast.

Don't smile at me like that. You have no confidence in this URL. I really don't. You know, just Google it. You'll find it. It's there. It's Patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Okay, all right.

Yeah, there we go. Okay, you know what? I'm bringing the meat today. Okay? I can't be bothered to know the URL to our own Patreon because I am bringing quite the story, my friend. Okay. I'm excited to learn more.

I really don't know a lot about Lucille Ball, minus her famous sitcom I love Lucy. Yeah, I think it's kind of a crime that you don't know more. But don't you worry. Shall I be arrested? You shall be arrested. And your punishment, sir, will be to listen to me talk about Lucille Ball for a very, very long time. Folks, if you think we talked a lot about John Brown, just wait till you hear me talk about Lucille Ball. I'm thinking three episodes for sure.

Oh. Maybe four? Four seems like too many. I had no idea. It seems like too many. I don't want people to complain, you know. So I'm going for three. We're shooting for three.

First, some shoutouts. Turner Classic Movies has an amazing podcast. It's called The Plot Thickens. And I believe it was their first season. They did all about the life of Lucille Ball. Amazing podcast. But also for this episode, I pulled a lot from the book Lucille, colon, the life of Lucille Ball by Kathleen Brady.

Excellent book. Lucille's colon, got it. No, so far, her colon has not been mentioned once, but it is in the title, and you know, you got to say when there's a colon in a title. Does the colon have anything to do with, like, poop? The butt? Yeah. Well, I had a colonoscopy, so yeah, it does, right?

Yeah, what are you talking about? Do you not know what the colon is? I really don't know what the colon does. My God. You know, maybe this should be the bonus episode. You're just telling us about the colon. And it's really just an excuse for you to learn more about the human body. We got a lot of parts in our body.

I can't be knowing everything about everything. All right. Well, there we go. One day I'll tell the story of when I got a colonoscopy at the age of 22. Yeah, that doctor was nuts. Yeah, I think that was like a way to get some insurance money. I don't think I really needed a colonoscopy. Or to go looking up your butthole.

Or they wanted to just look up my butthole. Let's hope that he just wanted money. My God. Yeah. It was an older lady doctor. Maybe she was just very attracted to me. You think that the fact that she was an older lady doctor? Sexy times.

Oh, okay. I'm glad we got my dad involved. She may have been into me. Okay, great. Well, we know she got into you. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Oh, here we go. Oh, cue up the soundboard.

I'm going to start us off with a mistake of shame. Really? Mistakes of shame. You know, your last mistakes of shame, you denied everything. I didn't make a mistake. You tried to say I made a mistake. I did not make a mistake. History hoes.

Rally up. Get her. No. I'm going to start by admitting to a mistake of shame that I made on, well, I'm about to make on this very episode. You haven't even made the mistake. mistake yet. I'm in the process. This whole episode's a mistake, really, is what I'm about to tell you. Great. Okay. When I decided to cover the life of legendary comedian Lucille Ball, I thought that I was going to lighten things up a bit, Norman, because I don't know if you know this, but an old-timey podcast is only five episodes deep, and yet we have talked about slavery in every ding- dang one of them. Oh yeah, we have

Keep the streak alive No, no An old time slavery podcast No, thank you Did we talk about slavery In the hippos Bonus episode? No, but that's a bonus episode

I'm just talking about For the people who are just listening To the regular feed They might be thinking Do they only cover slavery And I was like, I'm going to show them Well, we were going to Until you decided to cover Lucille Ball

So When I decided to cover Lucille Lucille Ball, I thought that I was choosing a topic that, you know, for one, would not include slavery and fun fact, it doesn't. So I nailed it. And two, I also thought that if I covered one of the funniest people in the history of comedy that her life story would make for like some really fun episodes, just a hoot and a half the whole time.

Boy, was I wrong. Comedians are usually troubled souls, Kristen. So this is no surprise to me. No, it shouldn't have been a surprise to me either. Like, this is just the stereotype of comedians that they're, you know, they've had terrible childhood and blah, blah, blah. Somehow it was a surprise to me, though, because I was like, I will cover Lucille Ball and save the day. And here I am. Mistakes of shame.

This is going to be a bit of a bummer. Tell you what, let's play a game. It's called the Six Degrees of Separation of Slavery. we will somehow connect Lucille Ball to slavery. Okay, well, I can already do it, and that's the problem. Oh, so we can talk about slavery in this episode. Anyway, it's a role she played in a movie. Don't worry about it.

Okay. Stick around, dear listener. The story of Lucille Ball's life is fascinating. It's unbelievable. And yes, I'm sorry, it's sad at times. But there's no turning back because I'm obsessed with Lucille Ball, and I have been since I was a little girl. I'm very excited to tell this story.

You watched a lot of old-timey shows as a kid. I did. Because you love the Andy Griffith show, too. Well, that's an excellent program, Norman. I'm not liking your SaaS. Okay, that's a good show. And I will have you know that watching I Love Lucy reruns did wonderful things to my brain chemistry, sir.

Okay. Ooh, serotonin. She was funny. She was physical. She was over the top. She made big faces and goofy noises. She did whatever she needed to do for a laugh. She was a performer, baby.

Yeah, definitely. She was pretty, but her goal was never to just be pretty. Her goal was to entertain. And for the folks who don't know much about her, you should know that Lucille Ball had the biggest success of her career in her 40s, when she and her real life husband invented the modern sitcom. So suck on that, everyone. In her 40s?

It's true. So she was basically on her deathbed when she made I Love Lucy. So many television staples that we have today were invented by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. You... Anyway. I'm excited to learn more. Yeah. I'm a curious history, ho.

Well, good. I like to experiment with my history. Well, I don't know what the hell that means, but I do know. Oh. No, go ahead. What were you going to say? I really wasn't sure where I was going to go with that. So you just keep doing your episode.

You're welcome, everyone. I stopped him before that got weird. Yeah, I have to get used to, like, I'm reacting now. Yeah. I'm used to telling the story. So this is. I bet you wish there was more John Brown stuff to say. I could have kept going.

Oh, my God. No, I loved the John Brown stuff. Thank you. And you gave me a much-needed mental break when my podcast ended and you like, Jesus took the wheel. Norman took the wheel on this one. I hugged you from behind and said, I've got this queen. Yes.

And we are all grateful for that. Yeah. No, I had a blast. But now I am I am ready to react and learn about Lucille Ball. Okay. So one of the things I love about Lucy and Desi is that they were two people who, although they were actually married in real life, no network executive wanted to cast them as husband and wife because, according to network executives, no one would ever believe that a good all American white girl would marry a Cuban American man. But I guess those network executives can go shit in a hat because people did believe it. And they loved it.

If you're shitting in a hat, maybe you need a colonoscopy. That's true. There's something wrong with my butt. Together, Lucy and Desi created that world and insisted on that world. And it became one of the best, funniest sitcoms in television history. They were brilliant together They were horrible together Oh

More on that later Yeah, no A little toxic Well, you know Some things don't go great But I'd argue that they were mostly Brilliant together Lucille Ball would go on to get

Two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Two, count them two Norm Wait, you can get two stars on the Walk of Fame Apparently she got one for TV and one for motion pictures Why don't they just give one and then put little symbols on the one? I feel like you could save a lot of space that way. I agree. Hollywood Walk of Fame, if you're listening, that's a free idea from us to you.

You have a little TV icon if you were on TV and then a little camera if you were in film. And then a little thumbs up if you were on YouTube. So if you're watching Hollywood Walk of Fame people, you know, maybe think of Think of Norman Caruso, the gaming historian. Yeah. What a great idea. Lucille Ball would be inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She'd get countless awards, countless honors.

But this episode, Sir, is about the time period before Lucy became one of the most famous people on Earth. In this episode of, you know, what I'm thinking is going to be a three-part series, we're going to focus on her childhood and her struggle to make it in Hollywood. Yeah, that kind of sums up what this episode's going to be. We rarely use the trombone, but it seemed appropriate. Buckle up! We're going back in time. So this is this going to be a... Hey, I'm going to try to keep it light.

Okay, light and fluffy, like a crispy cream donut. Let's go. You know, it's kind of like whipped cream at a funeral. I don't know. Whip cream at a funeral? It's like it's sad, but someone brought whipped cream. I don't know. No one has ever been like, oh, thank God. Someone brought whipped cream to this funeral.

I'm just trying to say, this episode's going to be kind of sad, but I'm doing my best, damn it. It was such a wonderful man. All right, let's go. Picture it. Jamestown, New York, 1911. Old-timey. Mm-hmm. James Town was kind of a funny place.

The population was small, like four. 43,000 people, but it wasn't a typical small town. It sounds like a pretty big city. Well, yeah, to a country bumpkin like yourself. But some of us grew up in Johnson County, Kansas. Oh. You said it with a perfect Johnson County accent, too. Thank you.

My whole home is beige. James Town was home to a lot of history, and for a really long time, it was known as the furniture capital of the world. Holy canola. That's right. People would come to Jamestown from all over the world to shop for furniture, which I realize now I didn't need to say. Furniture Capital of the world really just sums that up. Anyhow.

You can't buy it here. You can just look. You just look. The population would swell up quite a bit in the summertime because it was a little touristy and cute and out of the way. Jamestown was also home to some pretty major inventions. Oh, let's hear them. You ever heard of the Crescent Rent? Yes. Mm-hmm. Love, I have a few crescent wretches.

Well, don't brag to the people. Sorry. Also, the automatic lever voting machine, which, you know, it was a thing for a while. It was a big deal for a long time. Don't. Sounds like a slot machine. It does kind of. Who am I voting for?

Grover, Cleveland. All right. All right. So Jamestown was this mix of big and small where you could live. live in a small town but get a taste for what it might be like to be part of something bigger. Big and small, short and tall. We got them all. James Town, y'all. Wow. Well done, sir. That's where Lucille Ball was born in August of 1911. By that point, her parents, Henry and Dede, had been married for about a year. They were both young. Dede was 18. Henry was 23. And they stayed in

Jamestown for about a year after Lucy was born. And then they up and moved to Montana. Okay. Why? Okay. So thank you, sir. Yes. Why? Well, no one's just like, you know, let's just move to Montana. Right. Especially in 1912 when all your family's in Jamestown, New York. Yeah. So why Montana? Well, first of all, I want to say that like every source just throws this fact out there and we're just supposed to be like, okay, sure, naturally. We've all gone from Jamestown to Montana. It happens all the time. But the book Lucille, colon, the life of Lucille Ball, actually tells you why they did that. And personally, I think it's well worth the tangent. But boy, is it a tangent.

So here we go. Okay. Okay. In 1865. Oh, Jesus. No, you have to hear this. I think it's the only way to make this make sense. Okay.

In 1865, Lucy's great-grandfather on her dad's side got, like, ridiculously lucky. He had this property in Pit Hole, Pennsylvania, which, boy, that's too bad. Anyway, an OMG, turns out there was oil in them, NAR Hills. In pithole? In pit hole. Makes sense? So he was offered $750,000 for his property, and he was like, absa-freakin-lutely. Inflation.

Okay, that's the funny thing. the inflation calculator I use only goes back to 1913. And this happened in 1865. Don't give me that look. Don't give me that look. So I did it for 1913. What? You know, I provided many inflation calculations for John Brown and all that took place in the 1850s.

Well, how did you do that? I used an inflation calculator. No, but all the good ones only go back to 1913. Kristen, according to official data.org, $750,000 in 1865 is worth $14.5 million today. Hot diggedy dog. That's a lot of smackaroos. Mm-hmm.

Okay, so he got all this money, and he took some of it, and he bought 400 acres along Lake Erie in what is known as the Grape Belt. The Grape Belt? That's right. Fun fact. One of their neighbors was a fella named Dr. Thomas Branwell Welch. As in Welch's grapes

ever heard of them? You didn't have to clarify exactly what you were talking about. I'm sorry. You just didn't have kind of the reaction that I was hoping for. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. That's the only appropriate reaction

to hearing about Welch's grapes. Just shock and joy. I'm about to bust. That too. That's what I can use for now until I get the So Lucy's great-grandpa was now this super wealthy guy with, you know, grapes up to his eyeballs. But he was not the life of the party.

He was super religious. In fact, he was so religious that he forbid any of his children from dancing. No dancing? No, because dancing is the devil's preferred mode of transportation. Yeah, yeah. What was it back then with people thinking dancing was just terrible? One of life's pleasures, I don't know. If you got any joy out of it.

Do you think it's just like people who are bad at dancing? We're like, actually, it'll send you to hell, so we should all not do this. It's not because I'm bad at it. It's a good excuse, yeah. Thank you. I can't dance. Neither can I. So let's start this thing now.

In elementary school, in gym class, we had to do dances for as like physical exercise. Uh-huh. So we did the electric slide and the watermelon crawl. Sure. Yeah, that's the only dancing I know. But you could keep up. Sure, it was very easy. I know.

We all know the watermelon crawl. We all know it. So he's this super strict guy, no dancing, no fun of any kind, and naturally one of his children rebelled. And that was Lucy's paternal grandfather, Jasper Ball. Jasper was like, okay, fuck all this. And, you know, he did the macarena and sold off his family land. And once he was done with that, Jasper invested all of his money in, and I'm not making this up, butter manufacture. Pig butter?

No. Nowhere in the book did it say pig butter. She just said butter manufacture. Butter manufacture. So I don't know if he set up a little dairy or what. Okay. So he invests a bunch of money in that and he invested in the telephone. Good investment.

Well, or was it? Hear me out. Jasper was evidently one of quite a few rich guys who was like super stoked because in 1890, everyone knew that Alexander Graham Bell's patent on the telephone was about to expire. So he and I guess a bunch of other guys thought that once that patent expired that they could start up their own telephone businesses and just be rich, rich, rich, rich. Except that didn't work out for Jasper. And I guess he didn't have a lot of butter money either.

Why didn't the phone thing work out? Well, I don't know. I didn't go that deep. How long do you want this tangent to be, sir? We've come up with a brilliant new phone, the jitterbug. No one wants this. A phone with giant buttons, forget it. All I know, sir, is that this didn't quite pan out. Okay. Fair enough.

He's one of these rare special flowers who's given the world and, you know, squanders it on butter manufacture and a failed telephone business. It happens. It sure does. And after those failures, Jasper moved his wife and five children to Jamestown, New York. And he left them there while he went off to Missoula, Montana to be the manager of a town. telephone company. And eventually, his son, who was Lucy's dad, Henry, joined him out in Montana to work as an electrician for the phone company.

Okay. Tangent adjourned. Okay. We're caught up now. I can make a connection to slavery. How? Lucille's grandfather, great-grandfather, discovered oil in Pit Hole, Pennsylvania in 1865, the same year the Civil War.

war ended. Okay. No. And the same year, the 13th Amendment was ratified, which abolished slavery. God damn it, Norm. My one goal, my one goal was for this to not be about slavery. But now the streak is alive. Okay, continue.

So, Henry actually met and fell in love with D.D. When he was home visiting his mom and sisters in Jamestown, okay? Oh, okay. So now this all my family. makes sense, right? So it was actually not random at all that after they got married, Henry and D.D. went back to Montana together. And then, you know, a few years later, they moved just outside of Detroit because Henry got a job with a different telephone company. Henry was 27 years old, by all accounts, a pretty healthy guy, but he got sick one day. He developed typhoid fever.

Ooh. Yeah. Tifoy fever is an infection that usually spreads through contaminated food or water. It's horrible. It's painful. So Henry was very sick and D.D. tried to nurse him back to health, but that was tough. They didn't have a good support system in Michigan. And they really needed one because D.D. was five months pregnant. Lucy was three years old. And of course, she was a lot to handle as any three-year-old is. And then, you know, Henry's very, very sick. So what did Dee Dee do with Lucy? Norm, put yourself in Dee's shoes.

What do you do with this rambunctious three-year-old? Either send her to the grandparents. Okay. They're too far away. Or put her up for adoption. Oh, shit. Oh, you know what? Around this time, that probably was something that might have crossed a parent's mind.

Believe it or not, I'm going to go with a much lighter option. What Dedey did instead was she took Lucy outside, tied a rope around her waist, attached it with a metal cord to the clothes line, and then Bing, Bang, Boom, Lucy gets to run around outside on a leash. Everybody's happy. Great idea. Different times. Yeah. I mean, you do see kids on leashes sometimes out in public.

Do you? I mean, obviously, it's not wrapped around the neck, but just walking my kid. No, it's like... That's just a kid with a kink, Norm. They have like a... It's like a little waistband, like the soft plushy leash. I've seen those before. Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Yeah, tying them up in the yard like a dog is probably not good. It's interesting, though, because, like, she was in a really bad spot, five months pregnant with her husband and stuff. But at any rate, Henry's illness lasted about four weeks. So literally one month, he was... this healthy 27-year-old with a wife and a child and another one on the way. And after this four-week battle with typhoid fever, Henry Ball was dead. It was horrible. Yeah, typhoid fever. Not a great survival rate. 22-year-old Didi traveled back to Jamestown with Little Lucy and Henry's body in tow.

Didi and Lucy ended up moving in with Didi's parents. And I think this is super strange. Because even though Henry Ball had family in Jamestown, they had basically nothing to do with Lucy or Didy or the incoming baby ever. I'm sorry, I know incoming baby is not the right way to say it. It's an artillery shell. But anyway, luckily, Dee Dee's parents were pretty awesome. Didi's mom, Flora Bell Hunt, was this legendary midwife who, fun fact, was herself one of five sets of twins. Which is fucking ridiculous. From one set of parents had five twins? Yeah, that's what I'm telling you.

That is crazy. What are the odds of that? I don't know. I would never have sex. After the second set of twins, you'd be like, this is... I'd be like, I'm closing up shop. Masturbation only. Oh, wow.

Dede's dad, Fred Hunt, was a woodworker. Oh, much respect. Shout out. Yeah, well, he worked in the furniture capital of the world. if I mentioned that before. Yeah, that's true. Oh, man. I'd be in heaven in Jamestown.

You would have been. I'd just be admiring all the woodworkers. Would you be admiring the woodwork or the woodworkers? Both. Oh, good point. Woodworkers always work shirtless, Kristen. No, they don't. They'd get splinters on their nipples.

What a ridiculous thing to say. Fred was also a proud union man, a singer of naughty songs, and a bit of a commie. Communist? Well, yeah. And by a bit of a commie, I mean that he was a full-blown communist, loved it. More on that later, that's going to come back to bite us in the butt. But, you know, that's not for this episode. Okay.

D.D. and Lucy were living with Flora Bell and Fred when D.D. gave birth to a little boy whom she also named Fred, because everything's confusing. By all accounts, it seems that Grandpa Fred was just crazy in love with baby Fred. And, of course, baby Fred got a bunch of attention as babies. so often do, even though all they do is just look cute and poop. They always want attention. It's really pathetic. That's why when Norman sees a baby, he just says, you're pathetic. I'm so uncomfortable around babies. You really are. What's your deal?

I'm worried I'm going to like drop it or just do something. But even when you're not holding a baby, are you worried someone's going to ask you to hold a baby? Yes. You're just terrified? Yeah. you're thinking about it right now you look so uncomfortable right now remember that movie children of men where clive owen has to escort the pregnant woman i've never seen any movie ever we watched children of men i have no memory of that but anyway go ahead it was like the the last woman on earth who got pregnant oh i do remember that yeah if if she was like you have to help me to safety i'd be like i can't because i can't i can't i can't deal with the baby i'm sorry You'd say I can't because one day you might give birth and one day you might ask me to hold it and you'd say no.

And then the whole human race would be dead. Norman Caruso, what is wrong with you? You have to hold this baby for the human race to survive. Well, can't he hold it? So baby Fred was getting all this attention and, you know, Lucy was just kind of there and D.D. was clearly struggling. Which is weird because keep in mind that this was the early 19. 1900s and postpartum depression hadn't even been invented yet. But somehow she caught it early.

Water cure infirmary for Beatty would do wonders. So, yeah, I think it's safe to say she had postpartum depression. Also, her husband was dead. She had two young kids. So she probably had a heaping helping of regular depression on top of the postpartum depression, which is what we call a depression compression. Depression. Depression.

Also, this fun new thing called World War I was also happening, so it's just a mess. Everything's terrible. World War I is fucking terrible. What a terrible war that was. Future topic. Great. Twelve-part series. You'd probably need more than 12 parts, right?

All the death. Yeah, yeah. And plus, when you. even get into like how did that fucking thing start well that's a mess too there's no clear answer there well the shooting of franz ferdinand all right stop in it excuse me it's franz i'm impressed that i even knew the name okay so flora bell and fred were like dd we know just what you need for your depression compression and it's sunshine baby oh up the butt ew what remember that trend where people were spreading their cheeks in the sun yes they would go up on on mountains right

and then show their anus to the sun and that cured. 15 minutes. 15 minutes, they had to be bent over. Butthole in the sun for 15 minutes, you'll feel rejuvenated. Well, I would hope so. You know what I'm just now realizing is that people got sunburns on their buttholes. Anyway. So they sent D.D.

off to California for a while. And when D.D. came back, she got a job in a metal factory. And it was there that D.D. laid eyes on. Some dude named Ed Peterson. Oh, Ed Peterson. Mm-mm-mm. Can I interject?

Yeah, what? Every time you mention D-D., I am picturing her as Dedy Pickles from Rugrats, Tommy's mom. Oh, yeah. Because her name was Dedy as well. So that's what you've been thinking about this whole time? Well, she has red hair like Lucy. Actually, okay, but Lucy was a brunette. Okay.

Well. In real life. But yeah, yeah. Okay. I get how you got there. Yeah. I'm just picturing D.D. Pickles. Okay.

Anyway, continue. You know, that is... And now I want everyone else to picture D.D. Pickles as Lucy Ball's mother. You know, you're really taking control here. You're making us think about D.D. Pickles. Also, about that weird trend where people showed their anuses to the sun, even though the sun never asked for that. Yeah. And also, you really bent over backwards to tie this to slavery.

just because the year 1865 came up. We're a young country relative to everything. So slavery is going to come up in basically every topic we talk about. Great. Anyway, I am sorry for interjecting so much. No, I like it. No, I really do like it. So, Dedy, who was a cartoon at the time, obviously,

met a dude named Ed Peterson. If his name was Stu, I would have lost this show. The thing to know about it was. about Ed was that Ed was fun. Fun for Dedy. That's cool. Well, is it, though, because he wasn't really fun for anybody else? Oh, he wasn't?

Norm, let me ask you a question. Did Ed drink too much? That's not a fun question. Don't even know. If you're asking me that, he probably did drink too much. Let me ask you another question. Did Ed want to be a stepdad? No.

No, he sure didn't. You want to hear a... terrible story? Sure. Okay. In 1918, Didi and Ed got married, and seven-year-old Lucy was pretty excited because, you know, her dad had died so early in her life that she didn't have any memories of him. And she was really excited about having a dad, you know, just like everybody else. Sure. And so on D.D. and Ed's wedding day, little Lucy went up to her new stepdad and asked him, are you my new daddy? and he said to her, call me Ed.

What a shithead. Ed the shithead. Yeah. Shit Ed. I just spat. I hate that that made me laugh. Later in life, little Fred, who was no longer little,

but there are too many Fred, so he's just little Fred, referred to their stepdad as a dud. He was like, look, he didn't do any harm, but he didn't do any good either. What? Did he call them a dud? Yeah, a dud.

It's a great insult. I mean, it is. So shortly after they got married, Didi and Ed fucked off to Detroit to go find work. Dede evidently didn't think it would be fair to leave both of her children with her parents. So little Fred got to stay with her warm, fun parents. And Lucy had to live with Ed's very, very serious parents, Charles and Sophia. Yeah. Charles and Sophia, like, they weren't bad people by any means.

They were just so serious and so religious and so Swedish, which... Very Swedish? Very Swedish. Hinga dinga dergens. Just boys and berries and meatballs all the time. Okay. Instead of getting to do things like, you know, play outside with other children, Lucy was made to do chores and sit inside, alone, quietly.

It was for her own good, Norm. Grandma Peterson firmly believed that any pleasure was, quote, the devil's bait. My gosh. Fish in line. That's right. Yeah. So this lady's got some John Brown in her.

Yeah. Well, this must have been kind of. of the, a common-ish belief amongst people of a certain age at this point in time. I don't know. What year is this now? 191919. Yeah, 1918, 1919. Okay, so we're not in like the roar in 20s yet, but we're kind of in the beginning of like the debauchery age. So yeah, I can see, yeah. Yeah. And Grandma Peterson's not doing any debauchery. Let me tell you. No, she's against it. Fun fact, did you know that looking into mirrors can make you vain? It's shocking, but True. Lucy looked at herself for too long in the mirror one time, so the grandparents removed all the mirrors in the entire house except for the one in the bathroom.

You're so then. Quit looking in that fucking mirror. We'll take them away. Lucy and Grandma Sophia butted heads a lot. Grandma Sophia couldn't understand why Lucy couldn't sit still. ADHD. Grandma Sophia couldn't understand why Lucy wanted to run wild. ADHD. And poor little Lucy couldn't understand why her mom was off in Detroit with some dude named Ed while her little brother got to go live with the cool grandparents. Shit Ed. That's right. It's like how the British say shithead.

Shit Ed? Yeah. That's stupid. Okay. Lucy lived with grandma and grandpa Peterson for like two. two years. I realize I've painted it in a really sad way, and it was really sad. She did love them, but, you know, it sucked.

Sometimes you have a grandparent or a relative who's like, yeah, kind of a new willy, like a droopy dog, you know, very serious, not super fun. But then you also have the cool relative that you always want to hang out with. Are you thinking of someone in particular? Well, I think you and I are the cool aunt and uncle. Obviously we are. But I had a very cool aunt growing up. My mom's sister.

Shout out to Aunt Randy, R-I-P. Yeah. Me too. Cool ants are where it's at, Norm. Aunt Denise, man. Shout out to Antonyse. Quilter extraordinaire. So, Lucy lived with Grandma and Grandpa Peterson for like two years.

And then things got happy, kind of. Okay, good. Well, just to hang on there. It's as happy as this story's going to get. So, Dedy and Ed moved back home to Jamestown. But the reason they moved back was because Flora Bell, Dedy's mom, was in her mid-50s and dying of uterine cancer. But again, I can't stress this enough. This is the happy part of the story. So don't get bummed out. With Dedy and Ed, Ed back in town, Didi's parents bought a little house. just outside of Jamestown. And it was located at... Ooh. You want to look it up? Sure.

59. 59. Lucy Lane. Celeron, New York. Guessing that was renamed. Yeah, it was renamed because she became super famous. C-E-L-O-R-O-A. I know how to spell C-R-R-R-R.

Excuse me. Tell us one. Very cute little bungalow house. Two-stores. Yeah, it's just a modest, nice little house. So the thing about Selleron, New York is it's home to like nobody, but it's beautiful. It sits on a lake. And from the late 1800s to the early 1960s, it was also home to an amusement park called Seleron Park.

The amusement park had everything, a ferris wheel, a roller coaster, a variety of fried foods. plus a bunch of vaudeville acts. Are you familiar? Vodville. Okay, so it was this really popular genre of theater at the time that, I mean, it was basically silly stuff. So almost always a comedy and it had singing and dancing and, you know, that kind of stuff. So once again, Lucy was part of this small town, but she was exposed to showbiz light. And she loved it.

and she also loved her life. Finally, Lucy's whole family was under one roof. Her mom, her stepdad, her little brother, her grandparents, her aunt and uncle, Lola and George, and her cousin Clio. They could go ice skating on the lake, they could go fishing, they could put on plays in the living room. Aunt Lola operated a beauty salon out of the house. Grandpa Hunt dabbled as a chiropractor.

Don't worry about it. The house was kind of wild. and fun and, you know, maybe a little chaotic. But, you know, I warned you that this episode would be sad. So, of course. Yeah, I'm waiting for it. Yeah. When Lucy was about 12 years old, Grandma Flora Bell died of uterine cancer.

Mm-hmm. So that was a devastating loss. But, you know, the family kept going and Lucy got more and more interested in vaudeville. And one time when Lucy was 12 or was it 14, depends on the source, her stepdad. did something kind of fatherly. Oh. He encouraged her. He told her that he could tell she liked performing, and he thought that, you know, maybe

she could make it one day. But he wanted her to see something other than a vaudeville show. He wanted her to see something better. Broadway? Well, calm down. They're not leaving town, all right? So he invited her to see this famous monologist who was coming to town. Okay.

So I'd never heard that. term before in my life. Monologists. Yeah, it's an old timing term. We don't use it anymore. It's, think of it like stand-up comedy, but it's not stand-up comedy. It's like the precursor to stand-up comedy. It's...

Sit-down comedy. Shut. It's one person on a stage, and, you know, they're just telling stories. But the stories didn't have to strictly be funny. Okay. So the guy that Ed wanted Lucy to see was this legendary monologist named Julius Tannen. Lucy actually didn't want to go at first because she thought that hearing some dude stand on a stage and talk for two hours sounded horribly boring. But she went and sure enough,

she was amazed. For those two hours, Julius Tannen had the audience in the palm of his hand. He made them howl with laughter. He made them sob. He stunned them to silence. It was incredible. Norman, would you like to hear one of his signature, hilarious jokes. Oh, yeah, let me get the rim shot button. Boy, get ready to laugh, okay? I'm ready. Famous monologist, here we go. Pardon me for being late.

I squeezed out too much toothpaste and I couldn't get it back. Simpler times. Oh, boy. Well, you know, the audience loved it. Sure. You're kind of a tough friend. I mean, entertainment back then was, I mean, you look at a, a photo and just stare at it for 30 minutes.

That's your entertainment for the night. I think also like, you know, he's going around to these small towns, so you got to, I don't know, you got to read the audience, I guess. And that toothpaste one, that's not going to offend anybody. Even Grandma Peterson's going to giggle at that. Yeah. So afterward, as they were walking out of the show, Ed turned to Lucy and said, now that is show business.

That is magic. Lucy wanted to create that feeling herself. She wanted to be on stage. She wanted to be the center of attention. And she had all the right elements. She was gorgeous. She had gigantic blue eyes. She was tall and thin, loud and funny.

And even though her family didn't have much money, D.D. worked at a department store, so Lucy was always dressed really well. And plus, Lucy had this chaotic energy. also I'm going to guess part of this was trauma-based, but she needed to be loved. She needed to be in control. And she was smart. But she didn't really try hard in school because, you know, Grandma Peterson had made sure she stayed on top of her grades.

But without Grandma Peterson around, Lucy kind of did whatever she wanted. Rebellious. And I'll tell you what she didn't want to do. Homework? Sit around and be bored, Norm. And also homework. Are you ready to get uncomfortable? You can't make me uncomfortable unless you have a baby.

Well, here we go. Uh-oh. Let's test that. In 1925, when Lucy was 14 years old, she met the older brother of a friend. Oh, boy. The older brother was 21 years old. His name was Johnny DeVita, and he was a threatening boy. Johnny DeVita.

Sounds like a soprano's character. Yeah, you're really on to something. there actually. Oh. We're going to put this boy on the cover of Threatening Boys Magazine. Really? That's right. Ooh.

Okay. He had a very cool car. He dressed very well. He had a car? Yeah, a Buick. At this time? Yes. In this day and age?

Yeah. Guess what he did with it? Made out with girls in it. Well, I'm sure that too. Okay. We'll move on. Like that scene in Titanic. What?

Oh. Are they like doing in the car? Norm, I... I'm about to bust. I hate to tell you this. I think they were doing more than making out in that car. What else were they doing?

They were putting palm prints on the windows. Oh, yeah. Which is so rude. Johnny DeVita also made it a habit of carrying an unregistered gun. That's not good. His father was in the import business. He was an importer, not an exporter. That's right.

All right. He imported all of it. of oil from Italy. And maybe, maybe he sold bootleg liquor. And maybe he was in with the mob. And replace the maybe with a probably definitely yes for sure. This is during prohibition, right? Yeah, it's 1925.

Yeah, so yes. What were the years of prohibition again? Watch me tell you right now. I know this off the top of my head. I'm definitely not Googling this right now. January 17th, 1920 through December 5th, 1933. Very good. Man, that was a long time.

The 18th Amendment. Five amendments earlier was the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Great. Yes. So Lucy and Johnny started dating, and it was a bit of a scandal. And no one seemed to be asking, what is this grown man doing with this child? The question was, what's that girl doing with him? And even to this day, people don't seem to acknowledge the clear power imbalance in that relationship.

Part of that could be that love letters still exist between the two of them. So people just kind of want to cling to that and maybe not think about the context around it. He also did give her money when she was struggling. But he was also physically abusive. And I can't stress this enough. He was a grown man with a gun. and she was a child with a boatload of trauma. So anyway, there you go.

That's my thoughts on it. Yeah. For what it's worth, Didi was pretty freaked out by her young daughter's relationship with this 21-year-old wannabe gangster type. Oh, yeah. But at the same time, she'd always had more of a friend relationship with Lucy.

And it seemed like it was way too late for Dedy to all of a sudden, become this strict disciplinary. And that wasn't going to fly. To become a mom. Yeah. More like a mom, yeah. So she did something I think was pretty brilliant. She used Lucy's love of show business to get her away from Johnny. So in this time period, there was this theater school in New York City. And it was the snootiest snoot-snoot play she ever did see. It was called the John Murray Anderson, Robert Minton School of the Theater. Holy molly. Can you believe that?

Is it still around? No, I do not believe so. Nothing with this many words in it is allowed to survive for more than 15 years. They'd lose so much money on their signs. It costs too much money to bring any kind of materials about this school. Getting into this school was huge. Robert Minton was a big-time stage director. John Murray Anderson was a big-time producer.

They had a bunch of big wigs on their board of directors. And they were very clear in their admissions materials that their school was for serious actors only. Okay. Nice. It was expensive. Tuition was $350 for five months. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $6,200. Which, you know, it's not college.

It's like, you know, these are teenagers who are going here. So that's pretty pricey. Yeah. And the school was cutthroat. It said in their admissions materials that if at any point they thought you didn't have the talent to make it in showbiz, they'd just cut you and send you home. It'd be like that, it's like that MTV show, Next. Next. Thank you.

It's exactly like Next. Next. Next was actually inspired by this school from the 20s. I loved Next. Oh, it was brutal. It was a great show. Did you ever see? the ones, okay, so for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, it was an amazing

show on MTV back in the day, all these hot people are on a bus together, and it's, it was very heteronormative, right? It was only, you know, like, well, no, they had some gay people on there, too. I can't remember. Anyway, not the point, not the point. So, picture it, bus full of hot ladies and one dushy dude. He's outside the bus. And he dates one lady at a time. And as soon as he's sick of her, he says, next. And then boom, we get a new lady off the bus. That show could be brutal, Norm. Sometimes the lady would barely get off the bus and he'd already say next. Yep. Oh, yeah. Terrible. What a wonderful time to be alive to be able to watch that show.

The heyday of MTV right there. It sure was. Jersey Shore and next. Oh, amazing. Lucy was obsessed with the idea of going to this school. And D.D. was obsessed with making that dream a reality because New York City was six hours away from Jamestown, which would make Lucy six hours away from Johnny. So even though Didi absolutely did not have the money to do this, she made it happen. But Johnny DeVita's got connections in New York, right?

Sure. Sure. He's in the mob or his family's in the mob. Yeah, there's possible connections. Like, I don't want to totally overplay it. And there's some, it's like, Didi never went on record and said, yes, I absolutely made this huge financial sacrifice to get my daughter away from Johnny DeVita. But it's pretty well known that that's what was going on there.

Seems like a fairly good solution, right? Yeah, it's a good idea. So she paid the tuition and arranged for Lucy to stay in New York City with a family friend. And that's how, in the fall of 1926, 15-year-old Lucy arrived in New York City with 50 bucks sewn into her underwear and the dream of becoming a star. sewn into her underwear. That's right. So to get it out, you got to rip the underwear? Well, you got to be real careful about it.

I shouldn't have put the hole right in my crotch. Why did I sew it right there? When Lucy arrived at the John Murray-Anderson, Robert Minton School of Theater, she became so intimidated. She spent five minutes reading the sign. She became so intimidated that she, barely spoke a word. And honestly, who can fucking blame her? The school was cutthroat. And, you know, although some people thrive under harsh criticism, you know, they use it to make

themselves better, you're kind of like that. You're a weirdo who thrives on that kind of stuff. I'm a very spiteful person. See, to me, it has the effect that it had on Lucy in this case. So Lucy wasn't like that. When someone told her that she was doing a bad job, it just made her more sad and more scared and more quiet and more bad at her job. Lucy found herself being outshined by all of her classmates, most notably by some chick named Betty Davis. Oh, Norm doesn't know old Hollywood, everyone, I apologize. He knows the cast of Rugrats.

If you had said Betty White, I don't think Betty White was that old, though. Betty White and Lucille Ball were friends. Yeah, but in like the 50s or 60s, right? Well, we'll get to it. Don't worry about it. Betty Davis. Oh, regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history. Well, damn, don't I feel stupid?

Mm-hmm. I bet she's got five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Fun fact, she did the voice for Angelica and the Rugrats. That's not true. I know my Rugrats. Lucy didn't last long at the John Murray Anderson Robert Minton School of the Theater. I hope they said that the full name every time. You are no longer welcome here at the John Anderson Robert Minton School of Theater.

I have to admit that I did include the full name of this place three times just for the laughs. Yeah, it's a good joke. After six weeks, she got kicked out. Next. The administrator sent to... Didy a letter that just said next in big letters. No, saying that Lucy would never make it as an actress, which what the fuck? Lucy went back to Jamestown humiliated.

She'd made such a big deal about how she was going off to New York City to study theater and become an actress. And now she was back. Failure. Was Johnny Waiton? You know he was with the Buick. and his gun and his bootleg whiskey, what more do you want to be an actress? Well, you can't have that

because Betty Davis just kicked your ass. Fun fact, Betty Davis started at that school in a class of 70 other students, and by the time she finished, she was in a class of 12. Dear God. Yeah. They were cutthroat there

at the John Anderson, Robert Minton School of Theater. And dance. And dance. And dramatic tricks. So Lucy tried to readjust to life in Jamestown. And, you know, of course, she and Johnny got back together and things were going okay. And then came the July 4th holiday weekend of 1927. Woo!

Yeah. Holiday. I'm afraid that's the wrong vibe. It's not what we're going for at all, Norm. It's Independence Day. Yeah. This is going to be a real thing. real bummer.

All right, what happens? So, Grandpa Fred Hunt was in the backyard of their house in Celeron, and Lucy's little brother, Fred, who was 12 years old at the time, kept bugging Grandpa Fred to let him and his friends do some target practice on some tin cans. Oh, boy. Little Fred was really excited because he'd just been given a 22 rifle for his birthday. Oh, boy. I know where this is going.

He wanted to show it off. he wanted to shoot it. And Grandpa Fred said, sure, that's fine, and he got out the rifle and he loaded it. Fred was hanging out that day with his friend,

Joanna Ottinger. Joanna was just visiting relatives in Celeron that day, and she brought over her little cousin, Warner Erickson. Warner was eight years old, and he lived right next door.

And cousin Cleo, who was also eight years old, was also there. So they're all hanging out in the backyard, getting ready to do some target practice. And the rule was that when one kid was shooting, the other three kids would sit on the ground away from the line of shooting. Makes sense. Yeah, and that's exactly what they did. Grandpa Fred handed the gun to his grandson, little Fred shot at the 10 cans, and then it was Joanna's turn. Grandpa Fred loaded the gun, handed it to Joanna,

or did she pick up the gun herself? You know, it kind of depends on who you ask, at any of At the rate, Joanna raised the gun, aimed toward the tin cans, and Little Fred and Cleo and Warner were sitting nearby in the grass. And all of a sudden, Warner's mom, who again was right next door, hollered for Warner to come home. And eight-year-old Warner did the natural thing. His mom was calling for him, so he turned to Cleo and he said, I got to go. And he ran toward home. He ran into the line of sight and got shot. Yeah.

Oh, that sucks. He ran through the line of sight and Joanna pulled the trigger. Obviously had no idea that he was going to be there. And in a flash, Warner Erickson collapsed. It was horrible. It was so shocking that when Warner cried, I'm shot, I'm shot. Grandpa Hunt yelled, no, you're not, no, you're not. But he was.

The bullet had severed the little boy's spinal cord. It had gone through his neck and punctured one of his lungs. Grandpa Hunt ran inside to call an ambulance, and at that point, Lucy, who had been inside the house, ran over to the Erickson's to tell them that Warner had been shot. Grandpa Hunt followed behind her with the little boy in his arms, where they waited for the ambulance. It was awful.

Warner's mother was distraught, and she screamed at Fred, you killed my son, you killed my son. But Warner Erickson didn't die that day. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. His arms, legs, and back were paralyzed. He died five years after the accident. Oh. It's terrible.

Yeah. And it changed. I had some hope when you said he survived. Yeah, yeah. This accident changed everything for everyone. For the Erickson family, it was unspeakably awful. Awful for many reasons, obviously. The least of which was that they now had all of these medical bills and no way to pay them.

So they did what they had to do. They looked themselves in the mirror and they said, Let's go to court. Oh, they sued? Yeah, I mean. Fred. What do you think of that? Yeah.

I mean, you got to do what you got to do. Yeah. You need justice for Warner. And that's the only way you're going to get it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that you're going to get justice, but it's like, you were the adult in charge that day. Someone's got to be held accountable for that. Yeah, so they sued Fred Hunt for negligence. Again, he hadn't been the one to pull the trigger, but he'd been the adult in charge that day when their son had been injured.

So Fred Hunt went on trial, and Lucy and Little Fred and Didy and Cleo all testified in his defense. This trial only lasted two days. I think it was pretty straightforward. Yeah. And the jury deliberated for a few hours, and they found him guilty. They ordered Fred to pay for all of Warner Erickson's medical bills, which meant that Fred Hunt lost his entire life savings. Fred was devastated by the accident. years later, Cleo recounted the impact that the accident had on the family, and she said that when this accident occurred, her grandpa had been this really vibrant, fun, 60-year-old guy, but afterward, he just became an old man. So obviously there had to have been, you know, a lot of shame and guilt and regret, but then there was also that financial burden, too.

Yeah. Well, and they were neighbors, right? Yeah. So you're like you're reminded all the time. Well, and one of the stories, I think Cleo was the one who told this story. She said that, you know, the Erickson's were really mad at Fred Hunt. And so they would purposely, you know, push Warner's wheelchair kind of in front of the house. Yeah.

Yeah. Which part of me is like, well, were they just going for a walk or, you know, who knows, who knows what was going on there? But, I mean, they have a right to feel however they're going to feel, too. Sure. So this financial burden, Fred lost his life savings, but he tried to keep the family home. And it was kind of a mess. He transferred the deed to his daughters, but that didn't work out. And it wasn't long before the family home, you know, this home that had finally brought everyone together was foreclosed and sold at auction.

For years, the family would refer to that. moment, the moment they lost the house as the breakup, as in the breakup of their family. And it kind of was. D.D. found an apartment in Jamestown. Lucy had to switch high schools. Fred Hunt just kind of became a shell of his former self. This was 1927 before there were any kind of social safety nets, before there was any social security. So he was just screwed. Yeah, FDR. changed a lot of that for sure. Yeah. Well, and this is, oh, wait, you said 1927?

Mm-hmm. Ooh, he's going to be real upset in two years. Yeah. The Great Depression. We're getting to it. Don't worry. Oh, okay, good. I also, I don't want Warner Erickson's story to get lost in this.

I think this is one of those things where we're telling Lucille Ball's story. And so you hear a lot about how this impacted her fans. family, and obviously it did. It was horrible. Yeah. But, I mean... No one's blaming Warner Erickson. Well, I kind of didn't like Cleo's vibe in some of what I listened to. So, like she was blaming? Well, she talked about how his mother, you know, looked right outside the window and called for him,

and his mother had always been so strict. So, of course, he jumped right up and had to go. You know, not blaming with a capital B, but, you know, you know, know. So probably not surprisingly at all, this whole incident just led to Lucy getting even wilder. She and Johnny DeVita were still a thing. They were constantly heading out to New York City. Lucy was skipping school, kind of doing whatever she wanted. And when she was in New York City, she began auditioning to be a showgirl. Oh. Yeah. Okay. So she's still following the dream. Oh, absolutely. That's good. She really threw herself into her auditions, and since she felt like she'd tried and failed before, she adopted a new persona, one that would hopefully be much more successful.

Instead of Lucille Ball from Jamestown, New York, she was now Diane Belmont from Butte, Montana. Belmont is a great last name. Isn't it? This is a wonderful stage name. Yeah, also a great last name for a vampire killer. What? The main character of Castlevania, the Castlevania video games. Are you bringing up more video game stuff?

His name's Simon Belmont. Well, there you go. Lucy worked really hard on her fake persona. She wrote to the Chamber of Commerce and read every book she could about Butte Montana and the surrounding areas. She was totally ready for a pop quiz about Montana, but nobody quizzed her.

And unfortunately, no one really wanted to hire her. Oh. Lucy was definitely pretty, but she wasn't a standout. In a room full of the type of young women who wanted to be showgirls, she was never the prettiest. She was too skinny. She had no curves. Too skinny? Yeah.

Okay. No curves to speak of. Her teeth were kind of jacked up. And she had this thick western New York. accent, you know, not that she was being considered for speaking roles, but still. Right. Yeah. And it's funny because in pictures from this time period, you know, you're just, you think of Lucille Ball as just larger than life, so you think you're going to pick her out immediately

of a picture. But when she's photographed with other beautiful girls, Lucy at this time period just blends. Can I look up a picture of her? Sure. Okay. Yeah, you're Right, right. She doesn't look like her, like what we would think of Lucille Ball in our head. Right. She just looks different. I kind of have a theory on that. Okay. Well, I think at this point in her career, which, I mean, she didn't have a career, so maybe I'm being generous with that word.

It's like she was trying to imitate what was popular at the time. Yeah. You know, the blonde hair or, you know, what, you know, she's trying to imitate what's popular at time. Sure. And, you know, you can do that and do that pretty well, but you're probably not going to stand out. And so she got the red hair much later in life as a way of standing out in motion pictures. And like that kind of set her look into motion. What are you, what are you smiling about? I just imagine if I dyed my hair red to stand now. Oh my God.

Like on YouTube. You would look terrible as a redhead. Welcome to the game in a story. And my hair's just red for some reason. And you don't acknowledge it at all. No, I'm just trying to stand out. But no, I totally get that. Yeah.

I get it. Lucy was kind of a blender. And when you blend in, you don't get picked to be the showgirl. Yeah. So Lucy's auditions rarely panned out. And as a result, she became desperate. it. She had no money. She lived off of ketchup and water, which she mixed together to make a very tragic soup. She became... Tomato soup. Yeah, I mean, if you can call it that. She became like

very, very, very skinny. Did I feel like I read somewhere the other idea that ketchup was invented as like a medicine. Really? Yeah. Disgusting. That wouldn't surprise me at all. So much of this stuff back in the day was medicinal. at first. Yeah. It wasn't, I always liked the fact that Listerine

was used to, like, clean your floors. Was it really? Yeah. Listerine was like a cleaner. Oh. And then it became a mouthwash. With no changes

to the ingredient list. But as you've already pointed out, you know, this is the start of the Great Depression, so it's not like Lucy's the only one. Sorry, can you do that again? The Great what? Depression.

There you. Depression. It's the, A great depression. See, if they just said it like that, it wouldn't have been so bad. Yeah. God. We're all loving it.

So Lucy came up with these schemes to get food. She found breakfast places where people would come in and get orange juice, coffee, and two donuts for 15 cents. And people would sit up at the bar and get their breakfast, and they usually leave like a nickel tip. So Lucy would wait off to the side. for someone to finish their breakfast and leave. And she was always hoping to find someone who left behind half a donut. And as soon as they did, she'd swoop into their chair, pick up the nickel tip, and say, could I have some more coffee, please?

Oh. And once she finished this stranger's leftover, she'd leave the nickel behind. Well, it's good she left the tip. Yeah. Yeah. And she got away with that for a while. Yeah, that's a pretty good scheme there. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Johnny DeVita, was a big help.

He sent her money. There are records from that time period showing Lucy asking him to send her anything, even a dollar. And there are records of him sending sometimes as much as $50. Wow. So $50 back then was probably quite a good. Yeah, I mean, it was a lot. It was a lot. Lucy did land a few gigs, but she always got cut.

and in those days you didn't get paid for rehearsal, which is bullshit. So wait a minute. She would get signed on for this act, but the rehearsals for the act, you were not paid. So she'd get signed on, and you're basically kind of being considered. Like you've made it to the first round. So they start doing rehearsals, and, you know, they'd see her in rehearsals and go, nope, you're out. That sucks. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you've just spent a day. away from, you know, your drugstore job, which she worked at a drugstore, just, you know, giving people soda. And yeah, you've just wasted a day. It was pretty depressing, Norm. And really tough. At one point, she got hired as a showgirl, but got fired on the fifth day of rehearsal. It was the longest she'd ever been employed, you know.

And Lucy was devastated. On her way out the door, the producer told her, It's no use, Montana. You're not meant for show business. Oh. That was a very low point for Lucy. And I'm about to tell you what happened next. Okay.

But before I do, I have to acknowledge that a lot of Lucy's stories about her life come from appearances she made on talk shows after she became successful. I mention that only because when you're a guest on a talk show, you don't really tell stories. You tell anecdotes. Right. And on top of that, when an audience saw Lucille Ball, they were primed to laugh at whatever she said. So much later in life, when she was a guest on a talk show, she talked about that moment where she'd been fired after five days of rehearsals. And, you know, she talked about the indignity of it all.

she'd tried to be somebody else, Diane Belmont, and even a fake version of herself, couldn't keep a job. She said that after she was fired, she decided that she wanted to kill herself. And here's how she tells that story. She says, she walked out of the theater, sobbing, deciding, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to do it. I'm going to die by suicide. And just then, a limo passed by. And she figured, well, if I'm going to, I'm going to do it, I'm going to die by suicide. And she figured, well, if I'm going to get hit, might as well get hit by a big one. And so she threw herself in front of the limo, ready for death. But the limo stopped. And Lucy got up off the street, a little embarrassed, and decided to keep living. That's how she tells it.

Yeah, so probably made up. Yeah. But the feeling of suicide was probably very real for Lucy. You and I are on the same page, darling. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so to me that's a great anecdote. Yep. And one of the things I noticed in some of the books and media about Lucy is this, I'm going to say, ridiculous discomfort with the struggle to tell someone's life story when that person was an unreliable narrator of their own life story. Lucy Ball was a great storyteller.

Her goal, especially in front of a live audience, was number one, to entertain. And the fact is that the truth doesn't always make for the best story. And sometimes the truth, even if it is a good story, doesn't fit perfectly between commercial breaks. I personally think it's pretty clear that if Lucy was given the choice between the boring, sad truth and a sad but entertaining and kind of truthful story, she would always pick the more entertaining story. Yeah, absolutely. And that makes sense.

What I don't think makes sense is the people who are kind of confronted with this issue. And they're like, well, who knows what the truth is? You know, she made up a lot of stories. Yeah. So I'm of the opinion, I mean, basically like what you just said, she was number one, an entertainer. She was also an emotional person. and I think that in her stories, the thing that is true is the emotion.

Do I believe that when she was starving and desperate and alone and really young and failing again and again and again that she thought about suicide? Hell yes. Do I believe that she had this funny moment where she chose to throw herself in front of the most expensive vehicle she'd ever seen in her life and all she got was a little dirt on her skirt? No. But it's a great story. Kristen, you are being a very excellent history ho here. Excellent historical analysis. You are considering the sources and the context in which the information was given.

That's a very important part of being a historian. Is it? Absolutely. Thank you. This just pisses me off, though. Very smart people are looking at this stuff, and they're not considering that she's on a talk show. No one has ever told a true story on a talk show.

I'm sorry. Remember that Nathan for you? Absolutely. It's amazing. The whole episode is him trying to create an anecdote for his talk show appearance. It's a great episode. Yeah. We're big Nathan for you fans in this household.

Absolutely. In this household. And maybe it's partly because it's a woman that it drives me nuts that there's this thing of like, well, who's to say? You can't trust anything. Yes, you can. You can trust the emotion. You can look at the context. Yeah.

Anyway, thank you for the compliments, Norman. At the core of that story and the core of so many of these stories where she struggled to make it as an actress is the story of an ambitious young woman who wants fame and attention and praise and the stability that comes from money. Because it was money or, you know, rather the lack of love of love. money that broke up her family. Money is what took her mother away from her for years, at least in her mind. So if Lucy could just make it in the magical world of show business, then she could bring her family together again. She could get the praise and attention she'd craved since childhood. And yeah, she had to make it. Yeah. So she kept trying. She kept struggling. And that's how she got a job as a model. Kind of. Oh, kind of. Okay. This is not

sketchy, but it's not the kind of modeling that you're thinking of. Okay. It was a legit job. It sounds cool as hell. Okay. So back in this time period, there was this incredible women's clothing store right off Park Avenue, and it was run by a woman named Hattie Carnegie. Haddy Carnegie was a legendary businesswoman. Any relation to the Carnegie family? Oh, I'm so glad you asked that. Why? What?

I'm just curious. I mean, that last name, yeah. Yeah. What does it make you think of when you hear the name Hattie Carnegie? Carnegie Hill. Sure, sure. Yeah, Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man in the United States at the time. So it'd be pretty cool to have his last name, right?

Oh, did she just? Yeah. That was not her last name at all. Marketing. But she made it her last name. And if people assumed that this woman who had this store right off Park Avenue was somehow related to the Carnegie's, then great. Great. Great idea.

I think we should change our last name. Norman Penny. Penny. Penny. Of the J.C. Penny family. So you're not going to go for Gates or Zuckerberg. or Musk, any of that stuff. No, pennies.

Very good. Penny. Yeah, okay. Yeah. You know, Mr. J.C. Penny himself, his birthplace is about an hour from here. Tell me something I don't know. Maybe I'll do. I'd love to do an episode on J.C. Penny.

Oh, my God. That would be amazing. Everyone, my grandmother worked for J.C. Penny for, I mean, forever. And she had a pension. She loved it. She had a pension from J.C. Penny. Someone actually suggested we do company histories. That'd be kind of cool.

And so I think I want to do J.C. Penny. Oh, that'd be fun. And afterward, we all go on a field trip to J.C. Penny. And we can go to Hamilton, Missouri, and hang out at all the quilt shops because it's basically been overrun by quilters, Hamilton, Missouri. That's another fun story for another day. Yep. And there's a J.C. Penny Museum. It's one room in, like, the city hall.

It's something Me and my dad went to it It was a fun time But yeah, Kristen Penny What do you think? Kristen Nordstrom I love that Kristen Belk

Are we just going to name department stores Kristen Payless shoe source I can't just be Payless Shoes Source Payless Shoes store The full name of the company Yeah, thank you Anyway, I'm sorry, continue So the reality was Haddy was an immigrant who'd built herself into a very successful businesswoman.

I mean, she could be her own episode. Bottom line is, Haddy knew fashion and she knew the theater of fashion. And so at her upscale clothing store, she hired in-store models to model the clothing for customers. And the only reason she hired Lucille Ball was because Lucy kind of looked like this. really popular actress named Constance Bennett. So Haddy hired Lucy and told her to bleach her brown hair, blonde, so that she'd look even more like Constance. Sorry, I immediately think, so was this a thing to like get celebrity lookalikes for advertising, for stores? Possibly. I don't know.

Okay. Sorry, I immediately thought of L.A. Confidential. Okay. So part of the plot is there's a, there's a guy who has like a prostitution ring, and all of the prostitutes look like celebrities. Oh. So you can, like, you're sleeping with a celebrity, you know? Huh. And I didn't know if that was just, because it takes place in like, I think the 40s. And so I didn't know if that was a thing.

I mean, it makes sense. Like, I don't know when that would have started, but it makes sense if. someone is really famous and really beautiful, like, yeah, go look like that person. Yeah. I think it's especially brilliant here because Haddy's idea was like Constance is coming in. She's thinking about buying these clothes. What if we have this woman who looks just like her looking great in these clothes? Maybe that's a shorter leap to think that she's going to buy.

Okay. And, I mean, again, this was smart because not only did Constance. Bennett love fashion. She had insane money. I have a figure here that I feel like has to be wrong. There has to have been a typo, either my typo or a typo in the book. This figure says that Constance Bennett was making $30,000 a week. Adjusted for inflation, that's $550 grand a week. That can't be right. And what was her occupation again? She was a huge Hollywood actress at the time.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's possible. It's possible. That's a lot of Moola. It sure is. You just buy the whole department store. Right. So Lucy had this modeling job, but she was still struggling to just exist.

She still didn't have much money. She was super homesick. She went back and forth between Jamestown and New York City constantly. And, okay, this is another point in the story where things get a little wonky. Later in life, Lucy talked openly about how she and the other girls would go out with a guy just so they could have dinner that night. They made it a point to carry big handbags and they'd hollow out a dinner roll when the guy wasn't looking and stuff it with some of the entree and then wrap it in the napkin, put it in their purse so they'd have lunch the next day. Oh, man. Desperate times.

I guess doggy bags weren't invented yet. It was also a pretty open secret that around this time Lucy went on dates with known gangsters. Dates where she and the other girls were paid to go on the dates. As in they'd show up and there'd be a $100 bill under their dinner plate. Adjusted for inflation, that's like $1,800. So they were like escorts, basically? Not necessarily like a sexual thing, but just like company for the evening. Excellent question.

The Turner Classic Movie podcast, they talked about this. And, you know, they acknowledged the obvious, which is what you've brought up. It's like, well, it sure sounds like these guys were paying for more than just a dinner date. But then the host of the show just kind of dismissed the idea that Lucille Ball was, you know, maybe doing some sex work. I think that's nuts to dismiss that idea. Why dismiss it? Just because he can't possibly think that she would do that? Okay, I've thought about this a lot.

Part of it is, I think Turner Classic movies is a huge deal. So maybe you don't want to run that risk of saying what I think is pretty obvious. Although we have no, I don't want to say we have no evidence. Because to me, if you're admitting that you're going on dates with these guys and you're getting a $100 bill under your dinner plate for going on this date, like, I think that's pretty good evidence that there's something going on there. Sexy times. Thank you, Norm. But I'm actually going to touch on this more later in the episode. Okay.

For now, I want to touch on something else that maybe happened. in this time period. Okay, here's another Lucy's story. Here's how she tells this. You know, she's struggling to survive, barely eating, didn't have the right clothing for a New York City winter. And one day when she was modeling at Hattie Carnegie's store, she collapsed right in front of the customers.

She had this incredible pain in both of her legs. And Hattie sent her to her personal doctor, who was just kind of right around the corner. And the doctor was like, okay, yeah, something's wrong, but you obviously can't pay me shit. So I'm going to send you to the public clinic. Yeah. So Lucy went to the clinic and, again, she was clearly very sick, could barely walk, had no energy, and also had no money.

So she agreed to whatever medical experiments they wanted to perform on her. Oh, boy, would they do? Okay, apparently the brand new medical treatment that was being tested on the pores was this serum. that was made partly out of horse urine. Ooh, tangy. You don't drink it. Oh. No, apparently horse urine is still used in some drugs today,

which I think the Turner Classic movies folks said is a way to make me feel better, but I don't feel better about it. Feel worse. You know what to cure that COVID? Some good old-fashioned horse piss. This is why people are weird. about vaccines. That's right.

Well, wasn't there, what were people taken during COVID that was hilarious? It was like a horse dewormer, wasn't it? Oh, they were taking all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and bleach and all kinds of. And like fish tank rocks or something. Well, that worked. Yeah, I had a few myself. I'll do anything.

Anything but get a vaccine. Yeah. So the important thing is that whatever they did at this clinic worked. Oh, good. So the horse urine did the trick. Sure did. But what exactly was wrong with Lucy is hard to say. At one point in her life, she referred to it as rheumatoid arthritis.

At another point, she referred to it as rheumatic fever. At another point, she said that she had that terrible leg pain because she'd been hit by a car in Central Park and she'd been buried in a snowbank for hours. That is so clearly bullshit. It seems most likely she had rheumatic fever because rheumatoid arthritis doesn't just go away. Sure. The real point of this story is that she always said that after she got these mysterious injections, she took the train back home to Jamestown and she was bedridden for the next two years. She said that from the age of 17 to 19, she couldn't walk. That is horse shit.

Horse piss. Ha! You feed me to it! Oh! Sorry, premature ejoculation. That's right. Thank you to a listener who suggested that, so I am now using it. Lucy's friends from Jamestown, they saw her in this time period.

So they knew she wasn't bedridden. Yeah, I was she just walking around. Well, no, she had clearly been sick, like something had happened, and she did come home wearing these hideous orthopedic shoes, which that was not Lucy's style. So clearly something had happened. This is one of those things that people paint as a mystery, but in the book by Kathleen Brady, she points out that Lucy first told this story about being bedridden in 1942 when she was doing press for a movie called The Big Street. And in that movie, Lucy played a character named Gloria who was bedridden. So again, I think it's so obvious. The truth is that, yeah, Lucy did get sick.

It was really bad. It was probably rheumatic fever. She probably did get treatment from a clinic. We know that she definitely went back to Jamestown to recover. But that story about being bedridden was a story she told. For the press for her movie to make it relatable. And make it incredible and dramatic and what a great story. Oh my gosh, you relate to your character so well.

Yes, I too was bedridden. Another thing that happened in this time period when she was back in Jamestown started hooking up with Johnny DeVita again. Oh, in the Buick. Possibly. Why not? Near far. Well. Oh, that was terrible.

That was, oof. Oh, my. And yet we won't cut it. Because the people loved it. Lucy started acting in a local play. She got great reviews. That was really exciting for her. Yeah.

Community theater? Yeah, I mean, I think maybe it was a little step above that. Okay. But her relationship with Johnny was getting dangerous. Oh. Dangerous? Johnny was violent with Lucy. He gave her multiple black eyes.

You know, friends from the time period talked about that. They talked about how Lucy and Johnny would fight in the streets. It was obviously a bad relationship. Yeah. And by this point, it's 1930. And Johnny was no longer just some bad boy evading the law. He was getting caught now. That September, he got arrested for possession and transportation of whiskey.

So that's what he was doing in his cool car. I made you wait a really long time to solve that mystery. Damn. But hashtag worth the wait. Am I right? Possession. of whiskey. When the police went and searched his home, they found 130 gallons of illegal whiskey in the

family garage. That's so much whiskey. That's so much whiskey. John Brown would have been going eight shit in that garage. Give me my Kansas button. Then he'd be just smashing everything in there. In December of that year, Johnny got caught carrying a gun without a permit. A few months after that, he was arrested for disqualification.

What are you going to tell me next? Jaywalking? What's next, Kristen? There's nothing this boy won't do. A temp tag on his vehicle? Oh my gosh. The ultimate crime? No one gets more upset than Norman Caruso when we are in the car and we are driving behind

someone who has an expired temp tag. Norman cares so much about this crime. Let the murderers go free, he says. But do not drive your car with an expired temp tag. temp tag. It just bugs me that's all. You're trying to act cool about it. It just, it just bugs me that's all. Yeah. Uh-huh. It's not that the vein in my forehead throbs and that my knuckles go white when I see it. I saw, I saw one today that was from January, 2024, and I was just like, you were just disgusted. The way Missouri does vehicle purchases is super weird, and that's the reason

why temp tags or people just get away with temp tags forever. But they just changed the law. So, temp tag justice. It is so ridiculous to me that you are up on this, that you know. Well, I've never seen so many temp tags in my life. And so I wanted to know why. And the reason is when you buy a vehicle in Missouri, Oh, my God.

You don't pay the tax. Uh-huh. But when you go to get your license plate, that's when you pay the tax on your vehicle purchase. And so people are like, if I just never get my license, I will never have to pay taxes on this vehicle purchase. I see. Yes. So you feel like a chump because you went and paid. Because I was a big chump and went in immediately and got my license plate.

What a good boy. I was a non-threatening boy. I was a sucker. Yep. I did what any non-threatening boy would do. I followed the rules. And I didn't complain. So anyway, back to this story.

Johnny, who does break the rules, he's arrested left, right, and center. And then, not long after that, Johnny's father, Lewis, was murdered in the street near the family home. Oh. Yeah. So the rumor is that kind of everyone knew who murdered Johnny's father, but the killer was never apprehended. There are a couple different ways to look at that. One is that the DeVitas were Italian Americans at a time when discrimination against Italian Americans was just rampant. And so maybe the authorities didn't care to investigate the murder of this man.

Another way to look at it is like If it's true that they did have mob connections Maybe the local police are like Not getting involved in that Or it could be some other You know Theory that I'm not thinking about right now I think you're pretty

I think you're pretty spot on with that Either way Johnny's father was murdered And now Johnny was next in line To take over the family business Which on paper was olive oil importation and not on paper was none of your fucking business. So Lucy was having this success on stage.

She was kind of seeing the writing on the wall with this relationship with Johnny. And around this time, her Aunt Lola died. Lola's death had a big impact on Lucy. It felt like a further breakup of the family. Yeah. By this point, D.D. and Ed's marriage was on the rock. So, shit Ed?

Yeah, shit ed. So, D.D. moved to Washington, D.C., left shit ed behind. This is all happening around a time when Lucy was rumored to have had an abortion. The author Kathleen Brady asked Lucy's friend Marion about the rumored abortion. And Marion said, quote, A true friend would not say whether she did or did not. In reaction to Lola's death, Lucille did things she shouldn't have. So she probably definitely had an abortion?

I think that's what that means, yeah. How did they perform abortions back then? I don't know. Probably not very safely. Future topic. This is where I want to revisit the idea that Lucy might have engaged in sex work at some point. Okay. So personally, I think it makes absolute perfect sense that in this time,

when she was young, poor, hungry, that she did what she needed to do. Sure. Yeah. And if that meant sex work, why the fuck not? If that meant terminating a pregnancy, why the fuck not? You can't afford to feed yourself. You have other ambitions. You have other aspirations.

There are nude photos of her from this time period. And later in life, Lucy talked about a skeezy photographer who took advantage of how naive she was. I also want to acknowledge how weird it feels to be talking about someone and the choices she may or may not have made with her body, choices that in the cases of, you know, this rumored abortion or, you know, possible sex work, either these things didn't happen, or she just chose not to talk about them publicly. And I'm choosing to talk about them because so much of what Lucille Ball did with her life would be incredible even today. Yeah.

She became a comedy star. She created a legendary, groundbreaking sitcom. She got America not just to accept, but to love her interracial marriage in the fucking 1950s. And I think one of the big flaws in the American dream is that we want to believe that anything is possible. and equally importantly is that you can achieve anything in a really sanitized, socially acceptable way. And it's all just a matter of trying and trying and trying and picking yourself up by your bootstraps. But I think it makes sense that when you have nothing except for youth and beauty, maybe you sell that to get by. And I think it makes sense that when you are a young woman with a dream, that you delay having children until you're secure enough to have them.

So obviously only Lucy knows what the truth is. And who knows what kind of hilarious story she would tell us if she could tell us. But what we do know is that this was a very tough time in her life. And she survived it. And I really don't like this idea of so quickly dismissing the idea that she did sex work or anything that makes us feel uncomfortable to get ahead. First of all, that just shows how stupid we are about sex work. Sex work is real work. But also, like, look at all the stories that are coming out about Hollywood today and what actors and actresses have gone through. just because they want to be on screen.

They want to perform their craft. Yeah. Sex Work is one of those industries where I can't believe it's still illegal. I know. I don't understand. It's stupid. Yeah. And I want to be very clear.

Like, I don't have any insider information. You know, no, maybe she didn't do any of this. I just don't like the idea of. dismissing it when I think it just seems logical to me that she might have given the circumstances. Absolutely. And we don't need to judge her for that or judge anybody for it. So shut up, Norm, quit judging. Okay.

Sorry. I'm more offended about Johnny DeVita's temp tag on his Buick than Lucille Ballbott. performing sex work. Which she, again, we have no evidence that she did. But if anything, it just, you know, tells me she did what she needed to do to survive. Sure.

So, it's the early 1930s. The family's falling apart. Lucy went back to New York City. She got back into modeling. I have a question. Yeah. Did it say why her mom went to Washington, D.C.? That seems like a weird place to move to.

That does. I didn't look into that. I don't know. Okay. Sorry. That's good. Maybe she just wanted to see all the... Butter manufacture.

She was investing in butter manufacture. In D.C. Yeah. Didn't work out well. So Lucy got back into modeling. But this time, she wasn't just modeling for customers in Haddy's dress shop. This time, she kind of hit it big. Oh.

She did an ad. for Chesterfield cigarettes. And it was one hell of an ad. Okay. It was one of those illustrated ones that you used to see back in the day. I've always thought they were so beautiful. So it's one of those things where you pose for it and she posed in this beautiful blue gown with two Russian wolfhounds on either side of her.

Oh. History whole work, I cannot find this ad, but I want to see this ad. It's been described, but I want to see it with my own two. peepers. So if anyone has... So that's the history ho-work this week. That's right. Find the Chesterfield cigarette ad that features Lucille Ball with two Russian

wolfhounds. Please. That's quite a task. I know. I think the hos are up to it. So this ad put Lucy on the map. It made her a poster girl. She was everywhere. She was on billboards, on buildings, and she was kind

of famous. I mean, more famous than she'd ever been before. So she kind of, it was like a breakthrough. A bit, yeah. In fact, she was so famous that in July of 1933, an agent named Sylvia Hollow stopped Lucy in the street and asked her if she'd like to go to Hollywood. Sylvia was looking for poster girls to go to Hollywood

to be in a new movie called Roman Scandals. This was a no-brainer. At that point in her life, Lucy was working two jobs just to get by. if she went to Hollywood for the Roman Scandals job, she'd triple her income. She could finally be an actress. Of course, Lucy said yes. Hell yeah. She was 21 years old, and it looked like she'd finally made it.

But what Lucy didn't know was that she'd been the 13th young woman selected for a job that was only hiring for 12. And that's where we're going to end this episode. A cliffhanger. A cliffhanger. Excellent story. Really? Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. I always like hearing about the, well, and you've talked about this, like the buildup. Yeah. The buildup is very interesting to me. Me too. Kind of see where people came from and what they went through. Because it makes that, you know, what they became famous for even more, like, incredible. And it makes it all makes sense because, you know, you're going to see kind of in the next episode this drive she has.

And I don't think you'd really understand the drive if you didn't know all the shit she went through to get there. Well, and when you talked about like, okay, she kind of blended in with everybody else and then she had to do this modeling job where she had to look like somebody else, it makes. it makes way more sense why she had this unique identity later in life. Yeah. Because she want to be like, this is who I am. This is me. This is me. Yeah.

Very cool. Mm. Mm. Lucy O'Ball. Next week's episode, Lucy goes to Hollywood. Hollywood. Lucy's going to Hollywood. Yeah, I hope everybody liked this first episode.

I love Lucie O'Balliwood. ball so much. I can't wait to keep going with this series. Yeah, I'm excited to learn more. I, you don't want to know my introduction to I Love Lucy? Yeah. It was through Mad TV. What? Yeah. You never watched I Love Lucy? No. Oh my God. But like we watched Mad TV. And in like 1997, 1998, remember when Mad TV was like, oh, it was better than SNL? Oh, yeah, yeah. It was a thing. Yeah. So it had Nicole Sullivan, Alex Boorstein. Phil Lamar, Will Sasse, like tons of great actors, yeah. Great.

And they did a sketch. Nicole Sullivan played Lucille Ball. It was I Love Lucy 97. Uh-huh. And yeah, they did a sketch where, you know that famous I Love Lucy scene where they work at the chocolate factory? No, I'm not familiar. Oh. I'm sorry.

Of course you know about it because you're researching Lucille Ball. Well, no, I mean, it's iconic. If you love Lucy, you know that. You want to talk about great physical comedy? Yeah. That scene is great. But Mad TV did a parody where they were drug runners and they were making like heroin balls. Okay.

It was a pretty funny sketch. You know, fun fact about Mad TV, a lot of that stuff did not age well at all. No, it didn't. It didn't. But. Well, okay, I will say for anyone who's enjoying the podcast, please rate us and review us. We're still a very new podcast. We only mention slavery just a few times in every single episode.

The streak continues, folks. All six episodes of an old-timey podcast now feature slavery. God. We're talking about it at least. We're not enslaving anybody here. Thank you all so much for listening. This is so fun. I'm loving these deep dives.

Yeah. I think it's good for my ADHD to just. go full in. Okay. Somebody in the Discord mentioned their ADHD is also loving the deep dives. Oh, really? Yeah. And I guess, you know, what's up with that?

Okay. You have ADHD. What's up with you loving the deep dives? I think part of it for me is once I'm into a task, I'm all in. Yeah. And switching to a different task is really hard. Like the getting going on it is really hard. That's why you find me sometimes and I'm just in bed in the middle of the day

feeling overwhelmed by all the million things. I feel like urgently need to get done right now. And so instead of tackling them or doing anything, I just lay there and feel like a failure. It's a fun thing I do. Yeah. When I come upstairs to go to my... office the bedroom's there and yeah right now and then i'll see christin laying in the dark

with dotty yeah dotty's also you know i don't know if she actually has ADHD too or if she's just my depression dog but she she gets me yeah but no for me it's like it's like a reward that i get to go full in on these these topics because like i've been obsessed with lucile ball my whole life. And now I feel like I have an excuse to read everything about her, watch everything about her, and it's for work. So I have to do it. Oh, my gosh. You know, the people will be so upset if they don't hear Part 2 electric boogaloo. Got to give it to them, they say. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. I'm having a blast. And I can't wait for the bonus episode. I can't wait either, because I think I know what you're covering, you little weirdo.

Kristen, you know what they say about history, host? We always cite our sources. That's right, Norm. For this episode, I got my information from the book, Lucille, The Life of Lucille Ball by Kathleen Brady, the Plot Thicken's podcast from Turner Classic Movies, as well as the Lucy and Desi documentary, although I didn't really cover that yet,

but, you know, we're getting there. And the American Masters episode, Finding Lucy. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to an urge-termip-per-ker. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And until next time, Tudaloo, Tata, and Cheerio!