CONTENTS

  Introduction: That’s True, But . . .

  Chapter 1: Stuff Your Teacher Wants You to Know About Lucille Ball . . .

  Chapter 2: This Book Is a Bummer

  Chapter 3: Rats, Roaches, Jerks, and Horse Urine

  Chapter 4: Queen of the Bs

  Chapter 5: Lucy and Desi

  Chapter 6: I Love Lucy

  Chapter 7: Lucy Goes to the Hospital

  Chapter 8: The Four-Headed Monster

  Chapter 9: After I Love Lucy

  Chapter 10: Oh Yeah? (Stuff About Lucille Ball That Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else)

  To Find Out More . . .

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  That’s True, But . . .

  I’ll tell you what’s really interesting—celebrities. Everybody likes to read about famous people.

  The problem is that all the biographies for kids always leave out the good stuff. The cool stuff.

  Yeah, so we decided to learn about famous people and write about them. But we leave out all the boring junk and just include the good parts. This time, we’re taking on the actress Lucille Ball. Let’s just call her Lucy to make it easy.

  Y’know, I never even heard of that lady until we started working on this book.

  Wait! WHAT? She was probably the most famous woman in the world. Just about everybody watched her TV show I Love Lucy. Newsweek called her “probably the most popular woman in the history of show business.” The U.S. Postal Service put her picture on a stamp. She was named one of the ten most admired women in the world, ahead of Queen Elizabeth! She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom! TV Guide voted her the Greatest TV Star of All Time! And you never heard of her?

  Okay, I get it. Chill. I know lots about her now, and I watched a bunch of episodes of I Love Lucy. But you left out the most important Lucy fact of all.

  What’s that?

  She had no eyebrows.

  Yeah, I couldn’t help but notice the title of the book. Would you like to explain?

  No.

  Come on! You can’t just throw out something like that without explaining it. Was she born without eyebrows? Did they get burned off in a fire or something?

  No, it was neither of those things. Okay, okay, I’ll tell you what happened. Before she was ever on TV, Lucy acted in lots of movies. Back in those days, the movie studios would control the way actresses looked. They’d dye their hair, make them lose weight, make them wear certain clothes or wigs, and stuff like that. And one thing they did was shave off their eyebrows.

  Why? That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of.

  Think about it. What purpose do eyebrows serve anyway? Why do we even have eyebrows in the first place?

  I don’t know! Hey, can we argue about that another time? Why did they shave off Lucille Ball’s eyebrows?

  In the 1940s it was the fashion for women to have really skinny eyebrows. People thought it was a good look. So they’d shave off the actress’s eyebrows and then draw in fake eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil.

  Okay, that’s just weird. But don’t eyebrows just grow back after they get shaved off?

  Not always! Lucille Ball’s eyebrows never grew back. So she had to draw in her own eyebrows for the rest

  of her life.

  Wow. Now, that is an amazing fact. How did you find that out?

  I did my research, just like you!

  Well, I did tons of research on Lucille Ball. I dug up all kinds of cool facts like that, and you won’t see them in other books for kids.

  You want to hear another strange fact about Lucille Ball?

  I’m listening.

  She received radio signals through her teeth.

  Very funny. Now you’re just being silly. Let’s move on to the next chapter.

  Fine. Be that way. But it’s true!

  You’re crazy. Okay, how did she receive radio signals through her teeth? This I want to hear.

  You hurt my feelings. So I’m not going to tell you.

  You’re impossible!

  CHAPTER 1

  Stuff Your Teacher Wants You to Know About Lucille Ball . . .

  August 6, 1911 Lucille Désirée Ball is born in Jamestown, New York.

  March 2, 1917 Desi Arnaz is born in Santiago de Cuba.

  1926 Lucy, fifteen years old, travels to New York City to attend the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts. After a month, she goes back home.

  1928 Lucy returns to New York and works as a model for dress designer Hattie Carnegie. She comes down with rheumatic fever and goes back home.

  1932 Lucy comes to New York again, to become an actress and model.

  1933 Lucy goes to Hollywood and appears in her first movie. Desi Arnaz escapes Cuba and comes to the United States.

  1940 Lucy appears in the movie Too Many Girls, meets Desi Arnaz, and marries him.

  1948 Lucy stars in the radio sitcom My Favorite Husband.

  July 17, 1951 Daughter Lucie Arnaz is born.

  October 15, 1951 I Love Lucy is broadcast on CBS Television. It becomes the number-one show on TV.

  January 19, 1953 Son Desi Arnaz Jr. is born.

  1957 I Love Lucy ends.

  1960 Lucy and Desi get divorced.

  1961 Lucy marries Gary Morton.

  1962 Lucy becomes the first woman to run a major TV studio. The Lucy Show begins, and runs until 1968.

  1968 Here’s Lucy begins, and runs until 1974.

  1985 Lucy appears in her final movie, Stone Pillow.

  1986 Life With Lucy begins, and ends. Desi Arnaz dies on December 2.

  April 26, 1989 Lucy dies.

  2001 Lucy is inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. The U.S. Postal Service issues a stamp to celebrate what would have been her ninetieth birthday.

  2008 TV Guide ranks I Love Lucy the second-best TV show ever.

  2021 Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as Lucy and Desi, are nominated for Oscars for the movie Being the Ricardos.

  Are you still awake? Fantastic! Okay, let’s get to the good stuff, the stuff your teacher doesn’t even know about Lucille Ball.

  I thought teachers know everything about everything.

  They know almost everything. But not this stuff!

  Okay, let’s get to it.

  CHAPTER 2

  This Book Is a Bummer

  We should probably start at the beginning.

  Do we have to? That beginning stuff is always boring.

  It doesn’t have to be boring! Listen to this: Lucille Ball was descended from some of the earliest settlers of the thirteen colonies, and she was very possibly related to George Washington.

  Get out!

  No, really. George Washington’s mother’s maiden name was Mary Ball.

  You don’t say!

  I say. Not only that, but Lucille Ball was a descendant of one of the women accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials in 1692.

  I didn’t know that.

  Okay, are you in the mood to be depressed?

  No.

  Well, too bad. Because Lucille Ball’s childhood is really depressing. Her mother’s name was Désirée, but everybody called her DeDe. Her father’s name was Henry, but everybody called him Had. He worked for the telephone company, and the family had to move around a lot for his job.

  What’s so depressing about that?

  Well, Lucy’s father died when she was just three years old.

  Oh.

  He got typhoid fever, and he was just twenty-eight years old. Lucy’s mother was a widow when she was twenty-two.

  That must have been horrible.

  Lucy and Birds

  Yeah, and that day was Lucy’s first memory. She remembered that on the day her father died, a bird flew into an open window of her house and got trapped in there. From that moment on, and for the rest of her life, Lucy was afraid of birds.

  I read about that. She would never stay in a hotel that had pictures of birds on the wall.

  One time, she bought some expensive silk wallpaper for her home. It wasn’t until it was up on the wall that she noticed there were birds in the design. The wallpaper was taken down the next day.

  And you know what’s really odd? One of the most famous bird artists—Roger Tory Peterson—grew up in the same town as Lucy: Jamestown, New York. Anyway, when Had died, DeDe was pregnant with Lucy’s little brother, Fred, and she had her hands full. To make sure Lucy didn’t run around the neighborhood, DeDe tied a dog leash around her waist—

  Wait! WHAT?

  —and she attached the other end of the leash to a clothesline in the backyard. When Lucy ran around playing, she would pull on the leash and it made a noise. So if there was no noise, DeDe would run outside to make sure Lucy was okay.

  That doesn’t sound like much fun.

  Oh, it gets worse. DeDe suffered from terrible headaches. She would lie in a dark room with the shades down. She couldn’t move or talk. It got so bad that Lucy’s grandparents sent DeDe to live in California and they took care of Lucy and her brother.

  DeDe fell in love with a man named Ed Peterson out there, and when they got married a few years later, Lucy and her brother were sent to live with his parents.

  Why them?

  Beats me. But they were really strict, serious people. They only had one mirror in the whole house, because they thought mirrors were a sign of being vain. One time they caught Lucy looking at herself in the mirror, and she wa
s sent to her room.

  I bet that’s why she invented Sassafrassa and Madeline the Cowgirl.

  What? Who were they?

  Lucy’s imaginary friends. They were dolls she made out of clothespins, and she would talk to them. She had a fantasy world in her imagination, and that helped her deal with the situation she was in. She lived with Grandma Peterson from age eight to twelve.

  Eventually, Lucy’s mom came back home to raise her. But it was a tough way to grow up. Before Lucy was ten years old, her father died, her mother was gone for over three years, and she lived in eight different places.

  Plus, she grew up really poor. Her house had no hot water. They would heat water on a wood-burning stove. During the summer, she and her brother would take a bar of soap to a nearby lake so they could wash themselves. When she was older, Lucy remembered the “glorious day” her first bathtub arrived.

  The Ball family was so poor that Lucy couldn’t afford a pencil to bring to school with her. For the rest of her life, she hoarded pencils wherever she went.

  Wow, she was one of the funniest people in the world, but this book looks like it’s going to be a total bummer.

  Be patient. Even though times were really hard, Lucy found that she really loved getting attention. As a little kid, she would go to the local grocery store, hop up on the counter, and pretend to be a frog. The customers would give her pennies.

  That was her first professional performance.

  When Lucy was twelve, her stepfather

  suggested she try out for a local theater company. She got a part in a play, and she loved it. Even though she dislocated her shoulder when another actor threw her across the stage, she decided that she wanted a career in show business.

  And then she became a movie star, right?

  Uh, no. When she was fifteen, Lucy started going out with a boy who was much older than she was. Her mother disapproved. So do you know what DeDe did?

  She told the boy to get lost and never come back?

  No, she sent Lucy to acting school in New York City, which was six hundred miles away. So Lucy got on a bus and arrived in New York with fifty dollars sewn into her underwear.

  Wait a minute. If somebody sews money into your underwear, how do you get it out?

  I don’t know! I guess you have to rip the stitches or something. That’s not important!

  But if your money is sewn into your underwear and you want to buy an ice-cream cone or something for a few dollars, you have to take your pants off, rip out the stitches from your underwear, and get the money!

  I guess so. Who cares? Anyway, even though Lucy loved acting, she hated acting school. The school didn’t like her either. After a month, they sent her mom a letter saying she was wasting her money by sending her daughter to acting school. They said Lucy had no talent.

  Ouch. That must have hurt. So what did she do?

  She took the bus back home and went to high school. She was a cheerleader, she played on the basketball team, and she loved riding horses and ice-skating.

  During the summer, she flipped hamburgers at the snack bar of an amusement park. She would shout at people walking by, “Don’t step there! Step over here and get yourself a delicious hamburger!”

  While she was in high school, Lucy kept on performing. She and two of her friends formed a musical group called “The Gloom Chasers Union.” Lucy was the drummer.

  Never heard of ’em.

  Nobody did. After that, Lucy and her friends formed their own acting company and put on plays in the school gym at night. Lucy was the writer, director, and lead actor. She also helped make and sell tickets, print up posters, build props, and sweep up the stage at the end of the show.

  The tickets cost twenty-five cents, and the girls made twenty-five dollars.

  Did you read that when she was in high school, Lucy got so angry with one of her teachers that she threw a typewriter at her?

  No. What’s a typewriter?

  You’re kidding, right? You don’t know what a typewriter is?

  Uh. It’s something you write on?

  It was this machine they used to use before there were computers.

  Oh yeah, I knew that.

  Liar! Anyway, Lucy never finished high school.

  Maybe she would have graduated if she hadn’t thrown that typewriter at her teacher. But I bet things are going to get happier now, right?

  No, something terrible happened. It was 1927. Lucy was sixteen. Her grandfather Fred was in the yard with a few of the neighborhood kids, showing them how to shoot a rifle.

  Uh-oh. I think I know where this is heading.

  He set up some cans for the kids to use for target practice. Grandpa Fred told the kids not to move while one of the kids got ready to shoot. Just as this girl was about to pull the trigger, the mother of one of the boys called out for her son to come home. He got up to leave and ran right in front of the target. The bullet hit him, and the boy was paralyzed.

  Oh no!

  Grandpa Fred was the only adult watching the kids. He got sued by the boy’s family. He lost the lawsuit, lost his house, lost his life savings, and lost everything he owned. And when the boy died a few years later, Grandpa Fred had to live with the fact that he was responsible for the boy’s death.

  Oh man. Do we have to end the chapter like that?

  Hey, life isn’t all candy and laughter, Turner. Bad stuff happens.

  Can we move on now? I can’t take much more of this depressing stuff.

  1825: Bolivia became an independent country.

  1926: Nineteen-year-old Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel, breaking the men’s record by almost two hours.

  1945: The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

  1960: Chubby Checker sang “The Twist” on TV, starting a worldwide dance craze.

  1962: Jamaica became an independent country.

  1964: The world’s oldest tree, 4,862 years old, was accidentally cut down in Nevada.

  1965: President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting voting discrimination against minorities.

  2012: NASA’s robotic vehicle Curiosity landed on Mars and began sending

  back photos.

  Andy Warhol: Artist

  Alexander Fleming: Scientist who discovered penicillin

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson: British poet

  Leslie Odom Jr.: Actor and singer

  M. Night Shyamalan: Movie director

  Dutch Schultz: Gangster

  Edith Roosevelt: First Lady of

  the United States

  CHAPTER 3

  Rats, Roaches, Jerks, and Horse Urine

  Is this where the funny stuff starts?

  Not by a long shot. After the shooting incident, Lucy decided to give New York City another try.

  Oh yeah, this is when she became a model, right? I read about that. She was seventeen, and she wanted to get a fresh start, so she told everybody she was from Montana. She even wrote to the Montana Chamber of Commerce to get some facts about Montana so she would sound like she was telling the truth.

  She changed her name too. She started calling herself Diane Belmont.

  How did she come up with that?

  She named herself after a horse-racing track called Belmont.

  Aha. And she had no money, of course. She found a cheap apartment that was infested with rats and cockroaches.

  Ugh.

  When she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she would stamp her feet and sing to chase the critters away.

  Lucy was so broke that she would make tomato soup from ketchup and hot water.

  I read that one time she had to beg on the street for a penny because she only had four cents, and it cost a nickel to ride the subway. And to this day, people leave nickels on Lucy’s gravestone.

  She took any job she could find to make money. She sold cosmetics, she was an elevator operator in a department store—