Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball - Softcover

Brady, Kathleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823089134 ISBN 13: 9780823089130

Publisher: Watson-Guptill Pubns, 2001

Synopsis

A history of the complex and sometimes contradictory life and career of one of America's most beloved comediennes chronicles her troubled marriage with Desi Arnaz, her early career in vaudeville, and her success in television. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Kathleen Brady was named a Fellow of the Society of American Historians for her biography Ida Tarbell Portrait of a Muckraker. She was featured on the PBS American Masters Series tribute to Lucille Ball, as well as on the PBS series The Prize and the A & E Biography series. She is a former reporter for Time Magazine and was co-director of New York University's Biography Seminar. She writes about issues affecting New York City where she makes her home.

From Booklist:

Lucille Ball was the quintessential hardworking, wisecracking gal who knocked herself out to get a break, caught fame's shooting star, and rode it for all it was worth. Meanwhile, she worked herself harder than a Horatio Alger hero, becoming an extremely successful businessperson who suffered the now-familiar distancing from her children, who later said they couldn't remember her ever just playing with them. The first TV megastar, Ball became so familiar that her nickname, Lucy, instantly brought her to mind. Her offscreen persona was the antithesis of the TV Lucy, though, and after a while, she wasn't even Lucy on TV anymore. Yet the show, the drive, and the grind kept going, for the money kept rolling in. Eventually, her enjoyment of it all evaporated as the toll of her stormy marriage to Desi Arnaz and the problems of her children, whose entertainment careers she tried to start and manage, mounted. Ball's life is a captivating, ultimately cautionary tale; its similarity to the plot of a showbiz potboiler makes it all the more appealing. Mike Tribby

About this edition

• Publisher: Watson-Guptill Pubns
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0823089134
• ISBN 13: 9780823089130
• Binding: Paperback