Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball - Softcover

Kanfer, Stefan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 037572771X ISBN 13: 9780375727719

Publisher: Vintage, 2004

Synopsis

As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, “queen of the B-pluses.” But on the small screen she was a superstar–arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the roots of Lucy’s genius and places it in the context of her conflicted and sometimes bitter personal life.

Ball of Fire gives us Lucy in all her contradictions. Here is the beauty who became a master of knock-down slapstick; the control freak whose comic alter ego thrived on chaos, the worshipful TV housewife whose real marriage ended in public disaster. Here, too, is an intimate view of the dawn of television and of the America that embraced it. Charming, informative, touching. and laugh-out-loud funny, this is the book Lucy’s fans have been waiting for.

About this title

Review:

Those expecting a vicious Hollywood tell-all from Stefan Kanfer’s Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball will be disappointed. Kanfer, whose past work includes a biography of Groucho Marx and a history of the animation industry, comes to his famous red-headed subject with admiration, and readers will be drawn by his exuberance for early film and television history.

Kanfer opens with a brief recounting of Ball's tragic childhood (her father died of typhoid when she was 3 years old) and her early career as an unintentionally starving model in New York City. The significant portion of the book begins, however, when Ball gets her first offer for a stint of film work in California and finds herself launched on a moderately successful film career. Here Kanfer provides details of the inner workings of United Artists, Columbia, and RKO as Ball does battle with Ginger Rogers, Kathryn Hepburn, and a host of other young actresses struggling for screen time. But, as Kanfer notes, it was in television that Ball made her great mark, starring with her husband Desi Arnaz. I Love Lucy debuted in 1951, and readers will delight in Kanfer’s behind-the-scenes details of the show’s production. The first situation comedy to be filmed before a live audience, Lucy offered countless challenge--technical, professional, and personal—for the volatile couple.

Kanfer argues that Ball is one of the few truly enduring television personalities to emerge from the early years of television. His book, entertaining as it is educational, does much to secure her legacy. --Patrick O’Kelley

From the Back Cover:

“Among Stefan Kanfer’s gifts as a biographer are scrupulous research, fine judgement, and a critical knowledge of the wider world. But what sets him apart is his sense of music, which allows him to see the inexpressible. In Ball of Fire he gives us Lucy, whose life was hard and collapsible, yet who enchanted us because she was the music.”
–Roger Rosenblatt

“While paying close mind to the details of an astonishing career, Kanfer also illuminates the inner turmoil...Kanfer gently conveys how great she was and how small she could be.”   
–N.Y. Daily News

”Canny critic and cultural historian Kanfer...[with] entertaining and thoughtful observations bring(s) The Redhead into sharp focus."
–Kirkus

"...excellent, compulsively readable..."
–Publisher's Weekly

“Ball of Fire is a memorable portrait of its subject in all her gifted weirdness.”
–Washington Post Book World

”Ball of Fire does convey a vivid sense of [Lucy's] fearlessness.  Stefan Kanfer has the whole heroic story." 
–New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 037572771X
• ISBN 13: 9780375727719
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384