Dick Powell & June Allyson: Many Little Things

When June Allyson told some of her friends that she was going to St. George, Utah, “to be on location with Richard while he directed The Conqueror, they told her she was making a mistake. “St. George is a nice little town, but in the summer the mercury shoots up to about 130 degrees. It’s no place to go for a rest, Junie.” Mrs. Richard Powell cocked her cute little head to one side. “I’m not going to St. George,” she announced in that perennially husky voice, “to rest. I’m going there to be with Richard." So June climbed into her Ford station wagon and with the Edgar Bergens beside her, headed for the miserable Utah desert. When she got to St. George she was assigned a room with her husband Dick in the Twin Oaks Motel. All Dick and June had was a single motel room. Here, June washed Dick’s socks and hung them in the window to dry. Here, too, she gabbed with Dick’s two children by a previous marriage, Norman and Ellen.

June knew that Ellen’s sixteenth birthday was coming up and she arranged a surprise party for her stepdaughter. No comments were uttered by Ellen's mother Joan Blondell, a bit of a relief. And June hates flying, but one weekend she flew back to Los Angeles to bring her daughter Pamela to St. George. She even rode with Dick on his new motorcycle. She was wonderfully kind to the citizens of St. George. They would knock on her motel door and ask for autographs or ask her to step outside for pictures. June was always gracious and compliant. One time when Dick was out in the middle of the parched desert, June insisted upon driving eight miles over really rough terrain to lunch with him. The production crew had warned her that a cloudburst was in the offing and the roads would be impassable. But June went ahead, anyway. When news of her many family activities waited back to Hollywood, some local observers, jaded and skeptical, found the news difficult to believe. For months they had been whispering that “there’s trouble in the Powell-Allyson household.”

This rumor began several months ago when June and Dick were out to dinner with friends. The Powells began to quarrel. June (who is so emotional she cries at card tricks) jumped up from her seat, ran out, and hailed a cab. Next day Hollywood was whispering that the Powell-Allyson marriage had turned sour. Said one know-it-all: “It figures. Let’s face it. They’ve been married nine years. That’s par for the course. It's not like they are too compatible.” Said others: “She’s just tired of playing Trilby . . . Two careers in one family just don’t mix . . . I never expected it to last!” June and Dick were disturbed by these rumors for a while. “Richard and I quarreled,” she admitted. “So what? All married couples have disagreements. It was nothing important. It’s over and done with.” Didn’t they understand that she and Richard had been through so much together, they had become inseparable parts of each other’s lives? Didn’t they realize that only a few months before she had come close to losing her husband on the operating table?

“I’ll never forget it,” she says, “so long as I live. It happened last winter just before I started the Glenn Miller job. Richard got up in the middle of the night. He thought he was suffering from indigestion. He took some bicarbonate of soda and went back to bed. Then he took a little brandy. But that didn’t help either. “When morning came I called a doctor. By then the pain had spread all over his stomach and his skin was red and I was really frightened. “The doctor said it was just a virus and told me not to worry. He gave Richard some sedatives and told me everything would be fine. Only Richard’s pain got worse and worse and he was in agony for the next three days. “I stayed with him all the time but on the third night I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I fell asleep right on top of the bedspread and when I awoke, Richard was sitting on my bed and water was running down his face and I remember saying to myself in a daze, ‘That’s funny. Why is he taking a shower at this time of the night?’ And as I tried to shake the sleep out of my eyes, Richard mumbled, ‘Help me, June. Please help me.’ And then he collapsed in a heap at the foot of the bed.

“I don’t know how I managed but I dragged him to the bed, and it was then that his appendix burst. We rushed him to the hospital for an emergency operation. Richard is allergic to penicillin, so they couldn’t use that to kill the infection and it began to spread through his system. “Then the terrible mental torture began. Suppose he dies, I asked myself. What will I do? How will I ever be able to tell Ricky or Pam? “And Richard was dying. There was no doubt about it. Another operation was necessary. They were giving him blood transfusions and feeding him intravenously and it looked like the end for sure. “A priest went into Richard’s room and then walked out to me and said, ‘You’d better go in, Mrs. Powell.’ “And I can’t tell you how I felt when I walked in and saw Richard on that bed, almost lifeless. I began to talk to him, telling him that he must live, must live. I don’t know what I said. But after a while his eyes opened ever so slowly and he mumbled, ‘This is a helluva way to quit smoking. Isn’t it, June?’ 

And once he said that I knew he’d pull through.” Such experiences bind a man and wife together and to June it’s incredible that anyone might think a picayune quarrel could nullify such love as theirs. To others it is not incredible at all. A prominent director, for example, who has known the Powells for years, says, “The reason many Hollywood people expected June’s marriage to fail is relatively simple. At the time of their marriage, Junie had nothing in common with Dick except a show business background. She was twenty years younger than he—naive, insecure and incapable of helping him socially, domestically or professionally. “She couldn’t play tennis or golf, didn’t know how to run a house, was wracked by an inferiority complex, stammered when speaking to the servants. In short she was a New York City kid who had been raised in poverty."

“Her acting career, however, was going great guns, and Dick’s was not. The wise guys thought that sooner or later jealousy would ruin the marriage. They didn’t understand that June and Dick are intelligent and have great strength of character.  Despite the heat, June spent much of her time on the desert location with Dick, was furious at rumors that their nine-year-old marriage was in trouble. “In the years he’s been married to Junie, Dick has taught her a great deal. He still chooses scripts for her, and she still abides by his decisions, because they are wise decisions born of extensive experience. “Some actresses resent their husbands’ counsel. Not June. She respects Dick and loves him for all he’s done. And in the dark days several years ago she always maintained great faith in his ability."

“That faith has paid off. Today Dick Powell is one of the biggest men in Hollywood. He owns a TV series, Four Star Playhouse, produced by Powell Enterprises and sponsored by Singer Sewing Machine. He alternates with three other top names, Charles Boyer, David Niven, Ida Lupino, and Ronald Colman. “Dick is one of Howard Hughes’ favorites at RKO. Hughes signed him as a director in 1952 and Dick did an excellent directorial job on Split Second. Last year Hughes made him a producer and this year Dick is not only directing and producing but he’s just finished starring with Debbie Reynolds in Susan Slept Here. Under the circumstances, it seems impossible that career problems could cause Dick and June to split up—and unlikely that anything else could. “But the rumors persist because people don’t realize how much Junie has changed in the last ten years. They think she is the same clinging, bewildered kid who married Powell in 1945. Or that she is currently resenting his guidance.” Powell says, “Who has time to deny silly rumors? I’m too busy making a picture.”

In St. George, June said. “Dick and I have never been happier. It just hurts me to see him working so hard. Every night after the day’s shooting he holds long conferences with his staff. He’s really a very fine director. I’m sure this picture will prove it. “The reason I’m out here with Richard is because I love him and want to be near him. I was away from him during the shooting of Strategic Air Command.And I don’t like being away from him.” That does not sound like two people on the verge of separation. Of course, conditions might change but this isn’t very likely. Ever since Dick married June, he’s had eyes for no one else. No matter how gauche she was, he never strayed, never grew angry, never got fed up. And as June says, “It began to penetrate my thick skull years ago that Richard loved me for myself. And when I became sure of that I began to grow up.”

At first Dick was chary of adopting children. (He had two by his previous marriage to Joan Blondell). But only because he wasn’t at all sure that June could handle children. In 1948, when Joan Crawford told the Powells about an adoption home in Memphis, Tennessee, they adopted their daughter Pamela from there. Two years later on her way back to Memphis to adopt a brother for Pam, June found that adoption wouldn’t be necessary. She gave birth to Richard Keith on Christmas Eve that year. When Dick married June she had relatively few friends in Hollywood. He introduced her to his own world, a conservative world of prominent, wealthy, influential people. During this adaptation, she dropped the chorus girls she had known and grown up with in New York (Betsy Kelly, Gene’s wife, and Jane Ball, Monte Prosser’s wife) largely because they rarely crossed her path, but partly because she did not feel capable of mixing the two worlds. However, June hired a secretary who once worked in the Copacabana chorus line.

There were suggestions, of course, that she was revolting from Powell’s domination, asserting her own personality at last. But actually June’s real personality never has been submerged. It has been merely in the process of development. It has taken June a long time to get over her fear of assuming responsibility. Now June is sure of her own values and does not hesitate to act on them. “In my book,” she said a few weeks ago, “Richard’s happiness and the happiness of our family come first. If there’s any time left, I’ll think about my career." So long as cute little Junie adheres to that program, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Powell are destined to go on with many years of domestic bliss. -Alice Hoffman for Modern Screen Magazine (October, 1954)

The MGM Golden Era: June Allyson

"She's skinny; she's a little bowlegged; she can't sing much. She's certainly no raving beauty, and she's got a speaking voice that seems to be crying for cough drops after every syllable." That's how one plain-speaking insider described June Allyson, who, for filmgoers since the 1940s, was always been the wistful girl next door, wearing Peter Pan collars and starched skirts. It was an image which fit neatly into the "family" of MGM stars. She fortuitously began in motion pictures in the middle of America's involvement in World War II, a time when the public held high in esteem the wholesome girlfriend or wife left behind by a soldier going to war. June projected this wholesomeness very convincingly and the public eagerly went to see her films. 

As a teenager, June entered Amateur Night dance contests in the Bronx, and even though she never won, she kept on dancing. Things were a little better at home, now an apartment at 1975 Bryant Avenue, since her mother had remarried. After high school June began to seek jobs as a dancer. There was a $50 a week play date at the Club Lido in Montreal and then appearances in several movie shorts for Vitaphone and Educational Films. When June was twenty, she got a part in the chorus line of a Broadway musical Sing Out The News. When that flopped, she joined the chorus line of the Copacabana nightclub until she was hired for the chorus of Jerome Kern–Oscar Hammerstein II's musical Very Warm For May. That show opened in 1939, and one of her colleagues in the chorus was Vera-Ellen. This role got June into Rodgers and Hart's Higher And Higher. She recalls: "I've been in more flops than you can imagine. It was Richard Rodgers who was always keeping them from firing me, as every dance director wanted to do." 

According to June, it was MGM producer Joe Pasternak who persuaded Louis B. Mayer to look at her screen test by pleading to the studio kingpin: "Please look at this test and do just two things. Look at her eyes and listen to her voice. Don't pay any attention to anything else about her. These are distractions we can iron out." Thus was born the celluloid June Allyson, the diminutive blonde/redhead with the surprisingly husky voice (caused by chronic bronchitis and enlarged vocal cords—in 1961 she underwent a throat operation).

The Stratton Story (1949) was a very good biopic starring James Stewart as the baseball player who loses his leg in a hunting accident. June's husband Dick Powell had persuaded her to accept the assignment as the typical wife-next-door, because he was perceptive enough to know she had far more competition in glamorous musical roles. The Stratton Story displays her beautifully in her screen synthesis as an unsophisticated Margaret Sullavan type of screen star. The final straw for June was when the promised role in The Long, Long Trailer (1954) was handed to ex-MGM player Lucille Ball. However, June went into the top-grossing The Glenn Miller Story (1954) at Universal at the special request of James Stewart. 

Dick Powell, who played Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother who woos Dixie American Marion Davies in the costume musical Hearts Divided (1936), would recount his experiences on the set to Tony Thomas. Powell recalled that William R Hearst would not allow Marion to perform unless he was on the set. Usually the mogul would be accompanied by three bulky associates, who said nothing but looked about with great intentness. "Those love scenes," Powell remembered, "were sheer torture. If I didn't make them look real, the director [Frank Borzage] would never use me again. If I made them too real, I was sure I was going to get a bullet in the back. Marion was doing her part in the long kissing closeups, but I was damn near choking to death. That picture lasted ten weeks, and I thought I'd die before I got out. I was still shaking months afterwards." By 1937 Hearst's empire was beginning to crumble and Marion at age forty retired from the cinema. 

Her last performance was in a dramatization of The Brat on Lux Radio Theatre in July 1936. On September 22, 1961, Marion died at age sixty-four, leaving an estate of eight million dollars. Perhaps Mary Astor, who worked with Marion in Warner Brothers' Page Miss Glory (1935), summed up the off-screen Marion best: "She was not hard and inquisitive, nor was she a dumb blonde. She was bright and funny. Her warmth and kindness could have taught many of us a great deal about the art of loving." That definition of Marion definitely might cast doubt about her veiled depiction in Center Door Fancy (written by Dick Powell's ex-wife Joan Blondell) as a vengeful shady character. Yet, the worst character portrayed by Blondell is Amy O'Brien (inspired by June Allyson) that maybe reflects more on Blondell's troubled mind than Allyson's alleged "naughtiness."

If it were not bad enough that the June Allyson faction at MGM was burying Gloria's film career for good, she up and retired for two years when she wed actor John Payne. However, she looked back on the studio system with fondness: "You lived there, you worked there, you grew up there. You knew everyone around you. We were groomed, step by step, for stardom. Nobody was thrown into something before they were ready for it. And I miss the movies that were made for the sheer entertainment of the audience." Divorced in 1969 from her third husband Richard Fincher (who later became a Florida state senator), in 1971, at the persuasion of her good friend June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven moved back to California. She said of her old glamour MGM years: "I didn't begin to grow up until I was forty; and now I can face reality, but escaping from it via 'sheer entertainment' can be fun."

Bottle-blonde bombshell of 1940s and 1950s "B" films, Adele Jergens (who dated Ronald Reagan) typically played hardcore floozies and burlesque dancers. In the early 1940s, she worked as a Rockette, and was named the Number One Showgirl in New York City. She got her first break understudying Gypsy Rose Lee as a burlesque strip artist in the Broadway show "Star and Garter" in 1942. Lee fell ill for two weeks during the show's run. A talent scout for Columbia Pictures caught Jergens's performance and signed her to a contract. A year later, in 1943, Joan Blondell had displaced Gypsy Rose Lee as Mike Todd's girlfriend. It was hard on Lee, as Jergens (who played Marilyn Monroe's mother in Ladies of the Chorus) and others observed. Conveniently, Blondell ignored Lee largely in her confessional tome.

In 1954, June Allyson said: "We all seem to have an instinct to blame someone or something for personal tragedy." Was she possibly alluding to Blondell's stubborn accusations and exaggerations towards her? During Allyson and Powell marriage crisis in 1957, Beverly Ott reported that Powell sighed: "Sometimes it seems all the love in the world is not enough for June." Although Powell was thought of as a powerful mogul in Hollywood, at the time of his death, his estate was estimated to be worth 2 million. The divorce of June Allyson from Glenn Maxwell was prompted by the terms of Powell's will: She would receive $4,000 monthly if she stayed unmarried. Allyson was quoted as saying that Maxwell was "the nicest man I've ever known—besides Richard." 

Sources: The MGM Stock Company: The Golden Era (2015) by James Robert Parish and The Dick Powell Story (1992) by Tony Thomas 

Distinctiveness and femininity: Diane Chambers

Sam Malone and Diane Chambers may have had their fair share of tension as an on-again off-again couple on "Cheers," but 30 years later, Ted Danson (Malone) thinks Shelley Long (Chambers) has everything to do with the show's success. "You really put us on the map," Danson told Long at the "Cheers" 30th Anniversary Reunion Dinner, according to Entertainment Tonight. "And this is not my opinion," Danson remarked. "This is everybody's. We hadn't seen a character like Diane Chambers for years. You really put 'Cheers' on the map with your astounding performance." Danson told People in 1987: “I cannot say anything bad about my partner. I mean, my wife and I have terrible arguments sometimes, and they’re our business. Our relationship, Shelley’s and mine, has included being happy with each other and not being happy with each other.” Danson recently added, "Shelley's process would have infuriated you if it hadn't been purposeful. But it was purposeful—it was her way of being Diane—and there's not a mean bone in Shelley's body. I was in heaven." Source: huffpost.com

Distinctiveness and femininity, rather than symmetry and masculinity, affect facial attractiveness across the world. In a new study it was observed that males found the more feminine faces of women to be more beautiful, whereas masculinity had little to no impact on women’s perception of male attractiveness. The study also noted that facial symmetry did not influence attractiveness perceptions. This new research was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior Volume 45, Issue 1, January 2024. Female faces exhibiting higher sex-typicality, meaning those appearing more feminine, were universally judged as more attractive. However, increasing the masculinity of male faces did not influence their attractiveness ratings. Overall, women were rated as more attractive than men. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dick Powell and Joan Blondell, late 1930s. 

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Love and comedy at first sight: Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball: "The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."

Allegedly, Ginger Rogers would confess to her friend Lucille Ball: “Let’s face it: Astaire is a great dancer, perhaps the best, but he has less sex appeal than Gabby Hayes… you know, the sidekick of Roy Rogers with the beady eyes?” It's rumored that Ginger would have a brief fling with Cary Grant when they co-starred in Monkey Business (1952) with Marilyn Monroe. Although Rogers continued to date Desi Arnaz on and off for a few weeks, her romantic attentions soon began to focus on David Niven, with whom she was making Bachelor Mother (1939). It was said that homespun Jimmy Stewart kept a diary of all the beautiful glamour girls he’d seduced, and whereas Ginger’s name was near the top, other conquests included Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner, Norma Shearer, Olivia de Havilland, Marlene Dietrich, Margaret Sullavan, and June Allyson.

Stewart had lost his virginity to Ginger Rogers. Ginger and Lucille shared something in common: They believed in ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em'. Ginger’s recent victories: She had received a Best Actress Oscar for her dramatic role in Kitty Foyle (1940), for which she beat out both Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis. Ironically, on that same night, her former lover, James Stewart, won the Best Actor Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, “stealing” the picture from Kate Hepburn and Cary Grant. As sometimes happens in Hollywood, Stewart competed against his best friend Henry Fonda, who had been nominated for his performance in the movie classic, The Grapes of Wrath (1940). The first time Desi Arnaz spotted Lucille Ball, he didn’t know who she was. He mistook her for “some broken-down hooker.” She had taken a lunch break from a fight scene with Maureen O’Hara during the filming of Dance, Girl, Dance (1940). 

Arthur Freed hired Brooklyn-born Edward Buzzell as director of the film adaptation of Best Foot Forward. Both Freed and Buzzell agreed to offer the lead role in Best Foot Forward to Lucille Ball, who would portray a glamorous movie star who visits a military academy filled with young men lusting for her. Harry James and his Orchestra provide the music, performing such numbers as “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” Freed wanted to employ some members of the original Broadway cast, notably June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven and Nancy Walker. According to Lucille, “When I was told that William Gaxton had been cast as my leading man, I told Arthur Freed, ‘You must be kidding.’ Then I found out he was to be my press agent, not my on-screen lover. What a relief.” The New York Daily Mirror proclaimed, “Lucille Ball handles the comedy and lines in a manner reminiscent of the late Carole Lombard.”

Returning from a USO bond tour, Lucille was notified by MGM that her next picture, Meet the People (1944) would co-star Dick Powell. In kidding fashion, June Allyson warned Lucille to keep her hands off Dick Powell, Lucille’s new co-star, even though he was still married to Joan Blondell. Lucille, still in her happy phase of her marriage with Desi, assured June she wouldn't betray their friendship, and she seemed to notice how cold Powell behaved towards Lucille during the shooting. Meet the People bombed at the box office, losing $720,000 for MGM. Dick Powell, cast in Meet the People as “Swanee” Swanson, has won a date with Lucille Ball as part of a fund-raising contest for War Bonds. At the time, though still married to Joan Blondell, a former friend of Lucille’s, Powell was “heavy dating” June Allyson.  

In his biography, Lucy and Desi, Warren G. Harris wrote: “To get back at Desi, Lucy started going out on public dates with other men, usually younger actors from MGM like Peter Lawford and Scott McKay. Each of them at different times was seen escorting her to such popular spots as Ciro’s or Cocoanut Grove.” She never spoke publicly about her affair with Lawford, although she sometimes discussed it with her longtime confidant Barbara Pepper. “I agree with George Cukor,” she confessed. “Peter is a lousy lay. Where is Desi when I need him?” For an actor who allegedly was such a lousy lay, Lawford seduced a number of world class beauties and movie stars: Anne Baxter, Dorothy Dandridge, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Rhonda Fleming, Janet Leigh, Marilyn Maxwell, Lana Turner, Kim Novak, and June Allyson. Lawford was also a key player in the life of Marilyn Monroe, to whom he became scandalously linked, especially at the time of her murder.

Lucille did not like her role in Easy Living as a secretary to Lloyd Nolan playing Coach Lenahan. She and Nolan had worked smoothly together ever since filming Two Smart People (1946) with John Hodiak. Victor Mature played Pete Wilson, the star professional quarterback who has no future in football. His doctor had diagnosed him with a diseased heart because of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever. He doesn’t want to tell his scheming wife, Liza (Lizabeth Scott), who wants to be a big success as an interior designer, and will go far to achieve her goal, even if it means getting involved with other influential men. Pete’s best friend is Pappy McCarr (Sonny Tufts), who will eventually replace Pete as the team’s star football player. As his secretary, Lucille is in love with Pete, but in the end, he returns to his errant wife, who (unconvincingly) promises to mend her ways. 

In third billing, Liza, the wife of footballer Mature, Lizabeth Scott had a far better role than Lucille’s. One critic later called Scott “the most beautiful face of film noir to emerge from the late 1940s and early ‘50s.” Lucille had seen only one of her movies, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) in which Scott had co-starred with Kirk Douglas and Barbara Stanwyck. “Scott made me feel like a relic of the 1930s,” Lucille said. “Here I was still impersonating Carole Lombard as the wise-cracking, sexy, self-actualizing type in one of her screwball types.”

Lucille met with producer Robert Sparks, who was better known as the husband of Penny Singleton, who played “Blondie Bumstead” in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was one of the early members of the film colony urging Lucille to consider the newly emerging medium of television. In time, he would leave the movie industry altogether and join CBS as a producer, developing such superhit TV series as Gunsmoke (1955) and Perry Mason (1957), among other shows. Lucille became an expert on Manhattan after dark. She danced at the Cotton Club in Harlem to the music of Louis Armstrong. Still fully dressed in her evening clothes, she often watched the sun rise over Central Park, sometimes—after a long night—ordering breakfast in Greenwich Village. She was a familiar sight at supper clubs and at lavish parties.

Lucille Ball and Joan Blondell possibly dated film producer Pat DiCicco (who married Thelma Todd in 1932). Carole Landis was another one of Pat DiCicco's lovers. When she worked as a band singer in San Francisco, she allegedly turned tricks on the side and later Carole landed a job in the chorus at Warners she dated Busby Berkeley who featured her prominently in Hollywood Hotel and in the big dance finale of Varsity Show. Carole also tried her luck with Dick Powell during Varsity Show (1937) and with Ronald Reagan in 1938 (when Reagan co-starred with Joan Blondell's sister Gloria in Accidents Will Happen). Berkeley wanted to marry Carole but his mother did not approve of their romance. In the spring of 1938 Irving Wheeler, Carole's estranged husband, sued Busby Berkeley for alienation of affection. The story made headlines all over the country and although Wheeler lost the case the bad publicity hurt her reputation. Carole's romance with Busby Berkeley ended in the summer of 1938.

Lucille Ball was originally offered the Carole Landis role in the film noir I Wake Up Screaming. Wanting to star in The Big Street, Lucille turned down the role, in which she would have played the sister of Betty Grable, a former lover of Desi Arnaz, and the pinup girl of World War II. Lucille had long known of Betty Grable’s affair with Desi for a while. In 1959, at a recent dinner party, a former co-worker asked Lucille Ball and Ann Sothern if RKO Studios had changed since the days when they worked there together. 'Yes,' Ann replied, 'Lucille owns it now.' Lucille added: 'And Ann made over the wardrobe department for her dressing room.' Two decades ago, both Lucille and Ann were struggling for roles and recognition at RKO. In late 1950s, Lucille and Desi Arnaz were proprietors of the lot. 'I love Lucille and I know she loves me,' remarked Ann Sothern in her luxurious dressing room. 'Furthermore, I'm one of the few people who call her Lucille.'

'I understand her. A lot of people think she is gruff and tough. But that's just her way. She's soft inside.' 'My career was built on the roles Ann turned down,' Lucille claimed. 'I doubt that,' Ann countered. 'I wasn't that important.' 'Yes, but she didn't know some of the things that went on behind the scenes.' Lucille replied. At any rate, they became fast friends. Lucille recalls going to Ann with a problem: Her family was coming to California to stay and she wasn't making enough to fix up a house in the manner she hoped for. Ann went in and decorated the place with her unerring taste. 'I've always spent money,' Ann admitted. 'My theory is that whatever you spend will eventually come back to you. I've spent money even when I didn't have it.' —"Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy and Ricky Ricardo" (Blood Moon Productions, 2021)

About her meeting Desi Arnaz for the first time, Lucille Ball replied: "It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes."

Passionate love is rooted in the reward circuitry of the brain—the same area that is active when humans feel a rush from cocaine. In fact, the cravings, motivations and withdrawals involved in love have a great deal in common with addiction. Its most intense forms tend to be associated with the early stages of a relationship, which then give way to a calmer attachment form of love one feels with a long-term partner. This has a slightly different chemistry but still involves the reward centres of the brain. What all this means is that one special person can become chemically rewarding to the brain of another. 

Love at first sight is possible if the mechanism for generating long-term attachment can be triggered quickly. One line of evidence is that people are able to decide within a fraction of a second how attractive they find another person. This decision appears to be related to facial attractiveness, although men also favour women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, no matter what their overall weight is. Ayala Malack-Pines, a psychologist at Ben-Gurion University, found that a small fraction (11%) of people in long-term relationships said that they began with love at first sight. In other words, in some couples the initial favorable impressions of attractiveness triggered love which sustained a lengthy bond. It is also clear that some couples need to form their bonds over a longer period, and popular culture tells many tales of friends who become lovers. One might also speculate that if a person is looking for a partner with traits that cannot be quantified instantly, such as compassion, intellect or a good sense of humour, then it would be hard to form a relationship on the basis of love at first sight. Those more concerned only with visual appearances, though, might find this easier. Source: www.economist.com

When Lucille Ball met June Allyson

When June Allyson flew to New York in the winter of 1960, the last person anyone expected her to look up was Lucille Ball. And yet now it seemed that this was the very reason June had come three thousand miles—to see Lucy. Why? What was going on? In a matter of weeks, the answer was obvious. Right after her meeting with Lucy, June suddenly stopped squashing the rumors that all was not well with her marriage to Dick Powell. And early in January 1961, when an openly weeping June told reporters outright that she and Dick had separated and she would seek a divorce, the mystery seemed to be solved. 

June Allyson was faced with the breakup of her marriage. There was only one other woman in the world who had ever been faced with just her unique and difficult position-and that was Lucille Ball. Lucy seemed to be the only person June could turn to for the understanding and advice she needed. Neither woman was willing to comment on what they talked about. But there were no denials either. After their meeting, people were quick to point out that Lucy, having been through the division of Desilu Studios, might well give June some financial advice. After all, June and Dick also shared an entertainment empire, Four Star Productions. June Allyson and Lucille Ball were born, a few years apart, in New York. As children they dreamed of show business careers. Each girl underwent a tragic experience that almost crippled her for life. For June it was an accident. Her spine had been injured. 

For Lucille, it was an illness; she contracted pneumonia. Whether through improper treatment, or simply because of the violence of the attack, it left her paralyzed. For eight months she lay in bed, struggling to move a toe, an ankle, a knee. She had planned to begin her show business career as a chorus girl. Now she was told she might never walk again. Yet neither girl would consider giving up. Shy, delicate-boned, tiny June Allyson, and raucous, wide-mouthed, tall Lucille Ball—they shared an incredible determination. By effort, by sheer will power, they set about restoring themselves to health. For June there were long hours in a swimming pool, to help move her stiff and aching legs. And then there were the movies to help forget. She loved Fred Astaire’s “The Gay Divorcee,” which she watched eighteen times. She knew every step of the dance routines. 

For Lucille, there were exercises that were much the same—and scars that were very different. For three long years she struggled to regain control of her legs. She spent hours listening to the radio, studying the great comedians, their tricks, their timing. The one thing she wanted was to make people laugh. At one point, some relative brought a drama coach to see her, to encourage her gallant fight. At the end of the session the man rose, bit his lip, and told her that she did not have a chance. Sick or well, the man said with pity she simply had no talent. As stubbornly as June Allyson kept her eyes from her face in the mirror, so Lucille Ball kept her thoughts from that man, his condescension and his judgment. Despite him, despite her unwilling legs, she would be a dancer and a famous comedienne. Both women went to the West, to Hollywood, where they would meet each other for the first time during the production of Best Foot Forward. 

Best Foot Forward was a 1943 American musical film adapted from the 1941 Broadway musical comedy of the same title, based on an unpublished play by John Cecil Holm. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starred Lucille Ball, William Gaxton, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, and Nancy Walker. Produced by George Abbott, the production opened on Broadway on October 1, 1941 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it ran for 326 performances. It was directed by Abbott, with choreography by Gene Kelly, and starred Rosemary Lane. The show was Nancy Walker's Broadway debut and also launched June Allyson to fame. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times liked the "good humored" show, especially praising the score and choreography, singling out June Allyson and Nancy Walker. Maureen Cannon (Best Foot Forward) was friendly with Rosemary Lane and June Allyson, and she witnessed in the summer of 1942 the introduction of June Allyson to Dick Powell by mutual friend Rosemary Lane. This clearly would contradict Joan Blondell's madcap account of the meeting in her memoir Center Door Fancy. 

While shooting Meet the People (1944), co-starring Dick Powell, Lucille Ball helped her friend June Allyson to hide her and Dick Powell from the press. Lucille also observed Joan Blondell's erratic conduct and her tendency to spread false rumors about Allyson. Blondell's official divorce from Powell would happen in July 1945. In August, 19, 1945, Dick Powell would marry her third and last wife, June Allyson. After getting nervous in her first wedding night with Powell, Allyson felt more on ease the next day, explaining: "The next morning he took me to the Santana, and there we had our second wedding night in broad daylight. What had I been afraid of? This was truly the gold at the end of the rainbow. I didn't want to get off the boat, ever." This would also contradict Powell's bedroom customs that Joan Blondell mentioned in Center Door Fancy, complaining of a prudish Powell wanting to make love only in the darkness. 

Joan Blondell alleges, in the most libelous passage of Center Door Fancy, that Allyson's reputation was in the public domain and she had been a call-girl in NYC, according to Mike Todd. Blondell mustn't have figured that future biographers of Allyson would confirm or debunk these awful allegations. And multiples sources deny these off-base accusations. First, Mike Todd was a shady, sexist fabulist who only could know about Allyson through third-party sources. As a youngster, June Allyson lived on 3rd Avenue Elevated, also known as Bronx El, on a clanking street of tenements, bars, and hock shops. To help her family, at 16 she was working as a nightclub singer and dancer. It was typical of the era tongue wagging about a young woman in such an environment. Whilst, Lucille Ball studied dance under Martha Graham Dance Company  before Graham asked her to drop the class. “You’re hopeless as a dancer,” Graham told her. “You’re like a quarterback taking up ballet. Perhaps you could find work as a soda jerk.” Reportedly, at 14, Ball wound up in a relationship with 23-year-old Johnny DaVita, who, some authors speculated, ran illegal booze from Canada. In 1928, Lucy began working for Hattie Carnegie as an in-house model. Later Lucy Ball was hired by theatre impresario Earl Carroll for his Vanities Broadway revue, and by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. for the Rio Rita stage musical. After a stint in Roman Scandals (1933), Lucille Ball moved to Hollywood as a contract player for RKO. 

On March 3, 1960, (one day after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lucille Ball filed papers in Santa Monica Superior Court, claiming married life with Desi Arnaz was "a nightmare" and nothing at all as it appeared on I Love Lucy. On May 4, 1960, they were officially divorced. Both the show and the couple’s marriage ended in 1960. However, until his death in 1986, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke fondly of each other. Lucille’s marriage had taken place in 1940. June’s in 1945. Lucille chose a temperamental Cuban bandleader, Desi Arnaz, five years younger. June had married a respected, long-established movie star, Dick Powell—thirteen years her senior. At the beginning, there was the strain of being apart.

For June and Dick, enforced separations were not really long or frequent. They were apart only when location shooting was required for either of them, and this seldom meant more than a few weeks. But for Lucy and Desi Arnaz, enforced separations were far more severe. Lucy once estimated that in the early years of their marriage they spent far less than half their time together. In each marriage, the result was one of increased tension. Lucy and Desi’s broke down first in 1944. For June and Dick the first serious split came in 1957, when Dick moved out of their Mandeville Canyon home. In both cases the decision was made by the woman. And in both cases the women changed their minds and decided to reconcile. Both men had a shrewd business sense. Four Star Productions and Desilu became names to be reckoned within the world of TV. But just as strains had emerged from the success of the two women, new tensions appeared born of their husbands’ triumphs. Lucille Ball sold Desilu's stock for 17 million dollars in 1967, which amounts to $130 millions today. 

When Lucille was a young actress, she was known as a wild and rough woman, very unpolished and scrappy and willing to brawl, and she wasn't liked by everyone because she was sassy. Again, like her Stage Door character, she admitted: 'I'm a bitch in the boardroom, a bore in the bedroom and a bear on the toilet, so watch your back!' Lucille Ball clashed with Joan Crawford during the filming of "Lucy & The Lost Star." Not being used to the sitcom format, Crawford was filled with trepidation and turned to alcohol to calm her nerves, which greatly displeased the demanding and perfectionistic Ball. After Crawford failed to perform a Charleston dance routine to Ball's satisfaction, Ball loudly threatened to fire her in front of the entire cast and crew, causing Crawford to flee to her dressing room in tears. There, she uttered the infamous quote: "And they call me a bitch!" It is said that Desi Arnaz and Vanda Barra gave Crawford pep talks which helped get her through the shoot, and the episode became a big hit. 

Lucille Ball could be a comic wisecracker, but Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, and Eve Arden did it better. She's very good in The Big Street, but dramas were never going to be her bread and butter. She couldn't sing, she could move well but wasn't a dancer. Once the hair went red and she developed and was allowed to showcase her amazing talent for physical comedy she became a huge star in an emerging new medium. From a respectable but middling career to #1 at age 40. “On the set of The Lucy Show she could be a holy terror,” said one of the technicians who watched Lucy in action. Joan Blondell, who had known Lucy since their starlet days in the 1930s, had become a stage comedienne in middle age. Lucy booked her on the show, then expressed dissatisfaction with the way Blondell read her lines. After one take, her friend Herb Kenwith reported, the director yelled “Cut” and “Lucille pulled an imaginary chain. . . as if flushing an old-fashioned toilet.” Blondell turned away but caught the tailend of the gesture.“ ‘What does that mean,’ she demanded. Lucille said, ‘It means that stunk!’ Joan looked her right in the eye and said, ‘Fuck you, Lucille Ball!’ and left. The studio audience was stunned. You didn’t hear words like that in those days.” Blondell never came back.

Lucille Ball was very conservative and didn't invest in land properties, like a lot of other celebrities. Fred MacMurray made a fortune off of early Hollywood land valued over 60 millions at the end of his life, the same amount that Lucille Ball was worth: $60 million dollars at the time of her death in 1989. Dick Powell had been shrewd with property as well and was one of the founding investment developers of a big leisure complex at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue that included an ice hockey arena, a bowling alley, stores, and restaurants. Although his workaholic ethic might have given the impression he would have amassed near an equal fortune as MacMurray's, Powell's estate was just valued around 5 million. After their tumultuous honeymoon, Joan Blondell and Dick Powell left New York by train on 17 October, 1936, stopping at the tony South Shore Country Club in Chicago.

Some fans had difficulty separating reality from the movies. Joan Blondell complained bitterly: "People took all that love stuff so literally with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, who were always playing opposite each other, that several times the fans were actually furious that I took him away from Ruby. When we got married, they thought she should marry him. It didn't bother them one bit that she was married to Al Jolson." Vivian Vance fondly remembered that during the days of the "I Love Lucy", she would regularly go over to Lucille's house at night to henna and perm Lucy's hair. Ann Sothern and Ethel Merman attended these hair sessions too. Merman, Vance and Ball were having a party at Chez Roxbury and getting pretty drunk in the process. Merman announced she had slept with Desi Arnaz when he was appearing in Too Many Girls (1940), before he went to Hollywood and met Lucy. Merman was also having an affair with Sherman Billingsley, owner of the Stork Club, and married William Smith in 1940.

The story took place on the evening after Lucille Ball threw a wedding shower at Desilu studios for Ethel Merman prior to her marriage to Ernest Borgnine, which would put the time in June 1964. "Lucille threw a party for Merman at her Beverly Hills house. Her husband, Gary Morton, and her children Lucie and Desi Jr. were sent away while Lucille Ball, Ethel Merman, and Vivian Vance spent the evening with bottles of scotch. The three ladies reminisced about being young together in Broadway and Hollywood. Ethel Merman had known Vivian Vance for twenty nine years and Lucille a little longer. They had done movies and Broadway together and had just finished filming a two part "Lucy Show" for airing on CBS. The more they drank, the freer everyone's tongues got. Merman admitted to her one night stand with Desi in 1939, which Vivian found hysterical. Lucille was not amused and wondered out loud that Ernest Borgnine "must be great in bed at night because he is nothing to look at in the daylight." Finally, the three dames dissolved into laughter and made coffee." 

After her death, more of Lucille Ball's life story surfaced: her reputation back in Jamestown, NY, the rumors about Lucy being a call girl in NYC, like June Allyson, being both stories by all accounts patently false, byproduct of jealousy. In another girl night, June talked about Lucy having an affair with Pandro Berman, head of RKO. Lucy said she had dated Berman but she fended off Harry Cohn's advances in Columbia. Lucy seemed curious about June and Dick's intimate life, asking if was June satisfied? "I cannot have enough of it," laughed June. 

Lucy just seemed bluntly cranky. She advised June not to "mess with the Rat guys" (Sinatra, Lawford, Dino). Allyson shaked her head in disgust. Changing subject, Lucy said: "No matter how I get dressed up, I always look like the cigarette girl at the Trocadero." She added she wanted to redecorate her Roxbury Drive house. She seemed to dominate her second husband Gary Morton. Only Vivian Vance, Ann Sothern and June Allyson could stand up to Lucy's formidable character. Her friends sometimes heard Lucy snicker: "Goddammit Gary, I said no ice! I can't drink this. Make me another one and remember no ice! It's useless. Oh, and can you get me another pack of Pall Malls from the cupboard? Can you manage to do that? Jesus Christ!" —"If Lucy Ball saw June Allyson, what would she tell her now?" article by Charlotte Dinter for Photoplay magazine (April 1961), "Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz: They Weren’t Lucy & Ricky" (2020),  and "Affairs, Romances, Feuds" (2023) by Allan Royle