We dug into Lucille Ball’s travel cosmetics case from a previous post to share one of her creme rouges. Made by Max Factor, a preferred makeup brand, the color is called ‘FLAME’ (cue the reference to her flaming red hair). Directions say to use finger tips to apply and blend. The swirl marks made by Lucy’s can easily be seen inside of this heavily used cosmetic.
Category: The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show
Lucille Ball’s Curly Red Wiglet
If a hairstyle called for a certain look or something extra, wiglets were used in addition to the regular wig. Simply pinned on the main wig these added height, shape, more curls or possible used to cover something.
This was one of Lucy’s red wiglets. Her longtime hairstylist Imra Kusely dyed it to match her hair color and the piece still retains the original curls and shape with hairspray from when it was used.
Vivian Vance’s “The Voice of the Turtle” Program from La Jolla Playhouse
In July of 1951 Vivian Vance was performing at the La Jolla Playhouse in the production of “The Voice of the Turtle.” This would be the stage where Desi Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer watched their soon to be ‘Ethel Mertz’ portray Olive Lashbrooke in the Saturday, July 28th matinee.
The program shown here is the original copy Vivian Vance kept for her archives. Viv’s sister Lou Ann Graham inherited all of her programs from her years of stage performances. These were sold to the public in Lucille Ball’s hometown of Jamestown, NY during one of the annual festivals.
“Lucy Goes to Mexico” Polka dot Dress
A polka dot dress was a signature look of Lucy Ricardo and to this day, Lucy and polka dots are synonymous with one another. Throughout her television career Lucille Ball wore variations of this pattern in the form of dresses in the 1950’s to blouses in the 60’s and 70’s.
On October 6, 1958 the premiere episode of the second season of The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show (The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in syndication) aired, entitled “Lucy Goes to Mexico.” The Ricardos and Mertzes are in San Diego, staying at the Hotel Del Coronado because Ricky is doing a USO show with Maurice Chevalier onboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Yorktown. Lucy and the Mertzes decide to go south into Tijuana on a routine souvenir hunt. In true fashion, Lucy gets into trouble when a stowaway causes problems as they attempt to come back across the border.
Lucy wears an iconic polka dot dress for nearly the entire episode. Presented here is her stunt double’s dress, an exact replication to the one Lucille Ball wore. It can be seen on Lucy’s stand-in who’s running from the Policia through the streets of Tijuana. The unique polka dot pattern confirms this as the one Lucy Ricardo wears is slightly different and is currently in a private collection.
The two piece, A-line dress is made of a light brown silk-taffeta with beige polks dots. A long sleeve jacket features a zipper front, off-white canvas trim on the cuffs and waist along with a very large notched collar. Inside the jacket is a CBS garment tag attached near the zipper. The short sleeve dress features the same off-white canvas trim on the sleeve hems and has a full length zipper with hook and eye closures on the back. A sheer white silk lining can be found on the inside of the body.
This look was the inspiration of a large wooden statue carved out of a tree stump that once stood in the Lucille Ball Memorial Park from the late 1990’s to early 2000’s. The park banks Lake Chautauqua in Lucy’s hometown of Celeron, NY and is the current home of a beautiful bronze statue by Carolyn Palmer of Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo wearing a polka dot dress.
Lucille Ball’s Scrapbook Photo with Red Skelton
When I Love Lucy changed its format from 30 mintues to a whole hour in 1957, the Desilu team renamed it “The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show” aka “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.” For the second season, episode three, airing February 9, 1959 – ‘Lucy Goes to Alaska’ the guest star was fellow red-headed comedian Red Skelton. Towards the end of the show the duo perform a memorable pantomime sketch portraying tramps and finish with a song titled “Poor Everybody Else.”
This black and white 8×10 original publicity photo of Lucy and Red was retained by Lucille Ball for her scrapbook. The interior of the folder that displays the photo reads “Scrapbook – with Red “poor us” – poor everybody else” written entirely by Lucille. She was known to keep special photos, write ups in the press and momentos in huge scrapbooks throughout her career. This ‘Freddy the Freeloader’ act is brilliant for it was done by two of the best pantomime actors.
Lucille Ball’s Personal Red Wig
Irma Kusely first worked with Lucille Ball in the 1940’s at MGM. Nearly a decade later they would reunite on I Love Lucy. Irma became Lucy’s hair stylist for next four decades. Kusely began her Hollywood career at Max Factor styling wigs where she learned the technique of how they were made by hand using real hair.
In the clip shown above from a 2001 Television Academy Arts & Sciences interview, Irma makes it clear about Lucy’s hair color – “It’s not red at all, it’s a golden apricot color.”
Irma’s career with Lucy spanned hundreds of appearances both on and off screen. In the early 1990’s she was asked to supply some of Lucy’s custom wigs for Universal Studio’s “Lucy: A Tribute” exhibit. This is one of those wigs, still styled and untouched since Irma did it over 30 years ago.
La Jolla Postcard from Vivian Vance to parents
In the Summer of 1951 Vivian Vance was on stage at the La Jolla Playhouse in the production of “The Voice of the Turtle.” While staying at the La Jolla Palms Hotel, Vance wrote to her parents with this postcard postmarked July 16, 1951 which reads:
“This is the greatest place since Italy – we just love it – and so cool cool. We’ll be here 3 week – Love Vivian”
The show opened on Tueday, July 24, 1951. Around this time the ‘Lucy‘ crew was desparately searching for someone to play Ethel Mertz on a new TV show set to begin production in a few weeks. Director Marc Daniels recalled an actress he’d worked with that was performing at the La Jolla Playhouse. Desi Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer drove down to see the Saturday, July 28th matinee. They found their Ethel and the rest is history.
Lucille Ball – Desi Arnaz Show Ticket to “Lucy Hunts Uranium”
For the third episode of the new Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show (aka The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour) the Ricardos and Mertzs are in Las Vegas for Ricky’s band performing at The Sands Casino. Fred MacMurray and June Haver are the special guest stars with MacMurray joining the two couples in hunting for uranium around the desert.
Shown here is an original audience ticket for the November 15, 1957 filming of the episode. Tickets for all the LBDAS are much larger than previous I Love Lucy tickets or any future ‘Lucy series’ for that matter with more of an invitation, square style.
This show had a couple of ‘firsts’ for the series. It was the first epsiode to go outside the studio for location filming as well as the debut of Lucille Ball’s and Lucy Ricardo’s new hairstyle, dubbed by Irma Kusley as the “artichoke cut” which Lucy had variations of for the rest of her life.