Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball
List Price: $5.99
Kanfer traces the arc of her career from its unlikely beginnings in a lonely and desolate childhood in upstate New York. There she discovered that making people laugh could ease the pains of a fragmented family life. But she was more than amusing. She was also beautiful, and when Lucy's adolescent attempts to crack Broadway ended in failure, she became a runway model and on a fluke, journeyed out to California to be an extra in one film. That led to another, and another, and another bottom-of-the-bill movie, until she became, in her own words, "The Queen of the B's". Ball of Fire tracks Lucy's pursuit of the superstardom that eluded her on the big screen and follows the actress through a series of disappointing affairs and sorrows until she meets a Cuban conga drummer six years her junior, and falls headlong in love with Desi Arnaz. Working with her husband, Lucille Ball becomes a different kind of comic artist in a program called I Love Lucy, the show that is still running in more than eighty countries around the globe.
Taking us through the development of television both as technology and cultural phenomenon, Kanfer chronicles the difficult birth of the sitcom that changed the world. He details the early executive meetings, the rocky first productions, the shaky first weeks and the unpredicted triumph. We see all of Lucy's behind-the-scenes battles for creative control of the show; her surprising confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee when it was discovered that she had once registered to vote as a Communist; her groundbreaking on-air pregnancy; and a series of in-depth analyses of the classic scenes and Chaplinesque slapstick that guarantee her a permanent place in the pantheon of American comedy.
Finally, we see the aftermath of her hard-won fame: the turbulent marriage and painful split from Desi, the man she never stopped loving; her second marriage; and her sad last years out of the limelight and away from the applause.
This is the first biography to examine the legendary Lucille Ball in all her many dimensions: her personal struggles and the torments that forged a comic genius; and, at last, her posthumous influence on television comedy, on feminist scholars and cultural critics, and on the public at large. Ball of Fire is the definitive biography Lucy fans have been waiting for.
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.
So.... if I choose a subject matter, and then read several different books about that subject matter, and then summarize all the facts (while managing to get many of them wrong because I have no real understanding of what I'm writing about in the first place) into a new book... I can get published? Because that's exactly what this guy did. No new information of any consequence, and all he did was take information that he read from "Desilu", "Love, Lucy", "Lucille", "Lucy in the Afternoon", "I Loved Lucy", and a few others, and regurgitate it into one book. Yes, he sourced all of his information and gave credit appropriately, but still... isn't this what a book report is? Also, numerous errors throughout where he gets the different shows confused. I'm not suggesting he has to be one of those people who can answer trivia quizzes about every single episode of every show, but still -- there were only 3. It shouldn't be THAT hard to keep track of. He confuses the timelines several times, including having Robert Stack on the set of "I Love Lucy" (it was "The Lucy Show") and Joan Crawford on the set of "Here's Lucy" (it was "The Lucy Show.") The book is kind of like a "Greatest Hits" album -- except he didn't perform any of the songs himself.
height discrepancy
He states that her height was 5'7" in one section of the book, then a few chapters later states she was 5'9". Am I the only one who noticed this, or am I not reading it correctly? I read the Kathleen Brady book just prior to reading this one (she states she was 5'7", but another website said she was 5'6.5") and while it portrayed a Lucy that you really pity toward the end (so consumed with aging), I think it was the more complete and better researched overall. Just thought if he couldn't get her height correct then what else did he not get right?
Ball of fire is right
Overall I thought the book was very good. I really didn't "know" who Lucy was and I feel I know the person now. What was very interesting to me was the fact that Lucy was a control freak who people hated to work with. She would also have temper tantrums like a little girl and would later apologize.
The sections (and there are a lot of them) on Desi were very good. I never knew how smart he was. The talent he had for choosing the right actors and projects. Not just for the Lucy show itself but for their production company. You will be surprised at some of the popular titles that we still hear about today.
Lastly the one glaring omission is Buster Keaton. In the book it states that Buster was a mentor to Lucy. She listened to him when everyone else thought he was washed up. He helped her with her comic timing. The book, just gave a few sentences to this, which I thought was very disappointing and because of this omission I cannot give it 5 stars.
This book tells all - both good and bad
If you've watched all the "I Love Lucy" episodes, yet never read a book on Lucille Ball, then this is the place to start. Although this book may be seen as a tell-all, there's a strong undercurrent of admiration the author obviously has for his subject.
Ball, as seen by Kanfer, knew she was a star but never seemed to enjoy the priviledges and the adulation that came with the role. Instead, Ball was insecure during all her adult life and showed it by being tactless on the set, overly authoritative to her directors and fellow actors, and hated the fact that she was growing older and people might forget about her (no chance of that). One wonders, from reading the book, how Ball managed ever to have any friends.
But Kanfer shows another side of Ball that displays his admiration of her talent. Ball was perfect on her timing, a very hard worker, and tried to do everything just right. Although these tendencies tended to grate people at time, Kanfer expertly shows that this contributed to her stardom and most importantly, making sure that people would never forget Lucille Ball.
Stafan Kanfer does what few other writers do to famous people - he helps his readers understand Lucille Ball in a much better light by pointing out her faults and making sure they know the world owes much to this red-headed commedienn.
Great biography!
You know how some biographies are dreadful to read, filled with mundane details or too much author opinion? This is definately not one of those! After rediscovering I Love Lucy on DVD I became more and more curious as to the woman behind the myth. This book didn't disappoint.
It was very sad in that it completely shattered the persona Lucy and Desi portrayed in I Love Lucy. Desi was an alcoholic and a womanizer while Lucy was a workaholic. Their children readily admit that a nanny raised them and after wanting children so badly, Lucy and Desi were actually terrible parents.
The thing I like best about the book was that Kanfer seems to know what parts of her life made a good story. The parts on her childhood and later years weren't a major part of the book, while I Love Lucy and her film career took center stage. He doesn't sugar-coat anyone. At times you will hate Lucy and Desi, at times your heart will break for them.
It truly read more like a story which is what makes a great biography in my opinion. I would recommend this book to everyone, especially Lucy fans. It will keep you up late into the night!
List Price: $5.99
Description
For more than fifty years Lucille Ball has been television's most recognizable and beloved face. As Lucy Ricardo she was the ultimate screwball housewife, getting herself into and out of scrapes with unmatched comic finesse. Indeed, she was so funny, and so central to the cultural landscape, that we often overlook Ball's role in shaping that turf: as producer of her own show and a cofounder of a major studio, she was a pioneer, rewriting the rules and forging new paths for women in the boardroom and on the sound stage. In Ball of Fire, Stefan Kanfer goes beyond the icon to examine the difficult life and enduring work of the most influential woman in modern American comedy.Kanfer traces the arc of her career from its unlikely beginnings in a lonely and desolate childhood in upstate New York. There she discovered that making people laugh could ease the pains of a fragmented family life. But she was more than amusing. She was also beautiful, and when Lucy's adolescent attempts to crack Broadway ended in failure, she became a runway model and on a fluke, journeyed out to California to be an extra in one film. That led to another, and another, and another bottom-of-the-bill movie, until she became, in her own words, "The Queen of the B's". Ball of Fire tracks Lucy's pursuit of the superstardom that eluded her on the big screen and follows the actress through a series of disappointing affairs and sorrows until she meets a Cuban conga drummer six years her junior, and falls headlong in love with Desi Arnaz. Working with her husband, Lucille Ball becomes a different kind of comic artist in a program called I Love Lucy, the show that is still running in more than eighty countries around the globe.
Taking us through the development of television both as technology and cultural phenomenon, Kanfer chronicles the difficult birth of the sitcom that changed the world. He details the early executive meetings, the rocky first productions, the shaky first weeks and the unpredicted triumph. We see all of Lucy's behind-the-scenes battles for creative control of the show; her surprising confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee when it was discovered that she had once registered to vote as a Communist; her groundbreaking on-air pregnancy; and a series of in-depth analyses of the classic scenes and Chaplinesque slapstick that guarantee her a permanent place in the pantheon of American comedy.
Finally, we see the aftermath of her hard-won fame: the turbulent marriage and painful split from Desi, the man she never stopped loving; her second marriage; and her sad last years out of the limelight and away from the applause.
This is the first biography to examine the legendary Lucille Ball in all her many dimensions: her personal struggles and the torments that forged a comic genius; and, at last, her posthumous influence on television comedy, on feminist scholars and cultural critics, and on the public at large. Ball of Fire is the definitive biography Lucy fans have been waiting for.
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
Customer Reviews
I Can't Even Believe This Got PublishedSo.... if I choose a subject matter, and then read several different books about that subject matter, and then summarize all the facts (while managing to get many of them wrong because I have no real understanding of what I'm writing about in the first place) into a new book... I can get published? Because that's exactly what this guy did. No new information of any consequence, and all he did was take information that he read from "Desilu", "Love, Lucy", "Lucille", "Lucy in the Afternoon", "I Loved Lucy", and a few others, and regurgitate it into one book. Yes, he sourced all of his information and gave credit appropriately, but still... isn't this what a book report is? Also, numerous errors throughout where he gets the different shows confused. I'm not suggesting he has to be one of those people who can answer trivia quizzes about every single episode of every show, but still -- there were only 3. It shouldn't be THAT hard to keep track of. He confuses the timelines several times, including having Robert Stack on the set of "I Love Lucy" (it was "The Lucy Show") and Joan Crawford on the set of "Here's Lucy" (it was "The Lucy Show.") The book is kind of like a "Greatest Hits" album -- except he didn't perform any of the songs himself.
height discrepancy
He states that her height was 5'7" in one section of the book, then a few chapters later states she was 5'9". Am I the only one who noticed this, or am I not reading it correctly? I read the Kathleen Brady book just prior to reading this one (she states she was 5'7", but another website said she was 5'6.5") and while it portrayed a Lucy that you really pity toward the end (so consumed with aging), I think it was the more complete and better researched overall. Just thought if he couldn't get her height correct then what else did he not get right?
Ball of fire is right
Overall I thought the book was very good. I really didn't "know" who Lucy was and I feel I know the person now. What was very interesting to me was the fact that Lucy was a control freak who people hated to work with. She would also have temper tantrums like a little girl and would later apologize.
The sections (and there are a lot of them) on Desi were very good. I never knew how smart he was. The talent he had for choosing the right actors and projects. Not just for the Lucy show itself but for their production company. You will be surprised at some of the popular titles that we still hear about today.
Lastly the one glaring omission is Buster Keaton. In the book it states that Buster was a mentor to Lucy. She listened to him when everyone else thought he was washed up. He helped her with her comic timing. The book, just gave a few sentences to this, which I thought was very disappointing and because of this omission I cannot give it 5 stars.
This book tells all - both good and bad
If you've watched all the "I Love Lucy" episodes, yet never read a book on Lucille Ball, then this is the place to start. Although this book may be seen as a tell-all, there's a strong undercurrent of admiration the author obviously has for his subject.
Ball, as seen by Kanfer, knew she was a star but never seemed to enjoy the priviledges and the adulation that came with the role. Instead, Ball was insecure during all her adult life and showed it by being tactless on the set, overly authoritative to her directors and fellow actors, and hated the fact that she was growing older and people might forget about her (no chance of that). One wonders, from reading the book, how Ball managed ever to have any friends.
But Kanfer shows another side of Ball that displays his admiration of her talent. Ball was perfect on her timing, a very hard worker, and tried to do everything just right. Although these tendencies tended to grate people at time, Kanfer expertly shows that this contributed to her stardom and most importantly, making sure that people would never forget Lucille Ball.
Stafan Kanfer does what few other writers do to famous people - he helps his readers understand Lucille Ball in a much better light by pointing out her faults and making sure they know the world owes much to this red-headed commedienn.
Great biography!
You know how some biographies are dreadful to read, filled with mundane details or too much author opinion? This is definately not one of those! After rediscovering I Love Lucy on DVD I became more and more curious as to the woman behind the myth. This book didn't disappoint.
It was very sad in that it completely shattered the persona Lucy and Desi portrayed in I Love Lucy. Desi was an alcoholic and a womanizer while Lucy was a workaholic. Their children readily admit that a nanny raised them and after wanting children so badly, Lucy and Desi were actually terrible parents.
The thing I like best about the book was that Kanfer seems to know what parts of her life made a good story. The parts on her childhood and later years weren't a major part of the book, while I Love Lucy and her film career took center stage. He doesn't sugar-coat anyone. At times you will hate Lucy and Desi, at times your heart will break for them.
It truly read more like a story which is what makes a great biography in my opinion. I would recommend this book to everyone, especially Lucy fans. It will keep you up late into the night!
