Lucille Ball

Drawing from January 26, 1970

Lucille Ball Bio (IMDB) The drawing you see here is not the original signed Lucy and there is a  nice story behind that. Dad was not a big fan of her's but my mother and I were big fans of " I Love Lucy" so dad did the drawing for us. After the taping of the show dad had the stage manager take the sketch over to her to  be autographed (he had no great desire to meet her) while he was packing up his equipment. Lucy loved it and wanted to know who drew it. The stage manager pointed to the guitar player in the band. She immediately marched over to introduce herself and to thank him. When she found out that dad was in Hollywood in the early '40's with the Jimmy Dorsey Band  that really got the conversation going as she knew many of the musicians he knew. Lucy knew these players either because she had worked with them or through her husband, Desi Arnez, who also had his own band. They spent around 20 minutes in conversation. When dad came home that night he was now the new President of the Lucille Ball Fan Club. The next day he re-drew the sketch because the original was now not good enough. He cut out the autograph from the original and attached it to the new drawing. This is the only time he ever did that. I remember Cavett in some interview saying he had been warned that Lucy could be difficult (someone once quiped that she should add an "s" to her last name) but he never found that to be true, and my father would definitely have agreed.Thanks Lucy for showing me a side of him I otherwise would have never seen. That's why I love Lucy.