In the mid-1950s, Lucille Ball rose to the top of the Gallup Poll as the most famous woman on Earth.
Her most frequent co-star in the final decade of her life was the nostalgic for the.
Extra-marital, post-Desi indiscretions? Let\'s just say that our favorite redhead liked her men big and strong-No pretty boys for me.
It\'s also filled with details about Lucille\'s behind-the scenes banter with MGM\'s, Warner Brothers\', and Fox\'s dragons of yesteryear, once-celebrated stars dragged, by Lucille, back into the limelight through a formulaic roster of TV Specials that celebrated a fast-dying way of American life.
It also contrasts Lucille\'s vintage mystique with the Generation Gap and the emerging careers of younger stars (Carol Burnett, Mary Tyler Moore, Tom Selleck, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cher, and about forty others) who admired and perhaps resented her, too.
It explores the drug addiction (and recuperation) of Lucille\'s son, Desi Jr., and the show-biz struggles (and occasional resentments) of both of her children, including Lucie Arnaz.
It examines the final years of a fast-collapsing Desi Arnaz, who, post-Lucy, gambled away his millions and destroyed his health with late nights, liquor, and endless Havana cigars.
It describes how she reinforced her status as a reliable television staple with at least two ongoing (albeit derivative) series, The Lucy Show, Here\'s Lucy, and as a last hurrah, the ill-fated Life With Lucy.
It examines her second husband, Gary Morton, a Borscht-Belt stand-up comedian with a gift for diplomacy and the tactful handling of divas.
She gets it in the 500+ pages (with photos) of this book, the most in-depth portrait of this great American star ever published.
In vivid contrast, we maintain that Lucille, an artist and renowned businesswoman, deserves more.
One noted biographer summed up her three (emotional and fraught) final decades in five abbreviated pages.
Fans and readers have good reasons to anticipate it with gusto: The limited number of previous Lucille Ball biographies have each virtually ignored the last thirty years of her life, implying that her life ended in 1960 after her divorce from Desi Arnaz.
The is the second Volume of a Two-Part Biography crafted by two of the most prolific show-biz biographers in America.
Today, she\'s one of the best examples of a celebrity who succeeded at crafting an influential Second Act after I Love Lucy and her devastating divorce from her show-biz partner, Desi Arnaz.
In the mid-1950s, Lucille Ball rose to the top of the Gallup Poll as the most famous woman on Earth
