LUCILLE BALL
THE COMEDY LEGEND SPENT HER LATER YEARS DELIGHTING IN THE
The sitcom icon’s granddaughter reveals why she loved Lucy: She was a down-to-earth grandma who doted on her friends and family.
To the world she was a treasured comedy legend, but Kate Luckinbill-Conner only knew Lucille Ball as the grandma who spoiled her with love and attention. “I was always welcome at her home and I could do whatever I wanted,” Kate tells Closer. “She would make a whole day happen around me.”
Thirty years after the beloved television icon’s death, those closest to Lucy remember her not as a trailblazer, but as a woman who loved her job and her family and who remained down-to-earth despite all the accolades and adoration heaped at her feet. “My grandmother was a regular girl from upstate New York,” says Kate, who spoke with Closer exclusively at the Lucille Ball Lobby Tribute at The Hollywood Museum. “She didn’t set out to be anyone’s icon.”
By the time Kate was born to Lucy’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, in 1985, the star had
eased into a life centered on her family and her closest friends. The four-time Emmy winner and former studio head had become “a really good grandma” to make up for the past. “She wasn’t around a lot for my mom,” Kate says. “When she was raising her, she was just so busy.”
A CARING GRANDMOTHER
Instead of spending her later years regretting the time she spent apart from Lucie, 67, and Desi Jr., 66, Lucy threw herself into being the best grandmother in the world. “I remember her giving me these incredible bubble baths. She loved to wrap me up in towels and do my hair and makeup,” remembers Kate. “She’d dress me in these silk pajamas and let me take a nap on her California king-size bed — it was just the most expansive, largest thing I’d ever seen in my life!”
Kate, who lived with her parents in Brentwood, Calif., loved to visit Lucy’s home on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills,
where Lucy gave her anything her heart desired. “She would make a whole adventure happen for me. Did I want to go out and swim? Did I want to play in the playhouse outside? Did I want to eat?” recalls Kate. “It felt like my world and she was just living in it.”
“She was a very warm and loving
person. I have a lot of cuddly and cozy memories
of her.”
— granddaughter Kate
Luckinbill-Conner
KINDNESS COUNTS
The people who worked at Desilu Studios, which Lucy ran for several years following her 1960 divorce from her husband and I Love Lucy co-star Desi Arnaz, also look back on Lucy’s sweetness and fair-minded nature. “I was on the lot often,” Barry Livingston, a regular on My Three Sons, tells Closer. He remembers watching Lucy buzz around the studio in a golf cart. “You’d see her sailing by going to business meetings,” he says. “One day, she stopped and said ‘Hi, Barry.’ I was shocked she knew me!”
Lucy also came to Barry’s rescue when her second husband, Gary Morton, became upset about the marks the young actor had left on a wall where he practiced his baseball pitches. “Gary said: ‘Look what you did, kid. It’s going to cost me a fortune to repaint that stage!’ Then Lucy came up and goes, ‘Gary, leave him alone,’” remembers Barry. “She told me: ‘Keep going, kid. We got the Dodgers. We’re going to win. Keep playing.”
Lucy’s publicist Tom Watson also remembers how she always believed in doing the right thing. When the comedian accidentally spilled her lime slushie
in Tom’s car, she insisted on making amends. “She was mortified,” Tom tells Closer. “A few months later, at Christmastime, she had the entire interior of my car reupholstered.”
Another friend and former employee, Michael Stern, was a teenage superfan who attracted the comedian’s nurturing attention after he met her backstage several times. “She took me aside and said, ‘Kid, if you want to be my number-one fan, you’ve got to get a job and stay in school,’” he recalls. Michael followed his idol’s advice, found employment in a market and was touched when Lucy drove out to check up on him. “She wanted to make sure I was working. That day she bought $600 worth of [stuff] from me,” he recalls with a laugh.
Michael also credits Lucy with helping him to mend fences with his own parents at a difficult time in his young life. “Lucy sort of adopted me as her son, but she’d urge me to talk to my parents,” he remembers. “If I had an issue with something, she would say, ‘You know, this is what we could do, but you need to talk to your parents,’ ” he says. “She was kind and wonderful and tried to guide me the right way.”
A LASTING LEGACY
In the final decade of her life, Lucy entered a quieter, less stressful period. “She felt very peaceful at home where she could be herself,” remembers Michael. “She loved to play backgammon — whether it was 7 in the morning or 7 at night. That was Lucy happy — playing a board game.”
When she went out, Lucy often felt unworthy of the rapturous reception she received from her fans. “With her flaming red hair, fans would always know who she was. We would go into a theater and the audience would go crazy,” recalls Michael. “People would stand and give her an ovation. She would turn around and say, ‘Who is that for?’ I’d be like, ‘It’s for you, Lucy.’ ”
That’s no surprise. Nearly 70 years after it first premiered, I Love Lucy still regularly appears on critics’ lists of all-time best television shows. “Lucy’s comedy was timeless. It was about human foibles,” Tom says. “It made us laugh at her, but we were also laughing at ourselves.”
Lucy also brought generations together. “I used to watch TV with my grandfather. He didn’t speak a word of English, but we could laugh together watching Lucy,” recalls Michael.
Despite her impact, Lucy never thought much about her legacy. “She didn’t really dwell on her fame although she was proud of the work,” Tom recalls. “She’d say, ‘Don’t build any monuments to me. Either my work will speak for itself or it won’t.’ ”
And while she is often cited as a genius and a role model for working women, Kate insists that Lucy had no agenda other than following her own heart. “She wanted to be a mom, and she wanted to be a wife.
She also wanted to be an actress and a comedian, and she was determined to do it all,” says Kate, who is due to give birth to
Lucy’s first great-grandchild this spring. “She was humble, and she was a real person who just didn’t take no for an answer.”
— Reporting by Amanda
Champagne-Meadows