I’d heard how tough and intimidating Lucille Ball could be, but on the day I interviewed her at her home in Beverly Hills she was warm, unguarded and down-to-earth. It felt like hanging out with a favorite aunt.

Lucy picked up quickly on the fact that I was a fan, and since I was young and eager I think she liked me. She was promoting Stone Pillow, a CBS TV-movie in which she played a homeless bag lady named Florabelle. The movie was ill-conceived and Lucy was badly miscast, but it gave me the good fortune to meet a childhood idol.

Arranging our tete-a-tete was easy. One morning I called a veteran publicist at CBS and asked, “Do you think Lucy would do a one-on-one for Stone Pillow? I could fly down to Los Angeles.” With a big star like Lucy, you’d normally get a noncommittal response: “Let me look into it.” Instead, he asked to put me on hold. Within five minutes he was back. “Lucy wants to do it.” That kind of thing never happens.

I flew into Burbank on the morning of Oct. 23, 1985, rented a car and picked up a large, exotic floral bouquet en route to Lucy’s house. I rang the doorbell at 1000 N. Roxbury Dr. in Beverly Hills, an assistant answered and within seconds Lucy entered the foyer behind him. “Thank you,” she said, nodding her head in a slightly regal manner, “that’s a lovely bouquet.”  The assistant guided us into a section of the living room where Lucy and I sat and talked for nearly two hours. She wore white pants, a pleated white blouse and turquoise-blue jacket. Tinted, oversized eyeglasses. Her hair was the same, familiar henna-red I knew from television. She was 74.

Lucy’s ranch-style house was grand on the outside, comfortable and tidy on the inside. No major art pieces; just a painting of her husband Gary Morton swinging a golf club. In a corner of the room I spied a backgammon table, where Lucy probably spent hundreds of lively and competitive hours — backgammon being her favorite game. We weren’t alone as we confabulated. Joining us was a very old man, a minder I guess you’d call him, who CBS had sent to monitor Lucy’s remarks and make sure she said nothing too reckless or off-color.

Lucy was fascinated by my name. “Ed Guthmann! That’s such an old man’s name for a young kid like you,” she said with gusto. “Lucy, I’ll be 35 in three days,” I said, thinking I was practically middle-aged. “Big deal!” she harrumphed. “Big deal!”

She reminisced about the I Love Lucy days, praised her ex-husband Desi Arnaz for his professional acumen (“Innovation after innovation”) but slammed his gambling,  drinking and womanizing (“We had five homes but to him they were just houses”); gave excellent marks to her current husband, comic-turned-manager Gary Morton (“On a scale of 1 to 10 we’re a 12”); and said she didn’t act for five years after her beloved I Love Lucy sidekick Vivian Vance died in 1979. When I asked how it felt to be at leisure after shooting Stone Pillow, she frowned. “To tell ya the truth, it’s been kinda boring around here lately!”

She didn’t mince words. Lucy was at a point in her life when she had nothing to lose by telling the unvarnished truth – which is precisely why the ancient minder was warming up his end of the sofa.

Lucy told me she got that low, husky voice by yelling from her car on the Pacific Coast Highway — a method recommended by movie maker Howard Hawks. She grew nostalgic talking about her friend Clark Gable. “We used to tool around in his jeep,” she said, remembering when San Fernando Valley was all farms and ranches and open land. “Oh boy,” she sighed, shaking her head and looking off to one side. The memory seemed to stir thoughts of distant youth, of time passing swiftly and few friends left to share her memories.

I asked about Elizabeth Patterson, the fragile-looking character actress who played the babysitter Mrs. Trumbull on “I Love Lucy,” and Lucy told me she used to go home on the public bus after a day of taping at Desilu Studios. Patterson never accepted Lucy’s invitations to socialize — not from disinterest, but from feeling she didn’t belong. She was just as timid as the characters she played.

I told Lucy I’d admired Patterson in vintage movies, and described a poignant scene from the 1938 classic Remember the Night where Patterson plays the old-maid aunt of Fred MacMurray. When MacMurray brings Barbara Stanwyck home for Christmas, Stanwyck accidentally discovers an old, unused wedding dress in Patterson’s trunk. She’s startled. “But I thought you never –,” Stanwyck begins to say. Patterson cuts her off: “Oh well. That was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

“Boy, you’re really a buff!” Lucy said when I finished the story. “You should meet my friend Robert Osborne. He knows the old ones like you do.”

For show business fans, the block that Lucy lived on was famous. At one time or another, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Oscar Levant, Agnes Moorehead, Ira Gershwin, Peter Falk and Rosemary Clooney all lived on Roxbury. In 1985 Jimmy Stewart and his wife Gloria were still across the street from Lucy. I don’t remember how it came up, but she started grumbling about a spate of neighborhood burglaries. “Jimmy and Gloria are worried,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “We’re worried! Oh, it’s awful. But I don’t trust the Beverly Hills police as far as I can spit!”

The old chaperone’s hand reached out pleadingly, and tapped me on the arm. “Oh, you’re not going to put that in the story, are you?”

Same thing a few minutes later when I asked Lucy about her recovering son, Desi Jr., a recovering alcoholic, and the inspirational lectures he delivered on the virtues of sobriety. “Yeah, he’s still doing that,” Lucy groaned with a roll of her eyes. “But at least he’s not so boring about it now.” The hand tapped my arm and the ancient minder whispered, “Oh, you won’t use that, will you?”

And a third time. While filming Stone Pillow on location in New York City, Lucy confided, she was so weak from long hours and from wearing a heavy costume in the oppressive New York heat, that she contracted amoebic dysentery. When she flew home to Los Angeles, 23 pounds lighter and suffering from dehydration, she fell out of her limo into the gutter at LAX. “I was really sick!” she exclaimed with big eyes and that froggy, bottom-of-the-well voice. Once again the weathered hand reached out and the old man looked stricken: “Please don’t mention amoebic dysentery in your story,” he implored.

I asked Lucy to grade herself, A to F, in several categories.

Mother: “B minus. I was deterred in many a way by working; I couldn’t complete the scene at home.”

Comedian: “Should I say A? I guess I can because of the I Love Lucy reruns and the longevity still proving itself.”

Dramatic actress: “I don’t know, especially when my idol is Bette Davis. I haven’t given it that much of a whack.”

Business executive: “F. I hated it and I depended solely on honest and loyal men.”

Late in the interview Lucy’s husband Gary Morton walked in, looking very Beverly Hills in an alpaca cardigan and slacks. Nice guy. Lucy greeted him and said, “Gary, say ‘Hello’ to Old Ed Guthmann!” Gary grinned, took my camera and shot the photo you see at the top of this page. She was absolutely terrific. Adorable. I’m sorry it was the only time I got to spend with her.

This is a good morning; sometimes we’re both in the single digits.
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Missing Pussycats

JINX

I love pussycats and when I was growing up we had a long succession of wonderful ones.   Our house had a lovely garden and those lucky cats had the best of both worlds – indoors and out.

In fact one of my favorite cats was a tom named Jinx,  a dirty stay-out who prowled our Bronx neighborhood late into the night.  When he was ready to come home he’d climb the magnolia tree in front of my parents’ bedroom window,  and scratch on the window pane until my father got out of bed to let him in.

One night,  tired of Jinx’  middle-of-the-night antics,   my father – usually the most mild-mannered of men – lost his temper and scolded the cat.  The next night Jinx went out and never came back,   and for months I blamed my father for that missing pussycat.

         

SMOKEY

After that childhood of indoor-outdoor cats,    I married,   became an apartment dweller and realized that any future cats would have to be indoor-only.    No lovely garden to romp in or neighborhood to roam,  but at least they would never go missing.  Or so I thought.

Our first married apartment was on the top floor of a small four story building in New Rochelle,  NY.   From there Danny took the train to his mid-Manhattan office,  and I drove the short distance to the Bronx high school where I worked.    Sharing that first apartment with us was our first cat,   a beautiful black velvety tom named Smokey.

One afternoon after school  I stopped to do the marketing as was my habit,  and once home I juggled an armload of grocery bags as I fumbled with my keys.   Then I let myself into the apartment and headed straight to the kitchen to unpack the bags and start dinner.   Smokey hadn’t met me at the door,  nor had the clatter of pots and pans brought him running to the kitchen,  and I thought that was strange.

Wondering where he was,   I walked through the apartment calling him.   No Smokey in any of his favorite spots – not under the bed,  not in the closet,  not on the windowsill.   I even checked the terrace though we were always careful to keep the terrace door locked.

Then I noticed an open bathroom window,  the only window in the apartment that didn’t have a screen.   It was so high we never imagined the cat could reach it,   but what if somehow he had!

I ran to the bedroom window and peered down at the courtyard.   Thankfully I saw no splattered Smokey on the ground,  and even if he had fallen,  I reasoned,   four stories was a survivable height for a cat.   So I decided to get the car and cruise around the neighborhood until I found him,  when suddenly I heard a faint meow which seemed to be coming from inside the wall.  Just then Danny called to say he was leaving his office.

”Smokey’s missing,”  I cried,  “at first I thought he fell out the bathroom window,  but now I hear him meowing!”

”Calm down,”  my ever rational husband said,    “he must be locked in a closet.”

”No,  I checked all the closets!  HE’S SEALED UP IN THE WALL.”   I said now in complete panic mode.

”What are you talking about?”   Danny said.

”Remember that Edgar Allen Poe story The Cask of Amontillado when the crazy guy bricks up the other guy in the wine cellar?  That’s what happened to Smokey!  HE’S SEALED UP IN THE WALL!”.  I insisted.   “I’m going down to find the super,  he must have a crowbar or something we can use to get him out!”

I hung up before Danny could try to stop me,   and I rushed to the apartment door.   I flung it open and there,  curled up on the doormat,  was our missing pussycat!   Smokey stood up,  stretched his sleek body,  and pranced back into the apartment.   Obviously when I came home with that armload of grocery bags,  I didn’t see the cat run out.

I really must stop reading Poe!

JACKIE

Since those early Smokey years we’ve relocated to the city and also acquired a weekend house in the Connecticut countryside.   However our cat at the time,  the sweet Lucy Gray,   seldom came with us.   She didn’t travel well,  and a car-sick cat doesn’t bode well for a pleasant journey.

On the other hand our present cat Jackie is perfectly happy to spend two hours in his pet carrier,  with no messy accidents in the back seat.   And he loves his country weekends with such interesting things to see and hear outside the window,  quite different from his 16th floor,  birds-eye view back in the city.

Then one Sunday night a few years ago we were packing for the drive home when I couldn’t find the cat.   Assuming he was asleep somewhere in the house,  we searched room by room,  opening closets and looking under beds.  No Jackie.  We looked again.  No pussycat.

Although we were always careful going in and out the front door,  I now had a growing fear that somehow Jackie had gotten out and was lost in the woods.  So out we went with our flashlights.   I crawled under the deck and Danny got in the car and started driving around.   But no Jackie.

I called our neighbors Carol and Howard who came over with their dogs.   At Carol’s command,  “Find kitty!”. the doggies started sniffing all over the house.  But no kitty.

I opened the front door and banged a can opener against a can of cat food,  usually a surefire way to get Jackie coming on the run.  But still no cat.

By this time I had gone slightly berserk and was convinced that Jackie had been eaten by a bear.   (When Danny reminded me that bears were largely herbivorous,  I changed the murderous offender to a coyote.)

Then remembering that once my son’s cat had gotten out,  and Noah sat on his front steps for several hours until the cat came back,  I vowed to do the same for Jackie even if it took me all night.

“OK,  sit out there if you insist,”   my husband said,  “but I’m checking the house again.”

”It’s no use,”  I wailed,  “by now Jackie’s been eaten by a coyote!” 

But a few minutes later I heard Danny call from upstairs,  “I found him!“

It seems the cat was asleep in a closet all along,  but not on the floor where we had already looked.   Rather he was curled up on a built-in shelf at the back.   A black cat in a dark closet is not hard to miss.

”What a naughty pussycat making us worry so’”    I scolded.

But I couldn’t resist giving him a special treat,  so instead of cat food,  I opened a can of tuna fish.

Jackie came running!

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

It is so true that, as Andy Warhol famously said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” During the summers of my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I indulged my interest in theater by becoming an apprentice at Northland Playhouse in the newly built Northland Mall in a suburb of Detroit. Summer stock was a huge deal back then, and the playhouse needed free labor to cater to the stars who performed there. Many of them were actors I didn’t know who were actually, quite famous in the past. The few I did know left me star struck.

I may not have known who Walter Pidgeon or Arlene Dahl were, but what girl from my era didn’t know Ozzie and Harriet? Not only were their “adventures” on television every week, but they were also responsible for giving me teen idol Ricky Nelson. I would have been more excited to meet him, but I doubt he was into summer stock in 1960.

Similarly, Eve Arden was famous to me because I watched Our Miss Brooks, the television show about a zany teacher that may have inspired me to become an English teacher. And Robert Horton was really cute. He played scout Flint McCullough on Wagon Train from 1957 to 1962. He also had a career in musical theater, so that may explain how he ended up doing summer stock at our local playhouse.

My absolute favorite actor was Tony Randall. He was a genuinely nice guy who took the time to talk with me and the other apprentices. At the time, he had appeared on Broadway and as a supporting actor in many films. He had played a teacher on Mr. Peepers, a television series I watched as a kid. Shortly after appearing in summer stock at Northland Playhouse, he landed the role for which he became famous as Felix Unger in The Odd Couple. Here’s a factoid I never knew. His original name was Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg, clearly Jewish. I followed his long career and always adored him for his kindness and for treating us with respect.

On the other hand, Gypsy Rose Lee was my least favorite actor. Perhaps because my parents told me she was most famous for being a stripper, I was a bit scandalized and fearful of her. Her life was the basis for the musical Gypsy, but I have no idea how she ended up doing summer stock at a small theater in a suburb of Detroit. She was rude, demanding, and condescending. I still clearly remember her asking me, a fourteen-year-old, to iron her cashmere skirt. I was so terrified of ruining it that I never plugged in the iron.

The biggest crush of all the actors I met was James Garner, who was also pretty nice and friendly. I loved him on the TV show Maverick on which he played a wise guy gambler. I couldn’t believe someone that famous (at least to me) was performing at Northland Playhouse. In retrospect, he had just quit the popular series after three years and was not quite the movie and television star he went on to become.

Joan Fontaine, whose playbill is pictured next to his, was a movie star of my parents’ generation, so I was not terribly impressed. Looking back, I wonder why someone who was still making popular films like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Tender is the Night, as well as appearing on television, would want to perform summer stock. Perhaps actors were not that well paid back then. The same applies to Zsa Zsa Gabor and Martha Raye, also performers my parents regarded as famous. Zsa Zsa must have been between marriages (she had nine of them) and television guest appearances. Martha Raye, most famous for the size of her mouth, her USO tours during WWII, and a television variety show in the mid-fifties, was also fond of being married, as she did it seven times.

I regarded Mae West as somewhat famous because I knew the line she said to Cary Grant, “Why don’t you come up some time and see me?”  She was actually quite controversial and interesting, an early feminist and foe of censorship, but by the time she hit the summer stock circuit, her career was in decline. She never bothered to share her stories with any of the apprentices, which is too bad.

Of course, I should have been impressed by Ginger Rogers. She was actually quite famous and I had seen her dancing with Fred Astaire. Her career as his partner was over by the time she showed up at Northland Playhouse. She was also fond of marriage (five times), but I wish I had known the caption attributed to Bob Thaves’ 1982 cartoon (sorry Ann Richards) when I saw her, “Sure he [Astaire] was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did… backwards and in high heels”. Here was a truly famous woman in the decline of her career, which explains her summer stock appearance.

Being an immature girl with little sense of who these stars had been, I was most impressed by people I knew from television. Darren McGavin was ruggedly handsome and had been on Mike Hammer and Riverboat. Apparently, he disliked being in a television series and had left that for movies and guest starring roles. Thus, Northland Playhouse probably caught him in a career transition. At any rate, like James Gardner, he was cute and thus, I had a bit if a crush. Raymond Burr, best known to me as Perry Mason, was actually famous for this role, which he played from 1957-66. Later, he had a popular series, Ironside, from 1967-75. He was also a successful film star. What he was doing at Northland Playhouse that summer is beyond my comprehension.

Perhaps fame for actors in 1960 did not equate with the enormous incomes of today’s stars? Maybe doing the summer stock circuit was something actors, even famous ones, liked to do to hone their craft? As I look back on my experience, the main lesson I can take from it is that fame is fleeting. Many of the stars I met who were doing summer stock at Northland Playhouse had been very famous but were on their way down. Others would go on the achieve some degree of fame in the future. Perhaps Marilyn Monroe said it best from the perspective of a celebrity who was, and still is, a famous person:

“If fame goes by, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.”

I invite you to read my book Terribly Strange and Wonderfully Real and join my Facebook community.