At one time, Ball was the most powerful woman in Hollywood, buying out her ex-husband Arnaz's shares in their wildly successful production company, Desilu Productions. The Lucy Show, which aired several years after the original I Love Lucy ended, had Ball and co-star Vivian Vance playing a widow and a divorcee raising children on their own, free of men, an outlandishly female-centric premise for the time. And later in her career, Ball became a mentor for female comedians like Carol Burnett and Bette Midler, who both feature in the film. Poehler no doubt counts Ball as one of her primary influences and accordingly it's an empowering film about women helping women.
The documentary is brimming with clips from Ball's various television series, which make it very entertaining to watch, but it's the hours of Ball's audio tape documenting her life that make the film. Her raw and earnest commentary throughout provides a closeness to her, an almost first-person connection, despite being a posthumous portrait of her life. I found it very moving.
I felt inspired to watch the original I Love Lucy show after seeing this film but unfortunately it's virtually impossible to get access to in New Zealand. That's probably for the best: I don't have time to watch it because I'm unlikely to ever get out of this discussion about whether or not I actually think Greg is needy, which I think makes the answer pretty clear.
HE SAW
It must have been quite taxing relationship-wise to have been two of the world's most famous people, working together all day on one of the world's most successful television shows, while running one of the world's most successful television production companies and bringing up kids. The evidence bears this out, because, despite proclaiming their love for each other to the end of his life, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball spent more of their lives married to their second spouses than they did to each other.
Although the producers had great access to interview material both historic and new, plus a trove of tape recordings made by Ball, the documentary is remarkably thin on details about the inner workings of the relationship and particularly on the way it fell apart. It's suggested the stress of work took its toll and things just came to an inevitable and bloodless end. There's nothing about quibbling, nor bickering, no indication she was driven crazy by him routinely leaving his undies on the bathroom floor or talking to her while they're exercising together even though she's many times asked him not to.
That is understandable, I guess. Their lives were so full of work and glamour, there probably wasn't much time for all the dross and drudgery of everyday life, and certainly there's no space for it in a 90-minute documentary. No one wants to hear about the tiny crumbs of conflict that presumably piled up, and which nobody ever bothered to sweep away, until the relationship collapsed under their weight.
Although relationships are the things we need to work hardest at, we routinely put them last, behind paid work, children and watching TV while scrolling through Facebook.
I asked Zanna if watching the movie had changed the way she thought about life, love and relationships, specifically ours.
She said, "What about this? They were working together, like we are right now."
"Are we getting divorced because of the work?" I said.
"Yeah, probably," she said.
"I would rather it was the work than a personal issue, because that would blindside me."
"The work is a personal issue."
"Yeah but it's not something inherent like, 'You're a bad dad or…'"
"You fart too much," she said.
"I couldn't handle it if you said you don't find me funny."
"I find you too needy," she said.
She laughed, and I laughed, although maybe a little bit too much, because I wasn't completely sure of the extent to which she was joking.
Lucy and Desi is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
