Ball of Fire (55 page)
In autumn 2001, Lucille Ball’s older fans were treated to a glamorous and astute reappraisal in
Modern Maturity,
house organ of the American Association of Retired Persons.
STEFAN KANFER
BALL OF FIRE
Stefan Kanfer’s books include
The Eighth Sin
,
A SummerWorld
,
The Last Empire
,
Serious Business
, and
Groucho
. He was a writer and editor at
Time
for more than twenty years. A Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and recipient of numerous writing awards, Kanfer is currently in the Distinguished Writer program at Southampton College, Long Island University. He lives in New York and Cape Cod.
ALSO BY STEFAN KANFER
Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx
The Essential Groucho
Serious Business: The Art and Commerce of Animation
in America from Betty Boop to
Toy Story
The Last Empire: De Beers, Diamonds, and the World
A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden in the Catskills,
From the Days of the Ghetto to the Rise and Decline of the Borscht Belt
The International Garage Sale
Fear Itself
The Eighth Sin
A Journal of the Plague Years
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2004
Copyright © 2003 by Stefan Kanfer
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Kanfer, Stefan.
Ball of fire: the tumultuous life and comic art of Lucille Ball / Stefan Kanfer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Ball, Lucille, 1911–1989 2. Entertainers—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
PN2287.B16 K36 2003
791.45’028’092—dc21
[B] 2002043090
eISBN: 978-0-307-42491-4
v3.0