Ball of Fire, Stefan Kanfer
Ball of Fire, Stefan Kanfer
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Ball of Fire
The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball

Author: Stefan Kanfer

Narrator: Nan McNamara

Unabridged: 14 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/18/2022


Synopsis

As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, "queen of the B-pluses." But on the small screen she was a superstar—arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history of TV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the roots of Lucy's genius and places it in the context of her conflicted and sometimes bitter personal life.

Ball of Fire gives us Lucy in all her contradictions. Here is the beauty who became a master of knock-down slapstick; the control freak whose comic alter ego thrived on chaos, the worshipful TV housewife whose real marriage ended in public disaster. Here, too, is an intimate view of the dawn of television and of the America that embraced it. Charming, informative, touching. and laugh-out-loud funny, this is the book Lucy's fans have been waiting for.

About Stefan Kanfer

Stefan Kanfer was a journalist, critic, and editor, as well as the author of sixteen books, including the bestselling biographies Groucho and Ball of Fire. Kanfer, the first by-lined cinema critic for the New York Times, was the recipient of many writing awards and was named a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library. He died in 2018.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Summer on August 19, 2012

Lucille Ball is my mom’s idol. She loves that woman. She has every biography, every cookbook and every salt and pepper shaker you can imagine emblazoned with a red heart and two stick figures happily smooching. I Love Lucy is the most famous comedy of all time. I never watched television growing up......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on August 28, 2015

Early in the run of "I Love Lucy, Ball" gave co-star Vivian Vance a hard time. Vance decided, "If by any chance this thing actually becomes a hit and goes anywhere, I'm gonna learn to love that bitch." She did, and so did the rest of the world. But according to Kanfer's excellent, compulsively reada......more