James M. Keller I The New Mexican
l e h t E
We love IT
is Jan. 31, 1955 — a Monday night — and in this evening’s installment of I Love Lucy, Ricky and Lucy and Fred and Ethel are in the midst of a road trip to Los Angeles, where Ricky is to make a movie. Their route (66, of course) leads the funny foursome right through Albuquerque, and that raises the unusual possibility of placing Ethel at the center of the action in an episode titled “Ethel’s Home Town.” Inasmuch as the th television series I Love Lucyy was fictional to the core, Ethel Mertz could have been from anywhere. But the actress who portrayed her, the imitable Vivian Vance, really was a productt of Albuquerque, a happe nstance that has given rise to o the exhibition Everybody’s Neigh hbor: Vivian Vance, on view throu ugh Feb. 1 at the Albuquerque Museum. The gist of the episode is that the denizens of the Duke City are under the impression that it is their native daughter who is going to be starring in the Hollywood movie, and Ethel, swept up in the admiration, does nothing to disabuse them of that misconception. Pressed by a reporter to relate her life story, she takes a deep breath and basks in her unaccustomed moment in the spotlight: “My Story, by Ethel Mae Potter,” she begins, using her presumed maiden name, essentially dictating to the star-struck reporter. “You people who remained here in this lovely, quiet, peaceful town of Albuquerque, leading your dreary, uneventful lives, little do you know the heartache, the heartbreak, the hard work, the frustration that I went through to get where I am today. When I was a small tot, playing around the yard of the Albuquerque Grammar School, little did I know that I was destined to become the star of three continents.” The reporter proposes taking her on a tour of the places of her youth, photographing her at the schoolyard, behind the counter of her father’s grocery shop, posing “with a big close-up shot of the Little Theatre marquee,” where she had gotten her start as an actress. By the end of the show, ruffled feathers are smoothed and the others join Ethel at that very theater for a vaudeville routine in which Ethel sings “Short’nin’ Bread” plus the song “My Hero” from Oscar Straus’ operetta The Chocolate Soldier, while havoc reigns in the background. In fact, Vance was not a native of the city. She was born Vivian Roberta Jones on July 26, 1909, in Cherryvale, Kansas, and her family moved to Albuquerque only in 1928, in hopes that the climate
would prove beneficial for her asthmatic mother. While working as a model for a dressmaker, Vivian found an outlet for her theatrical proclivities by performing in weekend vaudeville shows at the KiMo Theatre. At just that time a professional actress named Kathryn Kennedy O’Connor arrived in town from New York, seeking respite from tuberculosis, and she convinced various movers and shakers t su upport her in founding the to Allbuquerque Little Theatre. Vance (the stage name was V assumed at that time) got in on the ground floor; the exhibition includes a photo of her iin costume for an unidentifiied production there in 1930, which was its first season. w Connor recognized the young O’C potential and sent her to New actress’s p with Eva Le Gallienne. York to study w Vance was nott yet ready for the big time. Her V first audition in New York earned this response: “May we suggest you immediately return home.” She proved persistent, snagging chorus parts and then supporting roles, finally graduating to a name on the marquee. A photo in the show has her posing onstage with Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman, and Bob Hope for the initial production of Cole Porter’s Red, Hot, and Blue in 1936; the previous year, she had been Merman’s understudy in the same composer’s Anything Goes. “I always tell a beginner to stand in the wings when you come offstage, watch and learn from top stars,” Vance later said. “Incorporate what they do; make it your own.” By 1939, her headshot graces the cover of the Playbill for Skylark, a comedy by Samson Raphaelson in which she played a supporting role to the British actress Gertrude Lawrence. That production was launched on Oct. 11, 1939, at the Morosco Theatre on West 45th Street. Exactly one week later audiences streamed to the opening, just down the block at the Imperial Theatre, of the Rodgers and Hart musical Too Many Girls, which served as the breakthrough for an emerging actor and nightclub performer named Desi Arnaz. The next year he would cement his fame in the film version of that musical, which included in its cast a B-movie starlet by the name of Lucille Ball. In 1951, Vance was appearing at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in the lead of John Van Druten’s The Voice of the Turtle, a piece that was hugely popular in its day but has been largely ignored since. Arnaz went to see her performance and invited her to audition for a TV show he was producing, a comedy series that would star Ball,
VivianinVance Albuquerque
30
PASATIEMPO I January 2-8, 2015
Vivian Vance outside the stage door of Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre during the run of Cushman’s Revue, 1930 Top, Vance, circa 1930; Brooks Studio Opposite page, top, Vance, left, in a production of Rain at the KiMo Theatre, 1931 Opposite page, bottom, Vance and William Frawley on the cover of TV Digest and Guide, March 20-26, 1953; courtesy Ric Wyman Images courtesy Lou Ann Graham and the Albuquerque Museum unless otherwise noted