Lucille Ball Had No Problem Telling Creeps to Keep Their Hands to Themselves
If you needed yet another reason to love Lucy, here's one — courtesy of Hocus Pocus and King of the Hill star Kathy Najimy. The prolific actress and activist shared a video on her Instagram page of the legendary Lucille Ball schooling a man on America Alive!, admonishing him for getting handsy with female audience members during the Q&A portion of her appearance.
That “man” was longtime entertainment newscaster for CBS, David Sheehan, and those audience members he was grabbing were young women likely studying at UCLA where the show was being taped.
Although the audience giggled at every one of Ball’s reproaches — “Will you take your hands off, David?” and “Take your hands off her, David” — Ball’s face was stern the whole time she scolded Sheehan. While everyone thought she was kidding around and perhaps thought it was part of a bit, Ball meant business.
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Ball may have never self-identified as a feminist, but she certainly was a trailblazer that broke the glass ceiling repeatedly in an industry that was — and perhaps still is — an old, white, boys’ club. She was the first woman to ever head a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which her ex-husband and I Love Lucy co-star Desi Arnaz sold to her following their divorce. During her five-year tenure as president and sole owner of Desilu, beloved series like Star Trek, Mannix, and Mission: Impossible were brought to the small screen. Ball was also the first female inductee into the Television Academy’s Hall of Fame (1984), and throughout her multi-Emmy-winning run as the star of I Love Lucy, she was instrumental in paving the way in which women were depicted on-screen. Ball showed that women can be both funny and attractive, zany and ladylike, a homemaker and a prankster all at the same time.
Although there aren’t any published reports of outright misogyny Ball faced in Hollywood, it appears from the clip Najimy posted that after years of working hard to be taken seriously as a creative and a comedian, Ball had no tolerance for sexist shenanigans left in her.
