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Ball of Fire

The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball

Stefan Kanfer

$27.95

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English
Faber & Faber
01 October 2005
For over 50 years Lucille Ball has been one of television's most recognisable faces, an iconic figure of American comedy, whose best work is rightly compared to Charlie Chaplin's.

To viewers worldwide Ball remains the ultimate screwball housewife, getting in and out of outlandish scrapes with hilarious finesse. Stefan Kanfer's biography looks behind the image, tracing Ball's comedic genius to its beginnings in a lonely childhood in upstate New York. En route Kanfer chronicles the runaway success of the sitcom I Love Lucy, the fiery marriage and eventual split from Desi - the Cuban bandleader who made her famous - and Ball's struggles to manage both a business empire and her own rebellious children.

By:  
Imprint:   Faber & Faber
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Edition:   Main
Dimensions:   Height: 197mm,  Width: 125mm,  Spine: 24mm
Weight:   261g
ISBN:   9780571220311
ISBN 10:   0571220312
Pages:   384
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print

Stefan Kanfer is the author of The Eighth Sin, A Summer World, The Last Empire, Serious Business and Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx. He was a writer and editor for Time magazine for more than twenty years. He lives in New York and on Cape Cod.

Reviews for Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball

'Ball of Fire reveals all about housewife superstar Lucille Ball. She made the top-rated TV show in America before her husband's serial adulteries practically sunk it.' Sunday Herald; 'A wonderful and poignant book... Kanfer portrays Lucille Ball as insatiably anxious and insecure, a woman whose search for a father figure would only ever find the unlikely and unholdable Desi... Kanfer pulls no punches over Lucy the pain in the neck, but he gives a superb picture of how she and Desi changed television.' David Thomson, New Republic; 'Easily the year's best Hollywood biog' Independent on Sunday


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