Right up until the end, Lucille Ball was getting the work done, inhaling unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes and downing endless cups of coffee during the production of her TV movie, Stone Pillow. “She was a little nervous, but she got right into it,” remembered her co-star, Daphne Zuniga, on a recent episode of The Patrick LabyorSheaux podcast. “And of course, this was very different. It wasn’t a comedy.”
Far from it. Ball played a homeless woman, or in the mid-1980s vernacular, a “bag lady.” The production crew had to cover up the comic actor’s trademark lipstick line, Zuniga said, removing any hint of glamour. “It was a character piece.”
Zuniga, in her early 20s when she appeared as the social worker trying to find Lucy a stable home, was incredibly nervous. In fact, she was sure Ball was going to get her fired. While filming their first few scenes, Ball kept complaining to Zuniga, “I can’t hear you, honey! I’m standing right here. If I can’t hear you, how do you expect anyone else to hear you?”
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“I learned to project a little more,” Zuniga confessed. “I just didn’t want to disappoint her.”
Ball’s inability to hear Zuniga’s dialogue would have consequences. The two actors were shooting a scene in New York City’s Port Authority near the end of a long filming day. Ball, dressed as her homeless character, was covered in layers of clothing. “We’re in the middle of the scene, and she slides down the wall and faints,” Zuniga recalled. “I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s Lucy. She’s a brilliant comedian. She’s improvising. She’s adding stuff. So I just got to go with it.”
In character, Zuniga asked Ball’s bag lady if she was okay. No response. Maybe Zuniga wasn’t projecting. She asked again. Nothing. Finally, as if to remind Ball where she was, Zuniga told her, “Camera’s rolling, by the way.”
Finally realizing something was wrong, Zuniga called out to the director that Ball had fainted. “And everyone goes, ‘Cut!’ They’re freaking out. Lucille Ball is on the ground. The ambulance comes. They put her on this bench, and she comes to. George Schaefer, our director, says, ‘That’s it. That’s enough for today.”
After regaining consciousness, Ball demanded to know why the lights were being taken down. “We got a day to finish!”
“No, Lucy, that’s okay. You’re not feeling well,” said Schaefer. “It’s been a long day.”
“No, put the lights back up,” Ball insisted, her Desilu instincts kicking in. “We got to get the other angle.”
No one says no to Ball, and so the show went on. “We get the day because she was a producer and a pro,” said Zuniga. “She was such a pro.”
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