"It's a beautiful portrait of someone with enormous talent as an entertainer and heartbreaking fragility as a woman. In giving Lucille Ball the serious appraisal she deserves, Kathleen Brady has really gotten behind the scenes and the cameras to provide an invaluable chronicle of several areas and eras of show business."--Molly Haskell

"While Brady is a fan, she is also a fine biographer. Her admiration is both clear-eyed and penetrating. With insight and impressive detail, Brady goes beyond Ball's most famous creation--Lucy Ricardo--to expose the complex, determined woman." --Chicago Sun-Times

In twenty years of show business, Lucille Ball had only modest and sporadic success. Her television program, I Love Lucy, was her last chance to fulfill the ambition that had sustained her through the frustrations of her professional life and the anguish of a failing marriage. The role of Lucy Ricardo revealed her true gifts, but it changed her life immeasurably, and the remarkable individual who was Lucille Ball became slowly obscured in the shadows of Lucy.

This definitive portrait of Lucille is based on the recollections of fellow performers like Milton Berle, Ginger Rogers, Bob Hope, and Katherine Hepburn; her closest friends and family; and Lucille herself. From her childhood, when her virtual abandonment instilled in her a relentless drive for love and attention, through her struggling years in Hollywood and her troubled relationship with Desi Arnaz, Brady vividly recounts the story of this passionate and vulnerable woman.