Lucille Ball was a 'Control Freak' - daughter Lucie Arnaz reveals to Joan Rivers -1990

we are back talking with lucy arnez now you have three terrific children who swam in my pool yeah and made a lot of noise so that's what they do and when normal and how are you bringing them up differently how do you're keeping them away from the press well i did not so much anymore but when up until they were old enough to run i did yeah i don't know i was fanatical about pictures of my kids i you know for obvious reasons i'm very protective i'm probably a lot of mothers are like that but uh everybody thinks my mother was worth 462 grillion dollars and i had these frank sinatra junior fears you know i i don't know they weren't warranted thank god my kids are fine but what's going to happen when they grow up and they're going to find out grandma was this big star mommy's a star daddy's a star we want to be stars would you let them go into the business where they came to you right now and wanted to do what you did when you were a child that's a really good question and i thank you never one out of 14. pretty darn good i can see why you do this now uh well you know it's very tough if they have to do it if they want to do it for the right reasons because they can't do anything else they have you know that thing you have to perform god if it makes you that happy you've got to do it but you didn't know that as a child no but you know see if they if they come about it the same way i did which is that i saw what it was like to be as famous as you could get a lot of people don't know that a lot of people say oh you know what i'll be a perfectly happy person if i get to be enormously famous that will solve all my problems that's it that's all i need then they get there and they see that it just creates a whole lot of other problems yeah well i knew what it was like to get to the very top so for me to go into this at all it wasn't to be famous it was because i loved acting now that doesn't say that it's a great profession to be in it's sporadic you make you could make you know if you're meryl streep a couple million dollars a picture or if you're somebody else only works once a year you better make a lot because you it goes out real fast and god forbid you get a series for five minutes you move to the hills you get the big house you get the cars you get the stuff and then the series is and then what you said oh my god now you're starting to live like you have larry and i are constantly saying we have to just live like normal people and of course we don't i mean we get you're tempted you know you want the best for your kids put them in private schools do this do that and then you're at the mercy of saying i take that job i don't want to do that job i'm going to do this job we're about probably getting ready to do a lot more theater now go back to the east spend more time in the east coast because it's what we love you can't really make a great living in the theater but you can love what you do you know your parents made a lot of money not 40 million dollars but then what what did your father do when the series was over your mother kept active well you know it was when the marriage was over it was really the key point the series was over when the marriage was over that's why they stopped and i mean my mother and father were divorced and that's why the i love lucy show stopped and after that he kind of hid and he drank a lot and he had a few other shows that he pulled out of the hat a few years after that mothers-in-law and he produced my mother's the lucy show and whatnot but progressively he was more and more depressed and went through a lot of his money gambling and pretty much hid out and uh never got the acclaim that i think he deserved because he was the brains behind all that comedy talent and uh and a brilliant comedian absolutely you go back and you look at the lucy shows your father is incredible i always thought he was a lot funnier than her naturally i mean as far as doing the physical stuff she was the queen but just as far as having humor and dry wit he was i mean i get my humor from my dad not from her which is odd but i do yeah because he's a naturally funny kind of guy and he always used to see things funny so that's kind of depressing that he ended up a drunk how did that get you they're not laughing at us now because it's true it's true a lot of us am i right i mean it's it's weird isn't it and you look around anybody see punchline must have killed you right yeah see that tore me up i laughed through the whole thing when that scene came where his dad came into the room and he broke down and couldn't go on there's so many people who become the funniest people on earth because they have such pain that they're trying to get through and thank god they have that i mean you never put it down because thank god for for the makeup that is in your body that lets you be a survivor however it is but are you survived you survived the divorce must have been devastating how old were you seven who you closer to your daddy my dad but i wasn't allowed to be because i know that now i would tell you my mother if you'd asked me 12 14 years ago but i know that emotionally i was closer to my father but i was always told what a bad person he was you know and no not that's not fair don't get mad not a bad person but there was always a little bit of the poor soul you know that poor soul he can't get his life together and so i felt like god if i if i emulate him if i admire him if i'm proud of him i'll end up like that you know as opposed but i didn't like what i was seeing over here either because there's a control freak here and somebody here yeah but she you know she had to be in charge 24 hours a day she loved us in her own way i'm sure she loved us in the only way she knew how because if you spin the circle back far enough you got to say well where did that come from had to come from her family and i loved my grandmother but maybe she and my mother didn't get along you know it's just fascinating in a way and sad that the circle goes on and goes on so the bottom line is you ask about how i raise my children i have these three terrific kids well i didn't know a lot of these problems existed until i had children nobody teaches us how to be parents it's the only thing we're ever going to do that's important in our lives forget the marriage forget the career you have a baby you're supposed to raise that child and send it out in the world a whole human being nobody teaches you how to do that so you rely on what you instinctively know but you don't know what you know till it's time to say get that off the table where did that come from oh my god and so then you start to back up and go well i i guess that's what i heard you know but gee that's not right i and here i am and i'm trying to figure it all out now because either you pass it on or you stop it and you fix it you know i used to what are you stopping and fixing i'm trying not to do that i'm trying to say what what now let's talk about why you had to put all that paint all over the furniture children you know i mean it's about having not using ridicule and sarcasm to raise your children it's giving them some kind of respect their little children are little tiny blank pieces of paper that we bring into this world and they could be anything and it's what we put on them that makes them what they are how old are your kids at they're nine seven and five what about drugs they've had a family you had a dad that drank a great deal your brother my brother emulated him i became an alcoholic and a drug abuse he's pulled himself out but he had to hit rock bottom emotionally before he did that maybe i had to hit rock bottom emotionally where i saw something dangerous happening right i saw myself walking away from a terrific marriage i don't say walking away walking but emotionally walking away distancing myself from my husband and i didn't know why you talked about my being a romance addict i just found that out i just found that term out for the first time in my life that all my life i ran towards what was the most romantic one relationship after another and as soon as one got to be to sedate oh this is my probably because my father was a romantic fanatic well he was full of romance he sang songs and played the guitar and and lit candles and and we always had music around the house and he was a performer on live on stage he could get up right here and and entertain you that's very romantic so when things got tough i would go to that find the romance be cured right then you realize that that's not curing anything you're just running away what about your mom was she romantic passionate i think about about certain things yeah i think about her work definitely and uh she was she was an organizer and a control freak can be a good thing if you're running a country yes and she ran a studio but it's right but it's great yeah well it it is it's your uh i mean i really believe that and i actually ran a studio and she did it well she ran a house and ran it well her estate is in perfect order which is a blessing so that we don't have to go through a lot of stuff she took care of us all she took care of her husband she she loved us in the way she could do that that's what she could do it was hard for her to really really communicate to really be there she could be there in her way did she realize it did she realize that she couldn't get through to you well i say no but i wonder i think maybe some of the loneliest loneliness that she felt towards the end was exactly that that she never could make this connection as hard as she tried you know but how nice that you're finding this out because then you can have it with your children i'm gonna die trying oh i mean i'm never gonna give up i just love you so much thank you we love you and i love you and i hope that the 1990s are your decades a new decade we have to be different now no you have to be different you stay just the way you thank you [Applause] you

Channel: Chronic Nostalgia

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Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021