Ball of Fire

Easily the years best Hollywood biog.Independent on Sunday

Ball Of Fire reveals all about house- wife superstar Lucille Ball. She made the top-rated TV show in America before her husbands serial adulteries practically sunk it.Sunday Herald

To viewers all over the world, Lucille Ball remains the ultimate screwball housewife, getting in and out of outlandish scrapes with hilarous finesse. But Stefan Kanfers biography looks behind the image, tracing Balls comedic genius to its beginnings in a lonely childhood in upstate New York. She yearned to make people laugh, to attain stardom and love. Then a Cuban bandleader called Desi came into her life to make her wealthy and famous -- and nearly destroyed her in the process. Kanfer chronicles the runaway success of I Love Lucy, the fiery marriage and eventual split from Desi, and Balls struggle to manage both a business empire and her own rebellious children.

A wonderful and poignant book . . . Kanfer portays 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