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Lucille Ball’s various encounters with New Jersey!

Save the “Lucille Ball” Pond!

The famed "Lucille Ball house and pond”, located on the corner of Clive Street and Mason Drive in Edison, New Jersey, has been recently purchased by developers. Word has spread that the plans call to demolish the existing home and fill in the existing pond. There has been an outpouring of support from the community to help save the pond for ecological and aesthetic  reasons.

Despite the nickname, neither Lucille Ball or anyone in her family ever owned the home, but the Metuchen-Edison Historical Society indicates the famed actress did visit the area at least once in late 1960 or early 1961, after divorcing Desi Arnaz and before marrying Gary Morton, at a time when she was about to appear in Wildcat on Broadway.

According to the source, Ball met with Kenneth Berg, one of two brother realtors from the Berg Agency, which may have led to speculation that she was looking at homes — one of the homes she may have looked at was the house at 110 Clive Street. Berg and Ball dined at a Main Street, Metuchen Chinese restaurant. Ball and Berg were ‘dating’ and spending a weekend at his home and decided to get some Chinese food for dinner. He said Ball took a ride with him to the restaurant and sat at a table to wait for their order. While waiting, Berg's friend, the owner of the local newspaper, came in and conducted an "off the record" interview with Ball.

Of the many homes in the area, the Clive Street one was thought to look the most like a movie star's home, and the legend stuck!

Lucy second husband, Gary Morton's family, lived nearby in the Colonia section of Woodbridge, New Jersey in the 1960s. People often thought that Lucille Ball lived there, too, and the Mortons got calls and visits looking for Lucy.

Coincidentally, as an infant, Lucille Ball's father was a lineman, and briefly lived with newborn Lucy in Trenton, New Jersey, the state capital, although no official address was ever established for her short stay in the Garden State.

Professionally, Lucille Ball appeared in 1937 at Princeton, New Jersey's McCarter Theatre in a play called Hey Diddle Diddle. The play was Broadway-bound, but was sidetracked when the leading man became ill. She returned a decade later in Dream Girl by Elmer Rice in June 1947, launching its nationwide tour.   

In August 1947 Dream Girl returned to New Jersey for a week of performances in Atlantic City at the Convention Hall’s auditorium / ball room. Convention Hall is now known as Boardwalk Hall. 

In 1983, Lucy went to the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey to see her daughter Lucie (and her husband, Lawrence Luckinbill) in “The Guardsman.” Due to her great fame, Ball was ushered in the side door just as the lights went down.  

NEW JERSEY ON “LUCY”

On “I Love Lucy” there were quite a few references to New Jersey by the Ricardos, who lived on the East Side of Manhattan, until they relocated to Westport, Connecticut in 1956. 

Thinking out loud in “The Adagio” (ILL S1;E12), Ricky presciently ponders moving to the country. He first suggests Long Island or Westchester, but then also considers New Jersey.

In 1951's “Drafted” (ILL S1;E11) Ricky is asked to entertain at Fort Dix in Burlington County, New Jersey.  Naturally, Lucy and Ethel think they've been drafted!  

After finding out that their marriage license has been revoked in a 1952 episode titled “The Marriage License” (ILL S1;E26), Lucy goes on a twelve hour walk to East Orange, New Jersey, to think things out. 

“How I ever got through the Holland Tunnel, I don’t know.” 

East Orange and the Holland Tunnel will be mentioned again three years later in “Lucy Learns to Drive” (ILL S4;E11). Reportedly, she tried to make a u-turn in the Holland Tunnel resulting in traffic being tied up to East Orange, New Jersey.  

When Lucy and Ethel pretend to be women from Mars at the top of the Empire State Building, newspaper reports warn 

"Hordes of invaders also seen in New Jersey and Connecticut.”  

Any similarity to Orson Welles' 1939 “War of the Worlds” radio invasion of Grover's Mill, New Jersey (an unincorporated community within West Windsor in Mercer County) is definitely intentional!  Welles was a friend (and frequent houseguest) of the Arnaz’s and would appear as himself in season six of the series. 

One of Ricky's Tropicana shows was set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Gay '90s. The episode ends with the lyrics: 

“On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City I found what I waited for. In romantic, enchanting Atlantic City, down by the old New Jersey shore!”

When an argument erupts between the Ricardos and the Mertzes, Lucy and Ricky pack their things to move, but they run across a sentimental photograph.

“It's a picture of us and Fred and Ethel taken in Atlantic City last summer. We sure had a lot of fun there, didn't we?” 

Since the series was traditionally on hiatus during the summer months, no such trip was ever seen on the show.

Another mention of Atlantic City was cut for time from the ending of “Cuban Pals” (ILL S1;E28). To ditch Ricky's sexy dancer Renita, Fred pretends to be a taxi driver that will bring her to the Tropicana “by way of Philadelphia.” The original script, however, ended with Ethel reading a telegram from Fred that he took Renita to Atlantic City, and they're living it up!

In “Lucy’s Summer Vacation”, a 1959 episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”, the Ricardos summer in Vermont, while the Mertzes head to Atlantic City. 

“Come on, Ethel. You take the East side and I'll take the West side, and I'll be in Jersey afore ya!“

~ The last line of “Million Dollar Idea” (ILL S3;E13)

PC0002 Amtrak train No. 42, the northbound “Valley Forge” speeds around the curve at Metuchen, NJ, July 12, 1974, powered by GG-1 913 in Penn Central livery. This locomotive is now preserved and on display in the Railroader’s Memorial Museum, Altoona, PA