“Where do we do it — here or in the bedroom?”
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That’s the question a young, well-oiled Arnold Schwarzenegger asks a robe-clad Lucille Ball during their first on-screen meeting, a borderline horny scene that he says changed everything for his burgeoning career.
Arnold’s account of how he met the comedy legend sounds like a #MeToo story in the making, but turns out, it was on the up-and-up. “She was so sweet,” he remembered. “She saw me one time on a Merv Griffin Show, and she called me the next day in the gym when I was working out. She said, ‘Look, I saw you yesterday on Merv Griffin. You were funny, you have a great sense of humor. That’s very unique with someone of your build.’”
What an opening line. And it worked — Ball invited Arnold to read for a television special called Happy Anniversary and Goodbye. The audition wasn’t great, but Ball must have seen something she liked in those biceps. “It was disastrous,” Arnold confessed. “I went in there, and I had no idea what she meant by ‘read.’ So I tried to read it like you read a book … and it was totally wrong because she wanted me to read like, ‘Get into the scene and act out the scene but use the script for help.’”
Despite wooden line readings, Ball appreciated Schwarzenegger’s abs more than his articulation. “She said, ‘Arnold, this was fabulous! You are hired.’” Just like that, he would be on national television, strutting around in a tight-fitting tank top. Ball, wrapped only in a towel, was in for the massage of her life.
For Schwarzenegger, it was not only an acting job, it was a job with Lucille Ball. “She was the 800-pound gorilla,” Schwarzenegger said in an interview with Graham Bensinger. “There’s no two ways about it. She was the monster of the entertainment industry.”
But Schwarzenegger wasn’t out of the woods yet. He still had the taping to get through. “My English was not yet that good,” he explained. “So I remember that she kept saying the whole week when we rehearsed, ‘You have to project more! You have to project more!’”
Not only did the strongman not understand what “Project more!” meant, he also didn’t get the concept of performing live in front of a studio audience. When Ball opened the door for Schwarzenegger and his “I am Rico!” line, he had no idea an audience full of actual human beings would be watching, laughing and applauding.
“The place was packed,” he said of his stunned reaction, entering before he’d been invited in. Ball, rightly realizing she had an amateur on her hands, improvised him back into the scene. She began her scripted line, “Won’t you come in?” and then got a raucous laugh by recognizing, “Oh! You are in!”
“Son of a bitch,” thought Schwarzenegger — no one told him there’d be an audience. Actually, Ball did tell him. He just didn’t understand what “live recording” meant and never saw the crowd from his waiting spot backstage.
Ball stayed in touch after the special, writing letters to Arnold whenever he got a movie role to encourage him to keep going. “Lucille Ball was absolutely instrumental in my early career,” Schwarzenegger swooned. “And this is why I would never forget her.”