ctor looked at her and decided right on the spot she would be perfect as a dumb broad. Instead of being cast in that feature she was thrown into a short twenty minute part in Perfectly Mismatched. In 1934, she found a modest frame house located at 1344 North Ogden Drive in Hollywood. She borrowed the down payment of $65 from George Raft. She hit rock bottom in Three Little Pigskins, starring the Three Stooges, whose idea of comedy was tweaking noses, smashing pies into peoples faces, and dumping cans of paint on to peoples heads. She didnt like this kind of comedy. By this time Lucy was unhappy in Hollywood. Columbia had only signed a contract with her to do bits. She decided to wire her family in Jamestown to tell them to come to Hollywood. She told them that she had no career and that she was still poor. They packed their bags and were off to live with Lucy. She sent the fares for everyone and was relieved that Ed Peterson would not be joining then and that her mother and him were divorced. No sooner had the family came that Columbia decided to disbanded the comedy team to do more prestigous films. While Lucy was out taking a walk on the street, she ran into a friend, Dick Gree, who said there was an opening for a showgirl at RKO and were paying $50 a week. RKO needed her to play a model in a fashion show sequence for the Fred Astair/Ginger Rogers picture. Even though she only had to walk down an isle wearing ostrich feathers, it was an honor to her to appear in one of their pictures. Emerging at the same time was Lucys RKO rival, Betty Grable, who was more talented than her. To compete with her Lucy dyed her hair red. Not knowing what she was doing on March 19, 1936, Lucy registered with the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters to affiliate with the Communist Party. From this decision, years later during the McCarthy era she was put into the threat of professional ruin and public exposure. She always said that decision was only to ...
