Welcome to my private Photo Album. Here you'll find rare and unique pics (many Lucy-oriented, some not) that are mostly not available elsewhere; feel free to "borrow" them, but be nice and tell people where you got them.*Click to make the pics larger and the right proportional size. Pics are captioned by row after the photos, at page bottom.
From the first row, left to right, top to bottom:
1st Row 1. Me signing books at one of my first appearances in Jamestown, N.Y. at the Lucy-Desi Days, 2002, in the original Lucy-Desi Museum. 2. My signature, handprints, footprints and the date in cement, still waiting, I assume, to be installed with others ("real" celebrities like Lucie Arnaz and Doris Singleton) in the forecourt of the new Museum, to be acquired and built in Jamestown sometime in the near future. 3. Caricature has always been one of my favorite art forms. Although I am best known in the Lucyverse as an author, I have dabbled in the unique art of caricature myself, using my favorite redhead as a subject. Here we find a recent example of my "art," done in Late May, 2008. 4. The man waving to me is Bill Asher, who directed most of the episodes of I Love Lucy. His wife, Meredith, is unfortunately hidden by the wave. And at the left, enjoying the festivities in Jamestown N.Y. several years ago, is Dann Cahn, the film editor for I Love Lucy and so much more.2nd Row 1. Lucy and Vivian in what is certainly a rare color promotional shot for The Lucy Show, circa the mid-1960s. Courtesy of Photofest, N.Y. 2. Doris Singleton and I met up in Jamestown, and she's as classy and delightful a person (and, of course, a fabulous actress) as I ever met. 3. Lucy touring London in an open car during the making of her 1966 TV special, "Lucy in London." 4.Vivian Vance was a popular guest on Jack Paar's Tonight Show many times in the early 1960s, and this evening she brought her famous redheaded pal to join the chat (see row 8 for another picture from the same show).
3rd Row 1. Another redhead, actress Marie Wallace (best known for multiple roles on the soap cult classic Dark Shadows), posed with me at the 2005 Big Apple Comic Con. I was there selling books, and she was featured in a Dark Shadows panel discussion. 2. In the 1941 movie Father Takes a Wife, a young Desi Arnaz relaxes onboard a ship. Fellow passengers included Gloria Swanson and Adolph Menjou. 3. This cover was the only thing I liked about the book it came from that it featured a caricature of Lucy among other funny ladies. 4. Lucy's presenting a young Johnny Carson with a gift in this picture I found at one of the photo archive stores in New York...but no one's been able to identify what the present is, or the event.
4th Row 1. The original linoleum floor from Lucy's bedroom, in her former house in Celeron, N.Y. near Jamestown, where she lived for a time as a child. 2. A daisy, shot by Marie Wallace (see first pic, row 3), who's gone from being a hobbyist photogrpaher to quite a picture-taker. 3. Betcha didn't know I was also a famous fashion model. Yup. Well, Lucy fahsions. For ther Lucy-Desi Center catalog. Hey, what have you done?! 4. When The Simpsons Movie opened in 2007, one of the prmoos was a Web site where you could go to "transform" yourself into a Simpson-like character as drawn by Matt Groening. This is me, if I were a guest star on the animated series.
5th RowThe fabulous caricaturist Robert Risko was kind enough to contribute one of his Lucy drawings to the 4th edition of Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia. In fact, he sent me six drawings; unfortunately, since I was limited to 50 pictures, I only had room for one. But that doesn't mean I can't show you the rest: from left, glamorous Lucy; Lucy Ricardo; "Lucy" embroiled in some kind of technoligical snafu (drawn for a business magazine); and Lucy and Harpo Marx (drawn for CBS). Thanks, Robert.
6th Row 1. A letter signed by Lucy to a fan who'd writen her in 1938, for sale on eBay several years ago. 2. One of my all-time favorite Lucy pics, her Blackglama mink ad. 2. I do write about other subjects than Lucy, and two of my books Kiss Me, Kill Me, and its prequel, Sleeps Well With Others are about a gay vampire named Ray Abreu, and how he got that way. My best friend, Craig Hamrick, convinced me they'd sell at the Dark Shadows convention, so I went with him several years ago, and, ya know what? He was right ... though they didn't sell nearly as well as his own books, which are Dark Shadows-related. For more on Craig, go here and here. 4. This rare color pic of Vivian Vance in the 1950s was also an eBay find, though I didn't buy it. The original you see when you click the pic looks more distorted than the one on this page because it was shot at an odd angle, and the thumbnail compression here actually makes it look normally proportioned.
7th Row More Lucy fun courtesy of yours truly: from left, a caricature I drew in 2007; a pencil drawing I made from a photograph back in the 1970s; a silhouette I created, also from a photo, of Lucy later in life; and one of my favorite pictures of Lucy I dug this up doing research for Lucy A to Z and it's from a Chicago newspaper in the 1940s.
8th Row 1. Lucy and Viv on the Jack Paar Tonight Show, another view (see Row 2). Courtesy Photofest. 2. Yours truly pictured with three of his favorite people, from my first visit to the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown. 3. An aerial view of Desilu Studios. 4. I put this together to use as a background for my opening page, but even extremely lightened it was too busy to read text over it. But why let it go to waste? It consists of pictures that are on the site, and some that used to be but are no more.
There's no place like home.
*Remember: these photos are purely for entertainment purposes. I don't own the copyrights to most of these, and you don't own any of them! Thanks.
