The final curtain fell on Lucille Ball’s life in 1989, but the secrets she carried about her Hollywood peers have proven far more enduring than her legendary sitcoms. In the years before her death, the queen of comedy left behind a series of scathing, private indictments against seven of the industry’s most beloved leading ladies, painting a portrait of an entertainment world rife with cruelty, manipulation, and calculated malice that contradicted the glossy images projected on screen.
Ball, who built an empire on the back of her own relentless work ethic and professional discipline, did not suffer fools or frauds lightly. Her observations, preserved in whispered conversations, private dinner anecdotes, and the recollections of trusted confidants, reveal a woman who saw through the veneer of Hollywood glamour with a sharp, unforgiving eye. She did not merely dislike these women; she actively cataloged their transgressions, viewing their behavior as a betrayal of the craft and a stain on the industry she helped define.
The most venomous of her condemnations was reserved for Ava Gardner, a woman Ball described as possessing a beauty that masked a deeply sadistic streak. The feud between the two was not born of professional rivalry but of a single, chilling incident during an MGM wardrobe fitting in the mid-1960s. A young assistant, nervous and eager to please, presented Gardner with a freshly steamed dress that bore a microscopic flaw in the seam.
Instead of dismissing the error, Gardner reportedly stared at the girl and delivered a crushing verdict: “Don’t bother fixing it. You can’t fix incompetence with more incompetence.”
Ball, standing nearby, was reportedly stunned not by the criticism but by the evident pleasure Gardner took in the humiliation. “Ava didn’t make mistakes. She made victims,” Ball later told a confidant.
The cruelty was not an isolated outburst. At an industry cocktail party, Gardner reportedly referred to Ball as a “washed-up clown” within earshot of other guests, a calculated jab designed to wound. Ball’s conclusion was stark: Gardner’s beauty was a shield for a rotten core, and without it, no one would have tolerated her behavior.
The two never reconciled, and Ball’s disgust only hardened with time.
While Gardner represented overt cruelty, Ball’s assessment of Judy Garland was far more complex, rooted in a profound frustration with wasted genius and the collateral damage of self-destruction. Publicly, Ball praised Garland’s extraordinary talent, but privately, she was brutally honest about the chaos Garland left in her wake. Ball, who clawed her way up from bit parts through sheer grit and punctuality, viewed Garland’s chronic lateness and unreliability as a form of professional violence.
Ball recounted a specific incident where an entire crew arrived at 5 a. m. only to wait until 2 p.
m. for Garland to appear. The star performed flawlessly for thirty minutes before announcing she was too exhausted to continue, resulting in a lost day of production and the subsequent firing of three crew members to cover the budget overrun.
For Ball, this was the unforgivable sin. “Talent doesn’t give you the right to destroy other people’s careers,” she reportedly said. While she mourned Garland’s death in 1969, she never excused the wreckage, viewing Garland’s addiction as a ripple effect that damaged countless innocent people beyond the star herself.
The list continued with Zsa Zsa Gabor, whom Ball dismissed not as dangerous but as fundamentally fraudulent. Ball’s contempt for Gabor was rooted in what she saw as a performance of humanity rather than genuine warmth. At a charity event in the late 1960s, Ball witnessed Gabor snap at a volunteer who guided her to a table, hissing, “I don’t sit with peasants.”
The mask dropped further when Gabor threatened a young volunteer who accidentally brushed her coat, promising to ensure the girl never worked in the town again—all delivered with a sweet, chilling smile.
To Ball, this was the most insidious form of evil: fake kindness. “Nothing about her is real,” Ball vented. “Not the accent, not the elegance, not even the kindness.”
When Gabor famously slapped a police officer in 1989, Ball was reportedly unsurprised, remarking, “There she is, the real one.” For Ball, Gabor’s entire existence was a weaponized illusion designed to disarm and manipulate.
Bette Davis, a titan of cinema, earned a place on the list not for her talent but for her merciless treatment of those she deemed inferior. Ball admired Davis’s craft but abhorred her cruelty, which she witnessed firsthand at an industry dinner in the mid-1960s. Davis spent the evening belittling waitstaff and making caustic remarks about absent colleagues.
When invited to join Davis’s table, Ball declined, reportedly saying, “I’d rather keep my skin intact tonight.”
The deeper issue for Ball was Davis’s habit of targeting the powerless. Davis was notorious for tearing into makeup artists and junior actors, often demanding firings over trivial mistakes. Ball once overheard Davis shredding a young actress for mispronouncing a single word, sneering about her education in front of the entire crew.
Ball was so appalled she complained directly to the director. “When you reach the top, you have a responsibility to be better, not worse,” Ball argued. Davis’s genuine talent made her cruelty even less excusable in Ball’s eyes.
Joan Crawford, however, disturbed Ball on a deeper, more visceral level. Ball saw Crawford as a woman of pure ice, using glamour as a camouflage for a heartless core. The defining moment came in 1971 when Crawford appeared as a guest on Here’s Lucy.
Crawford demanded the studio be kept at exactly 68 degrees, insisted on specific lighting to flatter her bone structure, and exploded when a young wardrobe assistant presented a dress with a tiny wrinkle. Crawford hissed, “You’re a useless little nothing. Toilets would be lucky to have you,” and demanded the girl be fired.
Ball refused.
When the cameras rolled, Crawford transformed into a charming, gracious star, but the moment the red light went off, she froze back into a cold, empty shell. Ball whispered, “I’ve worked with department store mannequins who felt more human.” For Ball, Crawford’s treatment of the powerless revealed her true character, and she considered Crawford unmistakably evil until her final days.
Shelley Winters presented a different kind of threat: uncontrolled, explosive rage. Ball saw Winters as a “storm in a dress,” a woman whose temper was so volatile she was feared throughout the industry. At a Hollywood fundraiser in the late 1960s, Winters became furious over a perceived lack of recognition and threw a drink, causing a scene that drove guests away.
Ball, watching from a nearby table, dryly remarked, “And that’s why I declined when they asked if I wanted to sit with Shell.”
More troubling to Ball was the strategic nature of Winters’s outbursts. Ball believed Winters learned that causing chaos was an effective way to get what she wanted, a manipulation tactic that offended Ball’s sensibilities. “Lucy despised manipulation of any kind,” a friend explained.
“But this kind, loud, disruptive, and strategic, offended her deeply.” Ball’s strategy was simple: keep a safe distance and always ensure someone was standing between them.
The most surprising name on the list is Vivian Vance, Ball’s beloved on-screen sidekick. While their friendship eventually became deep and genuine, the early years were marked by brutal, sisterly warfare. Ball’s initial insecurity led to a contract clause requiring Vance to stay overweight, a humiliating condition that Vance resented.
Vance, in turn, referred to Ball as “that tough old broad” and once stormed into Ball’s dressing room, accusing her of stealing a scene and calling her controlling, jealous, and old.
The argument got ugly, but what separates Vance from the others is the redemption arc. Over time, mutual respect replaced resentment. Vance stood by Ball during her divorce from Desi Arnaz, and Ball never forgot that loyalty.
By the 1970s, their bond was genuine, lasting until Vance’s death in 1979. Ball was devastated, proving that even the deepest wounds could heal into a love that transcended the scars they had given each other.
Ball’s own life was a testament to the discipline she demanded of others. She broke barriers as the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. She earned 13 Emmy nominations, won five, and was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
Her legacy is enshrined in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the Kennedy Center Honors, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded posthumously in 1989.
Her final days were marked by a tragic medical ordeal. On April 18, 1989, she was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with a dissecting aortic aneurysm. She underwent a grueling seven-hour surgery and received an aortic valve replacement.
Just over a week later, on April 26, she awoke with intense back pain and lost consciousness, passing away at 5:47 a. m. from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm unrelated to her surgery.
She was cremated, and her ashes were eventually moved to the Hunt family plot in Jamestown, New York, fulfilling her final wishes.
The revelations about these seven actresses offer a stark counterpoint to the golden age of Hollywood nostalgia. Ball’s warnings, preserved in the memories of those who knew her, serve as a reminder that the brightest smiles often hide the sharpest knives. Her legacy, however, remains untarnished, built on a foundation of professionalism, talent, and an unyielding demand for integrity in an industry that often rewarded its absence.
