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VIVIAN VANCE'S BIOGRAPHY

VIVIAN VANCE (ETHEL MERTZ)


  Vivian Roberta Jones was born in Cherryvale, Kansas on July 26, 1909 to a family which included five daughters and one son. Her family soon moved to Independence, Kansas, where she studied drama under the guidance of Anna Ingleman and William Inge. Her father again relocated the family to Albuquerque, New Mexico where Vivian’s talents continued to emerge at the Albuquerque Little Theatre. The directors were so impressed with her talent that they organized a production of The Trial of Mary Dugan, starring Vivian, the proceeds of which sent her to New York City to study dramatics under Eva LeGalliene.

  Because enrollment was already greater than it was supposed to be when she arrived in 1932, Vivian started attending auditions. She once remembered, "New York was a lot tougher to crack than Albuquerque. I found out I wasn’t as good as my friends thought I was, but, of course, I couldn’t go back." Although she had letters of recommendation from folks back in Albuquerque, the twenty-year-old wasn’t getting work. However, she learned of an audition for Music in the Air by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. She was hired and worked for two years on the show. Next, she landed a small role in Anything Goes in 1934 while understudying Ethel Merman, which was followed by Red, Hot, and Blue! in 1936. In 1937, she got her break. Kay Thompson left the cast of Hooray for What! with Ed Wynn before opening night. Vivian stepped in at the last minute and got her name on the marquee. She did her first dramatic role the following summer in Kiss the Boys Goodbye.

  Vivian met Phil Ober in 1941 who she would marry that year. She then went back to Broadway for Let’s Face It starring opposite Danny Kaye, Eve Arden, and Nanette Fabray. She and her troupe were the first legitimate entertainment to be sent to a combat Theater of War during WWII. Back from Europe, she took over a leading role in Voice of the Turtle. During a road company production of it in Chicago in 1945, Vivian suffered a nervous breakdown.

  "One day I was up and around, and the next I was lying in bed in my motel room, my hands shaking helplessly, in a state of violent nausea, weeping hysterically of causes I didn’t know. A few nights before, on stage, a piece of business called for me to pick up an ashtray. I began to do it and found I couldn’t move. The brain ordered, but the arm declined. It was one of the most sickening moments I have ever gone through."

  After two more seizures, Phil Ober came to her side and accompanied her back to San Fransisco so she could play six more weeks of Voice of the Turtle before fleeing to New York. For two years she was incapable of doing anything until she met a psychiatrist who changed her life. After four months in analysis, she returned to a ranch just outside Albuquerque in 1949. An old friend, Mel Ferrer, invited the Obers to appear in a new film he was to direct, The Secret Fury. Another friendship, this one with Norman Krasna, put her in another film, The Blue Veil. Once back in New Mexico, Ferrer offered her her role back in Voice of the Turtle at the La Jolla Playhouse. That’s when Jess Oppenheimer, Marc Daniels, and Desi Arnaz went out to see her perform there one evening. After the first act, Desi announced to his comrades that "I think we found our Ethel Mertz." They agreed and Marc, who had known Vivian and was responsible for getting Jess and Desi out to see her, went backstage during intermission. "I told Vivian they liked her and wanted her to try out for the show. Then she said to me, ‘What do I want to get mixed up in that for? It’s only a television show. I’m up for a picture at Universal.’ I was furious with her, and said, ‘You idiot, take the job if they offer it to you! It’s going to be a great show. I’ve already seen six or seven scripts and the pilot. It’s going to be terrific!’." Well, Vivian read for them and they loved it. She became Ethel, but recalled, "Fate sure is a funny thing. When Mel Ferrer called me in New Mexico to play in Turtle, at first I said no. I had a good reason." (She had associated her breakdowns with the show.)

  Well, not everything was peachy. Vivian didn’t appreciate the public accepting her so well as Ethel Mertz. After all, "Ethel is a frump. She’s frowsy, blowsy, and talks like a man." Most of all, though, Vivian despised the idea of portraying Bill Frawley’s wife. The problem: she was thirty-nine (or so) and he was sixty-four. "He should be playing my father." Moreover, a clause in Vivian and Bill’s contracts stated that if something should happen to either of them, the other could be written out. This all laid the groundwork for the infamous Vivian-Bill feud that raged for the entire run of the show. As soon as Bill discovered that Vivian thought of him like that, no one could reconcile the difference. Comments were always being blasted at each other. I sit and watch some of the Fred and Ethel lovey-dovey stuff in awe due to the effervescent feuding. Bill made the following remark after "Lucy" went off prime-time: Vivian’s "one of the finest gals to come out of Kansas but I often wish she’d go back there. I don’t know where she is now and she doesn’t know where I am and that’s exactly the way I like it."

  Throughout the run of the show, psychiatrists dealt with Vivian by delicately separating Ethel and Vivian, the character and the actress, in Viv’s mind. Lucy helped by building up Vivian’s character with laughs, whole scenes, episodes and more. Finally, she no longer resented being called "Ethel" on the street. She came to accept it as fans being friendly. She understood Ethel as just a part, though quite possibly the best part written for a supporting player in television history.

  After "Lucy," Vivian tried out her own series, Guestward, Ho! two times before she lost the part to Joanne Dru in 1960. (The show lasted only one season anyway on ABC.) She was divorced from Ober in 1959, yet Vivian met a charming man seven years younger who proposed to her and bells began to ring. John Dodds married her at the home of Babs Hooten in Sante Fe. They resided in Stamford, Connecticut which was close to NYC where John worked. Vivian became involved with the Connecticut Association for Mental Health and was satisfied with her new life.

  Lucy came East early in 1962 and went to see Vivian. Vivian recalls, "She told me she had a script for a new TV series in her purse. I said, ‘Lucy, don’t take it out, I won’t read it." Vivian was making the first episodes of "The Lucy Show" six months later, in Hollywood. John agreed to it, even though it meant five years of long-distance communication. He felt if it made Vivian happy, it was worth it.

  Desi Arnaz produced the show and was present on the set for rehearsals of the first episode. He gave Lucy a kiss and a good luck charm. He wished her luck and they hugged. As Lucy went back to rehearsing, Desi went up on the catwalks gazing at Lucy. He broke down crying. As he turned around, he saw Vivian crying, too.

  "Oh, Desi," Vivian cried, "It isn’t the same, is it?"

She knew why he was crying. "Like me, he was thinking back to when we all started on ‘I Love Lucy', him and Lucy, William Frawley and me, and how it all was then. All then newness, all the anticipation and the hope and the fun. And here we were, starting again, only this time it wasn't fun anymore. He wasn’t acting. He was divorced. I’d been divorced, but I was married again. And Lucy was married again. So much had happened to so many people, but most of all to Desi, leaving him alone and a little sad," Vivian explained.

  After three seasons, Vivian left. The commute coast to coast was a burden on her and her marriage. However, she returned every so often for guest appearances. Vivian began to lecture in the late sixties and seventies. She wrote an autobiography, but after she completed it, she put it away telling her husband, "Johnny, I want to pay back the advance, I don’t want to lose my privacy."

  The Dodds moved to an island in the San Fransisco Bay, Belvedere, California in 1974 so Vivian could be near her sister. There, at the age of sixty-seven, Vivian lost her long battle against cancer. She passed away on August 17, 1979.

  Desi said, "It’s bad enough to lose one of the great artists we had the honor and the pleasure to work with, but it’s even harder to reconcile the loss of one of your best friends."


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