Forever, Darling (1956)

Film: Forever, Darling (1956)

Stars: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, James Mason, Louis Calhern, Natalie Schafer

Director: Alexander Hall

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Lucille Ball click here to learn more about Ms. Ball (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We last left Lucille Ball in 1942, when her contract with RKO was expiring and she was signing with MGM.  It is entirely possible that Lucille Ball's career might've ended roughly at that time, a lot of promise but only a few brief years of stardom.  Ball's time at MGM wasn't particularly successful-she led a few movies, but she stayed in her genre of forgettable B-Movies, and by the end of the decade she was floating from studio-to-studio.  It was about that time, though, that fate intervened and Ball was hired on the radio show My Favorite Husband, which became a hit.  This led CBS to hire Lucille Ball for a TV show.  Ball had one major demand when she agreed to sign, though-that her husband Desi Arnaz would be her fictional husband on the show.  CBS, desperate to get a name as big as Ball's, agreed, and Ball (largely doing this to save her struggling marriage), signed on to make I Love Lucy.

It's hard to grasp exactly how big I Love Lucy was in its day, particularly in an era where TV hits are less about universality and more about streaming revenues.  But when I say pretty much every person in America watched I Love Lucy, I mean everyone watched it.  44 million people watched Lucille Ball give birth, roughly 14.4 million homes watching it.  To put that into perspective, nearly 74% of all American homes with TV sets watched Lucy Ricardo give birth (for comparison's sake, the Super Bowl, the quintessential American television get-together got barely half that last year).  Ball & Arnaz, through talent, smarts, & a bit of luck, had gone from being a B-Grade movie star and a night club act (respectively) to being two of the most famous people in the country.  And so it obviously made sense that when they asked MGM to sign a two-picture deal, the studio jumped at the opportunity.

(Spoilers Ahead) Forever, Darling features Arnaz & Ball in familiar roles, playing husband-and-wife.  Lorenzo Vega (Arnaz) is a chemical engineer working on creating a new type of insect repellent who marries a socialite named Susan (Ball).  The two have an idyllic marriage at first, but as time goes on they grow to like each other less-and-less, with Susan wanting a grander life with her high society friends, while Vega dislikes this and wants a simpler life with his wife, focusing on his research.  Things come to a head when Susan's Guardian Angel (Mason), shows up, telling her that she needs to look after her marriage & try harder to become interested in her husband before the union eventually falls apart.  Hijinks ensue, with Susan initially having moments where the Guardian Angel (invisible to all but her) causes many around her to think she's gone mad, but eventually she takes his advice, and goes with Lorenzo on a work trip.  While they have some calamities (it wouldn't be Lucy & Desi without some physical comedy bits, including a particularly funny one with a sinking boat), they end up making up & going back to their true romance.

Forever, Darling is not a great movie, and it wasn't a hit in 1956.  Part of the problem for audiences at the time was that everyone wanted Lucille Ball to just be Lucy Ricardo; this was, in fact a problem that she'd endure her whole life, though we'll get to that a bit more next week.  Forever, Darling is not the happy-go-lucky Ricardos though...if anything, it was more what Arnaz & Ball's marriage was like in real life, as Arnaz's alcoholism, gambling, & infidelity (not to mention both of their tempers) regularly put their successful professional partnership at risk.  No one wanted to see Lucy & Ricky unhappy, and the two-picture deal with MGM dissolved.

I don't have as much problem with seeing Ball, a talented actress, do something other than Lucy Ricardo (as we've seen throughout this month, she was a pretty versatile performer).  But Forever, Darling is too long & too boring to be of much interest beyond being a curiosity.  Ball & Arnaz, probably aware that the public didn't want to see them too unhappy onscreen (I Love Lucy was still on the air and they would continue working together until their divorce in 1960), can't fully commit to the rougher patches of the movie, and so a modern viewer feels like they are getting whiplash.  This would end up being the third and final theatrically-released movie to feature Arnaz & Ball.  Next week, as we close out our month with Ball, we will take a peak beyond I Love Lucy, and the decades that Ball would continue to work in, with many hits (and two notorious bombs).