All Because of Lucy

A conversation with Lucille's Ball longtime personal assistant, Wanda Clark

My first Lucille Ball Comedy Festival is in the books. Typically celebrated around Lucy’s birthday (August 6) the festival first got started in the early 1990s and has grown into a celebration of the art form of comedy with dozens of live events all centered in Lucy’s hometown of Jamestown, NY. I was there as part of my new job and it was a whirlwind, to say the least.

One of the participants for this year’s festival was Wanda Clark, a woman who knew Lucille Ball better than most. I had the opportunity to interview her back in July and wanted to share that conversation with you this week. This is a portion of an article I wrote for the National Comedy Center. 

“I could talk about Lucy all day!” 

Wanda Clark beams over a Zoom call from her home in Northeast Oklahoma. The now 90-year-old was in her mid-twenties when she first went to work as Lucille Ball’s personal secretary; their first meeting reading like something out of a movie.

“She was getting ready for a photo shoot at her home,” Clark recalls,”and she had her hair in a turban with a towel and a terrycloth robe, and she said, ‘Hi honey, I'm Lucy.’ Well, that was it. She was that way to me and always very warm and caring. So, I wasn't nervous. I don't know why.”

Clark says people crave details of those little moments and she is happy to oblige. She shared the story of her first time on a private jet, helping Lucy get home from Aspen after she broke her leg waiting for a ski instructor — another skiier ran into her. Then, there were the car rides from Palm Springs, Lucy at the wheel, the two playing word games along the way.

These little stories help Clark answer the monumental question she is asked the most: “What was Lucy really like?”

photo courtesy: National Comedy Center

“I mean, you'd have to give me 30 years,” Clark says with a smile. “She was not Lucy Ricardo. Lucy Ricardo was a beloved character that nobody could have done as well as Lucille Ball did it. That's just because Lucille Ball was so talented…But Lucille Ball was not really that. Lucy Ricardo was a character. So, she was very warm and generous and mothering to everybody around her young, old, children. Everyone comments to me about how Lucy mothered them. And me too. She was very, very warm.”

Lucille Ball was also a very hard worker and Clark explains she expected the same from those around her. 

“If she wanted that mountain moved, I’d go try to move it,” she laughs. “People always say to me, what a wonderful and terrific businesswoman Lucy was. Well, Lucy didn't like being a businesswoman. She wanted to do her job. That was the most important thing to Lucy.”

Important to Clark is the relationship that changed her life and the connection she maintains to Lucy’s family to this day.

“Little Lucie and I talk so often and Desi, not as often, but he's always glad to see me. I just saw them grow up, you know? It's been a pleasure to know them and know the family and the fact that they keep me in their life, I'm very happy about that.”

A longtime fan of Jamestown, Clark said she was very much looking forward to returning for the 2024 Lucille Ball Comedy Festival and to seeing friends and fans, old and new, and celebrating the one very special woman bringing them all together.  

“I’m a lucky lucky person,” she says, “and I know that. And my time with Lucy was got me every other job I had. You know, it's hard to believe Lucy has been gone as long as she has. And I had some absolutely wonderful jobs after we closed Lucy's office. All because of Lucy.”

This essay first appeared in my column in the August 8, 2024 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY.