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Watch the tense moment Lucille Ball tells a host to take his hands off female audience members

It was common for male hosts to kiss, hug, and touch women in the 70s. It was not common for a woman to publicly challenge them.

CBS Television (Public Domain)
Lucille Ball was a powerhouse both on screen and off.

According to her daughter, Lucille Ball never considered herself a feminist, but there's no question she blazed many a trail for women. A working mother in real life, she depicted issues facing housewives with her brilliant television comedy and became the first female studio head in Hollywood. She broke glass ceilings but wasn't particularly outspoken about women's rights. In fact, in a 1980 interview with "People," she said, “They can use my name for equal rights, but I don’t get out there and raise hell because I’ve been so liberated, I have nothing to squawk about.”

Ball empowered women by example—and by speaking her mind. Carol Burnett shared a story on PBS about how Ball was unhappy with a script for her new show, but women at that time didn't raise concerns about such things. Men could express criticism and demand changes, but women simply didn't. Ball did—and firmly—despite being non-confrontational by nature. Later she told Burnett, "Kid, that's when they put the 's' at the end of my name."

A video has been circulating on social media showing Ball's no-nonsense way of speaking up when she felt the need to, and people are gushing over it.


Lucille Ball, 70s, 80s, 60s, I Love Lucy, television, actress, hollywood, sexism, misogyny Lucille Ball was a massive star, but perhaps best known for the show 'I Love Lucy'By CBS Television - Public Domain

In 1978, Ball participated in a Q & A session with UCLA theater arts students on the television program "America Alive!" The viral clip shows Ball repeatedly telling one of the hosts, David Sheehan, to take his hands off of female audience members when they were asking a question.

"Will you take your hands off, David?" she says as he introduces one young woman. "Take your hands off of her," she says again as he places his hand on the shoulder of another. "David, would you take your hands away?" she says as he places his hands on another woman in a sparkly gold dress.

Watch:

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People laughed every time, but Ball didn't so much as crack a smile during her clear, simple, repeated "hands off" admonitions.

For 1978 especially, her advocacy for the women in the audience was extraordinary. Sheehan wasn't touching these women in a lewd or sexual manner, but he was touching them in a way that he wouldn't have touched a man who was asking a question. Most people wouldn't have thought much of it at the time, but Lucille Ball immediately noted it and didn't let it stand.

"I love that she didn't even laugh when the room was," shared one commenter. "She was not joking."

"'Take your hands off her, David,' should be a sound AND a t-shirt," wrote another.

"He kept trying. She kept telling him. Love her," shared another.

"Lucille Ball always reminds me of my grandma," offered another. "She hated to be seen as delicate, and she hated men that would touch her even more. She would say, stone-faced, 'Get your paws off.'"

Here are a few more of the best comments:

"the audience laughed and she said 'ain't nothing funny.' love her"

"This happened to me so much growing up and I noticed from very young the boys weren't treated this way."

"Even then she knew how the industry was I LOVE IT AND LOOOOVE LUCY SO MUCH"

A commenter on Reddit noted that Ball started her career as a chorus girl and dancer. "She knows every creepy man trick in the book"

Television and game shows from the 70s and 80s are an incredible time capsule of the culture and norms of the era. Sheehan wasn't the only one who tended to get a little handsy.

It was common for male hosts to kiss female contestants. Richard Dawson, host of The Family Feud, was famous for it. Even our beloved Bob Barker of The Price Is Right often had women suggestively reach into his jacket to fish out their $100 bill.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

There's a casual lecherous-ness that famous men seemed to get away with easily at the time. For anyone to publicly challenge them on their behavior was absolutely shocking.

Even if Sheehan was casually touching those women out of habit and not ill intent, it's laudable that Ball made a point of making him aware of it. Unfortunately, women are still having to deal with men touching them without being invited to, but seeing Lucille Ball's serious face while calling it out is a good reminder that women have been fighting this battle for a long time. Good for her for using her microphone and the respect afforded her to speak up for the young women in her audience.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Lucille Ball reveals how her dental fillings exposed hidden Japanese spies during World War II

"My whole jaw was vibrating."

Dick Cavette Show 1974

Lucille Ball shares how her dental fillings found spies during WWII

Lucille Ball is a comedy icon that has always had a way of telling stories. She was a bit a head of her time on many things and wasn't afraid to let people know her thoughts but her delivery was almost always comedic even when she was being serious. It's like the joke softened the edges of her more serious musings.

Watching her old videos help to showcase this unique talent and recently one of her interviews resurfaced where she mentions her temporary fillings picked up on radio signal on the Dick Cavette Show in 1974. At the time, the temporary fillings were made out of lead which may have aided in the conduction of radio frequency.

Ball explains to the host that she had never gotten had that level of dental work done previously so wasn't quite sure what to expect when both upper and lower teeth were filled with the temporary lead fillings.

This also happened around the time of the second World War, shortly after America removed Japanese citizens placing them in holding camps. Ball casually mentions this fact in the middle of her story along with her disapproval of the practice presumably to provide more context to what was to come.

A publicity picture of Lucille Ball from the 1950sFile:LDBALL1950s.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

"This particular night, it was about 1:15 and I was driving alone, I had 35 miles to drive and it wasn't any fun. It was just a normal night, I wasn't frightened or anything. I was just driving along," Ball shares with the audience and host.

All of a sudden Ball hears music but notices her radio isn't on when she reaches to turn it down.

After checking around to see if the music could be coming from another car or somewhere outside, she realizes as the music kept getting louder that it's coming from her mouth. Her eyes go wide while she mimics the beating of base beating against her jaws by tapping her fingers on her face.

"I could hear the tune and everything. I recognized the tune," Ball reveals to audience laughter. As she continues driving the tune fades out until she can no longer hear it. But the next day when explaining her experience to a coworker, he tells her that she drove by the radio station and her fillings picked it up. Ball jokes that she could "hardly wait to go by there again."

Cbs No GIF by Paramount+Giphy

But that wasn't the only time she picked up something she shouldn't have while those temporary fillings were in her teeth.

Turns out several days later while still waiting for her permanent dental work to be completed, she was driving near her home and picked up what sounded like morse code. This time instead of continuing to drive, she backed up so she could hear it more clearly.

"Morse code-like and I backed the car up and it got stronger and stronger. And I kept on backing it up until it really got strong and my whole jaw was vibrating," she demonstrates the vibration. "And then I got the hell out of there."

File:Lucille Ball John Wayne 1955.JPG - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

Ball went back to work the next day at MGM where she informed the security office of what she heard.

They must've called the authorities because Ball says shortly after her informing the security office, they found an underground Japanese transmitting radio station. The actress doesn't share any further details on what happens in the clip, though the jury is out on if the the events actually happened the way she described.

Watch the clip below:

Many people have tried to verify if this was even plausible with "Mythbusters" claiming they've debunked it as they were unable to reproduce the results, while Snopes says it's undetermined. Bradford Family Dentistry located in California dove into this story citing other instances when this has happened while also getting information from an expert.

"A radio receiver is made up of an antenna, a detector to convert the radio wave to an audio signal, and a transducer, which is anything that acts like a speaker. In very rare cases a person’s mouth can act as the receiver and their body acts as the antenna. A metallic filling can act as a semiconductor that detects the audio signal, and the speaker would be something in the mouth that vibrates enough to produce noise, like bridgework or possible a loose filling," Robert Hunsucker, a professor at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, explains to the dental office.

Season 5 Idk GIF by Paramount+Giphy

So is the story true? Possibly. The average American will likely never know since anything dealing with spies is usually kept pretty top secret. Either way, it's a wild story and Ball was an incredible storyteller.

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10 remarkable things about Lucille Ball that made her totally fierce.

Lucy was way ahead of her time in so many ways.

1. She paved the way for female comedians.

Actresses like Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus can thank Lucille Ball for opening the door. She trained with Buster Keaton and Red Skelton to become one of the best physical-comedy actors of all time. She really earned her nickname "Queen of Comedy."

GIFs via "I Love Lucy."

2. First interracial couple on TV.

Lucy insisted that her husband, Desi Arnaz, co-star in her show. When producers refused, saying he was "too ethnic" for American viewers, she wouldn't take no for an answer. She and Desi took the show on the road, creating a huge fan base for him. Before long, he became her leading man on TV too.

3. First woman to run a major television studio.

Lucy and Desi co-owned Desilu Productions (yep, she made sure her name was in it) until she bought him out and ran it on her own. It had 2,000 employees, 36 sound stages, and 62 acres. She eventually sold it for $17 million (in 1967 dollars). The name was changed to Paramount Pictures. Now, that deserves a round of applause.

4. Married a younger man when it wasn't really acceptable.

He was only six years younger, which was nothing compared to the age gap of older male actors and their younger starlet wives. Think Lucy would let that double standard dictate who she would marry? Not a chance.

5. First pregnant woman to be shown as pregnant on TV.

Women had to hide their pregnancies on TV. They also worried they wouldn't be allowed to continue their careers and be moms at the same time. Lucy broke that mold by incorporating her pregnancy and her son into the show. She compromised with producers, promising not to use the word "pregnant." She used the word "expecting" instead.

6. Was 40 years old when she started "I Love Lucy."

Ageism is real. but Lucy wasn't going to be put out to pasture. In fact, she became America's #1 star with over 16 million weekly viewers. People still watch it to this day. That says a lot.

7. Reflected the frustration of women struggling for equality.

We need to put the show in the context of it's time. She pushed limits to show how gender roles oppressed women. At the same time, she knew she had to remain "likable" to a 1950s audience that mostly preferred "childlike" female characters. Using humor helped her walk that delicate line.

8. Didn't always act like a lady.

June Cleaver wasn't dirty, clumsy, or overtly funny. She also didn't complain, defy, or get too assertive. Lucy did all of these things. She made qualities deemed "unfeminine" become a little more accepted.

9. Left a man she loved because she deserved more.

"Desi was the great love of my life. I will miss him until the day I die. ... I just couldn't take it anymore," she said. Lucy's daughter said Lucy spoke with Desi just days before he died of cancer and quoted her as saying through tears: "I love you. I love you. Desi, I love you."

10. The world's favorite redhead.

She colored her hair so she would stand out from the typical Hollywood "beauty image."

She was courageous, pioneering, talented, funny, and ahead of her time.

And that's why we will always "Love Lucy."

See Lucy in action with the best clips from season 1:

Share the laughs in honor of an extraordinary trailblazer.

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