Questão 2 - UFRGS 2 Dia 2026

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[1]    In the years since she captured the
American imagination, much has been
written about Lucille Ball. While some
accounts portray her life as a romp, others
[5] portray her as chronically miserable, tense,
and unhappy. None of the many books
devoted to her or to I Love Lucy has
explained who she was, her contradictions
and the source of her ambition.

[10]........ her peak, her comedic mastery
seemed effortless, but in fact, in the films
Lucille Ball made in the thirties and forties
with The Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers,
Edgar Bergen, and Harold Lloyd, she was
[15] wooden. She appears to have been no more
aware than her co-stars of her natural gifts.
How did so apparently ordinary a performer
discover her great genius? How did she later
remain so seemingly humble in the face of
[20] her hold on the American public? Lucille Ball
is one of the greatest performing artists
America has produced and probably the
most familiar ........ virtue of the reach of
television. Her work is on a par with that of
[25] Chaplin or Keaton, but because her shows
are rerun every day – several times in some
markets, and even more often ........ cable
systems – her virtuosity may have become
too accessible to achieve the mystique of art.
[30] Admittedly, she did not write and direct her
own material as Chaplin and Keaton did, and
although her greatest character, Lucy
Ricardo, is a brilliant creation, she cannot be
judged profound. While Chaplin's Little
[35] Tramp outwits his betters, and Keaton
stoically bungles into success, both of these
classic clowns remain poignant and heroic
strugglers against life and fate. Lucy
Ricardo, in contrast, rebels the way most
[40] people rebel – without intending to abandon
what is comfortable about her life. That she
is doomed to fail in show business is not a
thing of tragedy, for her talent lies in the
realm of havoc and tricks. A blend of
[45] incompetence and cunning, she inspires
laughter with her subversion of the
conventional, and her exaggerated way with
the commonplace. In sum, Lucy Ricardo
defies the imperatives that mold lesser souls

[50] – reason and judgment, propriety and the
prudent course – and proclaims that one
dogged individual can prevail on her own
illogical terms.

    Biographers seldom have an opportunity
[55] to meet their subjects, but ........ the last day
of June 1986, I met Lucille Ball. Had I never
spent time with her, I doubt I could have
understood what a puzzle she presented.
Each of her changing moods had a force and
[60] intensity that she herself did not entirely
command.

    I went to see her on assignment for
Working Woman magazine. When her maid
answered the door in Beverly Hills, the
[65] theme of I Love Lucy was playing in the
house, as if my ringing the bell had cued the
waiting band. I sat expectantly on a green
armchair in her citrus-colored den until I
heard, "Kathleen! I'm late! Don't shake my
[70] hand, my nails are wet. Shake my elbow!"
Wearing a pink jogging suit, she strutted in,
elbow first. She was a few months shy of her
seventy-fifth birthday, a fact she could not
deny because for three decades her age was
[75] a published fact, but she tried to obscure the
obvious signs of time by wearing large
glasses tinted as blue as her eyes were
supposed to be. She had dropped the curtain
on the exaggerated expressions that
[80] delighted her audience, but still cultivated
her trademark carrot-colored curls.

Extraído de: BRADY, Kathleen. Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball. Hyperion, 1994.

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