Suzan Ball - the trace of the fallen star

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Re: Suzan Ball - the trace of the fallen star

Post: # 22925Unread post Didier
12 Jan 2018, 17:58


Suzan was delighted, but also real­istic about the physical and emotional demands of moviemaking. The start­ing date for the picture was in June, just five months after the amputation. The artificial legs were ready: one for high-heeled shoes, one for low-heeled shoes, and a spare. But there was not time for the thirty-day course in gait-training normally required.
"Dick and I picked up the legs, threw them into the back of the car and set off for the airport," Suzan says. "I figured I'd have to get my gait-training on and off the set. The important thing was to be working!"

Suzan drove up in her sleek black convertible. She glowed with obvious happiness over being back at work. With black braids and Indian makeup, she was startlingly beautiful. She hopped ginger­ly from the car and walked on crutches to her dressing room.
"I'm getting a brand new leg for the picture," she smiled, explain­ing why she used the crutches. "I hope it will be finished by the time I leave. If it isn't, it will have to come up to location by plane the next day.
"It's a new kind of material that has all the qualities of skin except the warmth, I can do anything I with it, even apply makeup. There are no moving parts to get stuck. I had hoped to have some time to get used to it here, but I'll be able to adjust to it in a couple of days on location." -
She said she is getting along fine with her training to walk with the artificial leg. She attends the Peerless Limb School.
"I can walk without any limp now," she said. "My only probletm was in getting my balance. It's pretty hard after you've lost weight on one side."

(Bob Thomas, "City Herald" - Jun 16,1954)

The picture took four weeks to com­plete. Temperatures on the location were well over 100 degrees. In a heavy pig-tailed wig, long-sleeved deerskin dresses and layers of grease paint. Suzan took it all in stride.
And how she strode! Her energy and curiosity were boundless. She made friends with the entire tribe of Sioux Indians who were in the picture, learned a bit of sign language, took part in a ceremonial Rabbit Dance, and was "adopted" by 95-year old John Sitting Bull, survivor of the Custer massacre.
Back in Rapid City, at the hotel. Suzan led the company in a series of practical jokes, among them putting a stuffed gorilla into bed with Kay Biddle. With Dick she swam like a porpoise in the private pool of a local physician and tirelessly played games of water tag. In the privacy of her hotel suite she worked on her role.
On and off the set, everyone agreed that a change had taken place in Suzan. "She has a new thing in her face now," Dick Long sums it up, "and it comes through to everybody who knows her. It's a different quali­ty of depth and compassion. She's the same carefree, independent, even reckless kid, but she's concerned about others now."
A fifteen-year-old farm girl in Wi­nona, Minnesota, had a leg ampu­tated for cancer, just like the beauti­ful young movie star she had read about in the local newspaper. Suzan learned through the girl's minister that a few words from her would be very helpful. So she wrote:
"Dear Sandra: By now you should be up and hopping around with a pretty good sense of balance. And if not, why not? There is really nothing wrong with you any more. I hope you are looking forward to* fitting your new leg, because that is the first big step in returning to normal life. I don't think you will have too much trouble. You are young, and you will soon forget, as I have, that you ever walked any other way.
"I am writing from South Dakota, where we are making "Chief Crazy Horse" and I am also learning to walk. Sometimes it's a little difficult, be­cause almost always I do all my trip­ping and stumbling out in public, which makes' anybody a little mad.
"If you don't like your leg and don't want to wear it, don't worry about it. I'll let you in on a secret. I hated mine and wouldn't wear it for about a month. Then one morning I got up. put it on, and for no reason at all it seemed much easier to wear and walk on. Now I don't mind it at all and very seldom think about it.
"I'm quite sure that very soon you will be as happy as I was when some­one said to me, 'Pardon me, Miss Ball, but which leg is it?'
"So, lots of luck-—and would you do me a favor? Let me know when you go to your first dance on your best friend, your artificial leg!
Sincerely. Suzan Ball."

Image

Dick, Kay and Suzan at "Chief Crazy Horse" filming



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Re: Suzan Ball - the trace of the fallen star

Post: # 22926Unread post Didier
12 Jan 2018, 18:00

Sadly, Suzan began to lose weight during the movie's production and had dropped fifteen pounds by the end of filming. Incredibly, Suzan then summoned the strength to embark on a nightclub tour with Richard. Despite her pain, she managed to look beautiful and composed on stage. Though their act was a success, Suzan had no illusions about why many in the audience had turned out. "Many, I know, came to get a look at the movie star who lost a leg," she told the press.
Suzan and Richard signed to appear in a Climax TV drama. While rehearsing the show, Suzan suddenly collapsed and was rushed to the hospital where her condition was described as serious. Physicians discovered her cancer had metastasized to the lungs. Richard was informed she had only a few weeks to live. Every effort was made to keep Suzan's grave condition a secret from the press.
Suzan, herself, was never told the truth.
Weeks of excruciating pain followed. The constant and heavy sedation required to alleviate her suffering affected Suzan's personality drastically. She seemed bewildered at the dramatic changes taking place. The "Cinderella Girl" became a female "Jekyll and Hyde" scarcely resembling the sweet-dispositioned woman she had always been. Universal paid all Suzan's medical expenses.
Fans around the world flooded the hospital with flowers and get-well wishes.
On the evening of August 5, 1955, Suzan lay in a semi-conscious state with Richard at her side. Reportedly, Suzan opened her eyes, looked at her husband, and in a weak voice murmured, "Tony". Then, she quietly passed away.
Suzan's dying reference to her former lover, Anthony Quinn, sent an emotional shock wave through Richard. Even so, her gentleman husband kept the focus on their happy times together. "I will always love her," he stated. "My love remains eternal."
Suzan's death freed her from the pain and suffering of her final days. In a mere twenty-two years she had managed to live a remarkable life, making her passing seem all the more shocking to friends, co-workers, and fans around the world.
Magazines told the tragic story of the "New Cinderella Girl of 1952", who just a few years earlier had the world at her feet. Fame is fleeting, of course, and within a few years, the name Suzan Ball would fade into undeserved obscurity.
Life went on for Richard Long. In 1957, he married another stunningly beautiful Universal contract player, the lovely Mara Corday. Together, the couple would have three children and remain happily married until Richard's death from a heart attack on December 21, 1974.
With her untimely passing, we are left to wonder what Suzan Ball might have done with a longer life. Would Universal have showcased her dramatic and musical talents in roles other than the tempestuous exotics she played in their Technicolor westerns and adventure-film vehicles for male stars? Would Suzan Ball's screen image, like that of many other 1950s starlets, have become an anachronism in the turbulent 1960s? It is sad to think of what might have been, especially when we realize that Suzan never even had a chance to have the family she always wanted.
Whatever Suzan Ball's future might have been, her voluptuous beauty, talent, courage, and determination deserve to be remembered. In the Golden Age there were many "Cinderella Girls" who came to an unhappy ending, but Suzan's story was one of the most tragic.
A few weeks before her death, Suzan Ball reflected on her fatal illness: "I felt no pity for myself, nor have I any feeling of regret. Sometimes I pondered, 'Why has this thing happened to me?' But it was never in terms of complaint. I sought a real answer. It is not an easy one to find, and perhaps, I will never know."

THE END



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