Long before comedy legend Lucille Ball cemented her small-screen icon status by portraying Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy, she found herself playing another important role – that of a tooth-chattering World War II spy message interceptor.
A clip of Ball recounting the tale of how she accidentally thwarted a Japanese spy operation with her lead fillings began making the rounds on TikTok this week. While driving home from MGM studios one evening while filming the 1943 musical comedy Du Barry Was a Lady, Ball said she noticed a strange musical sound filling her car.
“All of a sudden, I heard music!” she said, checking to see whether she had accidentally turned on her radio – she hadn’t – she then realized sounds were coming from her mouth.
The following day, Ball recounted this tale to fellow actor, Buster Keaton, who explained that her musical mouth was the result of her lead fillings picking up nearby radio broadcasts.
A few weeks – and god knows how many free oral concerts – later, Ball took a different route home, when she noticed a new noise emanating from her teeth, the signature dots and dashes of Morse code.
“I stopped the car. Then I looked around,” Ball recounted of the incident.
“I backed the car up and it got stronger and stronger,” she continued, claiming that at one point, her entire jaw was shaking from the strength of the transmission.
So what, exactly, was it that she was intercepting? While Ball claimed that after MGM flagged the FBI, ”an underground Japanese transmitting radio station” was discovered.
So did Lucille Ball actually serve as MGM’s war hero? We may never know. But one thing is for certain, it sure as hell makes one great talk show tale.
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