Patrick Labyorteaux played Ball's nephew in the 1974 film, 'Mame'
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NEED TO KNOW
- Actor Patrick Laboyorteaux is sharing how Lucille Ball took him under her wing while the two filmed 1974’s Mame
- The film focused on an eccentric woman ruined by the Wall Street crash of 1929 who becomes her orphaned nephew’s guardian
- The actor said of Ball: “She was super protective”
Actor Patrick Labyorteaux is opening up about what it was like working alongside Lucille Ball in the 1974 film, Mame.
Labyorteaux, 60 — who would go on to become widely recognized for his role as Andy Garvey on Little House on the Prairie — spoke about making the film on his The Patrick LabyorSheaux YouTube channel.
Calling Ball an "amazing icon," Labyorteaux noted that he played Ball's nephew in the film, which focused on an eccentric woman ruined by the Wall Street crash of 1929 who becomes her orphaned nephew's guardian.
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Credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment
"It was a huge, wonderful experience for me because even though I was very young, I think I was like seven or eight, all of my scenes were with Lucille Ball and she was amazing," he said.
He continued: "She was super protective. She always held my hand. We were in all the scenes together. I was always right next to her and she just really took care of me."
He went on to detail one scene shot at the Burbank airport under "really, really hot lights."
"They had smoke stacks on them because they were so hot and they were really, really bright," he said. "And so I was doing this scene where I'm doing my big speech … and I'm looking up at everyone, and I'm squinting because it's so bright. And Lucy's like, 'What's going on with the kid? Why is he squinting?' "
He added: "And she gets down next to me and she gets her head right where I am, and she looks up and she goes, 'Ah, these lights are too bright.' She really fought for me. She was a sweetheart."
Labyorteaux said he and Ball had "a great relationship, but I could tell that the adults were afraid of her."
"And because the adults were afraid of her, I kind of just hung out with her," he said. "I was protected."
Labyorteaux added that Ball's iconic show I Love Lucy had at that point wrapped decades prior (the show ran for six seasons, until 1957) but as a seven-year-old kid who watched the show in syndication, he thought it was currently filmed — and Ball would humor him.
"Now, the thing that I didn't understand was that the show was done like 20 years beforehand," he said. "I thought that she was an actress on a TV show, I Love Lucy, and that this was her hiatus movie project. But every morning, I would come in and I would ask her about last night's show. So, I was asking her about episodes that were 20 years old, and I would say to her, 'Hey, in last night's episode, you were running around on grapes. What was that like?' And I swear to you, she was so sweet. She explained it as though it happened the night before."
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When filming wrapped on Mame, Labyorteaux said Ball, who died at age 77 on April 26, 1989, due to an abdominal aortic aneurysm, even gave him a gift.
"At the end of production, she gave me this Mickey Mouse watch, which I still have today," he said. "She was truly a sweetheart to me, even though I know she could be threatening to other people, but she was very protective, very sweet."
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