A new Lucille Ball statue has arrived in the famous actor’s hometown, replacing the statue known to many as “Scary Lucy”.
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Hundreds of fans gathered Saturday in Lucille Ball Memorial Park in the western NY village of Celoron (SEHL’-ur-ahn). Her version shows Ball in a polka-dot dress standing atop her Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
“She is 100% bronze. She is 750 pounds and the pedestal is maybe another 750 pounds, so she’s not going anywhere!”
Palmer thanked the “salt-of-the-earth” people of Celeron.
So far, it seems Celoron residents are happy, too. (He also referred to it as “the Celoron Lucy”, which is what it should be labeled if it somehow ends up in the British Museum.) To be fair to Poulin, the sculpture was a private endeavor that was donated to the town by its first owners, not a commissioned monument, and he offered to fix it at his own expense. “I am relieved that the response has been positive”. All that work was not done in vain. “I am very pleased tonight”.
In its place is a new bronze statue – this time wrought by sculptor Carolyn Palmer, who won a competition to create it a year ago. Sculpted by artist Dave Poulin, the older statue depicted Ball holding a bottle of the fictional nutrition elixir Vitameatavegamin from the 1952 “I Love Lucy” episode “Lucy Does a TV Commercial”.
“Scary Lucy” went viral in 2015 after one fan launched a Facebook group to advocate for the statue’s removal called “We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue”. As such, it is a remarkable and a successful sculpture, just not one that shows Lucille Ball when she looked her loveliest.
“She’s covered in clay and plays a sculpture of herself”, she shares.
The new statue was unveiled on what would have been Ball’s 105th birthday. “And then he stated that if we didn’t have the funds and we didn’t like the statue, we should take it down and put it in storage”. Poulin himself referred to the statue as his “most unsettling sculpture”.
Unlike “Scary Lucy”, her much-maligned counterpart now relegated to a nearby corner of shame, the likeness that one Twitter commenter dubbed “Friendly Lucy” has a natural and non-threatening appearance.
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Hundreds of fans chanting “Lucy!” The older statue will still remain at the Lucille Ball Memorial Park, but it will be in a different location.
