When the studio gave Amy Ball the full star build-up with the release of “The Return of Professor Morlock,” they depicted her as the definitive Madsion Avenue housewife and mother of the period. The ad on the left is a typical example of the appearances her contract required her to make. The studio had to go to greater and greater lengths to conceal her radical leftist political activities, and she became a role model to middle class homemakers all over the United Stated. Her popularity grew to the point where she was about to finally break free of her “Professor Motlock” typecasting with a sitcom called “That Wacky Amy!” in which she would play the scatter-brained wife of a by-the-book army sergeant who always gets into hot water when Amy keeps sneaking on the base to launch her own private war against Communist Russia.
That all went away when the famous mugshot on the right was made public after Ball was arrested at yet another war protest shortly after the release of “The Ghost of Professor Morlock.” She had actually been arrested over a hundred times prior to this incident but this was the first one that their publicists couldn’t cover up. When the mughot appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the country, the studio wired her that her contract was terminated.
She wired back “F—k my contract.”
|
