Stone Pillow

The ads for The Stone Pillow tended to suggest that this TV movie was Lucille Ball's dramatic debut—completely ignoring the fact that Ball had started out as a "straight" actress in the 1930s who only occasionally played comedy until I Love Lucy came along. Whatever the case, the Ball we see in Stone Pillow is a cranky bag lady, fiercely independent and violently resistant to do-gooders who try to alter her homeless status. Daphne Zuniga plays an idealistic social worker who tries to get Ball off the streets. It is only after watching several of her fellow indigents die where they sleep that Ball agrees to give up her "stone pillow." Though meant to be intensely dramatic, The Stone Pillow looks more like an elongated I Love Lucy sketch in which Ball dresses up like a tramp in order to meet Red Skelton (or somebody).