Lucille Ball listed her party affiliation as "Communist" when she registered to vote in 1936 and 1938. In 1936, she sponsored a CP candidate for the state's 57th district. She signed a certificate that stated, "I am registered as affiliated with the Communist Party."
Ball, according to former Communist Party member and writer Rena Vale, who later became an anti-Communist investigator for various government bodies in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., allowed her home to host party educational classes:
Within a few days after my third application to join the Communist Party was made, I received a notice to attend a meeting on North Ogden Drive, Hollywood [Ball's home]. On arrival at this address, I found several others present; an elderly man informed us that we were the guests of the screen actress, Lucille Ball, and showed us various pictures, books and other objects to establish that fact, and stated she was glad to loan her home for a Communist Party new members class.
Hollywood was founded by the communists when their attempt to take over NYC media failed.
I did not know that! At least she had the common decency to keep her politics in the closet and out of her work, which is unfortunately no longer the case. However, one now wonders...was the grape-stomping skit an expression of solidarity with the peasants? Was the candy-factory disaster an indictment of the alienation of labor and capital? ;)