Lucille Ball is one of the few true Hollywood legends . Emmy - winning comedic actress , God Almighty and star of agroundbreaking television comedy , first female principal of a major TV studio apartment — the listing work on . She was also be intimate for her shrewd business sense and square - shoot honesty . But there ’s one weird blip in Ball ’s life story , and it has morphed into another sorting of legend — the urban variety . If it ’s true , it ’s just a unusual but sorcerous story about an actress who made an accidental uncovering . If it is n’t genuine , we might have to rethink our assumptions about Lucille Ball — at least the " straight - shooting honesty " part .
Here ’s the story : One evening in 1942 ( in the midst of World War II ) , Ball was driving home from a day of movie filming when she all of a sudden heard medicine — and then realized the sounds were n’t exhale from the car radio but from her mouth . The next day , Buster Keaton told her that her new lead dental fillings had probably been propagate a radio post . A week later , also on the commute home , her mouth lead off emittingMorse computer code . This time she alerted the dominance , and the FBI finally bust a Nipponese gardener who was mesh a spy doughnut out of a shaft shed .
sound like the ultimateurban legend , veracious ? But this is n’t a unfounded hearsay start by an anon. gossipmonger . The informant is Ball herself — she tell the story on " The Dick Cavett Show " in 1974 and to at least two biographers . The tale has morphed over the years ( at no time , for example , did Ball ever claim she actually used her fillings to spy ) , but the BASIC stay the same , and Ball always stomach by them .
The problem is , the integral tale is pretty much unverifiable — other than Ball ’s accounts , there seems to be no record of the case . The generally reliable Snopes.com pronounced its condition " undecided . " The TV show " MythBusters " used several angle to enquire the story in 2003 and could n’t confirm any of Ball ’s claims . The host had no luck with their experimentation regard vintage wireless equipment and human skulls correspond with filling . They close that the combining of the metals and Ball ’s spittle caused a galvanic reaction , which create a electric current in her sass that could have resembled Morse code . The actual kicker , though , was the divine revelation that Ball ’s FBI file does not mention the case .
So why would Ball have invented such a story ? No one has the answer to that , either . At the height of theCommunistscare in the ' 50s , she was briefly investigated by the House Un - American Activities Committee , so some think she might have created the fillings story to seem more patriotic . But that ’s a pretty bragging stretch ; there are so many easier , non - screwball way to circularize that subject matter . In the end , only Lucy screw … and maybe that ’s just how it ’s supposed to be .
