Was shot at in her bathtub.
…
“Living with DaVita catalyzed some personality changes in her,” the authors write. “She developed a foul mouth to match his own and those of his hoodlum friends.”
Later, while auditioning for roles in Times Square under the stage names Montana Ball and Diane Belmont before settling on her given name, she scrounged to survive, including partaking in nude modeling and turning the occasional trick. She often ate food left over by diners in local cafes, and brought a handbag with a plastic liner on dates so she could take home half-eaten steaks.
She was briefly cast in the popular theatrical revue “The Ziegfeld Follies,” but was fired after two weeks because, she was told, “You’ve got no tits, and you can’t dance.”
Distraught, she briefly considered a life as a gun moll for DaVita, thinking, “I could join Johnny on his liquor runs down from Canada, with the police chasing after us.”
She eventually found work as a model, and as she sought acting roles, received advice from Lela Rogers — mother of her good friend Ginger Rogers — that she would later follow.
“If you want to be a star within two years, get auditioned on the casting couch,” Lela told her. “That’s the advice I gave my own daughter.”
Becoming one of Manhattan’s most popular models, Ball was a regular at hot nightspots like the Cotton Club. She dated Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who would go on to produce the James Bond films, then spent time with his cousin, Pat DiCicco.
DiCicco, a rumored associate of Lucky Luciano, would later marry film star Thelma Todd and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. Ball told friends at the time that she had hoped to marry him, and confided to actress Joan Blondell, “Pat taught me tricks in bed I think he learned in a brothel in Shanghai.”
But her association with gangsters almost had dire consequences. Dancing in Harlem one night, she suddenly sensed danger, grabbed a friend’s hand and ran from the club. The man she was afraid of wound up gunning a man down.
And while staying at Manhattan’s Kimberly Hotel, she was taking a bath one night and “while she was soaking in the tub, she was fired upon and the bathtub was riddled with bullets,” the authors write. “Miraculously, she escaped injury, but the room downstairs was flooded.”
For Ball, it was a matter of practicality. “I’ve resisted so far, but other gals like Joan Crawford did all right,” Ball told a friend. “At a party one night, I heard her tell some people that the casting couch was better than the cold hard floor.” After sleeping with Cohn, Ball began to get cast in better movies. But her career still evolved slowly, as she was repeatedly told by casting agents and others that she had no talent for acting, and was not large-breasted enough to become a sex symbol.