1911-1989
Who Was Lucille Ball?
Lucille Ball was an award-winning actor and comedian best know for her iconic role in the sitcom I Love Lucy. Ball got her start as a model and film star before becoming one of America's top comedic actresses. Co-starring with her husband, Desi Arnaz, the upstate New York native made a name for herself as the wacky Lucy Ricardo in the 1950s TV show I Love Lucy. Following her divorce in 1960, Ball went on to star in The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy while also becoming a top TV executive. She died in April 1989 at the age of 77.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Lucille Désirée Ball
BORN: August 6, 1911
BIRTHPLACE: Jamestown, New York
DIED: April 26, 1989
SPOUSES: Desi Arnaz (1940-1960) and Gary Morton (1961-1989)
CHILDREN: Lucie and Desi Jr.
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo
Early Life and Career
Lucille Ball was born on August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, New York, to Henry “Had”Durrell Ball and Desiree “DeDe” Evelyn Ball. The eldest of two children, Ball had a hardscrabble childhood shaped by tragedy and a lack of money. Shortly after she was born, her father, an electrician who went by the nickname Had, relocated the family to Montana for work. They soon moved again to Michigan, where Had took a job as a telephone lineman with the Michigan Bell Company. In February 1914, her father died of typhoid fever. Her mother was pregnant with her brother, Fred, at the time.
For Ball, just 3 years old at the time, her father's death not only set in motion a series of difficult childhood hurdles, but also served as the her first real significant memory. “I do remember everything that happened,” she said, according to Kathleen Brady’s 1994 biography The Life of Lucille Ball. “Hanging out the window, begging to play with the kids next door who had measles, the doctor coming, my mother weeping. I remember a bird that flew in the window, a picture that fell off the wall.”
After his death, Ball’s mother packed up and returned to Jamestown, where she eventually found work in a factory and remarried a man named Ed Peterson. While her mother and new stepfather looked for factory work in Detroit, she and Fred were forced to make a new home with their step-grandparents, who were a poor, puritanical couple.
Finally, at age 11, Ball reunited with her mother when Desiree and Ed returned to Jamestown. Even then, Ball had an itch to do something big, and when she was 15 she convinced her mother to allow her to enroll in a New York City drama school. But despite her longing to make it on the stage, Ball was too nervous to draw much notice.
“I was a tongue-tied teenager spellbound by the school's star pupil, Bette Davis,” Ball later recalled. The school finally wrote her mother, “Lucy's wasting her time and ours. She's too shy and reticent to put her best foot forward.”
She remained in New York City, however, and by 1927, Ball, who had started calling herself Diane Belmont, found work as a model, first for fashion designer Hattie Carnegie, and then, after overcoming a debilitating bout of rheumatoid arthritis, for Chesterfield cigarettes.
In the early 1930s, Ball, who had dyed her chestnut hair blonde, moved to Hollywood to seek out more acting opportunities. Work soon followed, including a stint as one of the 12 “Goldwyn Girls” to promote the 1933 Eddie Cantor flick Roman Scandals. She landed a role as an extra in the Ritz Brothers film The Three Musketeers, and then in 1937 earned a sizable part in Stage Door, starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.
Movies and TV
Ball went on to appear in more than 70 movies during her long career, including a string of second-tier films in the 1940s that garnered her the unofficial title “The Queen of B Movies.” One of the earliest ones, Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), introduced her to a handsome Cuban bandleader named Desi Arnaz, who she met on the RKO Pictures lot. The two appeared together in Ball's next film, Too Many Girls, and before the year was out, the pair fell madly in love and married.
At MGM’s urging, Ball dyed her hair red in 1942 to stand out in Technicolor. The following year, she debuted her now iconic hair in the musical comedy Du Barry Was a Lady. By the end of the decade, however, Ball’s movie career had become stagnant, and she found herself frustrated that she wasn’t landing the kinds of starring roles she'd always dreamed about. As a result, she moved away from film and tried her hand at broadcasting, and it wasn't long before Ball landed a lead part in the radio comedy My Favorite Husband. The program caught the attention of CBS executives, who wanted her to recreate something like it on the small screen. Ball, though, insisted it include her real-life husband, something the network clearly wasn't interested in seeing happen. So Ball walked away, and with Desi put together an I Love Lucy–like vaudeville act and took it on the road. Success soon followed, as did a contract from CBS.
I Love Lucy
From the start, Ball and Arnaz knew exactly what they wanted from the network. Their demands included the opportunity to create their new program in Hollywood rather than New York, where most TV was still being shot, but the biggest hurdle centered on the couple's preference to shoot on film rather than the less expensive kinescope. When CBS told them it would cost too much, Ball and Arnaz agreed to take a pay cut. In return they would retain full ownership rights to the program and run it under their newly formed production company, Desilu Productions.
In October 1951, I Love Lucy made its debut, and to the television viewing audience across the country, it was immediately apparent this was a sitcom like no other. Bombastic and daring, the show, which co-starred Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Lucy and Desi's two best friends, set the stage for a generation of family-related sitcoms to come. The program included story lines that dealt with marital issues, women in the workplace, and suburban living.
And in perhaps one of the most memorable TV episodes ever, I Love Lucy touched on the theme of pregnancy, when Lucy gave birth to Little Ricky on January 19, 1953—the same day the real-life Lucy delivered her son Desi Jr. by cesarean.
As the title of the show indicated, Ball was the star. While she could at times downplay her hard work, she was a perfectionist. Contrary to perception, rarely was anything ad-libbed. It was routine for the actress to spend hours rehearsing her antics and facial expressions, and her groundbreaking work in comedy paved the way for future stars like Mary Tyler Moore, Penny Marshall, and Cybill Shepherd.
Her genius did not go unrecognized. During its six-year run, I Love Lucy's success was unmatched. For four of its seasons, the sitcom was the No. 1 show in the country. In 1953, the program captured an unheard-of 67.3 audience share, which included a 71.1 rating for the episode that featured Little Ricky's birth—a turnout that surpassed the television audience for President Eisenhower's inauguration ceremonies. Ball’s time on the show earned her several Emmy Award nominations, including two wins for Best Comedienne and Best Actress in a Continuing Performance.
The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy
While I Love Lucy ended in 1957, Desilu Productions continued on, producing more television hits like Our Miss Brooks, Make Room for Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Untouchables, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.
Following her divorce from Arnaz in 1960, Ball bought out her former husband and took over Desilu Productions, making her the first woman to run a major television production studio. She eventually sold the company to Gulf-Western in 1967 for $17 milllion.
More acting work followed, including another sitcom, The Lucy Show, which ran from 1962 to 1968, and won her two Emmys for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. Ball soon followed up with Here's Lucy from 1968 to 1973. Both achieved a modest level of success, but neither captured the magic that had defined her earlier program with Arnaz. But Ball had already made a huge impact on the world of comedy and the television industry in general that was widely recognized.
In 1971, she became the first woman to receive the International Radio and Television Society's Gold Medal. In addition there were four Emmys, induction into the Television Hall of Fame and recognition for her life's work from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She also won the Golden Globes’ honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979 for outstanding contributions to the entertainment world.
In 1985, Ball strayed from her comedic background to take on a dramatic role as a homeless woman in the TV movie Stone Pillow. While it was hardly a smash hit, she earned some praise for her performance. Most critics, though, wanted to see her return to comedy, and in 1986, she debuted a new CBS sitcom, Life With Lucy. The program earned its star $2.3 million but not much of an audience. It was canceled after just eight episodes.
Ex-Husband Desi Arnaz and Kids
Shortly after meeting on the set on the RKO lot, Ball married bandleader Desi Arnaz in November 1940, eloping in Greenwich, Connecticut. For the careful, career-minded Ball, who had periodically been romantically linked to a series of older men, Arnaz was something completely different. He was fiery, young, and had a reputation as a ladies' man. Friends and colleagues guessed the romance between the apparently mismatched entertainers wouldn't last a year.
Ball seemed drawn to Arnaz's spark, and while he did support her career ambitions, his sometimes did stray romantically from the marriage. In 1944, Ball filed for divorce, citing Arnaz’s alcohol abuse and infidelity. However, they soon reconciled, and even renewed their vows in 1949.
Ball and Arnaz welcomed their first child, a daughter named Lucie, in July 1951. Seeking to spend more together, they hit a gold mine when they were cast in I Love Lucy, which aired that October. Two years later, Ball gave birth to the son, Desi Jr., January 1953. Despite their success, their TV show put a noticeable strain on their marriage, and they eventually divorced in 1960.
Ball soon remarried comedian Gary Morton in 1961, who became an active stepfather to her children. The couple remained together until her death in 1989.
Death
In April 1989, Ball suffered a heart attack and underwent emergency open-heart surgery to repair a ruptured aorta. While the surgery appeared successful at first, she died of cardiac arrest a week later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on April 26, 1989. She was 77 years old. Ball is widely considered a pioneering actor and comedian who broke gender and creative barriers and revolutionized the television industry.
Quotes
- A lot of the really beautiful girls didn't want to do some of the things I did—put on mud packs and scream and run around and fall into pools ... I didn't mind getting messed up. That's how I got into physical comedy.
- I was very happy being 'Queen of the B's.' Actually, that's one of my problems. I'm very happy in my nice little ruts.
- I'm not funny. What I am is brave.
- I was always stage-struck. I would recite speeches at the drop of ... anything.
- All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened.
- I must have done something right, but I cannot be as great as everyone's said. So I'll just accept a third of the compliments, gratefully.
- My idea of getting high was a Coca-Cola and an aspirin.
- Perhaps my willingness to be knocked off a twenty-foot pedestal or shot down a steamship funnel goes back to my earliest, happiest days with my father. I knew he was going to catch me. I wasn't going to get hurt.
- Most comedy success stems from long-standing inferiority complexes, and I had mine.
- I liked being an innovator, but people told us we were crazy, that we were committing career suicide. I didn't listen... I liked creating a show from scratch.
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