Lucille Ball
Encyclopedia
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian
, film, television, stage and radio actress, model
, film and television executive
, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy
, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show
, Here's Lucy
and Life With Lucy
. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie
star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu; a studio that produced many successful and popular television series.
Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award
thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award
in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors
in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway
using the stage name
Dianne Belmont. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then-husband, Desi Arnaz
as Ricky Ricardo
, Vivian Vance
as Ethel Mertz and William Frawley
as Fred Mertz. The Mertzs were the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. Then, some minor adjustments were made to the program's format – the time of the show was lengthened from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first show lasted 75 mins), some new characters were added, the storyline was altered, and the show was renamed The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which ran for three seasons (1957–1960) and 13 episodes. Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show
, which ran on CBS
from 1962 to 1968 (156 Episodes), and Here's Lucy
from 1968 to 1974 (144 episodes). Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life with Lucy
- which failed after 8 episodes aired, although 13 were produced.
Ball met and eloped with Cuba
n bandleader Desi Arnaz
in 1940. On July 17, 1951, at almost 40 years old, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz
. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV
, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.
On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm at age 77. At the time of her death she was married to her second husband and business partner, standup comedian Gary Morton
for more than twenty-seven years.
. Although Lucy was born in Jamestown, New York, she told many people that she was born in Butte, Montana
. At age 3, her family moved to Anaconda, Montana
and then to Wyandotte, Michigan
. Her family was Baptist
; her father was of Scottish descent, and his mother was Mary Ball. Her mother was of French
, Irish and English
descent. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies.
Her father, a telephone lineman for Anaconda Copper
, was frequently transferred because of his occupation, and within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved many times, from Jamestown to Anaconda, and then to Trenton. While DeeDee Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick
, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever
and died in February 1915. Ball recalls little from the day her father died, only fleeting memories of a picture falling and a bird getting trapped in the house. Ever since that day she had an intense bird phobia.
After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred Henry Ball (July 17, 1915 - February 5, 2007) were raised by her mother and grandparents in Celoron, New York
a summer resort village on Lake Chautauqua just west of Jamestown. Her grandfather, Fred Hunt, was an eccentric who also enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville
shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.
Four years after the death of her father, Ball’s mother DeeDee remarried. While her step-father, Edward Peterson, and mother went to look for work in another city, Ball was left in the care of her step-father’s parents. Ball’s new guardians were a puritanical Swedish couple who were so opposed to frivolity that they banished all mirrors from the house except for one over the bathroom sink. When the young Ball was caught admiring herself in it she was severely chastised for being vain. This period of time affected Ball so deeply that in later life she claimed that it lasted seven or eight years, but in reality, it was probably less than one. One good thing did come out of DeeDee's new marriage. Edward was a Shriner
. When his organization needed female entertainers for the chorus line of their next show, he encouraged his twelve-year-old stepdaughter to audition. While Ball was onstage she began to realize that if one was seeking praise and recognition this was a brilliant way to receive it. Her appetite for recognition had thus been awakened at an early age. In 1927 her family suffered misfortune when their house and furnishings were taken away in a legal judgement after a neighborhood boy was accidentally shot and paralyzed by someone target-shooting in their yard, under Ball's grandfather's supervision. The family then moved into a small apartment in Jamestown.
School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City
where Bette Davis
was a fellow student. Ball went home after the first semester when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer.", later saying about that time in her life "All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened."
Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1928, among her other jobs she landed work as a fashion model
for Hattie Carnegie
. Her career was thriving when she became ill, either with rheumatic fever
, rheumatoid arthritis
or some other unknown illness and was unable to work for two years. She moved back to New York City in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and supported herself by again working for Carnegie and as the Chesterfield
cigarette girl
. As Diane Belmont she started getting some chorus work on Broadway
but the work wasn't lasting. Ball was hired – but then quickly fired – by theatre impresario Earl Carroll
from his Vanities, by Florenz Ziegfeld
from a touring company of Rio Rita
. and was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones.
in Roman Scandals
(1933) she permanently moved to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges
(Three Little Pigskins
, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers
(Room Service
, 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers
film Roberta
(1935) and briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat
(1935), as well as a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet
(1936), another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant maternal cousin of Ball's. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door
(1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn
.
In 1936 she also landed the role she hoped would lead her to Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack
play Hey Diddle Diddle, a comedy set in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey on January 21, 1937 with Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of three roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead." The play received good reviews, but there were problems, chiefly with its star, Conway Tearle
, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to replace him, but the producer, Anne Nichols
, said the fault lay with the character and insisted that the part needed to be reshaped and rewritten. The two were unable to agree on a solution. The play was scheduled to open on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre
, but closed after one week in Washington, D.C. when Tearle suddenly became gravely ill. Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those films.
She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's" – a title previously held by Fay Wray
– starring in a number of B-movie
s, such as 1939's Five Came Back
. Like many budding starlets Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In 1937 she appeared as a regular on The Phil Baker Show. When that completed its run in 1938, Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show, starring future Wizard of Oz
tin man Jack Haley
. It was here that she began her fifty year professional relationship with Gale Gordon
, who served as the show's announcer. The Wonder Show only lasted one season, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.
In 1940, Ball met Cuba
n-born bandleader Desi Arnaz
while filming the Rodgers and Hart
stage hit Too Many Girls
. At first, Arnaz was not fond of Lucy. When they met again later that day, the two connected immediately and eloped the same year. Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army
in 1942. He ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. That same year, Ball appeared opposite Henry Fonda
in The Big Street
, in which she plays a paralyzed nightclub singer and Fonda portrays a busboy who idolizes her. The following year Ball appeared in DuBarry Was a Lady
, a film for which the natural brunette first had her hair dyed the flaming red that would be her screen trademark.
Ball filed for a divorce
in 1944. Shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory
decree of divorce, however, she reconciled with Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz were only six years apart in age but apparently believed that it was less socially acceptable for an older woman to marry a younger man
, and hence split the difference in their ages, both claiming a 1914 birth date until this was disproved.
, a radio program for CBS Radio
. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it for television. She agreed, but insisted on working with Arnaz. CBS executives were reluctant, thinking the public would not accept an All-American redhead and a Cuban as a couple. CBS was initially not impressed with the pilot episode produced by the couple's Desilu Productions
company, so the couple toured the road in a vaudeville
act with Lucy as the zany housewife wanting to get in Arnaz's show. The tour was a smash, and CBS put I Love Lucy
on their lineup. The I Love Lucy show was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had become badly strained, in part by the fact that each had a hectic performing schedule which often kept them apart.
Along the way, she created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts." Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu, the company that she and Arnaz formed. After their divorce, Ball bought out Arnaz's share of the studio, and she proceeded to function as a very active studio head. Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today such as filming before a live studio audience with a number of cameras, and distinct sets adjacent to each other. During this time Ball taught a thirty-two week comedy workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute
. Ball was quoted as saying, "You cannot teach someone comedy; either they have it or they don't."
When the show premiered, most shows were aired live
from New York City studios to Eastern
and Central Time Zone
audiences, and captured by kinescope
for broadcast later to the West Coast. The kinescope picture was inferior to film, and as a result the West Coast broadcasts were inferior to those seen elsewhere in the country. Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but the time zone logistics made that broadcast norm impossible. Prime time in L.A. was too late at night on the East Coast to air a major network series, meaning the majority of the TV audience would be seeing not only the inferior picture of kinescopes but seeing them at least a day later.
Sponsor Philip Morris
did not want to show day-old kinescopes to the major markets on the East Coast, yet neither did they want to pay for the extra cost filming, processing and editing would require, pressuring Ball and Arnaz to relocate to New York City. Ball and Arnaz offered to take a pay cut to finance filming, on the condition that their company, Desilu, would retain the rights to that film once it was aired. CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after initial broadcast, not realizing they were giving away a valuable and durable asset. Desilu made many millions of dollars on I Love Lucy rebroadcasts through syndication
and became a textbook example of how a show can be profitable in second-run syndication. In television's infancy, the concept of the rerun
hadn't yet formed, and many in the industry wondered who would want to see a program a second time. In fact, while other celebrated shows of the period exist only in incomplete sets of kinescopes mostly too degraded to show to subsequent generations of television viewers, I Love Lucy has virtually never gone out of syndication since it began, seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world over the past half century. The success of Ball and Arnaz's gamble was instrumental in drawing television production from New York to Hollywood for the next several decades.
Desilu hired legendary German cameraman Karl Freund
as their director of photography. Freund had worked for F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang
, shot part of Metropolis (1927) as well as the original Dracula
(1931) with Bela Lugosi
, and had directed a number of Hollywood films himself, including The Mummy
(1932) with Boris Karloff
. Freund used a three-camera setup, which became the standard way of filming situation comedies. Shooting long shots, medium shots, and close-ups on a comedy in front of a live audience demanded discipline, technique, and close choreography. Among other non-standard techniques used in filming the show, cans of paint (in shades ranging from white to medium gray) were kept on set to "paint out" inappropriate shadows and disguise lighting flaws. Freund also pioneered "flat lighting," in which everything is brightly lit to eliminate shadows and the need for endless relighting.
I Love Lucy dominated the weekly TV ratings in the United States for most of its run. (There was an attempt to adapt the show for radio; the cast and writers adapted the memorable "Breaking the Lease" episode—in which the Ricardos and Mertzes fall out over an argument, the Ricardos threaten to move, but they're stuck in a firm lease—for a radio audition disc that never aired but has survived.) In the scene where Lucy and Ricky are practicing the tango in the episode "Lucy Does The Tango," the longest recorded studio audience laugh in the history of the show was produced. It was so long, in fact, that the sound editor had to cut that particular part of the soundtrack in half. The strenuous rehearsals and demands of Desilu studio kept the Arnazes too busy to comprehend the show's success. During the show's production breaks they starred together in feature films: Vincente Minnelli
's The Long, Long Trailer
(1954) and Alexander Hall
's Forever, Darling
(1956).
Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Our Miss Brooks
(starring Ball's 1937 Stage Door
co-star Eve Arden
), The Untouchables
, Star Trek
, and Mission: Impossible
. Many other shows, particularly My Three Sons
in its first seven of twelve seasons, Sheldon Leonard
-produced series like Make Room for Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show
, The Andy Griffith Show
, and I Spy, were filmed at Desilu Studios and bear its logo. Desilu was eventually sold and merged into Paramount Pictures
in 1967.
's 1936 candidate for the California State Assembly
's 57th District
, Ball signed a certificate stating "I am registered as affiliated with the Communist Party." The same year, she was appointed to the State Central Committee
of the Communist Party of California, according to records of the California Secretary of State
. In 1937, Hollywood writer Rena Vale
, a self-identified former Communist, attended a Communist Party new members' class at Ball's home, according to Vale's testimony before the United States House of Representatives
' Special Committee on Un-American Activities
, on July 22, 1940. Two years later, Vale reaffirmed this testimony in a sworn deposition:
In a 1944 British Pathe newsreel, titled Fund Raising For Roosevelt, Ball was featured prominently among several stage and film stars at a fund-raising event in support of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt
's campaign for re-election
. She also stated that in the 1952 US Presidential Election, she voted for Republican Dwight Eisenhower.
On September 4, 1953, Ball met privately with HUAC investigator William A. Wheeler in Hollywood and gave him sealed testimony. She stated that she had registered to vote as a Communist "or intended to vote the Communist Party ticket" in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence. She stated she "at no time intended to vote as a Communist."
J. Edgar Hoover
, then director of the FBI, named "Lucy and Dezi" [sic] among his "favorites of the entertainment world." Immediately before the filming of episode 68 ("The Girls Go Into Business") of I Love Lucy, Arnaz, instead of his usual audience warm-up, told the audience about Lucy and her grandfather. Arnaz quipped: "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate." Then, he presented his wife and she received a standing ovation from the audience.
On July 17, 1951, one month before her fortieth birthday and after three miscarriages (one in 1942, one in 1949, and another in 1950), Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. When he was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings hit, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the show. (Ball's necessary and planned cesarean section in real life was scheduled for the same date that her television character gave birth.) There were several challenges from CBS, insisting that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air. After approval from several religious figures the network allowed the pregnancy storyline, but insisted that the word "expecting" be used instead of "pregnant." (Arnaz garnered laughs when he deliberately mispronounced it as "'spectin'"). The episode's official title was "Lucy Is Enceinte," borrowing the French word for pregnant; however, episode titles never appeared on the show. The birth made the first cover of TV Guide
in January 1953.
Ball's business instincts were often astonishingly sharp, and her love for Arnaz was passionate, but her relationships with her children were sometimes strained. Lucie Arnaz, her daughter, spoke of her mother's "controlling" nature. Ball was outspoken against the relationship that Desi Jr. had with Liza Minnelli
. Talking about Liza Minelli dating her son, she was quoted as saying, "I miss Liza, but you cannot domesticate Liza." Her close friends in the business included Ginger Rogers
, Vivian Vance
, Mary Wickes
and Carole Cook
.
In October 1956, Ball, Vivian Vance, Desi Arnaz, and William Frawley all appeared on a Bob Hope
special on NBC
, including a spoof of I Love Lucy, the only time all four stars were together on a color telecast.
By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz; his increased drinking further compounded matters. On May 4, 1960, just two months after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour
, the couple divorced. Until his death in 1986, however, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke very fondly of each other. Her real-life divorce indirectly found its way into her later television series, as she was always cast as a single woman.
The following year, Ball did a musical on Broadway, Wildcat
, co-starring Paula Stewart
. That marked the beginning of a thirty-year friendship between Lucy and Paula Stewart, who introduced her to second husband Gary Morton
, a Borscht Belt
stand-up comic who was thirteen years her junior. According to Ball, Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy due to his hectic work schedule. Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer
. Morton also played occasional bit parts on Ball's various series.
musical Wildcat ended its run early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show. The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over," which she performed with Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show
. She made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours
(1968), and the musical Mame
(1974), and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show
(1962–68), which costarred Vance and Gale Gordon
, and Here's Lucy
(1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball appeared on the Dick Cavett
show in 1974 and spoke of her history and life with Arnaz. She revealed how she felt about other actors and actresses as well as her love for Arnaz. She continued by telling Cavett that the success to her life was, "getting rid of what was wrong and replacing it with what is right," talking about her divorce from Arnaz and marriage to Morton.
Ball also revealed in this interview that the strangest thing to ever happen to her was after she had some dental work completed and having lead fillings in her teeth, she started hearing radio stations in her head. She explained coming home one night from the studio and as she passed one area, she heard what she thought was morse code
or a "tapping." She stated that "as I backed up it got stronger. The next morning, I reported it to the authorities and upon investigation, they found a Japan
ese radio transmitter that had been buried and was actively transmitting codes back to the Japanese." The extraordinary theory that dental fillings could pick up radio signals would ultimately be tested and debunked on the TV show Mythbusters
nearly thirty years later.
Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra
for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate
. Director/producer John Frankenheimer
, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury
in a mother role in All Fall Down and insisted on having her for the part.
During the mid-1980s, she attempted to resurrect her television career. In 1982, Ball hosted a two-part Three's Company
retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show. A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow
, received mixed reviews. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy
, costarring her longtime foil
Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and prolific producer/former actor Aaron Spelling
was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC
. The failure of this series was said to have sent Ball into a serious depression, and other than a few miscellaneous awards show appearances, she was absent from the public eye for the last several years of her life. Her last public appearance, just one month before her death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards
telecast in which she and fellow presenter, Bob Hope, were given a standing ovation.
. She was diagnosed as having a dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent heart surgery for nearly eight hours, receiving an aorta from a 27 year old male donor. The surgery was successful, and Ball began recovering, even walking around her room with little assistance. On April 26, shortly after dawn, Ball awoke with severe back pains. Her aorta had ruptured in a second location and Ball quickly lost consciousness. All attempts to revive her proved unsuccessful, and she died at approximately 05:47 PST. She was 77 years old. Her ashes were initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery
in Los Angeles, but in 2002 her children moved her cremains to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York, where Ball's parents, brother, and grandparents are buried.
by President George H. W. Bush
on July 6, 1989, and The Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award.
There is a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center
museum in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatre was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor. Ball was among Time
magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century.
On August 6, 2001, which would have been her ninetieth birthday, the United States Postal Service
honored her with a commemorative postage stamp as part of its Legends of Hollywood series. Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide more than any other person; she appeared on thirty-nine covers, including the very first cover in 1953, with her baby son Desi Arnaz, Jr. TV Guide voted Lucille Ball as the Greatest TV Star of All Time and later it commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of I Love Lucy with eight collector covers celebrating memorable scenes from the show and in another instance they named I Love Lucy the second best television program in American history, after Seinfeld
. Because of her liberated mindset and approval of the women's movement, Ball was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
.
She was awarded the Legacy of Laughter award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards
in 2007, and I Love Lucy was named the Greatest TV Series by Hall of Fame Magazine. In November of that year, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the 50 Greatest TV Icons, after Johnny Carson
. In a poll done by the public, however, they chose her as the greatest icon.
On August 6, 2011, which would have been her hundredth birthday, Google honored Ball with an interactive doodle on their homepage. This doodle displayed six classic moments from the I Love Lucy sitcom. On the same day a total of 915 Ball look-alikes converged on Jamestown, New York
to celebrate the birthday and set a new world record for such a gathering.
On February 8, 1960, she was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to motion pictures, and one at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard for television.
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
, film, television, stage and radio actress, model
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
, film and television executive
Film industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...
, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show is an American situation comedy that aired on CBS from 1962 until 1968. It was Lucille Ball's follow-up to I Love Lucy. A significant change in cast and premise for the 1965-66 season divides the program into two distinct eras; aside from Ball, only Gale Gordon, who joined the program...
, Here's Lucy
Here's Lucy
Here's Lucy is Lucille Ball's third network television sitcom. It ran on CBS from 1968 to 1974.-Background:Though The Lucy Show was still hugely popular during the previous season, finishing in the top five of the Nielsen Ratings , Ball opted to end that series at the end of that season and create...
and Life With Lucy
Life With Lucy
Life with Lucy is an American sitcom starring Lucille Ball. The show ran on the ABC network in 1986, and unlike Ball's previous hits on television, it was a critical and ratings flop.- Premise :...
. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu; a studio that produced many successful and popular television series.
Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award
Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award
The Cecil B. DeMille Award is an honorary Golden Globe Award bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment". It was first presented on February 21, 1952 at the 9th Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony and is named in honor of its...
in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors
Kennedy Center Honors
The Kennedy Center Honors is an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. The Honors have been presented annually since 1978 in Washington, D.C., during gala weekend-long events which culminate in a performance for—and...
in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
using the stage name
Stage name
A stage name, also called a showbiz name or screen name, is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers such as actors, wrestlers, comedians, and musicians.-Motivation to use a stage name:...
Dianne Belmont. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then-husband, Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz was a Cuban-born American musician, actor and television producer. While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is probably best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to...
as Ricky Ricardo
Ricky Ricardo
Enrique Alberto Fernando Ricardo y de Acha, III, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo is a main character in the television show I Love Lucy, played by Desi Arnaz...
, Vivian Vance
Vivian Vance
Vivian Roberta Jones was an American television and theater actress and singer. Often referred to as “TV’s most beloved second banana,” she is best known for her role as Ethel Mertz, sidekick to Lucille Ball on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, and as Vivian Bagley on The Lucy...
as Ethel Mertz and William Frawley
William Frawley
William Clement "Bill" Frawley was an American stage entertainer, screen and television actor. Although Frawley acted in over 100 films, he achieved his greatest fame playing landlord Fred Mertz for the situation comedy I Love Lucy.-Early life:William was born to Michael A. Frawley and Mary E....
as Fred Mertz. The Mertzs were the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. Then, some minor adjustments were made to the program's format – the time of the show was lengthened from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first show lasted 75 mins), some new characters were added, the storyline was altered, and the show was renamed The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which ran for three seasons (1957–1960) and 13 episodes. Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show is an American situation comedy that aired on CBS from 1962 until 1968. It was Lucille Ball's follow-up to I Love Lucy. A significant change in cast and premise for the 1965-66 season divides the program into two distinct eras; aside from Ball, only Gale Gordon, who joined the program...
, which ran on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
from 1962 to 1968 (156 Episodes), and Here's Lucy
Here's Lucy
Here's Lucy is Lucille Ball's third network television sitcom. It ran on CBS from 1968 to 1974.-Background:Though The Lucy Show was still hugely popular during the previous season, finishing in the top five of the Nielsen Ratings , Ball opted to end that series at the end of that season and create...
from 1968 to 1974 (144 episodes). Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life with Lucy
Life With Lucy
Life with Lucy is an American sitcom starring Lucille Ball. The show ran on the ABC network in 1986, and unlike Ball's previous hits on television, it was a critical and ratings flop.- Premise :...
- which failed after 8 episodes aired, although 13 were produced.
Ball met and eloped with Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n bandleader Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz was a Cuban-born American musician, actor and television producer. While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is probably best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to...
in 1940. On July 17, 1951, at almost 40 years old, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz
Lucie Arnaz
Lucie Désirée Arnaz is an American actress, singer, dancer and producer. She is the daughter of actors Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and is the sister of actor Desi Arnaz, Jr..- Early life :...
. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV
Desi Arnaz, Jr.
Desi Arnaz, Jr. , is an American actor and musician and the son of entertainers Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.-Early life:...
, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.
On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm at age 77. At the time of her death she was married to her second husband and business partner, standup comedian Gary Morton
Gary Morton
Gary Morton was the second husband of Lucille Ball. He was a stand-up comedian, whose primary venues were the hotels and resorts of the Borscht Belt in upstate New York.-Relationship with Lucille Ball:...
for more than twenty-seven years.
Early life
Ball was born to Henry Durrell Ball (September 16, 1886 – February 19, 1915) and Desiree "DeeDee" Evelyn Hunt (September 21, 1892 – July 20, 1977) in Jamestown, New YorkJamestown, New York
Jamestown is a city in Chautauqua County, New York in the United States. The population was 31,146 at the 2010 census.The City of Jamestown is adjacent to Town of Ellicott and is at the southern tip of Chautauqua Lake...
. Although Lucy was born in Jamestown, New York, she told many people that she was born in Butte, Montana
Butte, Montana
Butte is a city in Montana and the county seat of Silver Bow County, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. As of the 2010 census, Butte's population was 34,200...
. At age 3, her family moved to Anaconda, Montana
Anaconda, Montana
Anaconda, county seat of Anaconda City/Deer Lodge County, is located in mountainous southwestern Montana. The Continental Divide passes within 8 miles of the community with the local Pintler Mountain range reaching 10,379 feet...
and then to Wyandotte, Michigan
Wyandotte, Michigan
Wyandotte is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 25,883 at the 2010 census, a decrease of 7.6% from 2000. Wyandotte is located in southeastern Michigan, approximately south of Detroit on the Detroit River, and is part of the collection of communities known as...
. Her family was Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
; her father was of Scottish descent, and his mother was Mary Ball. Her mother was of French
French American
French Americans or Franco-Americans are Americans of French or French Canadian descent. About 11.8 million U.S. residents are of this descent, and about 1.6 million speak French at home.An additional 450,000 U.S...
, Irish and English
English American
English Americans are citizens or residents of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England....
descent. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies.
Her father, a telephone lineman for Anaconda Copper
Anaconda Copper
Anaconda Copper Mining Company was one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century. The Anaconda was purchased by Atlantic Richfield Company on January 12, 1977...
, was frequently transferred because of his occupation, and within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved many times, from Jamestown to Anaconda, and then to Trenton. While DeeDee Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick
Fred Ball
Frederick Henry Ball was an American movie studio executive, actor, brother of comedienne Lucille Ball.-Early life:...
, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
and died in February 1915. Ball recalls little from the day her father died, only fleeting memories of a picture falling and a bird getting trapped in the house. Ever since that day she had an intense bird phobia.
After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred Henry Ball (July 17, 1915 - February 5, 2007) were raised by her mother and grandparents in Celoron, New York
Celoron, New York
Celoron is a village in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. It sits on the west boundary of the City of Jamestown, New York and is surrounded by the Town of Ellicott. The population was 1,295 at the 2000 census.- History :...
a summer resort village on Lake Chautauqua just west of Jamestown. Her grandfather, Fred Hunt, was an eccentric who also enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.
Four years after the death of her father, Ball’s mother DeeDee remarried. While her step-father, Edward Peterson, and mother went to look for work in another city, Ball was left in the care of her step-father’s parents. Ball’s new guardians were a puritanical Swedish couple who were so opposed to frivolity that they banished all mirrors from the house except for one over the bathroom sink. When the young Ball was caught admiring herself in it she was severely chastised for being vain. This period of time affected Ball so deeply that in later life she claimed that it lasted seven or eight years, but in reality, it was probably less than one. One good thing did come out of DeeDee's new marriage. Edward was a Shriner
Shriners
The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, also commonly known as Shriners and abbreviated A.A.O.N.M.S., established in 1870, is an appendant body to Freemasonry, based in the United States...
. When his organization needed female entertainers for the chorus line of their next show, he encouraged his twelve-year-old stepdaughter to audition. While Ball was onstage she began to realize that if one was seeking praise and recognition this was a brilliant way to receive it. Her appetite for recognition had thus been awakened at an early age. In 1927 her family suffered misfortune when their house and furnishings were taken away in a legal judgement after a neighborhood boy was accidentally shot and paralyzed by someone target-shooting in their yard, under Ball's grandfather's supervision. The family then moved into a small apartment in Jamestown.
Teenage years and early career
In 1925 Ball, then only 14, started dating Johnny DeVita, a local hood who was 21. DeeDee was unhappy with the relationship, but was unable to influence her daughter to end the relationship. She expected the romance to burn out in a few weeks but that didn't happen. After about a year, DeeDee tried to separate them by using Lucille's desire to be in show business. Despite the family's meager finances, she arranged for Lucille to go to the John Murray AndersonJohn Murray Anderson
John Murray Anderson was a theatre director and producer, songwriter, actor, screenwriter, and lighting designer. He worked almost every genre of show business, including vaudeville, Broadway, and film....
School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
was a fellow student. Ball went home after the first semester when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer.", later saying about that time in her life "All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened."
Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1928, among her other jobs she landed work as a fashion model
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
for Hattie Carnegie
Hattie Carnegie
Hattie Carnegie was a fashion entrepreneur based in New York City from the 1920s to the 1960s. She was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary as Henrietta Kanengeiser....
. Her career was thriving when she became ill, either with rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease that occurs following a Streptococcus pyogenes infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever. Believed to be caused by antibody cross-reactivity that can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain, the illness typically develops two to three weeks after...
, rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, systemic inflammatory disorder that may affect many tissues and organs, but principally attacks synovial joints. The process produces an inflammatory response of the synovium secondary to hyperplasia of synovial cells, excess synovial fluid, and the development...
or some other unknown illness and was unable to work for two years. She moved back to New York City in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and supported herself by again working for Carnegie and as the Chesterfield
Chesterfield (cigarette)
Chesterfield is a brand of cigarette made by Altria. It was one of the most recognized brands of the early 20th century, but sales have declined steadily over the years. It was named for Chesterfield County, Virginia. Chesterfield is still being made today; it is still popular in Europe, but has...
cigarette girl
Cigarette girl
Cigarette girl or Cigarette Girl may refer to:*Cigarette girl , someone who sells or provides cigarettes in a casino*Cigarette Girl, a 2009 film*Cigarette Girl *The Cigarette Girl from the Future, an album by Beauty Pill...
. As Diane Belmont she started getting some chorus work on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
but the work wasn't lasting. Ball was hired – but then quickly fired – by theatre impresario Earl Carroll
Earl Carroll
Earl Carroll was an American theatrical producer, director, songwriter and composer born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.-Career:...
from his Vanities, by Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...
from a touring company of Rio Rita
Rio Rita (musical)
Rio Rita is a 1927 stage musical with a book by Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson , music by Harry Tierney, lyrics by Joseph McCarthy, and produced by Florenz Ziegfeld...
. and was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones.
Hollywood
After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn GirlsGoldwyn Girls
The Goldwyn Girls were a musical stock company of female dancers employed by Samuel Goldwyn. Famous actresses whose career included a stint in the Goldwyn Girls include Lucille Ball, Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Ann Sothern, Jane Wyman, Virginia Bruce, Virginia Grey, Mary Meade, and Virginia...
in Roman Scandals
Roman Scandals
Roman Scandals is a 1933 black-and-white American musical film starring Eddie Cantor, Ruth Etting, Gloria Stuart, Edward Arnold and David Manners. It was directed by Frank Tuttle....
(1933) she permanently moved to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges
Three Stooges
The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy act of the early to mid–20th century best known for their numerous short subject films. Their hallmark was physical farce and extreme slapstick. In films, the Stooges were commonly known by their first names: "Moe, Larry, and Curly" and "Moe,...
(Three Little Pigskins
Three Little Pigskins
Three Little Pigskins is the fourth short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.-Plot:...
, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
(Room Service
Room Service (1938 film)
Room Service is an RKO film comedy starring the Marx Brothers and based on the 1937 play of the same name by Allen Boretz and John Murray. It co-stars Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Alexander Asro, and Frank Albertson.-Plot outline:...
, 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
and Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
film Roberta
Roberta (1935 film)
Roberta is a 1935 musical film by RKO starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Randolph Scott. It was an adaptation of a 1933 Broadway theatre musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller...
(1935) and briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat
Top Hat
Top Hat is a 1935 screwball comedy musical film in which Fred Astaire plays an American dancer named Jerry Travers, who comes to London to star in a show produced by Horace Hardwick . He meets and attempts to impress Dale Tremont to win her affection...
(1935), as well as a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet
Follow the Fleet
Follow the Fleet is a 1936 Hollywood musical comedy film with a nautical theme and stars Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, Harriet Hilliard, and Astrid Allwyn, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Lucille Ball and Betty Grable also appear, in small supporting roles...
(1936), another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant maternal cousin of Ball's. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door
Stage Door
Stage Door is a RKO film, adapted from the play by the same name, that tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a boarding house at 158 West 58th Street in New York City. The film stars Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier,...
(1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
.
In 1936 she also landed the role she hoped would lead her to Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack
Bartlett Cormack
Edward Bartlett Cormack was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, and producer best known for his 1927 Broadway play The Racket, and for working with Howard Hughes and Cecil B. DeMille on several films....
play Hey Diddle Diddle, a comedy set in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey on January 21, 1937 with Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of three roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead." The play received good reviews, but there were problems, chiefly with its star, Conway Tearle
Conway Tearle
Conway Tearle was an Anglo-American stage actor who went on to perform in silent and early sound films.-Early life:...
, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to replace him, but the producer, Anne Nichols
Anne Nichols
Anne Nichols was an American playwright.Born in Dales Mill, Georgia, Nichols penned a number of Broadway plays, several of which were made into motion pictures...
, said the fault lay with the character and insisted that the part needed to be reshaped and rewritten. The two were unable to agree on a solution. The play was scheduled to open on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre
Vanderbilt Theatre
The Vanderbilt Theatre was a New York City Broadway theatre, designed by architect Eugene De Rosa for producer Lyle Andrews. It opened in 1918, located at 148 West 48th Street. The theatre was demolished in 1954....
, but closed after one week in Washington, D.C. when Tearle suddenly became gravely ill. Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those films.
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...
– starring in a number of B-movie
B-movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s, such as 1939's Five Came Back
Five Came Back
Five Came Back is a 1939 melodrama and a precursor of the disaster film genre. The film was directed by John Farrow, photographed by renowned film noir cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, and written by Jerry Cady, Dalton Trumbo and Nathanael West....
. Like many budding starlets Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In 1937 she appeared as a regular on The Phil Baker Show. When that completed its run in 1938, Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show, starring future Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
tin man Jack Haley
Jack Haley
John Joseph "Jack" Haley was an American stage, radio, and film actor best known for his portrayal of the Tin Man and Kansas farmworker Hickory in The Wizard of Oz.-Career:...
. It was here that she began her fifty year professional relationship with Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon was an American character actor perhaps best remembered as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil—and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television situation comedy, The Lucy Show...
, who served as the show's announcer. The Wonder Show only lasted one season, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.
In 1940, Ball met Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n-born bandleader Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz was a Cuban-born American musician, actor and television producer. While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is probably best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to...
while filming the Rodgers and Hart
Rodgers and Hart
Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership of composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist Lorenz Hart...
stage hit Too Many Girls
Too Many Girls (musical)
Too Many Girls is a Broadway musical comedy and a 1940 film version of the show, starring Lucille Ball.-Broadway version:Too Many Girls opened October 18, 1939, with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by George Marion Jr. It was produced by George Abbott...
. At first, Arnaz was not fond of Lucy. When they met again later that day, the two connected immediately and eloped the same year. Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
in 1942. He ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. That same year, Ball appeared opposite Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
in The Big Street
The Big Street
The Big Street is a 1942 American drama film, starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, based on the short story "Little Pinks" by Damon Runyon, who also produced the movie. The film was directed by Irving Reis...
, in which she plays a paralyzed nightclub singer and Fonda portrays a busboy who idolizes her. The following year Ball appeared in DuBarry Was a Lady
DuBarry Was a Lady (film)
DuBarry Was a Lady is a 1943 Technicolor film, starring Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, and Gene Kelly, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is based on the 1939 stage musical of the same name....
, a film for which the natural brunette first had her hair dyed the flaming red that would be her screen trademark.
Ball filed for a divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
in 1944. Shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory
Interlocutory
Interlocutory is a legal term which can refer to an order, sentence, decree, or judgment, given in an intermediate stage between the commencement and termination of a cause of action, used to provide a temporary or provisional decision on an issue...
decree of divorce, however, she reconciled with Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz were only six years apart in age but apparently believed that it was less socially acceptable for an older woman to marry a younger man
Age disparity in sexual relationships
Age disparity in sexual relationships refers to sexual relations between people with a significant difference in age. Whether these relationships are accepted and the question of what counts as a significant difference in age has varied over time; and varies over cultures, different legal systems,...
, and hence split the difference in their ages, both claiming a 1914 birth date until this was disproved.
I Love Lucy and Desilu
In 1948, Ball was cast as Liz Cugat (later "Cooper"), a wacky wife, in My Favorite HusbandMy Favorite Husband
My Favorite Husband is the name of an American radio program and network television series. The original radio show, co-starring Lucille Ball, was the initial basis for what evolved into the groundbreaking TV sitcom I Love Lucy. The series was based on the novel Mr. and Mrs...
, a radio program for CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it for television. She agreed, but insisted on working with Arnaz. CBS executives were reluctant, thinking the public would not accept an All-American redhead and a Cuban as a couple. CBS was initially not impressed with the pilot episode produced by the couple's Desilu Productions
Desilu Productions
Desilu Productions was a Los Angeles, California-based company jointly owned by actors Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who were married to each other from 1940 to 1960....
company, so the couple toured the road in a vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
act with Lucy as the zany housewife wanting to get in Arnaz's show. The tour was a smash, and CBS put I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...
on their lineup. The I Love Lucy show was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had become badly strained, in part by the fact that each had a hectic performing schedule which often kept them apart.
Along the way, she created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts." Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu, the company that she and Arnaz formed. After their divorce, Ball bought out Arnaz's share of the studio, and she proceeded to function as a very active studio head. Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today such as filming before a live studio audience with a number of cameras, and distinct sets adjacent to each other. During this time Ball taught a thirty-two week comedy workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute
Brandeis-Bardin Institute
The Brandeis-Bardin Campus of American Jewish University is a Jewish retreat located in Simi Valley, California, USA. Formerly known as the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, it is used for nondenominational summer programs for children, teens and young adults....
. Ball was quoted as saying, "You cannot teach someone comedy; either they have it or they don't."
When the show premiered, most shows were aired live
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
from New York City studios to Eastern
Eastern Time Zone
The Eastern Time Zone of the United States and Canada is a time zone that falls mostly along the east coast of North America. Its UTC time offset is −5 hrs during standard time and −4 hrs during daylight saving time...
and Central Time Zone
Central Time zone
In North America, the Central Time Zone refers to national time zones which observe standard time by subtracting six hours from UTC , and daylight saving, or summer time by subtracting five hours...
audiences, and captured by kinescope
Kinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...
for broadcast later to the West Coast. The kinescope picture was inferior to film, and as a result the West Coast broadcasts were inferior to those seen elsewhere in the country. Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but the time zone logistics made that broadcast norm impossible. Prime time in L.A. was too late at night on the East Coast to air a major network series, meaning the majority of the TV audience would be seeing not only the inferior picture of kinescopes but seeing them at least a day later.
Sponsor Philip Morris
Philip Morris USA
Philip Morris USA is the United States tobacco division of Altria Group, Inc. Philip Morris USA brands include Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Benson and Hedges, Merit, Parliament, Alpine, Basic, Cambridge, Bucks, Dave's, Chesterfield, Collector's Choice, Commander, English Ovals, Lark, L&M, Players and...
did not want to show day-old kinescopes to the major markets on the East Coast, yet neither did they want to pay for the extra cost filming, processing and editing would require, pressuring Ball and Arnaz to relocate to New York City. Ball and Arnaz offered to take a pay cut to finance filming, on the condition that their company, Desilu, would retain the rights to that film once it was aired. CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after initial broadcast, not realizing they were giving away a valuable and durable asset. Desilu made many millions of dollars on I Love Lucy rebroadcasts through syndication
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
and became a textbook example of how a show can be profitable in second-run syndication. In television's infancy, the concept of the rerun
Rerun
A rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. There are two types of reruns—those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Reruns can also be, as the...
hadn't yet formed, and many in the industry wondered who would want to see a program a second time. In fact, while other celebrated shows of the period exist only in incomplete sets of kinescopes mostly too degraded to show to subsequent generations of television viewers, I Love Lucy has virtually never gone out of syndication since it began, seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world over the past half century. The success of Ball and Arnaz's gamble was instrumental in drawing television production from New York to Hollywood for the next several decades.
Desilu hired legendary German cameraman Karl Freund
Karl Freund
Karl W. Freund, A.S.C. was a cinematographer and film director most noted for photographing Metropolis , Dracula , and television's I Love Lucy .-Early life:...
as their director of photography. Freund had worked for F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
, shot part of Metropolis (1927) as well as the original Dracula
Dracula (1931 film)
Dracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L...
(1931) with Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
, and had directed a number of Hollywood films himself, including The Mummy
The Mummy (1932 film)
The Mummy is a 1932 horror film from Universal Studios directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff as a revived ancient Egyptian priest. The movie also features Zita Johann, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan...
(1932) with Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
. Freund used a three-camera setup, which became the standard way of filming situation comedies. Shooting long shots, medium shots, and close-ups on a comedy in front of a live audience demanded discipline, technique, and close choreography. Among other non-standard techniques used in filming the show, cans of paint (in shades ranging from white to medium gray) were kept on set to "paint out" inappropriate shadows and disguise lighting flaws. Freund also pioneered "flat lighting," in which everything is brightly lit to eliminate shadows and the need for endless relighting.
I Love Lucy dominated the weekly TV ratings in the United States for most of its run. (There was an attempt to adapt the show for radio; the cast and writers adapted the memorable "Breaking the Lease" episode—in which the Ricardos and Mertzes fall out over an argument, the Ricardos threaten to move, but they're stuck in a firm lease—for a radio audition disc that never aired but has survived.) In the scene where Lucy and Ricky are practicing the tango in the episode "Lucy Does The Tango," the longest recorded studio audience laugh in the history of the show was produced. It was so long, in fact, that the sound editor had to cut that particular part of the soundtrack in half. The strenuous rehearsals and demands of Desilu studio kept the Arnazes too busy to comprehend the show's success. During the show's production breaks they starred together in feature films: Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
's The Long, Long Trailer
The Long, Long Trailer
The Long, Long Trailer is a novel by Clinton Twiss from the 1950s, about a couple who buy a new travel trailer home and spend a year traveling across the United States....
(1954) and Alexander Hall
Alexander Hall
Alexander Hall was an American theatre actor and film director....
's Forever, Darling
Forever, Darling
Forever, Darling is a 1956 American romantic comedy film with fantasy overtones, starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and James Mason, and directed by Alexander Hall...
(1956).
Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television , it became one of the medium's earliest hits...
(starring Ball's 1937 Stage Door
Stage Door
Stage Door is a RKO film, adapted from the play by the same name, that tells the story of several would-be actresses who live together in a boarding house at 158 West 58th Street in New York City. The film stars Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier,...
co-star Eve Arden
Eve Arden
Eve Arden was an American actress. Her almost 60-year career crossed most media frontiers with supporting and leading roles, but she may be best-remembered for playing the sardonic but engaging title character, a high school teacher, on Our Miss Brooks, and as the Rydell High School principal in...
), The Untouchables
The Untouchables (1959 TV series)
The Untouchables is an American crime drama that ran from 1959 to 1963 on ABC. Based on the memoir of the same name by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, it fictionalized the experiences of Eliot Ness, a real-life Prohibition agent, as he fought crime in Chicago during the 1930s with the help of a...
, Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...
, and Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...
. Many other shows, particularly My Three Sons
My Three Sons
My Three Sons is an American situation comedy. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until its end on August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas , raising his three sons.The series was a cornerstone of the CBS...
in its first seven of twelve seasons, Sheldon Leonard
Sheldon Leonard
Sheldon Leonard was a pioneering American film and television producer, director, writer, and actor.-Biography:...
-produced series like Make Room for Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom that initially aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System from October 3, 1961, until June 1, 1966. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. It was produced by Reiner with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff....
, The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina...
, and I Spy, were filmed at Desilu Studios and bear its logo. Desilu was eventually sold and merged into Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
in 1967.
Testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
When Ball registered to vote in 1936, she listed her party affiliation as Communist. (She was registered as a Communist in 1938 as well.) In order to sponsor the Communist PartyCommunist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
's 1936 candidate for the California State Assembly
California State Assembly
The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature. There are 80 members in the Assembly, representing an approximately equal number of constituents, with each district having a population of at least 420,000...
's 57th District
California's 57th State Assembly district
California's 57th State Assembly District is one of 80 districts in the California State Assembly. It is currently represented by Democrat Roger Hernandez of West Covina.-District profile:...
, Ball signed a certificate stating "I am registered as affiliated with the Communist Party." The same year, she was appointed to the State Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
of the Communist Party of California, according to records of the California Secretary of State
Secretary of State (U.S. state government)
Secretary of State is an official in the state governments of 47 of the 50 states of the United States, as well as Puerto Rico and other U.S. possessions. In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, this official is called the Secretary of the Commonwealth...
. In 1937, Hollywood writer Rena Vale
Rena Vale
Rena Vale, or Rena M. Vale, was a writer who from 1926 to 1930 was a scriptwriter for Universal Studios in Hollywood and in the 1930s was an investigator for a U.S...
, a self-identified former Communist, attended a Communist Party new members' class at Ball's home, according to Vale's testimony before the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
' Special Committee on Un-American Activities
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, on July 22, 1940. Two years later, Vale reaffirmed this testimony in a sworn deposition:
In a 1944 British Pathe newsreel, titled Fund Raising For Roosevelt, Ball was featured prominently among several stage and film stars at a fund-raising event in support of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
's campaign for re-election
United States presidential election, 1944
The United States presidential election of 1944 took place while the United States was preoccupied with fighting World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been in office longer than any other president, but remained popular. Unlike 1940, there was little doubt that Roosevelt would run for...
. She also stated that in the 1952 US Presidential Election, she voted for Republican Dwight Eisenhower.
On September 4, 1953, Ball met privately with HUAC investigator William A. Wheeler in Hollywood and gave him sealed testimony. She stated that she had registered to vote as a Communist "or intended to vote the Communist Party ticket" in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence. She stated she "at no time intended to vote as a Communist."
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
, then director of the FBI, named "Lucy and Dezi" [sic] among his "favorites of the entertainment world." Immediately before the filming of episode 68 ("The Girls Go Into Business") of I Love Lucy, Arnaz, instead of his usual audience warm-up, told the audience about Lucy and her grandfather. Arnaz quipped: "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate." Then, he presented his wife and she received a standing ovation from the audience.
Children and divorce
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
in January 1953.
Ball's business instincts were often astonishingly sharp, and her love for Arnaz was passionate, but her relationships with her children were sometimes strained. Lucie Arnaz, her daughter, spoke of her mother's "controlling" nature. Ball was outspoken against the relationship that Desi Jr. had with Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
. Talking about Liza Minelli dating her son, she was quoted as saying, "I miss Liza, but you cannot domesticate Liza." Her close friends in the business included Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
, Vivian Vance
Vivian Vance
Vivian Roberta Jones was an American television and theater actress and singer. Often referred to as “TV’s most beloved second banana,” she is best known for her role as Ethel Mertz, sidekick to Lucille Ball on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, and as Vivian Bagley on The Lucy...
, Mary Wickes
Mary Wickes
Mary Wickes was an American film and television actress.-Career:Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she...
and Carole Cook
Carole Cook
Carole Cook is an American actress. She has appeared in many theatrical productions, in films and on television.Born as Mildred Frances Cook, she was a protege of Lucille Ball. Ball gave her the stage name of "Carole", after her friend Carole Lombard because, Ball reportedly told Cook, "you have...
.
In October 1956, Ball, Vivian Vance, Desi Arnaz, and William Frawley all appeared on a Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
special on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, including a spoof of I Love Lucy, the only time all four stars were together on a color telecast.
By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz; his increased drinking further compounded matters. On May 4, 1960, just two months after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour
The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour
The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour is a CBS television situation comedy. The show is a collection of occasional specials rather than a regular series and originally served as part of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse...
, the couple divorced. Until his death in 1986, however, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke very fondly of each other. Her real-life divorce indirectly found its way into her later television series, as she was always cast as a single woman.
The following year, Ball did a musical on Broadway, Wildcat
Wildcat (musical)
Wildcat is a musical with a book by N. Richard Nash, lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, and music by Cy Coleman.The original production opened on Broadway in 1960, starring a 48-year-old Lucille Ball in her only Broadway show.-Background and production:...
, co-starring Paula Stewart
Paula Stewart
Paula Stewart is an American stage, film and television actress.-Life and career:Born as Dorothy Paula Zürndorfer, her father was Dr. Walter Zürndorfer and her mother, Esther Morris, appeared in the films, Ziegfeld Follies and Lady Be Good. She attended Northwestern University before joining the...
. That marked the beginning of a thirty-year friendship between Lucy and Paula Stewart, who introduced her to second husband Gary Morton
Gary Morton
Gary Morton was the second husband of Lucille Ball. He was a stand-up comedian, whose primary venues were the hotels and resorts of the Borscht Belt in upstate New York.-Relationship with Lucille Ball:...
, a Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties in upstate New York that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s.-Name:The name comes from...
stand-up comic who was thirteen years her junior. According to Ball, Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy due to his hectic work schedule. Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
. Morton also played occasional bit parts on Ball's various series.
Later career
The 1960 BroadwayBroadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical Wildcat ended its run early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show. The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over," which she performed with Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
. She made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours
Yours, Mine and Ours (1968 film)
For the remake of this film starring Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo see Yours, Mine and Ours Yours, Mine and Ours is a 1968 film, directed by Melville Shavelson and starring Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda and Van Johnson...
(1968), and the musical Mame
Mame (film)
Mame is a 1974 musical film based on the 1966 Broadway musical of the same name, directed by Gene Saks, written by Paul Zindel, and starring Lucille Ball and Beatrice Arthur.Warner Bros...
(1974), and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show
The Lucy Show is an American situation comedy that aired on CBS from 1962 until 1968. It was Lucille Ball's follow-up to I Love Lucy. A significant change in cast and premise for the 1965-66 season divides the program into two distinct eras; aside from Ball, only Gale Gordon, who joined the program...
(1962–68), which costarred Vance and Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon was an American character actor perhaps best remembered as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil—and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television situation comedy, The Lucy Show...
, and Here's Lucy
Here's Lucy
Here's Lucy is Lucille Ball's third network television sitcom. It ran on CBS from 1968 to 1974.-Background:Though The Lucy Show was still hugely popular during the previous season, finishing in the top five of the Nielsen Ratings , Ball opted to end that series at the end of that season and create...
(1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball appeared on the Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett
Richard Alva "Dick" Cavett is a former American television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussion of issues...
show in 1974 and spoke of her history and life with Arnaz. She revealed how she felt about other actors and actresses as well as her love for Arnaz. She continued by telling Cavett that the success to her life was, "getting rid of what was wrong and replacing it with what is right," talking about her divorce from Arnaz and marriage to Morton.
Ball also revealed in this interview that the strangest thing to ever happen to her was after she had some dental work completed and having lead fillings in her teeth, she started hearing radio stations in her head. She explained coming home one night from the studio and as she passed one area, she heard what she thought was morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
or a "tapping." She stated that "as I backed up it got stronger. The next morning, I reported it to the authorities and upon investigation, they found a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese radio transmitter that had been buried and was actively transmitting codes back to the Japanese." The extraordinary theory that dental fillings could pick up radio signals would ultimately be tested and debunked on the TV show Mythbusters
MythBusters
MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...
nearly thirty years later.
Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury, and featuring Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver...
. Director/producer John Frankenheimer
John Frankenheimer
John Michael Frankenheimer was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films...
, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
in a mother role in All Fall Down and insisted on having her for the part.
Three's Company
Three's Company is an American sitcom that aired from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984, on ABC. It is based on the British sitcom, Man About the House....
retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show. A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow
Stone Pillow
Stone Pillow was a 1985 television movie, directed by George Schaefer, in which Lucille Ball, in an attempt to make a dramatic "breakout" from her years in comedy, portrayed an older homeless woman with few resources and even fewer options...
, received mixed reviews. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy
Life With Lucy
Life with Lucy is an American sitcom starring Lucille Ball. The show ran on the ABC network in 1986, and unlike Ball's previous hits on television, it was a critical and ratings flop.- Premise :...
, costarring her longtime foil
Foil (literature)
In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of another character....
Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and prolific producer/former actor Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer. As of 2009, Spelling's eponymous production company Spelling Television holds the record as the most prolific television writer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits...
was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
. The failure of this series was said to have sent Ball into a serious depression, and other than a few miscellaneous awards show appearances, she was absent from the public eye for the last several years of her life. Her last public appearance, just one month before her death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
telecast in which she and fellow presenter, Bob Hope, were given a standing ovation.
Death
On April 18, 1989, Ball was at her home in Beverly Hills when she complained of chest pains. An ambulance was called and she was rushed to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical CenterCedars-Sinai Medical Center
Originally established as Kaspare Cohn Hospital in 1902, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, tertiary 958-bed hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre located in Los Angeles, California, US. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over...
. She was diagnosed as having a dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent heart surgery for nearly eight hours, receiving an aorta from a 27 year old male donor. The surgery was successful, and Ball began recovering, even walking around her room with little assistance. On April 26, shortly after dawn, Ball awoke with severe back pains. Her aorta had ruptured in a second location and Ball quickly lost consciousness. All attempts to revive her proved unsuccessful, and she died at approximately 05:47 PST. She was 77 years old. Her ashes were initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery
Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery is part of the Forest Lawn chain of Southern California cemeteries. It is at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica...
in Los Angeles, but in 2002 her children moved her cremains to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York, where Ball's parents, brother, and grandparents are buried.
Legacy and posthumous recognition
Ball received many prestigious awards throughout her career including some received posthumously such as the Presidential Medal of FreedomPresidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
on July 6, 1989, and The Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award.
There is a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center
Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center
The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center is a museum in Jamestown, New York, dedicated to the lives and careers of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The museum officially opened in 1996 "to preserve and celebrate the legacy of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and enrich the world through the healing powers of love...
museum in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatre was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor. Ball was among Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century.
On August 6, 2001, which would have been her ninetieth birthday, the United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
honored her with a commemorative postage stamp as part of its Legends of Hollywood series. Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide more than any other person; she appeared on thirty-nine covers, including the very first cover in 1953, with her baby son Desi Arnaz, Jr. TV Guide voted Lucille Ball as the Greatest TV Star of All Time and later it commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of I Love Lucy with eight collector covers celebrating memorable scenes from the show and in another instance they named I Love Lucy the second best television program in American history, after Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
. Because of her liberated mindset and approval of the women's movement, Ball was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
National Women's Hall of Fame
The National Women's Hall of Fame is an American institution. It was created in 1969 by a group of people in Seneca Falls, New York, the location of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention...
.
She was awarded the Legacy of Laughter award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards
TV Land Awards
The TV Land Awards is an American television awards ceremony that generally commemorates shows now off the air, rather than in current production as with awards such as the Emmys. It is presented in a manner that spoofs other entertainment award ceremonies...
in 2007, and I Love Lucy was named the Greatest TV Series by Hall of Fame Magazine. In November of that year, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the 50 Greatest TV Icons, after Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
. In a poll done by the public, however, they chose her as the greatest icon.
On August 6, 2011, which would have been her hundredth birthday, Google honored Ball with an interactive doodle on their homepage. This doodle displayed six classic moments from the I Love Lucy sitcom. On the same day a total of 915 Ball look-alikes converged on Jamestown, New York
Jamestown, New York
Jamestown is a city in Chautauqua County, New York in the United States. The population was 31,146 at the 2010 census.The City of Jamestown is adjacent to Town of Ellicott and is at the southern tip of Chautauqua Lake...
to celebrate the birthday and set a new world record for such a gathering.
On February 8, 1960, she was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to motion pictures, and one at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard for television.
Filmography and television work
Further reading
- Lucille Ball FAQ: Everything Left to Know About America's Favorite Redhead by James Sheridan and Barry Monush (2011) ISBN 978-1617740824
- The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball: Interpreting the Icon by Michael Karol (2005) ISBN 0-595-37951-6
- Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia by Michael Karol (2004) ISBN 0-595-29761-7
- Lucy in Print by Michael Karol (2003) ISBN 0-595-29321-2
- Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy by Madelyn Pugh Davis with Bob Carroll Jr. (2005) ISBN 978-1-57860-247-6
- I Love Lucy: The Complete Picture History of the Most Popular TV Show Ever by Michael McClay (1995) ISBN 0-446-51750-X (hardcover)
External links
- Lucille Ball at the Museum of Broadcast CommunicationsMuseum of Broadcast CommunicationsThe Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
- Flint, Peter B. "Lucille Ball, Spirited Doyenne Of TV Comedies, Dies at 77." The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. April 27, 1989. - Lucille Ball & several other actors participate on Orson Welles Radio Almanac 1944; recordings
- Celebrating Lucille Ball at 100: Unpublished Photos - slideshow by LIFE.com
- Lucille Ball Google doodle