1. Lucille Desiree Ball was an American actress, comedian, producer, and studio executive.
76 Facts About Lucille Ball
1. 2.
Lucille Ball was recognized by Time in 2020 as one of the most influential women of the 20th century for her work in all four of these areas.
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Lucille Ball was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning five, and was the recipient of several other accolades, such as the Golden Globe Cecil B DeMille Award and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Lucille Ball later appeared in films in the 1930s and 1940s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, being cast as a chorus girl or in similar roles, with lead roles in B-pictures and supporting roles in A-pictures.
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Lucille Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie, in 1951, followed by Desi Arnaz Jr.
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Lucille Ball produced and starred in the Broadway musical Wildcat from 1960 to 1961.
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Lucille Ball immediately began appearing in a new series, Here's Lucy, with Gordon, frequent show guest Mary Jane Croft, and Lucie and Desi Jr.
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Lucille Ball did not retire from acting completely, and in 1985 she took on a dramatic role in the television film Stone Pillow.
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Lucille Ball did not appear in film or television roles for the rest of her career and died in 1989, aged 77, from an abdominal aortic aneurysm brought about by arteriosclerotic heart disease due, in part, to her heavy cigarette smoking habit of at least six decades.
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Lucille Desiree Ball was born on Sunday, August 6,1911, at 69 Stewart Avenue in Jamestown, New York, the first child and only daughter of Henry Durrell "Had" Ball, a lineman for Bell Telephone, and Desiree Evelyn "DeDe" Ball.
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Lucille Ball's ancestors were mostly English, but a few were Scottish, French, and Irish.
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Lucille Ball recalled little from the day her father died, except a bird getting trapped in the house, which caused her lifelong ornithophobia.
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Lucille Ball's mother returned to New York, where maternal grandparents helped raise Lucy and her brother Fred in Celoron, a summer resort village on Chautauqua Lake.
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Lucille Ball loved Celoron Park, a popular amusement area at the time.
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Lucille Ball's step-grandparents were a puritanical Swedish couple who banished all mirrors from the house except one over the bathroom sink.
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Lucille Ball later said that this period of time affected her deeply, and it lasted seven or eight years.
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Lucille Ball's mother was unhappy with the relationship, and hoped the romance, which she was unable to influence, would burn out.
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Lucille Ball's acting forays were stilled at an early stage when she became ill with rheumatic fever and was unable to work for two years.
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Lucille Ball had 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 and a movie with the Marx Brothers.
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Lucille Ball's first credited role came in Chatterbox in 1936.
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Lucille Ball appeared in several Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers RKO musicals: as one of the featured models in Roberta, as the flower shop clerk in Top Hat, and in a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet.
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Lucille Ball played a larger part as an aspiring actress alongside Ginger Rogers, who was a distant maternal cousin, and Katharine Hepburn in the film Stage Door.
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The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 21,1937, with Lucille 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".
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When its run ended in 1938, Lucille Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show starring Jack Haley.
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In 1940, Lucille Ball starred in Dance, Girl, Dance and appeared as the lead in the musical Too Many Girls, where she met and fell in love with Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz, who played one of her character's four bodyguards in the movie.
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Lucille Ball signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but never achieved major stardom there.
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In 1942, Lucille Ball starred opposite Henry Fonda in The Big Street.
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In 1946, Lucille Ball starred in Lover Come Back and the film noir The Dark Corner.
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In 1948, Lucille Ball was cast as Liz Cooper, a wacky wife in My Favorite Husband, a radio comedy for CBS Radio.
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My Favorite Husband was successful, and CBS asked Lucille Ball to develop it for television.
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Lucille Ball agreed, but insisted on working with her real-life husband, Arnaz.
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Along the way, Lucille Ball created a television dynasty and achieved several firsts.
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Lucille Ball was the first woman to head a TV production company, Desilu, which she had formed with Arnaz.
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Lucille Ball sold her shares of the studio to Gulf+Western in 1967 for $17,000,000, and it was renamed Paramount Television.
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Lucille Ball made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours, and the musical Mame, and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show, which costarred Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy, which featured Gordon, as well as Lucy's real-life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr.
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Lucille Ball told a story about how she helped discover an underground Japanese radio signal after accidentally picking up the signal on the fillings in her teeth.
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Lucille Ball mentored actress and singer Carole Cook, and befriended Barbara Eden, when Eden appeared on an episode of I Love Lucy.
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Lucille Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs Iselin in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate.
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In 1979, Lucille Ball signed a deal with NBC under Fred Silverman's watch after 28 years of working with CBS in order to deal with new comedy specials, but only one was aired as part of an agreement.
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Lucille Ball was the lead actress in a number of comedy television specials to about 1980, including Lucy Calls the President, which featured Vivian Vance, Gale Gordon, and Mary Jane Croft, and Lucy Moves to NBC, a special depicting a fictionalization of her move to the NBC television network.
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In 1959, Lucille Ball became a friend and mentor to Carol Burnett.
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Lucille Ball guested on Burnett's highly successful CBS-TV special Carol + 2 and the younger performer reciprocated by appearing on The Lucy Show.
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Lucille Ball was rumored to have offered Burnett a chance to star on her own sitcom, but in truth, Burnett was offered Here's Agnes by CBS executives.
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Lucille Ball instead chose to create her own variety show due to a stipulation that was on an existing contract she had with CBS.
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Lucille Ball starred in a 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, which received mixed reviews, but had strong viewership.
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In February 1988, Lucille Ball was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.
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In May 1988, Lucille Ball was hospitalized after suffering a mild heart attack.
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When Lucille Ball registered to vote in 1936, she listed her party affiliation as Communist, as did her brother and mother.
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In 1937, Hollywood writer Rena Vale, a self-identified Communist, attended a class at an address identified to her as Lucille Ball's home according to her testimony given before the United States House of Representatives' Special House Un-American Activities Committee, on July 22,1940.
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Lucille Ball stated that in the 1952 United States presidential election, she voted for Republican Dwight D Eisenhower.
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On September 4,1953, Ball met voluntarily with HUAC investigator William A Wheeler in Hollywood and gave him sealed testimony.
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Lucille Ball 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.
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Lucille Ball stated she "at no time intended to vote as a Communist".
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Lucille Ball's testimony was forwarded to J Edgar Hoover in an FBI memorandum:.
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Lucille Ball stated she has never been a member of the Communist Party "to her knowledge".
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In 1940, Lucille Ball met Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls.
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Lucille Ball filed for divorce in 1944, obtaining an interlocutory decree; however, she and Arnaz reconciled, precluding the entry of a final decree.
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On July 17,1951, less than three weeks prior to her 40th birthday, Lucille Ball gave birth to daughter Lucie Desiree Arnaz.
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The episode aired on the evening of January 19,1953, with 44 million viewers watching Lucy Ricardo welcome little Ricky, while in real life Lucille Ball delivered her second child, Desi Jr.
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On March 3,1960, a day after Desi's 43rd birthday, Lucille Ball filed papers in Santa Monica Superior Court, claiming married life with Desi was "a nightmare" and nothing at all as it appeared on I Love Lucy.
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On May 4,1960, they divorced; however, until his death in 1986, Arnaz and Lucille Ball remained friends and often spoke fondly of each other.
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Lucille Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer; he played occasional bit parts on her various series.
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Lucille Ball was outspoken against the relationship her son had with actress Patty Duke.
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Lucille Ball was diagnosed with a dissecting aortic aneurysm near her heart and underwent a 7-hour surgery to repair her aorta and successfully install an aortic valve replacement.
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The remains of her brother, Fred Henry Lucille Ball, were interred there in 2007.
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Lucille Ball received many tributes, honors, and awards throughout her career and posthumously.
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Lucille Ball sent it and the tapes of interviews, conducted by Hoffman and used to write the manuscript, to Lucie and Desi Jr.
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On December 7,1986, Lucille Ball was recognized as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient.
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The part of the event focused on Lucille Ball was particularly poignant, as Desi Arnaz, who was to introduce Lucy at the event, had died from cancer just five days earlier.
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Lucille Ball was among Time magazine's "100 Most Important People of the Century".
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Lucille Ball appeared on 39 covers of TV Guide, more than any other person, including its first cover in 1953 with her baby son, Desi Arnaz Jr.
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Lucille Ball was posthumously awarded the Legacy of Laughter Award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards in 2007.
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Since 2009, a statue of Lucille Ball has been on display in Celoron, New York, that residents deemed "scary" and not accurate, earning it the nickname "Scary Lucy".
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Lucille Ball has been portrayed or referenced numerous times in other media.
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In 2015, it was announced that Lucille Ball would be played by Cate Blanchett in an untitled biographical film, to be written and directed by Aaron Sorkin.
76.
Lucille Ball was portrayed by Sarah Drew in the play I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, a comedy about how Lucille Ball and her husband battled to get their sitcom on the air.