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Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) 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 America 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.
Ball received thirteen Emmy Award nominations and four wins. 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 and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Ethel and Fred Mertz, the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. They then changed the format a little - lengthening the time of the show from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first one went 75 mins), adding some characters, altering the storyline somewhat, and renaming the show from "I Love Lucy" to "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 miserably after 8 episodes aired although 13 were produced.
Ball met and eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940. On July 17, 1951, 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 had been married to her second husband, standup comedian and business partner Gary Morton, for twenty-eight years.
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 York. 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. A picture fell, and a bird got 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 new step-father, Edward Peterson, and mother went to look for work in another city, Ball was left in the care of her new 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. Her new husband Ed 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.
In 1927, Ball dated a gangster's son by the name of Johnny DeVita. DeDe was unhappy with the relationship, but did nothing about it. She expected the romance to burn out in a few weeks. When that didn't happen DeDe took advantage of Lucille's desire to be in show business and "allowed" her to go to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City.[ There, Ball attended with fellow actress Bette Davis. Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer".
Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1929. She landed work as a fashion model. Her career was thriving when she became ill with rheumatoid arthritis and was unable to work for two years. She moved to New York City once again in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and had some success as a fashion model for designer Hattie Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. She began on Broadway as Dianne Belmont. She was hired—but then quickly fired—by theatre impresario Earl Carroll from his Vanities, and by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of Rio Rita.
She was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones. After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn Girls 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 cousin of Ball's on her mother's side of the family. 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-movies, 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 Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of 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.
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.
Lucille Désirée Ball
6 August 1911 - 26 April 1989
Jamestown, New York
Lucille Ball
I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't.
Lucille Ball
False eyelashes were invented by the American film director D.W. Griffith while he was making his 1916 epic, "Intolerance". Griffith wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life. A wigmaker wove human hair through fine gauze, which was then gummed to Owen's eyelids. "Intolerance" was critically acclaimed but flopped financially, leaving Griffith with huge debts that he might have been able to settle easily - had he only thought to patent the eyelashes.
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In 1948, Ball was cast as Liz Cugat (later "Cooper"), a wacky wife, in My Favorite Husband, 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 is 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) and had directed a number of Hollywood films himself. 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.
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.
On July 17, 1951, one month before her fortieth birthday and after several miscarriages, 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 (indeed, Ball gave birth in real life on the same day that her Lucy Ricardo 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. 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 of 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. It was Stewart who introduced her to second husband Gary Morton, a Borscht Belt stand-up comic who was thirteen years her junior. Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy due to his hectic work schedule. That marked the beginning of a thirty-year friendship between Lucy and Paula Stewart. 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.
The 1960 Broadway 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 after placing 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 Japanese 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 another film 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.
Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award posthumously in 1990.
Originally interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California, USA, Columbarium of Radiant Dawn, Court of Remembrance. In 2003, she was re-interred in the Ball family plot in Lake View Cemetery, Jamestown, New York.
A comment from a member of the preview audience of Follow the Fleet (1936) about bit-player Ball: "You might give the tall gum chewing blonde more parts and see if she can't make the grade - a good gamble."
Ball and Barbara Pepper met early in their careers when they were both "Goldwyn Girls" and remained lifelong friends.
Mother of Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr..
During a Barbara Walters interview, Jane Fonda claimed that her father, Henry Fonda, was deeply in love with Lucille Ball and that the two were "very close" during the filming of Yours, Mine and Ours (1968).
Was the first woman to own her own film studio.
Born a brunette.
She signed her first promotional agreement with Max Factor in 1935 and again in 1942. Of all the stars, she had the longest association with the Max Factor company.
Once registered as a voter for the Communist party as a favor to her grandfather Frederick Charles Hunt (July 24, 1865-January 9, 1944).
Lucy and her son, Desi Arnaz Jr., appeared together on the very first cover of "TV Guide" magazine in 1953.
Died the morning of April 26, 1989, the fifty-sixth birthday of her friend Carol Burnett. That afternoon Burnett received the flowers that Ball had ordered for her birthday.
During the 1933 filming of Roman Scandals (1933), young Lucille Ball, portraying a slave girl, needed to have her eyebrows entirely shaved off. They never grew back.
Before her movie career, Lucille was a model at Hattie Carnegie's in New York. She mainly modeled heavy fur coats, because she was startlingly thin as a young lady.
Lucy and Desi Arnaz began "I Love Lucy" (1951) in the hopes of saving their crumbling marriage.
She was fired from working at an ice cream store because she kept forgetting to put bananas in banana splits.
She put her Chesterfield cigarettes in a Philip Morris package to please her sponsor (of the "I Love Lucy" (1951) show).
TV Guide picked her as the greatest TV star of all time.
Was one of the 20 original "Goldwyn Girls", along with Virginia Bruce; Ann Dvorak; Paulette Goddard and Betty Grable.
Born at 5:00 pm.
Second cousin of actress Suzan Ball.
For many years during their marriage, Lucy and Desi Arnaz hid the fact that she was six years older than him by splitting the difference in their ages. She (born in 1911) said she was born in 1914 and he (born in 1917) also said he was born in 1914.
Was known for a while as Dianne Belmont back when she was a model.
Pictured on a 34¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued 6 August 2001.
Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.
Her favorite movie she made was The Big Street (1942). Up to her dying day, she resented AMPAS for not recognizing her performance in the movie by including her for an Academy Award nomination.
One of her last television appearances was in 1989 on the 62nd Academy Awards, with Bob Hope, announcing the nominations and winner of Best Picture.
Stricken by rheumatoid arthritis early in her modeling career and spent 2 years re-learning how to walk.
Filed for a divorce from husband Desi Arnaz, the day following the last day of filming "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour" (1957). [3 March 1960]
Measurements: 33-22 1/2 -34 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine).
Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. pg. 35-37. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387.
Felt that she did not deserve the title of "Queen of Comedy" and felt that it belonged to her idol, Carole Lombard.
While still contemplating whether to do the "I Love Lucy" (1951) shows, she claimed that in her dream, Carole Lombard came to her and told her to "Give it a whirl".
Was Frank Sinatra's first choice for the role of Laurence Harvey's mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He was only dissuaded when John Frankenheimer took him to see Angela Lansbury in a play.
Disliked any false form of a bird, she preferred to see them in person so she banned all pictures of birds from her house and any hotel room she was staying in.
Had a superstition about the letters A and R, which is why her character was named Lucy RicARdo in "I Love Lucy" (1951); Lucy CARmichael in "The Lucy Show" (1962); Lucy CARter in "Here's Lucy" (1968) and Lucy BARker in "Life with Lucy" (1986) (she was also married to 'Desi ARnaz'). She believed she didn't have luck in her career until she changed her name to Arnaz.
First cousin of Cleo Morgan, though they were raised as sisters.
Related by marriage to Sid Gould.
Related by marriage to Vanda Barra.
Was of Irish, Scottish, French, and English descent.
Suffered a miscarriage with her and Desi Arnaz's first child in 1942.
Suffered a second miscarriage with her and Desi Arnaz's second child in 1949.
Suffered third miscarriage in 1950 with husband Desi Arnaz.
Comedian John Belushi was a fan of her and knew every detail of her life and career.
She was proud of her family and heritage. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies. One direct ancestor, William Sprague (1609-1675), left England on the ship "Lyon's Whelp" for Plymouth/Salem, Massachusetts. They were from Upwey, Dorsetshire, England. William, along with his 2 brothers, helped to found the city of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Other Sprague relatives became soldiers in the Revolutionary War and 2 of them became governors of the state of Rhode Island.
Lucy and Desi Arnaz were married a second time in 1946 in a church because his mother believed that the reason they didn't have children yet was because they were never married in the Catholic Church.
Lucy and Desi Arnaz were married at the Byram River Beagle Club in Connecticut in 1940.
Lucy filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz in the 1940s, but didn't go through with it because they reconciled.
Not long after the Arnazes bought their house on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, it was featured in an episode of "I Love Lucy" (1951) (the one where Richard Widmark guest stars and she climbs over the fence to pick a grapefruit).
She named herself Diane Belmont after the Belmont racetrack in New York.
The day she first met Desi Arnaz, she had a black eye and a torn dress from filming a fight scene for Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and he didn't find her at all attractive until they met again later in the day when she had changed into her own clothes and makeup. His oft-quoted first impression of her extraordinary beauty was "That's a hunk o' woman".
The original Desilu was her and Desi Arnaz's ranch in Chatsworth, CA. They used the same method of naming it that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford's did when they named their estate "Pickfair".
Was once known as the "Chesterfield Girl" because she was the spokesmodel for Chesterfield cigarettes.
Was tutored in comedy by Buster Keaton.
When they were first married in 1940, Desi Arnaz had to give Lucy a ring from a drugstore because all jewelry stores were closed. She wore it for the rest of their marriage.
Her biological father died when she was three years old. Henry Durell Ball was a telephone lineman for the Bell Company. Lucy's mother, DeDe Ball, was pregnant with her second child (younger brother Fred) when Henry contracted typhoid fever and died in February of 1915.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 63-66. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
Her younger brother, 'Fred Ball (II)' (1915-2007), moved from their hometown of Jamestown, NY, to join Lucy in Hollywood in the 1930s. Fred often accompanied Desi Arnaz's band on tour during the 1940s and 1950s, and was also on the Board of Directors of Desilu Productions. In later years Fred and his wife Zo operated a motel in Cottonwood, AZ, where he died. Fred also shared the same birthday as his niece Lucie Arnaz.
In Italy, her films were often dubbed by Lidia Simoneschi or Wanda Tettoni, notably in the hilarious The Long, Long Trailer (1953). She was occasionally dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta, Dhia Cristiani, Rina Morelli and Renata Marini (in Stage Door (1937)).
Was in frail health following a heart attack in May 1988.
In 1966 it was reported in an annual stockholder's meeting that her salary as President of Desilu Productions (1962-1967) was $100,000. Her acting fees for 1966 were $130,172.
In 1968 she was reported to be the richest woman in television, having earned an estimated $30 million.
In 1962 she purchased Desi Arnaz's holdings in Desilu holdings for $3 million, as he wanted to retire to his horse ranch in Corona, CA, and lead a more stress-free life.
In July 1967 she sold Desilu Productions, consisting of 36 sound stages, 2000 employees and 62 acres adjacent to Paramount, to Gulf + Western Industries for $17 million. She received $10 million in Gulf + Western stock for her 60% of Desilu, the remaining $7 million being distributed to 3878 stockholders.
Profiled in "Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames" bu Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner (McFarland, 2004).
When her subsequent series "The Lucy Show" (1962) and "Here's Lucy" (1968) became popular, Jess Oppenheimer, a co-creator of "I Love Lucy" (1951) alleged that her character Lucy Carmichael/Carter was in fact Lucy Ricardo re-named and threatened to sue. Rather than go to court, she settled for $220,000.
Her 1960 divorce from Desi Arnaz was quite amicable. They divided their $20 million television empire equally, each retaining 25% Desilu stock (282,800 shares),she got the homes in Beverly Hills and Rancho Mirage, and Desi got the beach house in Del Mar, California and his Horse Ranch in Corona, California. In addition they agreed to joint custody of their children with him paying $450/month child support.
In 1958, in order to raise funds for their various investments, she and Desi Arnaz took Desilu public on the NYSE at $10 per share. She and Desi each retained 25% of the company, while each selling 25%. She took her $2,500,000 windfall, paid $600,000 in capital gains taxes and, always frugal, invested the remainder into bonds and securities.
When Ball lived at 1000 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, Jack Benny lived at 1002 N. Roxbury Drive.
Was offered the role of Angel in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), but was forced to turn it down due to pregnancy. Gloria Grahame was later cast instead.
Appears on a 44¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Early Television Memories issue with Vivian Vance, as Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, in a scene from "I Love Lucy: Job Switching (#2.1)" (1952). The stamp was issued 11 August 2009.
Was good friends with actresses: Mary Jane Croft, Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Vivian Vance, and Mary Wickes. All except Croft were childless; Wickes never married.
Became very good friends with Maureen O'Hara during the making of Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and continued being friends until Ball's death. O'Hara was with Lucille when Lucille first met her husband Desi Arnaz.
Profiled in book "Funny Ladies" by Stephen Silverman. [1999]
Though starring in many successful 1940s musical comedies for MGM, her contract allowed her to honor her prior commitments.She starred in the film noir classics, "The Dark Corner"(1946) for Fox and the independently produced "Lured"(1947).
I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.
One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore faith in yourself.
I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.
The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
I'm not funny. What I am is brave.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.
I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.
A man who correctly guesses a woman's age may be smart, but he's not very bright.
In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.
[About her meeting Desi Arnaz for the first time]: It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.
Desi (Desi Arnaz) was the great love of my life. I will miss him until the day I die. But I don't regret divorcing him. I just couldn't take it anymore.
[About Edith Head]: Edie knew the truth about all of us. She knew who had flat fannies and who didn't -- but she never told.
[on Liza Minnelli] She's a great trouper, Liza, I wish I had her talent. If anybody's going to take over from me, it's her. She's got a mind like a trip hammer and huge vitality. She's great.
[on Bob Hope] You spell Bob Hope C-L-A-S-S.
[on Audrey Hepburn] She's a tomboy and a fine comedienne. You'd never think of her being able to do my type of comedy. But she can. She has great energy, frail as she looks. But, well, she's so beautiful, so ethereal, it would be sacrilege to put her through it.
You were taken in charge and trained. They have none of that today any place. I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent. Believe me. What could I do? I couldn't dance. I couldn't sing. I could talk. I could barely walk. I had no flair. I wasn't a beauty, that's for sure.
[on Julie Andrews] I mean, you in Britain have some of the best comediennes. Julie Andrews is a comedienne -- oh yes she is!
[on Buster Keaton] He taught me most of what I know about timing, how to fall and how to handle props and animals.
[Defending her "singing" performance in the film Mame (1974)] Mame stayed up all night and drank champagne! What did you expect her to sound like? Julie Andrews?
I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.
(About her Friend Maureen O'Hara) Maureen O'Hara is one of the people I love the most out all the people I know.
Give yourself first and everything else will fall into line.
