Lucille Ball was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York to Henry Durrell Ball and Desiree Evelyn Hunt.
She dropped out of high school in 1926 (at the age of 15) to go to the John Murray Anderson Drama School in New York City. However, the school told her that she had no talent and therefore would not accept her into the school.
While her hopes of fame as an actress were going up in flames, she took up modeling as a career (under the name of Diane Belmont). As her modeling career, grew, so did her exposure. She became the “Chesterfield Cigarette Girl” in 1933 and gained some national fame. She was also on of the original twenty Goldwyn Girls.
She took this moderate fame and began auditioning for parts in movies. Her first screen debut came as a slave girl in the musical Roman Sandals in 1933.
With each role she took, she gained more experience and exposure in Hollywood. She took on many parts large and small during the 1930’s and 1940, although no one role really pushed her into the big media spotlight.
Although she did not become a household name during this time, it was during the filming of the movie Too Many Girls (1940) that she met a handsome Cuban bandleader named Desi Arnaz (Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y De Acha III, d. 1986). They immediately fell in love and married later that year. Due to the stress of their jobs and traveling apart, they almost got divorced in 1944. They decided that in order to stay together, they were going to need to work together. They pitched an idea to CBS of a television show based on a crazy red head and a Cuban bandleader. CBS balked at the idea saying that the American public would not go for such an idea.
In 1945, Lucy and Desi Arnaz created their own production company, and began touring the country, doing the vaudeville circuit, with a show based on the crazy red head and the Cuban bandleader. Audiences loved their act. They also took the show to the airwaves via radio (entitled My Favorite Husband). They went back to CBS, but once again they were turned down, so they decided to make a pilot for a show funding the entire thing themselves. The pilot of I Love Lucy aired in October 1951 to great reviews. CBS then came knocking on their door and decided to make it into a full series.
For six seasons (1951-1957), the show was always at the very top of the rating charts. In January 1953, the episode where Lucy gave birth to their on screen son Little Ricky (Keith Thibodeaux) was the most watched single episode of television up to that time (over 44 million viewers). This coincided with the birth of their first child, Desi Arnaz, Jr. (they also later had a daughter Lucie Arnaz). [Trivia: The first issue of TV Guide pictured Lucy and her new son Desi Jr.] The show won or was nominated for dozens of awards (including 5 Emmys) during the six year span. Lucy herself was also honored with winning many awards, including the 1956 Emmy Award for Best Actress – Continuing Performance and some of the awards she was nominated for include the 1954 Emmy Award for Best Female Star of Regular Series; 1955 Emmy Award for Best Actress Starring in a Regular Series; 1956 Emmy Award for Best Comedienne; 1957 Emmy Award for Best Continuing Performance by a Comedienne in a Series; 1958 Emmy Award for Best Continuing Performance (Female) in a Series by a Comedienne . . . who Essentially Plays Herself.
Although the show was doing well, the marriage was not. In order to save their marriage, they decided to cancel the I Love Lucy show and do something less stressful, such as a variety show called the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, which first aired in 1957. They also began working more closely together on other Desilu productions such as Star Trek and Mission Impossible.
Once again, their love life turned sour and they filed for and received a divorce in 1960. The divorce was hard on Desi and he turned towards the bottle. On the other hand, Lucy placed all of her misery into work. She borrowed three million dollars to buy out Desi of his half of Desilu Productions and engrossed herself in her work as the owner of a multimillion dollar company.
She appeared as Kitty Weaver in the movie Facts of Life in 1960 and came in second place for the Golden Laurel Award for Top Female Comedy Performance. She went back to the small screen in 1962, reviving the character of Lucy in the new TV series, The Lucy Show. This series was successful and ran for 6 years.
She also began to perform on Broadway, and headlined in Wildcat, which was a deviation from the comedies she was know for. She continued to appear on the big screen and appeared in such movies as Yours, Mine and Ours where she won the Golden Laurel Award for Female Comedy Performance and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress – Musical/Comedy. She was again awarded for her role as Lucy receiving the 1967 Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series and the 1968 Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. Some of the awards she was nominated for include the 1963 Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Series (Lead); 1966 Emmy Award for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series; and the 1968 Golden Globe for Best TV Star – Female.
She sold Desilu Poductions in 1967 for a whopping 17 million dollars. Then after marrying Gary Morton in 1968, she created Lucile Ball Productions. One of her first projects was to resurrect Lucy one more time in the television series Here’s Lucy, which also led her to be nominated for Golden Globes for Best TV Acress – Musical/Comedy in 1970 and 1972. In 1970, she was nominated once again for a Golden Globe, this time for her role in the movie Mame.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s she worked on a few sporadic movies and television roles, and spent her time with her family and working with her production company. [Note: She had a fifth TV show based on the Lucy character in the short lived Life With Lucy from September to November 1986.] Over the next three decades she was awarded for many lifetime achievement awards including, a Star on the Hollywood walk of fame, the 1973 Golden Apple Female Star of the Year, 1977 Woman In Film Crystal Award; 1979 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award; 1987 American Comedy Award’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy; 1988 Hasty Pudding Theatricals Woman of the Year; 1989 Television Critics Assn Career Achievement Award; 1989 Emmy Awards’ Governor’s Award; The Women’s International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award (posthumously in 1990). A US Postage Stamp was also issued with her likeness on it in 2001.
The Queen of Comedy passed away in April 1989. She had a very full and productive life for a woman who “had no talent” and whose fame was based on he own television concept that was turned down by the networks twice, because the American people would not go for it.
You can find Lucy Ball stuff in movies, tv shows reruns, and even in tin signs.
Biography by Ian Ripley, PopStarsPlus.com, Sr
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