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Revision as of 01:46, 22 December 2007
Lucille Ball | |
|---|---|
 Pin-up photo of Lucille Ball in Yank, the Army Weekly. | |
| Born | Lucille Désirée Ball |
| Years active | 1932 - 1989 |
| Spouse(s) | Desi Arnaz (1940-1960) Gary Morton (1961-1989) |
| Children | Lucie Arnaz (b. 1951) Desi Arnaz, Jr. (b. 1953) |
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an iconic American, glamour girl, comedienne, actress and star of the landmark sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy. Lucille Ball is one of America's favorite stars and had one of Hollywood's longest careers. She was a major movie star from the 30s to the 70s, and appeared on television for more than 30 years. She won 13 Emmy Awards (more than any other person ever), and dozens of Golden Globes and Lifetime Achievement Awards. She was also nominated dozens of other times for Emmys and Golden Globes.
Biography
Early life and career
Lucille Désirée Ball was born to Henry Durrell Ball (September 16, 1886 – February 28, 1915) and Desiree "DeDe" Eveline Hunt (September 21, 1892 – July 20, 1977) in Jamestown, New York, and grew up in the adjacent small town of Celoron. Although Lucy was born in Jamestown, she told many people that she was born in Butte, Montana.[1] Her family was Baptist; her father was of Scottish descent, whose mother was Mary Ball [2] Her mother was of French, Irish and English descent.[3] Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies. One ancestor, William Sprague (1609–1675), left England on the ship Lyon's Whelp for Plymouth/Salem, Massachusetts. They were from Upwey, Dorset, England. Along with his two brothers, William helped to found the city of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Other Sprague relatives became soldiers in the US Revolutionary War and two of them became governors of the state of Rhode Island.
Her father was a telephone lineman for the Bell Company, while her mother was often described as a lively and energetic young woman. Her father's job required frequent transfers, and within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved many times, from Jamestown to Anaconda, Montana, and then to Wyandotte, Michigan. While DeDe Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915.
After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred were raised by her working mother and grandparents. Her grandfather, Fred C. Hunt, was an eccentric socialist 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.
In 1925 after a romance with a local bad boy (Johnny DeVita), Ball decided to enroll in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City with her mother's approval. There, the shy girl was outshone by another pupil, Bette Davis. Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer".
She moved back to New York City in 1932 to become an actress and had some success as a fashion model for designer Hattie Carnegie and as the Chesterfield girl. She began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name "Diane Belmont" and was hired—but then quickly fired—by theatre impressario Earl Carroll from his Vanities and by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of Rio Rita.
She was let go again 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 movies with the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film Roberta (1935), where she met her lifelong friend, Ginger Rogers. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door (1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn. Ball would later claim that this was the film that first got her recognition. Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved great success in 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. Macdonald Carey was designated as the "King of the B's".
In 1940, Ball met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls. Ball and Arnaz connected immediately and eloped the same year, garnering much press attention. Arnaz and Ball frequently argued, especially over his indiscretions with other women, but they always made up in the end. 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. Ball filed for a divorce in 1944. However, shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory decree, she reconciled with Arnaz again. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were only six years different in their ages 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 and both claimed a 1914 birth year.
I Love Lucy and Desilu
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, a show that eventually became I Love Lucy. 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 the show 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 buying out her by-then ex-husband's share of the studio, Ball functioned as a very active studio head.)
Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today. When the show premiered, most shows were captured by kinescope, and the picture was inferior to film. The decision was made to film the series, a decision driven by the performers' desire to stay in Los Angeles.
Sponsor Philip Morris did not want to show kinescopes to the major markets on the east coast, so Desilu agreed to take a pay cut to finance filming. In return, CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after 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.
Desilu also 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. The show made a lot of firsts. 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 hiatus, they starred together in feature films: Vincente Minnelli's The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Alexander Hall's Forever, Darling (1956). According to a number of sources, including biographers Stern Kanfer and Bart Andrews, when the couple finally found time to attend a Hollywood movie premiere in late 1953, the entire star-studded audience stood and turned with a thunderous applause. It finally connected with the Arnazes. I Love Lucy made them the biggest stars in the nation, even among the Hollywood elite.
Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Our Miss Brooks, The Untouchables, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible. Many other shows, particularly 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.
Children and divorce
On July 17, 1951, just one month before her 40th birthday and after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Desiree 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. The birth made the first cover of TV Guide in January 1953.
Ball's instincts with business 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. She had a few very good friends in the business: Ginger Rogers, Mary Wickes and Vivian Vance. All were childless; Wickes never married.
In 1953, Ball was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities because she had registered to vote in the Communist party primary election in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence (per FBI FOIA-released documents in a declassified FBI file.)[4] Immediately before the filming of episode 68 ("The Girls Go Into Business") of I Love Lucy, people in the studio audience made signs and started booing, their minds on her Capitol Hill appearance. Desi Arnaz came onstage and quipped: "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate." Then, he presented her and people started cheering for her.
By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz; his increasing 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, ending one of television's greatest marriages. However, until his death in 1986, Arnaz would remain friends with Ball. Indeed, both Arnaz and Ball spoke lovingly of each other after the breakup.
The following year, Ball did a musical on Broadway, Wildcat, co-starring Paula Stewart. It was Stewart who introduced her to her next husband Gary Morton, a Borscht Belt stand-up comic who was twelve years her junior. That marked the beginning of a 30-year friendship between Lucy and Paula. Morton told interviewers at the time that he had never seen Ball on television, since he was always performing during primetime. 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.
Later career
Following I Love Lucy, Ball appeared in the 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat, a successful sell-out that 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 was originally considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate. However, director/producer John Frankenheimer had worked with Angela Lansbury in a mother role in another film, and insisted on having her for the part. (Source: Frankenheimer's DVD audio commentary.)
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. The second part of the special ended with her receiving a kiss on the cheek from John Ritter. A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, was well received. However, her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy, costarring her longtime foil Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and former actor Aaron Spelling, was a critical and commercial flop which was cancelled 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.
Death
On April 18, 1989, Ball complained of chest pains and was rushed to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She was diagnosed as having a dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent surgery for nearly eight hours. The surgery was successful and Ball was recovering; she was walking around her room with little assistance. On April 26, shortly before 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 at approximately 5:17 a.m., Lucille Ball died at the age of 77. She was initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, but in 2002 her children moved her ashes to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York where Ball's mother, father, brother, and grandparents are buried.
Legacy and posthumous recognition
- On May 1, 1989, one week after her death, Lucille Ball was featured as a subplot on the TV series Designing Women wherein stars Jean Smart and Dixie Carter discuss Charlene (Smart)'s new Lucille Ball VHS tape and Julia (Carter) responds, "Yes, I love Lucy, we all love Lucy." A photo of Lucy on the set of I Love Lucy was used as the backdrop to the episode's credits, as well as the theme song of the series.[5]
- On July 6, 1989, Lucille Ball was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush.[6] In 1990, she was posthumously awarded the Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award.[7] In 2002, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[8]
- The Little Theatre in Jamestown, New York was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in 1991.[9]
- In 2000, Lucille Ball was among Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century.[10]
- On August 6, 2001, on what would have been her 90th birthday, the United States Postal Service honored her with a commemorative postage stamp as part of its Legends of Hollywood series.[11]
- Lucille Ball has appeared on the cover of TV Guide more than any other person; she appeared on 39 covers, including the very first cover in 1953, with her baby son Desi Arnaz, Jr.[12] In 1996, TV Guide voted Lucille Ball as the Greatest TV Star of All Time. In 2001, it commemorated the 50th Anniversary of I Love Lucy with eight collector covers celebrating memorable scenes from the show. In 2002, TV Guide named I Love Lucy the second most influential television program in American history.[13]
- In 2007, she was posthumously awarded the Legacy of Laughter award at the 5th Annual TV Land Awards.[14] and I Love Lucy was named the Greatest TV Series by Hall of Fame Magazine.[citation needed]
- In November of 2007, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the 50 Greatest TV Icons, after Johnny Carson.[citation needed]
Personal Quotes
 |
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 trooper, 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 pros and animals.
Salary
"Life with Lucy" (1986) $150,000/episode
Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) 50% of the net profits (co-producer)
A Guide for the Married Man (1967) $10,000 for two days work.
The Danny Kaye Show with Lucille Ball (1962) (TV) $100,000
The Long, Long Trailer (1954) $125,000
The Magic Carpet (1951) $85,000
I Love Lucy (1951) $3,500 per episode
Two Smart People (1946) $1,750/week
A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941) $12,500
Too Many Girls (1940) $1,500/week
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) $3,500/week
Top Hat (1935) $50/week
Filmography
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Television appearances
- I Love Lucy (1951-1957)
- The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960)
- The Lucy Show (1962-1968)
- The Danny Kaye Show with Lucille Ball (1962)
- Mr. and Mrs. (1964)
- Lucy in London (1966)
- Carol + 2 (1967)
- Here's Lucy (1968-1974)
- Three's company (1982)
- Swing Out, Sweet Land (1970)
- Happy Anniversary and Goodbye (1974)
- Lucy Gets Lucky (1975)
- Three for Two: Starring Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason (1975)
- CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years (1976)
- What Now, Catherine Curtis? (1976)
- Lucy Calls the President (1977)
- Lucy Comes to Nashville (1978)
- Password Plus (Game Show) (1979-1982) (several guest appearances)
- Lucy Moves to NBC (1980)
- Stone Pillow (1985)
- Body Language (Game show) (1984-1985) (several guest appearances)
- Life With Lucy (1986) (canceled after 8 episodes)
Radio appearances
- The Phil Baker Show (1937–1938)
- My Favorite Husband (1948–1951)
References
- ^ [1] Time 100 Retrived on 07-19-2007
- ^ Ball of Fire by Stefan Kanfer, Random House, Inc., 2003, pg. 10 ISBN 0-375-41315-4
- ^ Lucille Ball. Love, Lucy. ISBN 0425177319
- ^ http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/balllucille/balllucille.htm Museum.tv Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ [2]
- ^ http://www.medaloffreedom.com/LucilleBall.htm Medaloffreedom.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://www.wic.org/ Wic.org Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://www.greatwomen.org/ Greatwomen.org Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://www.designsmiths.net/lucilleball/index.html Designsmiths.net Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://www.time.com/time/time100/index_2000_time100.html Time.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://www.usps.com/news/2001/philatelic/sr01_057.htm USPS.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ [http://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/lucille-ball/163025# ht t://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/lucille-ball/163025#] TVguide.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/history/topic/56036-1.html Archive.tivecommunity.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
- ^ http://theenvelope.latimes.com/tv/la-env-tvland15apr15,0,2045170.story?coll=env-tv Theenvelope.latimes.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
Further reading
- Love, Lucy (1997) ISBN 0-425-17731-9
- 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
- The Lucille Ball Quiz Book by Michael Karol (2004) ISBN 0-595-31857-6
- Lucy in Print by Michael Karol (2003) ISBN 0-595-29321-2
- Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz by Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert (1993) ISBN 0-688-13514-5
- Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy by Madelyn Pugh Davis with Bob Carroll Jr.(2005) ISBN -13; 978-1-57860-247-6
- Ball of Fire: the tumultuous life and comic art of Lucille Ball by Stefan Kanfer (2003) ISBN 0-375-41315-4
External links
- Official website
- Lucille Ball at IMDb
- Template:Tvtome person
- Lucille Ball at the Internet Broadway Database
- Lucille Ball at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
- New York Times obituary
- Lucille Ball biography on TVLand.com
- American television actors
- American film actors
- American comedians
- Women comedians
- American female singers
- American television producers
- American models
- American Presbyterians
- Emmy Award winners
- Television Hall of Fame inductees
- Hollywood Walk of Fame
- Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
- Kennedy Center Honors recipients
- People from Jamestown, New York
- Scottish-Americans
- Irish-Americans
- French Americans
- Deaths from cardiovascular disease
- Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
- 1911 births
- 1989 deaths