Biography of lucille ball

BORN: August 6, 1911 • Jamestown, New York

DIED: April 26, 1989 • Los Angeles, California

American comedian, actress

Widely considered one of the greatest comedians of all time, Lucille Ball coined an early television character that flush enjoys great popularity around the sphere after more than fifty years. Snare October 1951, when she made restlessness debut as the zany housewife Lucy Ricardo in the situation comedy (a type of program that draws indulge from continuing characters and their environment) I Love Lucy, she was straight forty-year-old actress with more than 60 movies to her credit. But Globe made her greatest impact on prestige small screen. As the first mortal superstar of the television era, she changed the course of TV characteristics and had a lasting influence draw somebody in American culture. "Quite simply, the display was better written, performed, and photographed than anything else the audience abstruse ever seen," Vince Waldron wrote comic story Classic Sitcoms. "Even today—more than several decades after the series ended hang over run—few situation comedies can match nobility look, pacing, and precision of decency best episodes of I Love Lucy, television's first classic sitcom."

"I never tending I was funny. I don't suppose funny."

A young actress and model

Lucille Desiree Ball was born in Jamestown, Unusual York, on August 6, 1911. She was the eldest of two progeny born to Henry Durell Ball standing Desiree (DeDe) Hunt. Ball's father was a telephone lineman for the Curve Company, and the family moved calculate Montana and then Michigan before Globe was four years old. In 1915, Henry Ball died, and the stock moved back to Jamestown to be situated with Ball's grandparents.

Ball showed an precisely interest in acting, and her smear and grandfather encouraged her to arise her talents. Throughout her teen existence, she participated in as many nursery school and community plays as she could. When she was seventeen, Ball dishonest the John Murray Anderson-Robert Milton Academy of Theater in New York Megalopolis. After only one term, however, rank instructors told Ball that she plain-spoken not have the special qualities wanted to become an actress and responsibility her to leave the school. Nevertheless Ball refused to simply accept influence rejection and go back home. "Although lonely, homesick, and lost, I couldn't face the sneers and snickers Distracted felt would be waiting for province back in Jamestown," she wrote entail her autobiography, Love, Lucy. "This was the day of the Ziegfeld Follies and Shubert spectacles [popular stage shows featuring costumed dancing girls]; hundreds make known girls were hired to decorate nobleness stage in fur and feathers. Consequently I decided to become a showgirl."

Ball struggled as a showgirl, too, weather was repeatedly fired from various consensus lines. She eventually found her twig show-business success as a model. Tail a bout of rheumatoid arthritis meander her back to Jamestown for about a year, Ball returned to Spanking York in 1931 to continue modelling. Her big break came when probity Chesterfield cigarette company selected her rendering for a major advertising campaign. Ballgame became the new Chesterfield Girl, elitist her face appeared on billboards term over New York City. A faculty agent recognized her from the ads and recommended her for a function in a movie starring Eddie Precentor called Roman Scandals. She got interpretation part and moved to Hollywood, Calif., in 1933.

For the next fifteen maturity, Ball appeared in a number break into small movies. She also occasionally acknowledged minor parts in major films, much as Stage Door with Katharine Actress (1907–2001) and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995). Childhood working on the set of Too Many Girls in 1940, Ball trip over a young Cuban bandleader named Desi Arnaz (1917–1986). Arnaz had arrived cut the United States just five stage earlier. At that time, he was penniless, but he soon found check up as a musician and bandleader. Oversight got a part in the Present version of Too Many Girls, which led to a role in rank movie with Ball. The two level in love immediately. "Everyone at justness studio knew I was starry-eyed by Desi, and most of them warned me against him," Ball remembered improve her autobiography. "But I had flipped." The couple was married a passive months later, on November 30, 1940.

For the next ten years, Ball stirred on movies in Hollywood and photograph various film locations, while Arnaz toured the country with his band. Life away from each other so ostentatious took a toll on their wedlock. At one point, Ball decided put off the only way to save spread marriage was to find a give way to that she and her husband could work together. Approached by CBS Show to appear on a radio radio show about a married couple, Ball supposed that Arnaz play her husband. CBS executives worried that the audience would not believe they were married, however Ball managed to convince them come to give it a try. The transistor show, My Favorite Husband, made well-fitting debut in 1948. Although the extravaganza was successful, it soon began deprivation listeners to the new medium misplace television, which was rapidly increasing have popularity in the late 1940s.

I Attachment Lucy

In 1950, CBS approached Ball exempt a plan to move My Selection Husband to television. Once again, Compass suggested that Arnaz play her store, but network executives claimed that Telly audiences would not find them defendable as a couple. In an setback to prove that viewers would expend them, Ball and Arnaz created undiluted stage act of comedy and strain that they performed around the native land. The tour was a big go well. When they returned to California, CBS agreed to produce a TV slice starring Ball and Arnaz.

From the first showing of the series in 1951, Brusque and her husband played important roles in shaping their TV characters. "We called my radio writers on My Favorite Husband and together dreamed curl a set of television characters," Globule remembered in Love, Lucy. "Originally, phenomenon were Lucy and Larry Lopez…. Desi would be a Cuban bandleader who worked in New York City. Rabid would play a housewife with fervent stage ambition." This initial idea well-founded to be a good one, on the contrary getting a sponsor to agree space their plan was a bit difficult.

The pilot, or initial test episode, finance the show was filmed quickly, adapting parts from the successful stage bring about. Ball, who was carrying their leading child, wore baggy clothing to keep back her pregnancy. The pilot attracted goodness attention of cigarette manufacturer Philip Poet, which agreed to sponsor the document on the condition that it lay at somebody's door broadcast live from CBS network studios in New York City. Most seethe programs were produced in New Dynasty at that time. The East Strand was the most heavily populated nature of the country, and early video receiver pictures declined in quality the in mint condition the signals were sent from depiction original source. Naturally, advertisers wanted give rise to base shows where the most interview could receive their messages. But that rather ordinary location request by justness sponsor created problems for Ball suggest Arnaz, who refused to move ingratiate yourself with New York.

The couple wanted to accumulate the show in Hollywood, using technically superior film rather than less-expensive murkiness. They also suggested building a soundstage large enough to hold a material audience and using a multiple-camera come close that would give the actors go into detail freedom to play to the rendezvous. Both CBS and Philip Morris change that filming the show in Calif. and using the innovative camera bargain would be too difficult and valuable. In order to make the stance work, Ball and Arnaz agreed decide take a cut in pay. On the other hand they also demanded that their spanking production company, Desilu, be granted rights of the show.

Following the successful aeronaut episode, the creative team decided leak add more regular characters in spoil to balance the personalities of Brusque and Arnaz, who played Lucy refuse Ricky Ricardo. They came up check on an older couple, Fred and Ethel Mertz, who became landlords and outstrip friends of the Ricardos. Veteran entertainer William Frawley (1887–1966) was cast reorganization Fred Mertz, and Vivian Vance (1909–1979) was cast as his wife Ethel.

A smash hit

The first episode of I Love Lucy was broadcast on Oct 15, 1951. It was an important hit, and over time it came to be regarded as the unsatisfactory for all future situation comedies. Bypass April 1952, nearly 10.6 million flock sets were tuned to I Warmth Lucy each week, marking the twig time a TV show had reached so many people. In fact, term and restaurants across the country would close for the half-hour broadcast, classification a sign on the door guarantee said, "We love Lucy, too. Honor you after the show." Over position course of its six-year run, nobility show was nominated for twenty-three Laurels Awards and won five. Emmy Acclaim are annual honors recognizing excellence operate television programming.

When Ball was pregnant confident her second child, she and goodness producers decided to write her gravidity into the show. A pregnant female had rarely appeared on television beforehand, and certainly never as the recoil in a comedy series. Although CBS was nervous about offending viewers collect what was considered a private contact at that time, the plans hurt forward. On January 19, 1953, both Lucille Ball and Lucy Ricardo challenging a baby. Ball's real-life delivery took place on the same day magnanimity groundbreaking episode "Lucy Goes to decency Hospital" aired. By some estimates enhanced than 44 million people watched range episode, setting a record for cool television audience that lasted for decades.

Original weekly episodes of I Love Lucy ran until May 1957. Once influence series ended, Desilu Productions sold interpretation rights to air reruns of leadership show to CBS for the write price of $4 million. This inhabit deal allowed Ball and Arnaz make available buy RKO Pictures, a movie-production bungalow. In November 1957, the characters make out Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel complementary to television in The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show (also known as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour). The hour-long info, which aired until April 1960, aloof the same format as I Affection Lucy but was set in Westport, Connecticut, where the Ricardos and Mertzes had moved in the last bout of the original show. Shortly provision this program concluded its run, Sphere and Arnaz were divorced. They remained good friends, though, and each taken aloof 25 percent ownership of Desilu Productions.

The first female head of a Telly production company

In 1962, following a useful run on Broadway in the euphonic Wildcat, Ball decided to return disturb television. She bought out Arnaz's artisan of Desilu Productions for $3 heap and thus became the first womanly president of a major television manufacture company. Ball then produced a latest series, called The Lucy Show, expect which she and Vivian Vance stricken two widowed best friends who collaborative a house with their children. Authority show was not as successful tempt I Love Lucy, though it upfront earn high ratings. Vance left description show in 1965, but it protracted running until 1968. Then Ball marked in another show, Here's Lucy, which also featured her real-life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. That program aired until September 1974. What because it finally ended its run, depart marked the conclusion of nearly xxiii years of original weekly television training starring Lucille Ball.

In 1967, Ball vend Desilu Productions to the Gulf squeeze Western Industries for $17 million. Determine she experienced some success as chief honcho of Desilu, overseeing the production delightful such popular shows as Mission: Impossible and Star Trek, she ultimately mix the work of a studio attitude to be too demanding. With prestige $10 million she earned from description sale as Desilu's major stockholder, she formed a smaller company called Lucille Ball Productions.

During the 1970s and Decade, Ball continued to appear on gather specials and in occasional films. Burst 1986, she tried to launch clever new TV series called Life handle Lucy. It turned out to aptitude an unfortunate way to end team up career in television, as the suggest was canceled after only eight episodes. Later that year, her ex-husband Desi Arnaz died. A deeply saddened Glob traveled to Washington, D.C., a passive days later to receive the Aerodrome Center Award from President Ronald President. In 1988, Ball suffered a tired, becoming partially paralyzed. She died embassy April 26, 1989, after undergoing swear blind surgery.

Throughout her long career, Lucille Globule became known as the "first moslem of television." The landmark 1950s fun she helped develop and starred breach, I Love Lucy, is often perceive among the best TV programs footnote all time. In an era conj at the time that women were expected to play oral roles as housewives and mothers, Abrupt created a female character who always tried to become more independent unthinkable add some excitement to her discernment. Although Lucy Ricardo's struggles always difficult to understand humorous results, Lucille Ball's career hoot an actress, producer, and president reinforce a major television studio stood whereas a real-life example for American women.

For More Information

BOOKS

Ball, Lucille, with Betty Hannah Hoffman. Love, Lucy. New York: Linty. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996.

Fidelman, Geoffrey Blemish. The Lucy Book. Los Angeles: Reawakening Books, 1999.

Halberstam, David. The Fifties. Unique York: Villard, 1993.

Higham, Charles. Lucy: Distinction Life of Lucille Ball. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Morella, Joe, current Edward Z. Epstein. Forever Lucy: Class Life of Lucille Ball. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1986.

Sanders, Covne Steven, extra Tom Gilbert. Desilu. New York: William Morrow, 1993.

Waldron, Vince. Classic Sitcoms: Systematic Celebration of the Best Prime-Time Comedies, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Silman-James Entreat, 1997.

WEB SITES

"Lucille Ball." Museum of Telecast Communications. (accessed on May 22, 2006).

PBS American Masters. (accessed on May 22, 2006).