Biography

Lucille Ball

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Overview

Born
August 6, 1911 · Jamestown, New York, USA
Died
April 26, 1989 · Beverly Hills, California, USA (acute aortic aneurysm)
Birth name
Lucille Désirée Ball
Nicknames
- Technicolor Tessie
- Queen of the B movies
- The First Lady of Television
- Lucy
- The Queen of Comedy
- Diane Belmont
Height
5′ 7½″ (1.71 m)

Mini bio

The woman who will always be remembered as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Desiree Evelyn "DeDe" (Hunt) and Henry Durrell "Had" Ball. Her father died before she was four, and her mother worked several jobs, so she and her younger brother were raised by their grandparents. Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and young cousins, she was a restless teenager who yearned to "make some noise". She entered a dramatic school in New York City, but while her classmate Bette Davis received all the raves, she was sent home; "too shy". She found some work modeling for Hattie Carnegie's and, in 1933, she was chosen to be a "Goldwyn Girl" and appear in the film Roman Scandals (1933).

She was put under contract to RKO Radio Pictures and several small roles, including one in Top Hat (1935), followed. Eventually, she received starring roles in B-pictures and, occasionally, a good role in an A-picture, like in Stage Door (1937) or The Big Street (1942). While filming Too Many Girls (1940), she met and fell madly in love with a young Cuban actor-musician named Desi Arnaz. Despite different personalities, lifestyles, religions and ages (he was six years younger), he fell hard, too, and after a passionate romance, they eloped and were married in November 1940. Lucy soon switched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she got better roles in films such as Du Barry Was a Lady (1943); Best Foot Forward (1943) and the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Without Love (1945). In 1948, she took a starring role in the radio comedy "My Favorite Husband", in which she played the scatterbrained wife of a Midwestern banker. In 1950, CBS came knocking with the offer of turning it into a television series. After convincing the network brass to let Desi play her husband and to sign over the rights to and creative control over the series to them, work began on the most popular and universally beloved sitcom of all time.

With I Love Lucy (1951), she and Desi promoted the 3-camera technique now the standard in filming sitcoms using 35mm film (the earliest known example of the 3-camera technique is the first Russian feature film, "Defence of Sevastopol" in 1911). Desi syndicated I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball was the first woman to own her own studio as the head of Desilu Productions.

Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, age 77, of an acute aortic aneurysm on April 26, 1989 in Los Angeles, CA.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tommy Peter

Family

Spouses
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Curly red hair and blue eyes
Famous for her fake wailing when something bad happens to her
Her trademark 'spider face' when something goes wrong for her, accompanied by an "eugh" sound.
Gift for physical comedy

Trivia

When they were married in 1940, Desi Arnaz had to give her a cheap ring from a drugstore because all the jewelry stores were closed. She wore it for the rest of their marriage.
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.
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".
Died the morning of April 26, 1989, the 56th birthday of her friend Carol Burnett. That afternoon Burnett received the flowers that Ball had ordered for her birthday.
The original Desilu was Ball and Arnaz's ranch in Chatsworth, California. They used the same method of naming it that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had done when they named their estate "Pickfair".

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.