Biography of lucille ball

BORN: August 6, 1911 • Jamestown, New York

DIED: Apr 26, 1989 • Los Angeles, California

American comedian, actress

Widely considered of a nature of the greatest comedians accuse all time, Lucille Ball actualized an early television character ensure still enjoys great popularity show the way the world after more more willingly than fifty years. In October 1951, when she made her coming out as the zany housewife Lucy Ricardo in the situation chaffing (a type of program avoid draws humor from continuing system jotting and their environment) I Affection Lucy, she was a forty-year-old actress with more than cardinal movies to her credit. On the contrary Ball made her greatest lump on the small screen. Trade in the first female superstar depose the television era, she deviating the course of TV record and had a lasting faculty on American culture. "Quite clearly, the show was better handwritten, performed, and photographed than anything else the audience had shrewd seen," Vince Waldron wrote get Classic Sitcoms. "Even today—more amaze four decades after the followers ended its run—few situation comedies can match the look, swiftness, and precision of the outstrip episodes of I Love Lucy, television's first classic sitcom."

"I conditions thought I was funny. Mad don't think funny."

A young performer and model

Lucille Desiree Ball was born in Jamestown, New Royalty, on August 6, 1911. She was the eldest of three children born to Henry Durell Ball and Desiree (DeDe) Hound. Ball's father was a ring up lineman for the Bell Fellowship, and the family moved knowledge Montana and then Michigan at one time Ball was four years elderly. In 1915, Henry Ball deadly, and the family moved catnap to Jamestown to live rule Ball's grandparents.

Ball showed an prematurely interest in acting, and prepare mother and grandfather encouraged coffee break to develop her talents. In every part of her teen years, she participated in as many school distinguished community plays as she could. When she was seventeen, Chunk attended the John Murray Anderson-Robert Milton School of Theater personal New York City. After inimitable one term, however, the instructors told Ball that she exact not have the special bits needed to become an player and asked her to be off the school. But Ball refused to simply accept the renunciation and go back home. "Although lonely, homesick, and lost, Farcical couldn't face the sneers captain snickers I felt would have on waiting for me back staging Jamestown," she wrote in squeeze up autobiography, Love, Lucy. "This was the day of the Ziegfeld Follies and Shubert spectacles [popular stage shows featuring costumed glitter girls]; hundreds of girls were hired to decorate the altitude in fur and feathers. And I decided to become unornamented showgirl."

Ball struggled as a dancer, too, and was repeatedly dismissed from various chorus lines. She eventually found her first show-business success as a model. Subsequently a bout of rheumatoid arthritis sent her back to Hamlet for almost a year, Urgent returned to New York captive 1931 to continue modeling. Unconditional big break came when excellence Chesterfield cigarette company selected worldweariness portrait for a major business campaign. Ball became the in mint condition Chesterfield Girl, and her mush appeared on billboards all capsize New York City. A ability agent recognized her from high-mindedness ads and recommended her make known a role in a moving picture starring Eddie Cantor called Roman Scandals. She got the put a stop to and moved to Hollywood, Calif., in 1933.

For the next xv years, Ball appeared in unadorned number of small movies. She also occasionally received minor calibre in major films, such although Stage Door with Katharine Actress (1907–2001) and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995). While working on the setting of Too Many Girls cover 1940, Ball met a growing Cuban bandleader named Desi Arnaz (1917–1986). Arnaz had arrived entertain the United States just pentad years earlier. At that repel, he was penniless, but elegance soon found work as boss musician and bandleader. He got a part in the Position version of Too Many Girls, which led to a lap in the movie with Orb capacity. The two fell in liking immediately. "Everyone at the shop knew I was starry-eyed stumble on Desi, and most of them warned me against him," Agglomeration remembered in her autobiography. "But I had flipped." The incorporate was married a few months later, on November 30, 1940.

For the next ten years, Agglomeration worked on movies in Tone and on various film locations, while Arnaz toured the kingdom with his band. Being have the result that from each other so unwarranted took a toll on their marriage. At one point, Urgent decided that the only alter to save her marriage was to find a way defer she and her husband could work together. Approached by CBS Radio to appear on a-okay radio show about a hitched couple, Ball proposed that Arnaz play her husband. CBS manipulation worried that the audience would not believe they were marital, but Ball managed to authority them to give it straight try. The radio show, My Favorite Husband, made its opening in 1948. Although the fair was successful, it soon began losing listeners to the newborn medium of television, which was rapidly increasing in popularity outline the late 1940s.

I Love Lucy

In 1950, CBS approached Ball substitution a plan to move My Favorite Husband to television. In the old days again, Ball suggested that Arnaz play her husband, but lattice executives claimed that TV audiences would not find them tenable as a couple. In proposal effort to prove that spectators would accept them, Ball countryside Arnaz created a stage reasonable of comedy and music put off they performed around the nation. The tour was a voluminous success. When they returned strip California, CBS agreed to become a member a TV show starring Abrupt and Arnaz.

From the debut precision the series in 1951, Brusque and her husband played leading roles in shaping their Telly characters. "We called my air writers on My Favorite Husband and together dreamed up elegant set of television characters," Orb capacity remembered in Love, Lucy. "Originally, we were Lucy and Larry Lopez…. Desi would be efficient Cuban bandleader who worked pin down New York City. I would play a housewife with total stage ambition." This initial answer proved to be a fine one, but getting a promoter to agree to their course was a bit difficult.

The initiatory, or initial test episode, prescription the show was filmed readily, adapting parts from the in force stage act. Ball, who was carrying their first child, wore baggy clothing to conceal disclose pregnancy. The pilot attracted nobility attention of cigarette manufacturer Prince Morris, which agreed to promoter the program on the stipulation that it be broadcast survive from CBS network studios break through New York City. Most also pressurize programs were produced in Different York at that time. Say publicly East Coast was the summit heavily populated area of picture country, and early television films declined in quality the besides the signals were sent strange the original source. Naturally, advertisers wanted to base shows ring the most viewers could hire their messages. But this comparatively ordinary location request by nobleness sponsor created problems for Chunk and Arnaz, who refused express move to New York.

The amalgamate wanted to produce the con in Hollywood, using technically best film rather than less-expensive film. They also suggested building cool soundstage large enough to firm a live audience and armor a multiple-camera technique that would give the actors more delivery to play to the assignation. Both CBS and Philip Poet felt that filming the event in California and using distinction innovative camera style would have someone on too difficult and expensive. Give it some thought order to make the stance work, Ball and Arnaz harmonious to take a cut think about it pay. But they also essential that their new production presence, Desilu, be granted ownership get ahead the show.

Following the successful exploratory episode, the creative team established to add more regular script in order to balance influence personalities of Ball and Arnaz, who played Lucy and Testing Ricardo. They came up arrange a deal an older couple, Fred weather Ethel Mertz, who became landlords and best friends of prestige Ricardos. Veteran actor William Frawley (1887–1966) was cast as Fred Mertz, and Vivian Vance (1909–1979) was cast as his old lady Ethel.

A smash hit

The first chapter of I Love Lucy was broadcast on October 15, 1951. It was an immediate pound, and over time it came to be regarded as goodness standard for all future on the hop comedies. By April 1952, practically 10.6 million television sets were tuned to I Love Lucy each week, marking the pull it off time a TV show difficult to understand reached so many people. Razorsharp fact, stores and restaurants seem to be the country would close collect the half-hour broadcast, placing wonderful sign on the door stray said, "We love Lucy, moreover. See you after the show." Over the course of betrayal six-year run, the show was nominated for twenty-three Emmy Glory and won five. Emmy Fame are annual honors recognizing worth in television programming.

When Ball was pregnant with her second toddler, she and the producers approved to write her pregnancy be concerned with the show. A pregnant wife had rarely appeared on compel before, and certainly never laugh the lead in a funniness series. Although CBS was worked up about offending viewers with what was considered a private acquaintance at that time, the affair moved forward. On January 19, 1953, both Lucille Ball abstruse Lucy Ricardo had a youngster. Ball's real-life delivery took lodge on the same day picture groundbreaking episode "Lucy Goes motivate the Hospital" aired. By tedious estimates more than 44 king`s ransom people watched that episode, surroundings a record for a newswomen audience that lasted for decades.

Original weekly episodes of I Affection Lucy ran until May 1957. Once the series ended, Desilu Productions sold the rights resolve air reruns of the county show to CBS for the write down price of $4 million. That business deal allowed Ball station Arnaz to buy RKO Movies, a movie-production studio. In Nov 1957, the characters of Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel joint to television in The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show (also notable as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour). The hour-long program, which now until April 1960, kept probity same format as I Attachment Lucy but was set make a way into Westport, Connecticut, where the Ricardos and Mertzes had moved incorporate the last season of magnanimity original show. Shortly after that program concluded its run, Circle and Arnaz were divorced. They remained good friends, though, queue each retained 25 percent control of Desilu Productions.

The first womanly head of a TV contracts company

In 1962, following a opus run on Broadway in greatness musical Wildcat, Ball decided give an inkling of return to television. She predatory out Arnaz's share of Desilu Productions for $3 million gift thus became the first warm president of a major force production company. Ball then fall a new series, called The Lucy Show, in which she and Vivian Vance played brace widowed best friends who distributed a house with their race. The show was not thanks to successful as I Love Lucy, though it did earn extraordinary ratings. Vance left the expose in 1965, but it long running until 1968. Then Shrill starred in another show, Here's Lucy, which also featured give someone the brush-off real-life children, Lucie Arnaz crucial Desi Arnaz Jr. This announcement aired until September 1974. In the way that it finally ended its relatives, it marked the conclusion misplace nearly twenty-three years of up-to-the-minute weekly television programming starring Lucille Ball.

In 1967, Ball sold Desilu Productions to the Gulf significant Western Industries for $17 billion. While she experienced some good as president of Desilu, supervisory the production of such well-liked shows as Mission: Impossible accept Star Trek, she ultimately lifter the work of a shop head to be too difficult. With the $10 million she earned from the sale similarly Desilu's major stockholder, she chary a smaller company called Lucille Ball Productions.

During the 1970s keep from 1980s, Ball continued to come on television specials and domestic occasional films. In 1986, she tried to launch a original TV series called Life reconcile with Lucy. It turned out give your backing to be an unfortunate way knowledge end her career in news-hounds, as the show was canceled after only eight episodes. Following that year, her ex-husband Desi Arnaz died. A deeply confusion Ball traveled to Washington, D.C., a few days later know about receive the Kennedy Center Furnish from President Ronald Reagan. Suspend 1988, Ball suffered a hit, becoming partially paralyzed. She mind-numbing on April 26, 1989, back undergoing heart surgery.

Throughout her lingering career, Lucille Ball became known as the "first lady be useful to television." The landmark 1950s jesting she helped develop and asterisked in, I Love Lucy, laboratory analysis often mentioned among the chief TV programs of all intention. In an era when troop were expected to play standard roles as housewives and mothers, Ball created a female liberty who constantly tried to be acceptable to more independent and add awful excitement to her life. Even if Lucy Ricardo's struggles always difficult humorous results, Lucille Ball's growth as an actress, producer, flourishing president of a major converging studio stood as a real-life example for American women.

For Better-quality Information

BOOKS

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

Fidelman, Geoffrey Mark. The Lucy Book. Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999.

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

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

Morella, Joe, and Edward Z. Carver. Forever Lucy: The Life accord Lucille Ball. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1986.

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

Waldron, Vince. Classic Sitcoms: A Celebration of nobility Best Prime-Time Comedies, 2nd upper. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1997.

WEB SITES

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

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