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Lucille Ball

1911–1989 · 78 years Tier I

Told at 15 she had no future, and believed it for years

Portrait of Lucille Ball — CBS Television — 1955 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Henry Ball died of typhoid fever in February 1915, at 27, when his daughter was three, and the household that raised her afterward ran on her mother DeDe and a grandfather with opinions. In 1927 a court judgment took the family's house and furniture and moved them into a Jamestown apartment. She was 15 when she enrolled at a New York drama school whose instructors informed her, and her mother, that she had no future in the business. Rheumatic fever then cost her two working years. She came back as a model calling herself Diane Belmont, worked her way into a Broadway chorus, and in 1933 went west as an uncredited Goldwyn Girl. RKO kept her busy for a decade as the Queen of the Bs.

She met Desi Arnaz on the set of Too Many Girls in 1940 and eloped that November. When CBS wanted her radio hit My Favorite Husband moved to television, she agreed on one condition: her actual husband would play her husband. The network balked, so the two of them took a vaudeville act on the road until the box office settled the argument. I Love Lucy premiered October 15, 1951, shot on 35mm film before a live audience with three cameras running — a method chosen so the couple could stay in Los Angeles, and one that accidentally invented the rerun. Forty-four million people watched Lucy Ricardo have a baby on January 19, 1953. In 1957 CBS paid a million dollars for the negatives, and the Arnazes used it to buy RKO.

On September 4, 1953, she sat down with an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee and explained that she had registered to vote Communist in 1936 to please her grandfather and had never voted that way. It made the front pages. The show survived it. The marriage did not — she filed in March 1960 and the divorce was final on May 4. She bought out Arnaz's share of Desilu in 1962 and became the first woman to run a major television studio, where she kept Star Trek alive over the objections of her own board and put Mission: Impossible on the air. She found running a lot less agreeable than working on one, and sold the company to Gulf and Western in 1967 for 17 million dollars.

She made her last public appearance at the Academy Awards on March 29, 1989, came out with Bob Hope, and got an ovation that stopped the broadcast. Four weeks later she died at Cedars-Sinai of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. George H. W. Bush gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom that July, after the fact. What has moved since is which half of her gets credited. For decades she was simply the funniest woman on television. The other half is now taught in film schools — the three-camera format, the ownership of the negatives, the executive who greenlit Star Trek — and Jamestown, New York, has a national comedy museum built around her.

Lifespan

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Lucille Ball's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Desilu Productions company
Founded with Desi Arnaz — she bought him out in 1962 1950
I Love Lucy television
Six seasons, and the first hit sitcom shot on film before a live audience 1951
The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour television
The last work she and Arnaz made together 1957
The Lucy Show television
Her first series without Arnaz on screen 1962
Star Trek television
A Desilu production she kept alive over her own board 1966
Here's Lucy television
Six more seasons, with her own children in the cast 1968

Life in brief

with age at each point

February 28, 1915 aged 3 Her father dies of typhoid fever at 27 She was three years old.
1927 aged ~16 A court judgment costs the family their house and furniture
1933 aged ~22 Arrives in Hollywood as an uncredited Goldwyn Girl in Roman Scandals
November 30, 1940 aged 29 Elopes with Desi Arnaz to Greenwich, Connecticut
October 15, 1951 aged 40 I Love Lucy premieres on CBS
January 19, 1953 aged 41 Forty-four million people watch Lucy Ricardo give birth
September 4, 1953 aged 42 Questioned about a 1936 Communist voter registration She said she had done it for her grandfather. The audience came back the following week.
May 4, 1960 aged 48 Her divorce from Desi Arnaz is final
April 26, 1989 aged 77 Dies at Cedars-Sinai of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm Her last public appearance had been at the Academy Awards four weeks earlier.