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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 comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, glamour girl and star of the landmark sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy. Lucille Ball was one of America's favorite stars and had one of Hollywood's longest careers. She was a movie star from the 1930s to the 1970s, and appeared on television for more than 30 years. She received 13 Emmy Award nominations and had four wins. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Governors Award in 1989.
Biography
Early life and career
Main article: Lucille Ball filmography and television workLucille 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. Her family were Baptist; her father was of Scottish descent, whose mother was Mary Ball. Her mother was of French, Irish and English descent. 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. Originally from Upwey, Dorset, England, William and his two brothers 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 Bell Telephone who'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 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 1927, Ball dated a gangsters son by the name of (Johnny DeVita). Because of this relationship, her mother decided to ship Ball off to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City. There, Ball attended with fellow actress, Bette Davis. Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer".
Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong and returned to New York City in 1929. She landed work as a fashion model. Her career was thriving, when she became ill with rheumatoid arthritis and could not work for two years. 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 state that this was the film that first got her recognition. Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those 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". Like many budding starlets Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In October of 1938 Ball joined the cast of the Wonder Show staring future Wizard of Oz tin man Jack Haley. It was on this show that she began her 50 year professional relationship with Gale Gordon who served as the show's announcer. The Wonder show only lasted one season with the final episode airing in April 7, 1939.
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 apart in age 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, both claiming a 1914 birth date.
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. 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 I Love Lucy 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 aired live from New York City studios to Eastern and Central Time Zone audiences, and captured by kinescope for broadcast later to the West Coast. The kinescope picture was inferior to film, and as a result the West Coast broadcasts were inferior to those seen elsewhere in the country. Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but the time zone logistics made that broadcast norm impossible. Prime time in L.A. was too late at night on the East Coast to air a major network series, meaning the majority of the TV audience would be seeing not only the inferior picture of kinescopes but seeing them at least a day later.
Sponsor Philip Morris did not want to show day-old kinescopes to the major markets on the East Coast, yet neither did they want to pay for the extra cost filming, processing and editing would require, pressuring Ball and Arnaz to relocate to New York City. Ball and Arnaz offered to take a pay cut to finance filming, on the condition that their company, Desilu, would retain the rights to that film once it was aired. CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after initial 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. In fact, while other celebrated shows of the period exist only in incomplete sets of kinescopes too degraded to show to subsequent generations of television viewers, I Love Lucy has virtually never gone out of syndication since it began, seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world over the past half century. The success of Ball and Arnaz's gamble was instrumental in drawing television production from New York to Hollywood for the next several decades.
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. 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).
Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Our Miss Brooks (starring Ball's 1937 Stage Door co-star Eve Arden), 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.
Testimony Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
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). 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.
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. 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.. However, until his death in 1986, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke very fondly of each other. Indeed, both Arnaz and Ball spoke lovingly of each other after the breakup. However, her real-life divorce indirectly found its way into her later television series, in that she was always cast as a single woman.
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 thirteen years her junior. That marked the beginning of a 30-year friendship between Lucy and Paula. 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
The 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat was 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. 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 after 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 05:17 PST, 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. On July 6, 1989, Lucille Ball was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush. In 1990, she was posthumously awarded the Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award. In 2002, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. The Little Theatre in Jamestown, New York was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in 1991. In 2000, Lucille Ball was among Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century. 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. 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. 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.In 2007, she was posthumously awarded the Legacy of Laughter award at the 5th Annual TV Land Awards. and I Love Lucy was named the Greatest TV Series by Hall of Fame Magazine. In November 2007, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the 50 Greatest TV Icons, after Johnny Carson. However in a poll done by the public they chose her as the greatest icon.
Radio appearances
- The Phil Baker Show (1937–1938)
- My Favorite Husband (1948–1951)
References
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Lucille Ball is one of the worlds favorite actresses
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Ball wins four Emmy's and nominated for a total of 13
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Lucille Ball awards
- "Kennedy Center: Biographical information for Lucille Ball". Kennedy Center. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Ball honored at the Kennedy Center
- "Time Life". Time. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Lucille Ball's relatives
- Ball of Fire by Stefan Kanfer, Random House, Inc., 2003, pg. 10 ISBN 0-375-41315-4
- Lucille Ball. Love, Lucy. ISBN 0425177319
- "Lucille Ball - Biography". imdb. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Ball heritage
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Henry Ball workes for Bell Telephone
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Ball's mother and father
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Lucille raised by her mother
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Ball's grandfather
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Ball dates Johnny DeVile and moves to NY to attend school
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Lucille Ball and Bette Davis attend School for Dramatic Arts together
- ^ "Lucille Ball Biography, Bio, Profile, pictures, photos from Netglimse.com". Netglimpse.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball stricken with arthritis
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Ball returns to NY in 1932
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Lucille Ball's stage name
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Ball was released from "Stepping Stones"
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Ball and Rogers are lifelong friends
- "The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Google Book Search". Books.Google.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
"Stage Door" gives Ball her big break
- "Biography: Lucille Ball - Celebrity Biographies - Helium - by James Harvey". helium.com. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Lucille Ball and Fay Wray listed as Queens of the B rated movies
- The Wonder Show Episode 3 Full stream of October 28 1938 episode of the Wonder Show Retrived on 03-1-2008
- ""The Wonder Show" - 1938 Radio Series - Starring Jack Haley, with Lucille Ball & Gale Gordon". The Wonder Show. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
Lucy and The Wonder Show
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(help) - ^ "Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz - Dating, Gossip, News, Photos". whosdatedwho.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Arnaz's indescretion with other women
Cite error: The named reference "titleLucille Ball and Desi Arnaz - Dating, Gossip, News, Photos" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). - "Lucille Ball biography". Essortment.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball and Arnaz patch things up before divorce became final
- "Lucille Ball: Biography and Much More from Answers.com". US Census Bureau. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Discrepency in birthdates
- "I Love Lucy, Ricky, Ethel, Fred & Little Ricky Too! / Series Information". Geocities. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
CBS did not want Arnaz
- "Lucille Ball Collection". Lucille BAll Collection. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball tries to save marriage with "I Love Lucy" series
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Ball first woman to head a major studio
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Arnaz revolutionizes television
{{cite web}}
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Arnaz did not want kinescope
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I Love Lucy was the first show to introduce reruns
- "Stars of the living room - HOLLYWOOD". Los Angeles Timesformat=. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Arnaz and Ball bring tv show to Los Angeles
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: Text "TV MILESTONES - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com" ignored (help) - "The Great Clowns of American Television - Google Book Search". Google Books. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Desilu hires legends to help with series
- "5000 Episodes and No Commercials ... - Google Book Search". Google book search. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Longest laugh in television history
- "Desilu Studios [us]". IMDb. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Shows Desilu Studios produced
- http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/balllucille/balllucille.htm Museum.tv Retrieved on 05-10-07
- "Lucie Arnaz Filmography". Fandango. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball suffers several miscarriages
- ^ "Lucille Ball Timeline and Biography". twoop.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball gives birth to her children
- ] . teletronics.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
The word "pregnant" replaces with "expecting"
{{cite web}}
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at position 28 (help) - "I Love Lucy: Lucy is Enceinte - TV.com". TV.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball's pregnancy episode
- "Biography of Lucille Ball, famous TV clown". Clown Ministries. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball makes cover of TV Guide with pregnancy episode
- ^ "Lucille Ball's grave". Hollywoodusa.com. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Lucy Jr. speaks of her mothers controlling nature
Cite error: The named reference "titleLucille Balls grave" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). - Howard Johns (2006). Palm Springs Confidential: Playground of the Stars. New York: Barricade Books. ISBN 1-56980-297-1.Bio of Lucy
- "Desi Arnaz History". Desi History. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Arnaz' drinking problem
- Howard Johns: Hollywood Celebrity Playground, Barricade Books, Fort Lee, NJ (2006). ISBN-13: 9781569803035 ISBN 156980303X
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Ball and Arnaz remain friends after their divorce
- "Powell's Books - Review-a-Day - Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball by Stefan Kanfer, reviewed by The New Republic Online". Powell's Books. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball's real life divorce makes it into her new shows as showing her as a single woman
- ""Wildcat" - Original Broadway Cast". Geocities. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball does "Wildcat"
- "Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball ... - Google Book Search". Google Books. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Ball meets Gary Morton
- "Lucille Desiree Ball (1911 - 1989) - Find A Grave Memorial". Findagrave. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
Morton helps Ball in her television career
- "TV Land March 2007 --To Be Continued Free Fridays; Three's Company 30th Anniversary - Sitcoms Online Message Boards". TV Land. Retrieved 2008-04-06.
Ball hosts Three's Company reflective
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"Life With Lucy" tunrs out to be a flop
- Howard Johns: Hollywood Celebrity Playground, Barricade Books, Fort Lee, NJ (2006). ISBN-13: 9781569803035 ISBN 156980303X
- ""Designing Women" The Women of Atlanta (1989)". IMDb. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
Reference to Ball on Designing Women
- "Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Lucille Ball, "I Love Lucy"". Medal of Freedom. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
Ball given the Medal of Freedom
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(help) - "Welcome to Women's International Center". Women's International Center. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
Living Legacy Award
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(help) - "National Women's Hall of Fame". Great Women Organization. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
BAll inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
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(help) - "The Lucille Ball Little Theater of Jamestown, INC". Designsmiths. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
Renaming of the "Little Theater" in Jamestown, New York
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(help) - "TIME Magazine: TIME 100 - People of the Century". Time. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
BAll named one of Times 100 People of the Century
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(help) - "USPS - Stamp Release No. 01-057 - LEGENDARY HOLLYWOOD STAR LUCILLE BALL HONORED ON U.S. POSTAGE STAMP". US Post Office. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
Ball honored on a Postage Stamp
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(help) - "Lucille Ball - Photos, Bio and News for Lucille Ball". TV Guide. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
Lucy appears on 39 covers of TV guide
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(help); Text "TVGuide.com" ignored (help) - "TiVo Community Forums Archives - TV Guide's 50 Best Shows of All Time". TV Guide. Retrieved 2008-04-09.
TV Guides second most influential show of all time
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(help) - http://theenvelope.latimes.com/tv/la-env-tvland15apr15,0,2045170.story?coll=env-tv Theenvelope.latimes.com Retrieved on 05-10-07
- Associated Press (16 November 2007). "Carson tops list of 50 greatest TV icons". MSNBC. Retrieved 2008-03-19.
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 Find a Grave
- Please use a more specific IBDB template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Template:Tv.com person
- Lucille Ball at the Museum of Broadcast Communications
- New York Times obituary
- Lucille Ball biography on TVLand.com
Preceded byRed Skelton | Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award 1979 |
Succeeded byHenry Fonda |
{{subst:#if:Ball, Lucille|}} [[Category:{{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1911}}
|| UNKNOWN | MISSING = Year of birth missing {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1989}}||LIVING=(living people)}} | #default = 1911 births
}}]] {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1989}}
|| LIVING = | MISSING = | UNKNOWN = | #default =
}}
Categories:- Living people
- 1989 deaths
- American comedians
- American female models
- American female singers
- American film actors
- American Presbyterians
- American television actors
- American television producers
- Americans of English descent
- Americans of French descent
- Americans of Irish descent
- Americans of Scottish descent
- Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
- Deaths from cardiovascular disease
- Dropouts
- Emmy Award winners
- Hollywood Walk of Fame
- Kennedy Center honorees
- People from Jamestown, New York
- Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
- Women comedians