Lucille Ball

Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American actress and comedienne.

She was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning five times, and was the recipient of several other accolades, such as the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She earned many honors, including the Women in Film Crystal Award, an induction into the Television Hall of Fame, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Lucille Désirée Ball was born on August 6, 1911, at 69 Stewart Avenue in Jamestown, New York, the first child and only daughter of Henry Durrell "Had" Ball, a lineman for Bell Telephone, and Désirée Evelyn "DeDe" (née Hunt) Ball.

Her family belonged to the Baptist church.

Her ancestors were mostly English, but a few were Scottish, French, and Irish.

Some were among the earliest settlers in the Thirteen Colonies, including Elder John Crandall of Westerly, Rhode Island, and Edmund Rice, an early emigrant from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Her father's Bell Telephone career frequently required the family to move during Lucy's early childhood.

The first was to Anaconda, Montana, and later to Trenton, New Jersey.

On February 28, 1915, while living in Wyandotte, Michigan, Lucy's father died of typhoid fever at age 27 when Lucy was only three.

At that time, DeDe was pregnant with her second child, Fred Ball (1915–2007).

Lucille recalled little from the day her father died, except a bird getting trapped in the house, which caused her lifelong ornithophobia.

Ball's mother returned to New York, where maternal grandparents helped raise Lucy and her brother Fred in Celoron, a summer resort village on Chautauqua Lake.

Ball's career began in 1929 when she landed work as a model.

Shortly thereafter, she began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name Diane (or Dianne) Belmont.

She later appeared in films in the 1930s and 1940s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, being cast as a chorus girl or in similar roles, with lead roles in B-pictures and supporting roles in A-pictures.

During this time, she met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, and they eloped in November 1940.

In the 1950s, Ball ventured into television, where she and Arnaz created the sitcom I Love Lucy.

She gave birth to their first child, Lucie, in 1951, followed by Desi Arnaz Jr.. in 1953.

Their home was at 59 West 8th Street (later renamed to 59 Lucy Lane).

Also living in the house were Ball's aunt and uncle, Lola and George Mandicos, and their daughter, Lucy's first cousin Cleo.

Having grown up with Lucy, Cleo would later work as a producer on several of Lucy's radio and television programs, and Lucy also introduced Cleo to her second husband, the Los Angeles Times critic Cecil Smith.

Ball loved Celoron Park, a popular amusement area at the time.

Its boardwalk had a ramp to the lake that served as a children's slide, the Pier Ballroom, a roller-coaster, a bandstand, and a stage where vaudeville concerts and plays were presented.

Four years after Henry Ball's death, DeDe married Edward Peterson.

While they looked for work in another city, Peterson's parents cared for Lucy and Fred.

Ball's step-grandparents were a puritanical Swedish couple who banished all mirrors from the house except one over the bathroom sink.

When Lucy was caught admiring herself in it, she was severely chastised for being vain.

She later said that this period of time affected her so deeply, it lasted seven or eight years.

When Lucy was 12, her stepfather encouraged her to audition for his Shriners organization that needed entertainers for the chorus line of its next show.

While Ball was onstage, she realized performing was a great way to gain praise.

They divorced in March 1960, and she married comedian Gary Morton in 1961.

Ball produced and starred in the Broadway musical Wildcat from 1960 to 1961.

In 1962, she became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced many popular television series, including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.

After Wildcat, she reunited with I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance for The Lucy Show, which Vance left in 1965.

The show continued, with Ball's longtime friend and series regular Gale Gordon, until 1968.

Ball immediately began appearing in a new series, Here's Lucy, with Gordon, frequent show guest Mary Jane Croft, and Lucie and Desi Jr.; this program ran until 1974.

Ball did not retire from acting completely, and in 1985 she took on a dramatic role in the television film Stone Pillow.

The next year she starred in Life with Lucy, which, unlike her other sitcoms, was not well-received; it was canceled after three months.

She did not appear in film or television roles for the rest of her career and died in 1989 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm and arteriosclerotic heart disease at the age of 77.