Lucille Ball

Profiled in "Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames" by Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner (McFarland, 2004).

Originally interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, CA, Columbarium of Radiant Dawn, Court of Remembrance. In 2003, she was re-interred in the Ball family plot in Lake View Cemetery, Jamestown, NY.

Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.

Pictured on a 34¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued 6 August 2001. In 2009, she and Vivian Vance (as Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz in a scene from I Love Lucy: Job Switching (1952)) were pictured on a 44¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Early Television Memories issue, which was issued 11 August 2009.

Profiled in by Stephen M. Silverman's 1999 book "Funny Ladies: 100 Years of Great Comediannes".

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. pg. 35-37. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387.

Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award posthumously in 1990.

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.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 63-66. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

During a Barbara Walters interview, Jane Fonda stated that that her father, Henry Fonda, was deeply in love with Ball and that the two were "very close" during the filming of Yours, Mine and Ours (1968).

In July 1967 she sold Desilu Productions, consisting of 36 sound stages, 2000 employees and 62 acres adjacent to Paramount, to Gulf+Western Industries for $17 million. She received $10 million in Gulf+Western stock for her 60% of Desilu, the remaining $7 million being distributed to 3878 stockholders. In 1968, after the sale of Desilu, she was reported to be the richest woman in television, having earned an estimated $30 million.

In 1966 it was reported in an annual stockholder's meeting that her salary as President of Desilu Productions (1962-67) was $100,000. Her acting fees for 1966 were $130,172.

Was Frank Sinatra's first choice for the role of Laurence Harvey's mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He was only dissuaded when John Frankenheimer took him to see Angela Lansbury in a play.

On March 3, 1960, Ball filed for a divorce from husband Desi Arnaz, the day following the last day of filming The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957). The couple divided their $20-million television empire equally, each retaining 25% Desilu stock (282,800 shares), she got the homes in Beverly Hills and Rancho Mirage, and Desi got the beach house in Del Mar, California and the horse ranch in Corona. In addition, they agreed to joint custody of their children, for which she received $450/month child support. In 1962, she purchased Desi Arnaz's holdings in Desilu holdings for $3 million, as he wanted to retire to his horse ranch and lead a more stress-free life.

In 1958 in order to raise funds for their various investments, she and Desi Arnaz took Desilu public on the NYSE at $10 per share. They each retained 25% of the company, with each selling 25%. She took her $2.5-million windfall, paid $600,000 in capital gains taxes and, always frugal, invested the remainder in bonds and securities.

In Italy, her films were often dubbed by Lydia Simoneschi or Wanda Tettoni, notably in the hilarious The Long, Long Trailer (1954). She was occasionally dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta, Dhia Cristiani, Rina Morelli and Renata Marini (in Stage Door (1937)).

Ball and her son, Desi Arnaz Jr., appeared together on the very first cover of "TV Guide" magazine in 1953.

Offered the role of Angel in Greatest Show On Earth (1952), she was forced to turn it down due to pregnancy. Gloria Grahame was later cast instead.

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 Desiree Ball was the first woman to own her own studio as the head of Desilu Productions.

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.

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.

Ball and Desi Arnaz were married a second time in 1946 in a church because his mother believed that the couple could not have children because had not been married in the Catholic Church. (She suffered three miscarriages with husband Desi Arnaz, in 1942, 1949, and 1950.) Their first marriage ceremony, in 1940, was at the Byram River Beagle Club in Connecticut. She filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz in the 1940s but didn't go through with it because they reconciled.

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).

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.

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).

A comment from a member of the preview audience of Follow the Fleet (1936) about bit-player Ball: "You might give the tall gum-chewing blonde more parts and see if she can't make the grade--a good gamble".

She was put under contract to RKO Radio Pictures and several small roles, including one in Top Hat (1935), followed.

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).

The children of a telephone lineman, Henry Durrell Ball (who died in 1915 from typhoid fever), and Désirée Hunt, Lucy and Fred Ball were of Irish, Scottish, French, and English descent. She was proud of her family and heritage. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies. One direct ancestor, William Sprague (1609-75), left England on the ship "Lyon's Whelp" for Plymouth/Salem (Massachusetts). They were from Upwey, Dorsetshire, England. William, along with his two brothers, helped to found the city of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Other Sprague relatives became soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and two became governors of the state of Rhode Island.

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. 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".

Once registered as a voter for the Communist party as a favor to her grandfather Frederick Charles Hunt (July 24, 1865-January 9, 1944).