Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Lucille Désirée Ball was an American actress, comedian, model, studio executive and producer. She was the star and producer of sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life with Lucy, as well as comedy television specials aired under the title The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Ball was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning four times. In 1960, she received two stars for her work in film and television on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

About Lucille Ball in brief

Summary Lucille BallLucille Désirée Ball was an American actress, comedian, model, studio executive and producer. She was the star and producer of sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life with Lucy, as well as comedy television specials aired under the title The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Ball was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning four times. In 1960, she received two stars for her work in film and television on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She died in April 1989 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm at the age of 77. Her father died from typhoid fever at 27 years old, when Ball was three. Her maternal grandparents helped raise her and her brother in Celoron, a village on Lake Chautauqua, 2 miles west of downtown Jamestown, New York. Her mother was a vaudeville performer who presented regular theatrical shows and concerts. She married Edward Peterson four years after her mother’s death, and they had two children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced many popular television series, including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. In 1977, Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was also the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1984, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986, and the Governors Award from The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.

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. As part of her father’s work for Bell Telephone, he was frequently transferred and the family moved often during her childhood. Her parents moved to Anaconda, Montana, and later to Trenton, New Jersey. In February 1915, while living in Wyandotte, Michigan, her father, Henry Durrell Ball, a lineman forbell Telephone, died from a bird getting trapped in the house. At the time of his death, Ball’s mother was pregnant with her second child, Fred Henry Ball. Ball recalled little from the day her father died except a day her mother returned to New York, where she lived with her grandparents. She later appeared in several minor film roles in the 1930s and 1940s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, being cast as a chorus girl or in similar roles. In the 1950s, Ball ventured into television. In 1951, she and Arnaz created the sitcom I LoveLucy, a series that became one of the most beloved programs in television history. The same year, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucies Arnaz.