Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Motion Pictures Category Star

• Ceremony was on February 8, 1960

Motion Pictures Star for Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Television Category Star

• Ceremony was on February 8, 1960

Television Star for Lucille Ball

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The Lucille Ball Foundation
Born in 1911 Lucille Ball is the most famous female comedian of all time. Her television shows I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy have grossed billions of dollars. At the time of her death in 1989, Lucy was the wealthiest woman in Hollywood, having had the smarts to retain all rights to her original shows - Believe It or Not!

Lucille Ball

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Lucille Ball

LOVING LUCY
Comedian leaves us laughing and with a legacy of innovation
By Jack Garner Gannett News Service

We loved Lucy. In truth, we made the star of I Love Lucy the most popular comedian in television history. Lucille Ball's pioneering show continues in syndication today as perhaps the most successful sitcom of all-time.
Ball died Wednesday in California, eight days after surgery to repair a ruptured aorta near her heart.
The fact that I Love Lucy continues to be as funny, as clever, and as beautifully staged now as it was more than 30 years ago is a tribute to its classic qualities, and to the fact that its star was probably the greatest female comedy star ever.
Lucille Ball, in fact, is the only woman to rise to the very pinnacle of the male-dominated comedy profession. She is the only comedian to create and sustain a great, humorous character with such consummate skill that she deserves a place in the pantheon of comedy greats - including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx, and Woody Allen.

LUCILLE BALL came to early television in 1951, after a modest but frustrating career in Hollywood films and a brief fling at radio.
Born in Jamestown, N.Y., in 1911, she first found fame as a Goldwyn girl in Hollywood in the '30s. She began her film career in 1933 with Broadway Thru a Keyhole.
In the decades that followed, Ball compiled a large resume of films. She played starring roles in The Big Street (1942) and Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), and supporting roles in three Astaire-Rogers musicals - Top Hat (1935), Roberta (1935), and Follow the Fleet (1936). She was even among the vast parade of actresses who made unsuccessful grabs for the Scarlett O'Hara role in Gone With the Wind.
But Ball was never really satisfied with her film career, and often complained that she wasn't able to sustain a solid screen image that would attract and hold a large public.

"AFTER 15 years in motion pictures, I'd always been playing someone else," she once said. "I wanted to be typecast."
Ironically, Ball found her first truly satisfying role in another medium - radio. She took the part of a zany, scatter-brained wife opposite a spouse played by Richard Denning in My Favorite Husband, a CBS radio sitcom in 1948. The role was the precursor of Lucy Ricardo, the character the United States would soon embrace on CBS television.
When talk began of starring Lucille Ball in a comedy show on CBS television, Ball saw it not only as an opportunity to develop a sustaining character, but also a way to bolster her troubled marriage.
She had met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz on an RKO set in 1940, and married him later that year. But the marriage had apparently turned rocky, as Arnaz spent much of his time on the road, while Lucy stayed home in California. Ball was eager to find a way to work with her husband - and the TV comedy show seemed the answer.

CBS EXECUTIVES, however, adamantly fought Ball, arguing that no one would believe she was married to a Cuban bandleader (even though, of course, she was). So Ball and Arnaz developed a husband-and-wife comedy scenario for the stage, and toured the country with it to prove to CBS that it could be popular.
Ball had another battle to wage before I Love Lucy became a reality. CBS wanted her to perform the show on live television, from New York. Ball didn't want to leave Hollywood, however, and fought to be able to film the show, in front of a live audience, in Hollywood.
To create the spontaneity of live TV, the show was filmed in continuity, as if live, by a system the comedian and her husband pioneered. They stationed three cameras on the sound stage, and hired renowned cinematographer Karl Freund to devise a unique lighting system that would provide uniform lighting simultaneously for all three camera positions.

THAT THREE-camera system became the norm for TV sitcoms, and is still used today, more than three decades later.
The decision to film I Love Lucy had another important, long-range effect - it meant that all episodes of the series were recorded on high-quality film stock, at a time when most shows were recorded, if at all, on blurry, poorly made kinescopes. This was a major factor in I Love Lucy becoming the first great syndicated-rerun television show in history. It established their company, Desilu, as an immensely successful production firm, and placed the husband and wife team among the wealthiest people in Hollywood.
I Love Lucy premiered on CBS at 9 p.m. on Oct. 15, 1951, and continued through six years of unprecedented success. Lucy owned Monday night. Over the course of the show's run, it ranked No. 1 for the year four times, No. 2 once, and No. 3 once. When it went out of production, the show was still near the top of the ratings.

SINCE THEN, I Love Lucy has never been off television. Through reruns, the antics of Lucy, Ricky, and their neighbors, Ethel and Fred Mertz (Vivian Vance and William Frawley), continue today - even though all of the stars are now dead. (Frawley died in 1966, Vance in 1979, and Desi Arnaz in 1986.) In some markets, I Love Lucy can be seen several times a day.
Lucille Ball starred as the hare-brained, well-intentioned wife of a Cuban bandleader who constantly struggles to be more than she is. Though ostensibly a housewife, Lucy was seldom shown in the kitchen. More often than not, she was scheming to boost her husband's career or become a part of his act.
As a comedian, Ball demonstrated remarkable skills of physical prowess and timing. She was a genius at wild reactions and wonderful slapstick. Lucy Ricardo was the role she'd been hunting for nearly 20 years, and she played it for all it was worth, until the character and the star became one in the public's mind.

Classic laughs: 'I Love Lucy'

If you watched all 193 episodes of I Love Lucy, you'd be in front of the TV set for four days, seven hours, and 45 minutes.
That's according to Bart Andrews in his Lucy-lovers' must-have volume, The 'I Love Lucy' Book (Doubleday-Dolphin). [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385190336]
Here are the highlights of some classic I Love Lucy episodes, which are described in detail in Andrews' book:

• "Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her." First episode filmed. Aired Nov. 5, 1951.
  Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo overhears Ricky (Desi Arnaz) and his agent talking about names for a dog act, only Lucy thinks they are referring to Ricky's girlfriends. She's been reading The Mockingbird Murder Mystery and naturally assumes Ricky is out to kill her.
• "Pioneer Women." Aired March 31, 1952.
  Lucy bakes a giant loaf of bread - one that practically nails her to the cupboard as it pops out of the oven. The baking is the result of Lucy and Ethel Mae Potter Mertz's (Vivian Vance) complaining that the Society of Matrons League would never admit them because of their dishpan hands. Ricky and Fred (William Frawley) tell "the girls" that they have it too soft.
• "Luey Does a TV Commercial." Aired May 5, 1952.
  A classic. Lucy works her way into doing a commercial to be aired during a show Ricky is emceeing. The product, of course, contains a bit of alcohol. Lucy can hardly say the product's name: Vitameatavegamin.
• "Job Switching." Aired Sept. 15, 1952.
  Perhaps THE classic. This time? Lucy runs out of cash, and Ricky lets her know that she'd appreciate money more if she had to earn it herself. She and Ethel talk their way into jobs at Kramer's Kandy Kitchen. Lucy and Ethel try unsuccessfully to keep up with a conveyor belt full of candy.
• "Redecorating the Mertzes' Apartment." Aired Nov. 23, 1953.
  Once again, Ethel wants Lucy to host the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League's meeting because she's too embarrassed to hold the session in her own apartment. Lucy talks everybody into painting and re-upholstering the Mertz apartment, which works all right until Fred turns on a fan while Lucy is removing feathers from an overstuffed chair.
• "Off to Florida." Aired Nov. 12, 1956.
  Lucy has misplaced the train tickets, so she and Ethel hitch a ride to Florida with a Mrs. Grundy (Elsa Lanchester), who they come to believe is hatchet murderess Evely Holmby. And Mrs. Grundy thinks Lucy and Ethel are Holmby and companion. The girls end up getting to Miami via a poultry truck, only to discover that Little Ricky had their train tickets.
• "The Seance." Aired Nov. 26, 1951.
  Lucy offers to conduct a seance to help a producer contact his late Tillie. Ethel plays the medium, Raya, which allows Fred Mertz (William Frawley) to say "Well done, Medium Raya..."
• "New Neighbors." Aired March 3, 1952.
  Lucy naturally believes the new neighbors are spies threatening to kill her, and she inches her way out of the new neighbors' apartment disguised as an armchair.
• "The Freezer." Aired April 28, 1952
  700 pounds of meat end up cooking when Fred turns on the furnace to help thaw out Lucy, who has gotten stuck in the freezer.
• "Lucy Is Enceiente." Aired Dec. 8, 1952.
  Ricky finds out Lucy is pregnant.
• "Lucy Goes to the Hospital." Aired Jan. 19, 1953. Ricky shows up in the hospital emergency room in costume after Lucy has delivered Little Ricky.
• "The Million-Dollar Idea." Aired Jan. 1, 1954.
  Lucy and Ethel decide to make a little extra money by producing Aunt Martha's Old-Fashioned Salad Dressing.
• "The Charm School." Aired Jan. 25, 1954.
  In an analysis at the Phoebe Emerson Charm School, Lucy and Ethel wind up with scores of 32 and 20 respectively - out of a possible 100. The "girls" get glamorous for a night on the town.
• "The Diner." Aired April 26, 1954.
  One of the let's-try-a-new-job episodes. The Ricardos and the Mertzes buy a diner, only to discover that life behind the counter isn't fun. There's a pie-in-the-face fight, of course.
• "L. A. at Last." Aired Feb. 7. 1955.
  Lucy and Ethel dine at a Brown Derby table next to William Holden. Later she wears a putty nose.
• "In Palm Springs." Aired April 25, 1955.
  Lucy and Ethel meet Rock Hudson.
• "Lucy Meets the Queen." Aired Jan. 30, 1956.
  Lucy misses her chance to meet the queen when she can no longer curtsey.
• "Lucy's Italian Movie." Aired April 16, 1956.
  Lucy ends up stomping grapes.
• "Desert Island." Aired Nov. 26, 1956.
  Lucy and companions get stuck on a desert island after Lucy and Ethel purposely drain the boat's gas tank.
• "Lucy and the Loving Cup." Aired Jan. 7, 1957.
  Lucy gets a loving cup - for jockey Johnny Longden - stuck on her head.
• "Lucy and Superman." Aired Jan. 14, 1957.
  Lucy convinces Superman (George Reeves) to attend Little Ricky's party, but not before she has to go out on a ledge, literally, disguised as Superman.
• "Building a Bar-B-Q." Aired April 8, 1957.
  In Connecticut, Lucy loses her wedding ring, so she and Ethel must tear down and rebuild the back yard barbecue.
• "Lucy Raises Chickens." Aired March 4, 1951.
  Editors from House and Garden arrive as chickens are scattering throughout the living Toom.

- Gannett News Service