On August 6, 1911, Lucille Desiree Ball was born in Jamestown, New York. She was the first child born to Desiree (Dede) Hunt and Henry Durell Ball. Lucy grew up without a father due to his death of Typhoid Fever when she was barley four years old. She was separated from her family and sent to live with her step-grandmother while her mother and baby brother (Fred Ball) went to live with Dede's parents. Eventually, Lucy and her mother reunited. When Lucy was eight years old, her mother remarried, to a factory worker who ended up drinking and gambling. Her step-father began to work on the road and her mother wanted to follow. Lucy and her brother were sent to his parents. Lucy often ran away, so they were sent to their grandfather's, Frederick C. Hunt in Celeron, New York.
When Lucy turned fifteen, her mother gave her enough money to attend The John Murray Anderson Drama School in New York. She was told by the school that she had no acting talent whatsoever and that her mother was wasting her money. Lucy eventually saved enough money to attend The Hattie Carnegie's Model Agency under the name Diane Belmont. Lucy won national exposure as the Chesterfield Cigarette Girl in 1933. This success led to her first movie role as a chorus girl in Roman Scandals (1934).
From the early 1930's through the late 1940's, Lucy appeared in over 60 films. She was under contract to the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Studio for 7 years, playing leading roles in a number of low-budget movies. Some of her noteable films include: Stage Door (1937) with Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers; The Affairs of Annabel (1938); Five Came Back (1939); Dance, Girl, Dance (1940); The Big Street (1942); The Dark Corner (1946); and Sorrowful Jones (1949) co-starring Bob Hope.
Due to an ice skating accident, Lucy was not able to make the opening of Too Many Girls. When her friends visited her in the hospital, they told her about a New Cuban Sensation, Desi Arnaz. When she was finally able to see the film, she couldn't take her eyes off of him. Lucy met Desi at one of his band practices and hit it off.
On November 30, 1940, Lucy and Desi were married at the Byram River Beagle Club in Greenwich, Connecticut. They were very attracted to each other but there were a lot of differences between them. Lucy was a realist and Desi was a romantic. They bought an $8,000, 5-acre ranch in Chatsworth, in the San Fernando Valley. They named it Desilu. Desi quit his band and took acting lessons but returned to his band when everyone gave more attention to Lucy than to him. He started touring again and Lucy and Desi kept in contact by phone. In May 1943, Desi was drafted into the Army.
In 1944, Lucy filed for divorce because Desi wasn't taking notice in Lucy anymore. The night before the court date, Desi took Lucy out to dinner to butter her up. Desi thought it didn't work but it did. After the court date, Lucy called Desi and told him the divorce was called off.
Between films, Lucy performed on the radio in Philip Morris Playhouse and Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby. From 1947 to 1951, Lucy played a wacky wife of a straight-laced banker on the popular CBS Radio Program, My Favorite Husband. When CBS came to her about putting this show on TV, Lucy set a condition: She would only do it if her real-life husband played her husband. The premise of the show: a TV Comedy based on the unlikely marriage of a redheaded housewife and a Cuban bandleader. CBS was very skeptical about the public's reaction to the show.
During this time, Lucy had become pregnant and miscarried. Five months after her miscarriage, Lucy became pregnant again. During her fourth month of pregnancy, CBS suddenly gave Desi the green light that they would finance a pilot for a domestic television show featuring Lucy and Desi as a married couple. They had a month to put the show together. They had a lot of work ahead of them. Picking a location to film, picking the crew and the cast, writers, directors and producers and creating a set. On July 17, 1951, by a cesarean, Lucie Desiree Arnaz arrived.
When I Love Lucy premiered on October 15, 1951, it immediately became one of the most popular shows on television. In its 6 year run, the show never ranked lower than third in the Nielsen Ratings; it was Number 1 for four of those years and won more than 200 awards, including 5 Emmys. The cast included: Lucy and Ricky Ricardo (Lucy and Desi) and their neighbors Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance). Lucy played a wild and disaster-prone women; goofy yet sexy.
The I Love Lucy Show changed the way TV comedies were made. The show paved the way for 30-minute situation comedies; replacing the once dominant hour-long comedy variety shows. Desi came up with a new way of producing TV shows: shooting each episode of I Love Lucy on film, by using 3 cameras, in front of a live studio audience, so that the final product could be re-broadcasted any number of times instead of preserving it on a fuzzy kinescope.
In May 1952, Lucy found out she was pregnant again and due in January. Lucy and Desi were ready to shut down production until Jess Oppenheimer (the writer) came up with an idea. He suggested writing the pregnancy into the show. Lucy and Desi became very excited but knew that no actress had ever appeared on a TV show or in theater before when she was obviously pregnant. Jess called the CBS sensor and he thought it was a great idea. Also, the sponsors and the network went along with it.
The cast and crew worked very hard to get the next season filmed. They sometimes worked ten and twelve hour days, six days a week. They filmed seven shows concerning her pregnancy. A priest, a minister, and a rabbi watched those seven shows to make sure they were made in good taste. The CBS network objected to them using the word "PREGNANT". Instead they had to use the word "EXPECTING".
The baby was going to be delivered by a cesarean section. Lucy and Desi arrived at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on January 18, 1953 and on January 19, 1953, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV arrived. They tried to keep the birth a secret but news had leacked out that Lucy's real baby and Lucy Ricardo's baby would arrive on the same day. Nearly seven thousand telegrams and letters arrived at the hospital congratulating Lucy and Desi, but this was only the beginning. Counting the telegrams, letters, cards, phone calls, baby booties, and other gifts, one million people sent some expression of their good wishes for the new baby. The same day Desi Jr. was born, fourty-four million Americans watched the arrival of Ricky Ricardo Jr. on the I Love Lucy show.
Desi had created his own production company (Desilu Productions), which owned the rights to I Love Lucy. Eventually, he sold them to CBS, allowing the couple to buy their own studio. Desilu grew into a powerful corporation and spawned a number of hit TV Series, including Star Trek and Mission Impossible. In 1962, Lucy bought Desi's half of Desilu and became sole owner of what was then the world's largest production facility. In 1967, Lucy sold Desilu Productions for $17 million with $10 million as her share.
By 1957, after 179 episodes, both Lucy and Desi had grown exhausted by the show's hectic taping schedule, and their troubling marriage. For the next 3 years, they made a series of hour-long specials, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, and Desi continued to work at Desilu.
On March 3, 1960, America's best-loved couple ended their 20-year marriage. Desi began drinking and became an alcoholic. Also in 1960 (December 20, 1960), Lucy met Gary Morton, a stand-up comedian. They started to date and fell in love. After eleven months of dating, Lucy asked Gary if he would want to marry her. He said yes and they were married on November 19, 1961. The wedding was put together in five days and they had only forty guests.
Two years after her divorce, Lucy brought back her character in The Lucy Show, (1962 to 1968), and also in Here's Lucy (1968 to 1974). Both shows featured her two children, Lucy and Desi Jr., along with Vivian Vance and a new co-star Gale Gordon. She also appeared on Broadway in 1961's Wildcat; re-teamed with Bob Hope in The Facts of Life (1961) and Critic's Choice (1963); co-stared with Henry Fonda in Yours, Mine and Ours (1968). In 1985, Lucy played a bag lady in Stone Pillow; in 1986, the 75 year old reprised her signature role in ABC's Life With Lucy, but it was short-lived. Lucy's last public appearance was at the 1989 Academy Awards, when she and Bob Hope introduced a production number called "New Hollywood".
On April 26, 1989, a week after having open-heart surgery, Lucy suffered a ruptured aorta and died at the age of 77. She was survived by her husband Gary Morton, her two children with Desi - who died in 1986 of Cancer - and three grandchildren. At the time of her death, I Love Lucy remained in syndication in more than 80 countries.
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