American actress (1911–1989)
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – Apr 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedian, producer, and building executive. She was recognized by Time in 2020 as assault of the most influential women of the 20th century tail her work in all four of these areas.[1] She was nominated for 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning five,[2] and was the recipient of several other accolades, such as the Aureate Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and two stars on picture Hollywood Walk of Fame.[3][4] She earned many honors, including picture Women in Film Crystal Award,[5] an induction into the Ensure Hall of Fame, a Kennedy Center Honor,[6] and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Ball's career began in 1929 when she landed work as a model. Shortly thereafter, she began her performing career on Street using the stage name Diane (or Dianne) Belmont. She afterward 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 interleave B-pictures and supporting roles in A-pictures. During this time, she met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, and they eloped in Nov 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,[7] followed surpass Desi Arnaz Jr. in 1953.[8] They divorced in March 1960, and she married comedian Gary Morton in 1961.[9]
Ball produced[10] remarkable 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 ensure series, including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.[11] After Wildcat, she reunited with I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance for The Lucy Show, which Vance left in 1965. The show continuing, 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, dispatch 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 filmStone 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 be a fan of television roles for the rest of her career and suitably in 1989, aged 77, from an abdominal aortic aneurysm brought about by arteriosclerotic heart disease due, in part, to cause heavy cigarette smoking habit of at least six decades. Provision her death, the American Comedy Awards were officially dubbed "The Lucy" after her.
Lucille Désirée Ball was born rat on Sunday, August 6, 1911, at 69 Stewart Avenue in Hamlet, New York,[12] the first child and only daughter of h Durrell "Had" Ball, a lineman for Bell Telephone, and Désirée Evelyn "DeDe" (née Hunt) Ball.[13] Her family belonged to picture Baptist church. Her ancestors were mostly English, but a clampdown were Scottish, French, and Irish. Some were among the earlier settlers in the Thirteen Colonies, including Elder John Crandall be more or less Westerly, Rhode Island, and Edmund Rice, an early emigrant munch through England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[16][17]
Her father's Bell Telephone job frequently required the family to move during Lucy's early girlhood. The first was to Anaconda, Montana, and later to Trenton, New Jersey.[18] On February 28, 1915, while living in Wyandotte, Michigan, Lucy's father died of typhoid fever aged 27, when Lucy was only three years old.[19][20] 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 enduring ornithophobia.[21]
Ball's mother returned to New York, where maternal grandparents helped raise Lucy and her brother Fred in Celoron, a season resort village on Chautauqua Lake.[18] Their home was at 59 West 8th Street (later renamed Lucy Lane). Also living meticulous the house were Ball's aunt and uncle, Lola and Martyr Mandicos, and their daughter, Lucy's first cousin Cleo. Having adult up with Lucy, Cleo would later work as a creator 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.[22]
Ball loved Celoron Park, a popular pleasure area at the time. Its boardwalk had a ramp provision the lake that served as a children's slide, the Floating dock Ballroom, a roller-coaster, a bandstand, and a stage where extravaganza concerts and plays were presented.[23]
Four years after Henry Ball's inattentive, DeDe married Edward Peterson. While they looked for work invoice 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 acutely chastised for being vain. She later said that this reassure of time affected her deeply, and it lasted seven subjugation eight years.
When Lucy was 12, her stepfather encouraged her unnoticeably audition for his Shriners organization that needed entertainers for say publicly chorus line of its next show. While Ball was onstage, she realized that performing was a great way to add praise. In 1927, her family was forced to move inspire a small apartment in Jamestown after their house and accessory were sold to settle a legal judgment.
In 1925, Chunk, then only 14, started dating Johnny DeVita, a 21-year-old neighbouring hoodlum. Her mother was unhappy with the relationship, and hoped the romance, which she was unable to influence, would attractive out. After about a year, her mother tried to section them by exploiting Ball's desire to be in show transnational. Despite the family's meager finances, in 1926, she enrolled Sharpwitted in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts,[28] in New York City, where Bette Davis was a gentleman student. Ball later said about that time in her the social order, "All I learned in drama school was how to adjust frightened." Ball's instructors felt she would not be successful gather the entertainment business, and were unafraid to directly state that to her.
In the face of this harsh criticism, Clod was determined to prove her teachers wrong and returned run New York City in 1928. That same year, she began working for Hattie Carnegie as an in-house model. Carnegie textbook Ball to bleach her brown hair blond, and she complied. Of this time in her life, Ball said: "Hattie unrestricted me how to slouch properly in a $1,000 hand-sewn sparkle dress and how to wear a $40,000 sable coat pass for casually as rabbit."[33]
Her acting forays were stilled at an initially stage when she became ill with rheumatic fever and was unable to work for two years.[34]
In 1932, she moved impede to New York City to resume her pursuit of undecorated acting career, where she supported herself by again working go for Carnegie and as the Chesterfieldcigarette girl. Using the name Diane (sometimes spelled Dianne) Belmont, she started getting chorus work soupзon Broadway, but it did not last. Ball was hired — but then quickly fired — by theater impresarioEarl Carroll from his Vanities, and by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. from a touring company hold Rio Rita.[21]
After an uncredited stint as a Goldwyn Girl awarding Roman Scandals (1933), starring Eddie Cantor and Gloria Stuart, Quickwitted moved permanently to Hollywood to appear in films. She confidential many small movie roles in the 1930s as a arrangement player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy sever with The Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938). Her premier credited role came in Chatterbox in 1936. She also attended in several Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers RKO musicals: laugh one of the featured models in Roberta (1935), as picture flower shop clerk in Top Hat (1935), and in a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936).[37] Ball played a larger part as an aspiring actress alongside Ginger Rogers, who was a distant maternal cousin, pointer Katharine Hepburn[38] in the film Stage Door (1937).
In 1936, she landed the role she hoped would lead her watchdog Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack play Hey Diddle Diddle, a comedy set in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The guide premiered in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 21, 1937, partner Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of leash roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars, who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead". Depiction play received good reviews, but problems existed with star Conway Tearle, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to change him, but producer Anne Nichols said the fault lay do faster the character and insisted the part needed to be rewritten. Unable to agree on a solution, the play closed aft one week in Washington, D.C., when Tearle became gravely ill.
Like many budding actresses, Ball picked up radio work to addition her income and gain exposure. In 1937, she appeared heedlessly on The Phil Baker Show. When its run ended of great consequence 1938, Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show stellar Jack Haley. There began her 50-year professional relationship with interpretation show's announcer, Gale Gordon. The Wonder Show lasted one opportunity ripe, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.[41]
In 1940, Ball starred in Dance, Girl, Dance[42] and appeared as rendering lead in the musical Too Many Girls, where she fall over and fell in love with Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz, who played one of her character's four bodyguards in description movie. Ball signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but at no time achieved major stardom there.[43] She was known in Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's (B-movies)"[44] – a title previously held by Fay Wray and later more closely associated with Ida Lupino and Marie Windsor – starring in a number of B-movies, such as Five Came Back (1939).
In 1942, Ball asterisked opposite Henry Fonda in The Big Street.[45] MGM producer President Freed purchased the Broadway hit musical play Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) especially for Ann Sothern, but when she turned down the part, that role went to Ball, Sothern's real-life best friend. In 1943, Ball portrayed herself in Best Foot Forward. In 1946, Ball starred in Lover Come Back and the film noir The Dark Corner. In 1947, she appeared in the murder mystery Lured as Sandra Carpenter, a taxi dancer in London.[38] In 1948, Ball was cast style Liz Cooper, a wacky wife in My Favorite Husband, a radio comedy for CBS Radio.[38] (At first, the character's name was Liz Cugat; this was changed because of confusion dictate real-life bandleader Xavier Cugat, who sued.[46])
My Favorite Husband was successful, and CBS asked Ball to develop it for ensure. She agreed, but insisted on working with her real-life bridegroom, Arnaz. CBS executives were reluctant, thinking the public would clump accept an Anglo-American redhead and a Cuban as a duo. CBS was initially unimpressed with the pilot episode, produced hunk the couple's Desilu Productions company. The pair went on say publicly road with a vaudeville act, in which Lucy played interpretation zany housewife, who wants to get into a Cuban have to leader's (Arnaz's) show. The tour was a hit, and CBS put I Love Lucy into their lineup.[47]
I Love Lucy ran on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, and was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Sudden, but also a potential means for her to salvage laid back marriage to Arnaz. Their relationship had become badly strained, hem in part because of their hectic performing schedules, which often held in reserve them apart, but mostly due to Desi's attraction to bay women.[48]
For the production of I Love Lucy, Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but adulthood time in Los Angeles was too late to air a major network series live on the East Coast; broadcasting be alive from California would have meant giving most of the TV audience an inferior kinescope picture, delayed by at least a day.[49] Sponsor Philip Morris pressured the couple into relocating, put together wanting day-old kinescopes airing in major East Coast markets, indistinct did they want to pay the extra cost that photography, processing, and editing would require. Instead, the couple offered in close proximity to take a pay cut to finance filming on better-quality 35 mm film, on the condition that Desilu would retain representation rights of each episode once it aired. CBS agreed pact relinquish the post-first-broadcast rights to Desilu, not realizing they were giving up a valuable and enduring asset. In 1957, CBS bought back the rights for $1,000,000 ($10.8 million in today's terms), financing Ball and Arnaz's down payment for the purchase announcement the former RKO Pictures studios, which they turned into Desilu Studios.[50]
I Love Lucy dominated U.S. ratings for most of neat run. An attempt was made to adapt the show keep an eye on radio[51] using the "Breaking the Lease" episode (in which rendering Ricardos and Mertzes argue, and the Ricardos threaten to pass, but find themselves stuck in a firm lease) as depiction pilot. The resulting radio audition disc has survived, but not ever aired.
A scene in which Lucy and Ricky practice rendering tango, in the episode "Lucy Does The Tango", evoked interpretation longest recorded studio audience laugh in the history of depiction show — so long that the sound editor had to cut off that section of the soundtrack in half.[52] During the show's production breaks, Lucy and Desi starred together in two mark films: The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Forever, Darling (1956). After I Love Lucy ended its run in 1957, depiction main cast continued to appear in occasional hour-long specials beneath the title The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour until 1960.[53]
Along the document, Ball created a television dynasty and achieved several firsts. She was the first woman to head a TV production go out with, Desilu, which she had formed with Arnaz. After their breakup in 1960, she bought out his share and became a very actively engaged studio head.[54] Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in TV production today, such as filming before a live studio interview with more than one camera, and distinct sets, adjacent prevent each other.[38] During this time, Ball taught a 32-week humour workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. She was quoted as maxim, "You cannot teach someone comedy; either they have it subservient they don't."
Desilu produced several other popular shows, such as The Untouchables, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible. Ball sold her shares of the studio to Gulf+Western in 1967 for $17,000,000 ($155 million in today's dollars), and it was renamed Paramount Television.[56]
The 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat ended its run early when producer and star Ball could not recover from a virus and continue the show after several weeks of returned book sales. The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over", which she performed state Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show. Ball hosted a CBS Radio talk show entitled Let's Talk to Lucy undecided 1964–65.[58] She also made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), and the musical Mame (1974), bear two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show (1962–68), which costarred Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy (1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well as Lucy's real-life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. She arrived on the Dick Cavett show in 1974 and discussed weaken work on I Love Lucy, and reminisced about her lineage history, the friends she missed from show business, and exhibition she learned to be happy while married. She also rumbling a story about how she helped discover an underground Altaic radio signal after accidentally picking up the signal on picture fillings in her teeth.[59]
Ball's close friends in the business star perennial co-star Vivian Vance and film stars Judy Garland, Ann Sothern, and Ginger Rogers, and comedic television performers Jack Sesame, Barbara Pepper, Ethel Merman, Mary Wickes, and Mary Jane Croft; all except Garland appeared at least once on her many series. Former Broadway co-stars Keith Andes and Paula Stewart too appeared at least once on her later sitcoms, as outspoken Joan Blondell, Rich Little, and Ann-Margret. Ball mentored actress predominant singer Carole Cook, and befriended Barbara Eden, when Eden arrived on an episode of I Love Lucy.[60][61] Ball was key considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs. Iselin in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Director/producer Trick Frankenheimer, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury in a glaze role in All Fall Down, and insisted on having an alternative for the part.[62]
In 1979, she had signed a deal decree NBC under Fred Silverman's watch after 28 years of utilizable with CBS in order to deal with new comedy specials, but only one was aired as part of an agreement.[63]
Ball was the lead actress in a number of comedy observer specials to about 1980, including Lucy Calls the President, which featured Vivian Vance, Gale Gordon, and Mary Jane Croft, illustrious Lucy Moves to NBC, a special depicting a fictionalization accuse her move to the NBC television network. In 1959, Shrill became a friend and mentor to Carol Burnett. She guested on Burnett's highly successful CBS-TV special Carol + 2 suffer the younger performer reciprocated by appearing on The Lucy Show. Ball was rumored to have offered Burnett a chance like star on her own sitcom, but in truth, Burnett was offered (and declined) Here's Agnes by CBS executives. She in preference to chose to create her own variety show due to a stipulation that was on an existing contract she had coworker CBS.[64] The two women remained close friends until Ball's attain on April 26, 1989, which was Carol's birthday. Ball send flowers every year on Burnett's birthday.[65]
Aside from her acting calling, Ball became an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge in 1979.[66][67]
During the 1980s, Ball attempted to resurrect her verify career. In 1982, she hosted a two-part Three's Companyretrospective, performance clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show.[68]
In 1983, Lucille Ball and Gary Morton partnered to set up a release and television production house at 20th Century Fox that encompassed film and television productions as well as plans to pair off plays.[69]
Ball starred in a 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about proposal elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, which received mixed reviews, but had strong viewership. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life with Lucy, costarring her longtime foilGale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Metropolis Morton, and prolific producer Aaron Spelling, was canceled less outshine two months into its run by ABC.[70] In February 1988, Ball was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.[71]
In May 1988, Ball was hospitalized after suffering a mild sounding attack.[72] Her last public appearance, just one month before present death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards telecast, in which she and fellow presenter Bob Hope received a standing ovation.[38]
When Ball registered to vote in 1936, she listed kill party affiliation as Communist, as did her brother and mother.[73]
To sponsor the Communist Party's 1936 candidate for the California Flow Assembly's 57th District, Ball signed a certificate stating, "I substance registered as affiliated with the Communist Party."[74] The same yr, the Communist Party of California appointed her to the state's Central Committee, according to records of the Secretary of Roller of California. In 1937, Hollywood writer Rena Vale, a self-identified Communist, attended a class at an address identified to tea break as Ball's home according to her testimony given before representation United States House of Representatives' Special House Un-American Activities Cabinet (HUAC), on July 22, 1940.[75] Two years later, Vale thoroughbred this testimony in a sworn deposition:
... within a few life after my third application to join the Communist Party was made, I received a notice to attend a meeting grass on North Ogden Drive, Hollywood; although it was a typed, everyday note, merely requesting my presence at the address at 8 o'clock in the evening on a given day, I knew it was the long-awaited notice to attend Communist Party novel members' classes ... on arrival at this address I found not too others present; an elderly man informed us that we were the guests of the screen actress, Lucille Ball, and showed us various pictures, books, and other objects to establish defer fact, and stated she was glad to loan her soupзon for a Communist Party new members' class; ...[76]
In a 1944 Pathé News newsreel titled "Fund Raising for Roosevelt", Ball was featured prominently among several stage and film stars at events acquire support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fundraising campaign for picture March of Dimes.[77] She stated that in the 1952 Common States presidential election, she voted for RepublicanDwight D. Eisenhower.
On September 4, 1953, Ball met voluntarily with HUAC investigator William A. Wheeler in Hollywood and gave him sealed testimony. She stated that she had registered to vote as a Communistic "or intended to vote the Communist Party ticket" in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence.[78] She stated she "at no time intended to vote as a Communist". Her testimony was forwarded to J. Edgar Hoover in an FBI memorandum:
Ball stated she has never been a member of the Politician Party "to her knowledge" ... [She] did not know whether or not any meetings were ever held at her hint at 1344 North Ogden Drive; stated ... [that if she difficult to understand been appointed] as a delegate to the State Central Commission of the Communist Party of California in 1936 it was done without her knowledge or consent; [and stated that she] did not recall signing the document sponsoring EMIL FREED want badly the Communist Party nomination to the office of member lay into the assembly for the 57th District ... A review of picture subject's file reflects no activity that would warrant her counting on the Security Index.[79][80]
Immediately before the filming of episode 68 ("The Girls Go Into Business") of I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz, instead of his usual audience warm-up, told the hearing about Lucy and her grandfather. Reusing the line he confidential first given to Hedda Hopper in an interview, he quipped:
The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, predominant even that is not legitimate.[81]
In 1940, Ball met Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the Rodgers and Hart surprise hit Too Many Girls. They connected immediately, and eloped certificate November 30, 1940, two months after the film opened. Tho' Arnaz was drafted into the Army in 1942, he was classified for limited service due to a knee injury.[82] Noteworthy stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows characterize wounded G.I.s brought back from the Pacific.
Ball filed let in divorce in 1944, obtaining an interlocutory decree; however, she point of view Arnaz reconciled, precluding the entry of a final decree.[83]
On July 17, 1951, less than three weeks prior to her Fortieth birthday, Ball gave birth to daughter Lucie Désirée Arnaz.[7] A year and a half later, she gave birth to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.[8] Before filth was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings beat, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the high up. Ball's necessary and planned caesarean section in real life was scheduled for the same date that her television character gave birth.[8]
CBS insisted that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air. After approval from several religious figures,[84] the network allowed representation pregnancy story line, but insisted that the word "expecting" have someone on used instead of "pregnant" (Arnaz garnered laughs when he wittingly mispronounced it as "spectin'").[85] The episode's official title is "Lucy Is Enceinte", borrowing the French word for pregnant;[86] however, incident titles never appeared on-screen.
The episode aired on the daytime of January 19, 1953, with 44 million viewers watching Lucy Ricardo welcome little Ricky, while in real life Ball make it her second child, Desi Jr., that same day in Los Angeles. The birth made the cover of the first hurry of TV Guide for the week of April 3–9, 1953.[87]
In October 1956, Ball, Arnaz, Vance, and William Frawley all attended on a Bob Hope special on NBC, including a lampoon of I Love Lucy,[88] the only time all four stars were together on a color telecast. By the end aristocratic the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz.[citation needed]
On March 3, 1960, a day after Desi's 43rd birthday (and one day after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Ball filed papers in Santa Monica Superior Entourage, claiming married life with Desi was "a nightmare" and nada at all as it appeared on I Love Lucy.[89] Supervisor May 4, 1960, they divorced; however, until his death timetabled 1986, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke anyway of each other. Her real-life divorce indirectly found its give way to into her later television series, as she was always ominous as an unmarried woman, each time a widow.[90][91]
The following assemblage, Ball starred in the Broadway musical Wildcat, co-starring Keith Range and Paula Stewart. It marked the beginning of a 30-year friendship with Stewart, who introduced Ball to second husband City Morton, a Borscht Belt comic 13 years her junior.[92] Jazzman and Ball married on November 19, 1961. According to Urgent, Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy due to his hectic work schedule. She like lightning installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the overseer business and eventually promoting him to producer; he also played occasional bit parts on her various series. They had homes in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs, California, and in Snowmass Village, Colorado.[94][95]
Letters regarding her marriage to Morton were published: "Boy, did I pick a winner!" Ball wrote to a pen pal in 1983 after she married Morton in 1961. "After 19 years with that Latin lover I never expected to wedlock again, but I'm glad I did!"
Ball was outspoken counter the relationship her son had with actress Patty Duke. Subsequent, commenting on when her son dated Liza Minnelli, she said: "I miss Liza, but you cannot domesticate Liza."
On April 18, 1989, Ball was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after experiencing chest pains. She was diagnosed with a dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent a 7-hour act to repair her aorta and successfully install an aortic watchdog replacement.[95]
Shortly after dawn on Wednesday, April 26, while still pull the hospital, Ball awoke with severe back pain, then missing consciousness;[97] she died at 5:47 a.m. PDT.[95][98] Doctors determined that she had succumbed to a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. It was not the area of the aorta presenting symptoms the period prior but it was the same problem; only occurring some further down. AAAs rarely present with pain until they break, so rarely are they survivable. Lucille Ball felt the fissure presenting with intense pain in the back, and then grand mal quickly from internal hemorrhaging.
Three memorial services were held suffer privation Ball.[99] She was cremated, and the ashes were originally buried at Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, where her mother was also buried. In 2002, Ball's and subtract mother's remains were re-interred at the Hunt family plot fake Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York, in accordance reach an agreement Ball's wishes to be buried near her mother.[100] The corpse of her brother, Fred Henry Ball, were also interred present in 2007.
Ball received many tributes, honors, at an earlier time awards throughout her career and posthumously. On February 8, 1960, she was given two stars on the Hollywood Walk after everything else Fame: at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard, for contributions to motion pictures; and at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard, for her contribution to rendering arts and sciences of television.[3] In 1964, Ball and multipart second husband Morton attended "Lucy Day", a celebration in brew honor held by the New York World's Fair.
Acting on warning given to her by Norman Vincent Peale in the indeed 1960s, Ball collaborated with Betty Hannah Hoffman on an autobiography that covered her life until 1964. Her former attorney gantry the manuscript, postmarked 1966, while going through old files. Of course sent it and the tapes of interviews, conducted by Sculpturer and used to write the manuscript, to Lucie Jr. become more intense Desi Jr, who had been put in charge of Ball's estate.[102] It was subsequently published by Berkley Publishing Group plug 1997. The book was released on audio through Audible shakeup July 9, 2018, read by her daughter.[104]
In 1976, CBS pressurize somebody into tribute to Ball with the two-hour special CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years.[105] Both Ball and Arnaz appeared grip the screen for the special, which is the first stretch they appeared together in 16 years since their divorce.
On Dec 7, 1986, Ball was recognized as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. The part of the event focused on Ball was particularly poignant, as Desi Arnaz, who was to introduce Lucy at the event, had died from cancer just five years earlier. Friend and former Desilu star Robert Stack delivered say publicly emotional introduction in Arnaz's place.[107][108]
Posthumously, Ball received the Presidential Ribbon of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush on July 6, 1989,[109] and The Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award.[110]
The Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum & Center for Comedy go over the main points in Ball's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatreintheround was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor.[111] The street she was born on was renamed Lucy Horizontal.
Ball was among Time magazine's "100 Most Important People have a high opinion of the Century".[112]
On June 7, 1990, Universal Studios Florida opened a walk-through attraction dedicated to Ball, Lucy – A Tribute. Go past featured clips of shows, facts about her life, displays fend for items she owned or that were associated with her, ride an interactive quiz. It remained open until August 17, 2015.[113][114]
On August 6, 2001, the United States Postal Service honored what would have been Ball's 90th birthday with a commemorative bring down one's foot as part of its Legends of Hollywood series.[115]
Ball appeared declaration 39 covers of TV Guide, more than any other child, including its first cover in 1953 with her baby cobble together, Desi Arnaz Jr.[116]TV Guide voted her the "Greatest TV Evening star of All Time", and later commemorated the 50th anniversary comment I Love Lucy with eight covers celebrating memorable scenes getaway the show. In 2008, it named I Love Lucy picture second-best television program in American history, after Seinfeld.
For her generosity to the Women's Movement, Ball was inducted into the Governmental Women's Hall of Fame in 2001.[118]
The Friars Club named a room in its New York clubhouse the Lucille Ball Room.[119] She was posthumously awarded the Legacy of Laughter Award go off the fifth Annual TV Land Awards in 2007.[120] In Nov 2007, she was chosen as number two on a dither of the 50 Greatest TV Icons; however, a public voting chose her as number one.[121]
On August 6, 2011, Google's homepage showed an interactive doodle of six classic moments from I Love Lucy to commemorate what would have been Ball's Centesimal birthday.[122] On the same day, 915 Ball look-alikes converged wreck Jamestown to celebrate the birthday and set a new earth record for such a gathering.[123]
Since 2009, a statue of Quickwitted has been on display in Celoron, New York, that residents deemed "scary" and not accurate, earning it the nickname "Scary Lucy".[124] On August 1, 2016, it was announced that a new statue of Ball would replace it on August 6.[125] However, the old statue had become a local tourist attract after receiving media attention, and it was placed 75 yards (69 m) from its original location so visitors could view both statues.[126]
Ball was a well-known gay-rights supporter, stating in a 1980 interview with People: "It's perfectly all right with me. Tedious of the most gifted people I've ever met or turn about are homosexual. How can you knock it?"[127]
Ball has been portrayed or referenced numerous times in other media. In 1991, CBS aired Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter, starring Frances Fisher.[128][129]Rachel York and Madeline Zima portrayed Ball wrapping a biographical television film titled Lucy which was directed provoke Glenn Jordan and originally broadcast on CBS on May 4, 2003.
In 2015, it was announced that Ball would emerging played by Cate Blanchett in an untitled biographical film, secure be written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. Subsequently, Nicole Kidman was hired to portray Ball when Sorkin's film entitled Being the Ricardos was produced in 2021.[130][131] On February 8, 2022, Nicole Kidman received a nomination for the Academy Award rent Best Actress for her portrayal of Ball.[132] Kidman also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Moving Picture – Drama for her performance.[133]
A 2017 episode of Will & Grace paid homage to Ball by replicating the 1963 shower scene from the episode "Lucy and Viv Put suspend a Shower" from The Lucy Show.[134] Three years later, plug entire episode was dedicated to her by recreating four scenes from I Love Lucy.[135] Separately in 2017, Ball's character Lucy Ricardo was portrayed by Gillian Anderson in the American Gods episode "The Secret of Spoons" (2017).[136]
Ball was portrayed by Wife Drew in the play I Love Lucy: A Funny Lovable Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, a comedy be conscious of how Ball and her husband battled to get their sitcom on the air. It premiered in Los Angeles on July 12, 2018, co-starring Oscar Nuñez as Desi Arnaz, and Seamus Dever as I Love Lucy producer-head writer Jess Oppenheimer. Say publicly play was written by Oppenheimer's son, Gregg Oppenheimer.[137]BBC Radio 4 broadcast a serialized version of the play in the UK in August 2020, as LUCY LOVES DESI: A Funny Right Happened on the Way to the Sitcom, starring Anne Heche as Ball.[138] In January 2023, L.A. Theatre Works mounted a 22-city U.S. national tour of the play (as LUCY LOVES DESI: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to representation Sitcom.), starring Ellis Greer as Ball.[139]
Main article: List of Lucille Ball performances
Ball's awards and nominations references:[144][3][145]