Lucille Ball

Lucille Désirée Ball was born on August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Henry Durrell Ball, a Bell Telephone lineman, and Désirée Evelyn Ball. Her father died of typhoid fever in 1915 in Wyandotte, Michigan, when Ball was three years old, leaving her mother pregnant with her brother Fred. Following her father's death, Ball and her brother were raised largely by maternal grandparents in Celoron, a village on Chautauqua Lake, where Ball's aunt, uncle, and cousin Cleo also shared the household. Her cousin Cleo would later work as a producer on several of Ball's radio and television programs.

Ball's mother eventually remarried, and during the years Ball spent in her stepfather's parents' care, the household was governed by strict rules; all mirrors except one were removed from the home, and Ball was reprimanded for looking at her own reflection. At age twelve, Ball performed in a chorus line for her stepfather's Shriners organization, an experience she later identified as a turning point in her desire to perform. In 1926, despite limited family finances, her mother enrolled her in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City, where Bette Davis was a fellow student. Ball's instructors expressed doubt about her prospects in the entertainment industry. After illness with rheumatic fever kept her from working for two years, she returned to New York City in 1928 and began modeling for Hattie Carnegie.

Ball's performing career on Broadway began in the early 1930s under the stage name Diane Belmont, where she obtained chorus work. She was hired and then dismissed by theater impresario Earl Carroll from his Vanities, and by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. from a touring company of Rio Rita. After an uncredited appearance as a Goldwyn Girl in Roman Scandals in 1933, she relocated permanently to Hollywood, where she worked as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Her RKO credits included a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges, a film with the Marx Brothers, and supporting appearances in several Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, among them Roberta, Top Hat, and Follow the Fleet. Her first credited film role came in Chatterbox in 1936, and she played a larger part alongside Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door in 1937.

During her film years, Ball met Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, and the two eloped in November 1940. In the 1950s, Ball and Arnaz moved into television, creating the sitcom I Love Lucy. Their daughter Lucie was born in 1951, followed by son Desi Arnaz Jr. in 1953. Ball and Arnaz divorced in March 1960, and she married comedian Gary Morton in 1961.

Ball's Broadway career spanned from 1947 to 1960 and included credits such as The Dream Girl and the musical Wildcat. She produced and starred in Wildcat, which ran from 1960 to 1961. Following Wildcat, she reunited with I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance for The Lucy Show, which Vance departed in 1965. The series continued alongside Ball's longtime collaborator Gale Gordon until 1968, after which Ball immediately launched Here's Lucy, featuring Gordon, Mary Jane Croft, and her children Lucie and Desi Jr. That program ran until 1974.

In 1962, Ball became the first woman to head a major television studio when she took control of Desilu Productions, which produced series including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. In 1985, she took on a dramatic role in the television film Stone Pillow, and the following year starred in Life with Lucy, which was canceled after three months. Ball died on April 26, 1989, at age 77, from an abdominal aortic aneurysm caused by arteriosclerotic heart disease.

Over the course of her career, Ball received thirteen Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won five. Her additional honors included the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Women in Film Crystal Award, induction into the Television Hall of Fame, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2020, Time recognized her as one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Following her death, the American Comedy Awards were officially renamed in her honor.