The Full Biography
Lucille Ball. Actress. Producer. The Jamestown redhead who turned television into a live room, then bought the studio.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a woman at a conveyor belt, chocolates going into a mouth, an apron, a look at the camera that is already a national joke. The year is 1952. The show is I Love Lucy. What the still cannot show is Lucille Désirée Ball of Jamestown, New York, a decade and more as Hollywood’s Queen of the B’s, a marriage the network did not want, and a 1962 morning when she became the first woman to run a major Hollywood television studio — the same desk that said yes to Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.
She was born on August 6, 1911, in Jamestown. Her father, Henry Durrell Ball, a telephone lineman, died of typhoid when she was three. That is the first pressure: a household that had to remake itself without him. Her mother, Desiree “DeDe” Hunt, held the family. The girl wanted the stage the way some children want a locked door opened. She went to New York, was sent home, went back. Chorus work. A Goldwyn Girl in Roman Scandals (1933). An RKO contract. For years she was the reliable pretty woman in pictures that did not intend to be remembered: the second lead, the wisecrack, the blonde the plot could spare. The town called her Queen of the B’s and meant it as a ceiling. She treated it as a shop.
Stage Door (1937) put her in a room with Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers and showed a timing the B pictures had only rented. She kept working. On November 30, 1940, she married Desi Arnaz, a Cuban bandleader the studio would have preferred to replace with someone paler. That refusal is the door to everything that follows. Radio gave her My Favorite Husband. CBS wanted the television version live from New York, with a different man as the husband. She said no. He said no. They would film it in Los Angeles, in front of an audience, on film, with three cameras, and he would play Ricky Ricardo. Cinematographer Karl Freund helped build the grammar. Desilu owned the negatives. The country thought it was watching a marriage. It was also watching a business plan.
I Love Lucy premiered on October 15, 1951. Lucille Ricardo was not a scatterbrain invented for a laugh track. She was a woman who would not stay in the apartment, played by a woman who had waited twenty years for a part this size. The chocolate factory — “Job Switching.” The grape vat in Italy. Vitameatavegamin, a tonic sold in a single breath. In 1952 and 1953 she was pregnant with Desi Arnaz Jr. CBS would not let the script say “pregnant.” The word on air was “expecting.” The episode of the birth, “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” aired on January 19, 1953, the day she delivered by cesarean. More people watched than had watched Eisenhower take the oath. She had made a forbidden word into a national appointment.
The weekly show ran until 1957; hour-long specials followed. She was already a producer. Desilu made other people’s hits as well as hers. The marriage did not survive the company. They divorced in 1960. She married Gary Morton, a nightclub comic, in 1961. In November 1962 she bought Arnaz’s share of Desilu and became the first woman to run a major Hollywood television studio. The title was not honorary. When Gene Roddenberry’s first Star Trek pilot failed to sell, she paid for a second. Studio accountant Edwin Holly said the plain sentence: without her, no Star Trek. Mission: Impossible survived the same desk. She sold Desilu to Gulf and Western in 1967. Paramount absorbed the lot. The reruns kept printing.
I’m not funny. What I am is brave.Lucille Ball
That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the chocolates. The turn is the buyout — a woman the town had filed as a clown picking up the studio and using it as a studio. Bravery, in her mouth, was not a poster word. It was falling down on purpose, in front of a live audience, after a decade of being told she was the extra. She also said, “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.” She had waited long enough to mean it.
The B-picture shop is longer than the still admits. Too Many Girls (1940) is where she met Arnaz on an RKO lot. Dance, Girl, Dance the same year, for Dorothy Arzner, gave her a dancer’s temper the programmers had not budgeted. The Big Street (1942), from a Damon Runyon story, is the rare dramatic part the Queen of the B’s was allowed to keep. DuBarry Was a Lady. Fancy Pants, with Bob Hope. The Fuller Brush Girl (1950), a slapstick that already knew what television would do with her. Radio’s My Favorite Husband (1948–1951), as Liz Cooper, is the dress rehearsal the network tried to recast. She would not recast the husband. That refusal is how Desilu, founded in 1950, became a company and not a marital hobby.
Desilu was a factory before it was a legend. I Love Lucy ran 180 half-hours from 1951 to 1957, then the hour-long Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour specials through 1960. Three cameras, 35-millimeter film, a live audience in Hollywood, Karl Freund’s lighting, negatives the company owned. “Job Switching,” the chocolate conveyor. “Lucy’s Italian Movie,” the grape vat. “Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” Vitameatavegamin in a single breath. “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” January 19, 1953, the day she delivered Desi Jr. by cesarean — more sets than Eisenhower’s inauguration. Lucie had already arrived in 1951. My Favorite Husband on radio, 1948 to 1951, had been the dress rehearsal CBS tried to recast with a different man. She would not recast the husband. They filmed in Los Angeles so the marriage could be a household, not a commute. The country thought it was watching a marriage. It was also watching a business plan: shoot on film so the show could live twice, then a third time, then forever.
The studio desk after the 1962 buyout was not honorary. She paid for a second Star Trek pilot when the first one failed to sell. She kept Mission: Impossible alive through the expensive early going. The Untouchables had already been a Desilu object. Studio accountant Edwin Holly said the plain sentence: without her, no Star Trek. In 1967 she sold the company to Gulf and Western for a figure the trades put near seventeen million dollars. Paramount absorbed the lot. She went back in front of the cameras because that was still the job. The Lucy Show (1962–1968) as Lucy Carmichael. Here’s Lucy (1968–1974) as Lucy Carter, Lucie and Desi Jr. on the call sheet. Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) with Henry Fonda. Mame (1974), which the country did not accept. Wildcat, on Broadway in 1960, had already taught her that a live house is not a three-camera floor. She had nothing left to prove to a musical. She had already proved it to a factory. Gary Morton ran the daily machine after the Arnaz divorce. She kept a working friendship with Desi that the columns never quite knew how to file. Jamestown remained the first room: a telephone lineman dead of typhoid when she was three, a mother named DeDe who held the household, a girl who went to New York, was sent home, and went back. The Goldwyn Girl work and the RKO contract were a decade of being the extra. Stage Door showed the timing. The Big Street showed the dramatic part. The Fuller Brush Girl already knew the falls. Television finally used the decade. The studio desk used it again. The reruns did not need a campaign. They were the campaign. Desilu’s children — Trek, Impossible, the sitcom floor plan — outrank most of the men who would not have hired her as a boss. She had been Queen of the B’s for a decade. She became the first woman to run a major Hollywood television studio. Both jobs are the life. Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 named the career while she was still looking for the next mark. Cedars-Sinai was the last hospital. St. Monica’s was the Mass. Lake View in Jamestown is the plot, beside the mother who held the household. The conveyor belt did not stop.
Six things most people never knew
- The Queen of the B’s is a decade, not a footnote. RKO, Goldwyn, the second lead. Television did not invent her. It finally used her.
- CBS would not say “pregnant.” The script said “expecting.” The birth episode aired the day she delivered. A forbidden word became a national appointment.
- Three cameras on film, before a live audience, is the factory she and Arnaz built. They shot in Los Angeles so the marriage could be a household, not a commute. They owned the negatives.
- In 1962 she became the first woman to run a major Hollywood television studio. She bought Desi out. The title came with a desk, not a bouquet.
- Star Trek and Mission: Impossible survived because she said yes. A second Trek pilot. An expensive Impossible. The clown’s studio underwrote the future catalog.
- Jamestown is still the first room. A father’s death at three. A mother who held. The grave is there. The laugh is everywhere else.
Lucie and Desi Jr. grew up as the children of a national couple, which is a job no one auditions for. After the divorce she kept a working friendship with Arnaz that the columns never quite knew how to file. He died in 1986; she grieved the partner in public. Morton ran the daily machine and kept the wolves off the lawn. Friends from the Desilu years describe a boss who read a budget the way she read a pratfall: where does it break, and who pays.
The later years
Those years were specials, a serious turn, and a last sitcom the country would not accept. Home was Los Angeles — Beverly Hills rooms, then a life with Gary Morton, the nightclub comic she had married in 1961, who ran the daily machine and kept the wolves off the lawn. Lucie and Desi Jr. were adults with their own call sheets. Desi Arnaz, divorced since 1960, remained a working friend the columns never quite knew how to file. He died in 1986. She grieved the partner in public. The company had been sold in 1967. The face had not been sold. CBS and the independents still ran the chocolates every night.
In 1985 she took Stone Pillow, a television film in which she played a homeless woman on New York streets, a part that asked for dirt and not for an apron. Critics argued. She had wanted the risk. In 1986 ABC put Life with Lucy on the air. She was seventy-five and still willing to fall down. The country wanted the 1952 woman. She gave them the 1986 one and they looked away. The show was cancelled after thirteen episodes. Kennedy Center Honors arrived that same year, a civic object that does not require Nielsen. She accepted it as a woman who had already bought a studio and sold it and was still, in her own mind, a performer looking for the next mark.
On April 18, 1989, she had emergency surgery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles for a dissecting aortic aneurysm. Eight days after that operation, on April 26, a second rupture — an abdominal aortic aneurysm — killed her. She was seventy-seven. Jamestown took her home. The funeral Mass was at St. Monica’s in Santa Monica; the burial, at first in Los Angeles, was moved years afterward to the Hunt plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, beside the mother who had held the household. The stone says she had come home. Morton outlived her. The children kept the name in the theater and in the museum the town built from the private furniture. The chocolates did not pause.
After she was gone
The chocolates still air on a Saturday. Desilu’s children — Trek, Impossible, the sitcom floor plan — outrank most of the men who would not have hired her as a boss. Lucie kept the name in the theater. The Lucy–Desi museum in Jamestown holds the private furniture. The reruns do not need a campaign. They are the campaign.
She came out of Jamestown, lost a father, spent a decade as a B-picture utility, married the man the studio did not want, built a show on film so it could live twice, made a pregnancy a broadcast, bought the company, said yes to two series that outlived her laugh, and died in Los Angeles with the conveyor belt still running somewhere every night. If you only remember the chocolates, you have the still. If you remember the B pictures, the buyout, and a woman who called herself brave instead of funny, you have her.
Portrait: CBS Television · Public domain (PD US not renewed) · via Wikimedia Commons