46 Fun Facts About Lucille Ball

In which New York town was Lucille Ball born in 1911?

Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, on August 6, 1911; the city is home to the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum and the National Comedy Center.

Ball's father, Henry, worked as a lineman for which company?

Bell Telephone employed Henry Ball as a lineman in Michigan, where the family had moved after a spell in Montana. He died there of typhoid fever while Lucille was small, and her pregnant mother took her back to her parents in New York.

Ball grew superstitious about what after seeing some at the window the day her father died?

Birds. She remembered them at the window that day, and as an adult she refused hotel rooms with bird pictures or bird wallpaper.

Ball's strict step-grandparents kept just one mirror in the house to guard against what?

Vanity, by most accounts. The Petersons are said to have left a single mirror over the bathroom sink, and when they caught young Lucille studying her face in it she was punished.

Which future star was the teenage Ball's classmate at a New York drama school in the 1920s?

Bette Davis was the star pupil of the John Murray Anderson school, and Ball said she was spellbound by her. The school wrote to Ball's mother that Lucy was wasting her time and theirs.

Hattie Carnegie hired the young Ball to do what at her fashionable Manhattan dress salon?

Model gowns. Ball, a natural brunette, went platinum blond in those years, and her modelling led to Chesterfield cigarette posters, which is how Hollywood first noticed her.

Ball once called herself Diane Belmont, borrowing the surname from what?

A horse racetrack. She said she had always loved the name Diane and was driving past New York's Belmont track when the two names seemed to fit together.

Ball first went to Hollywood in 1933 on a six-week contract for what job on Roman Scandals?

Showgirl: she was one of twelve Goldwyn Girls decorating the Eddie Cantor comedy. The six weeks kept stretching, bit parts followed, and she stayed on to build a film career.

Ball appeared in a 1934 two-reel short with which comedy team?

The Three Stooges soaked her with seltzer in Three Little Pigskins (1934). All she learned from them, she said later, was how to duck, and she still got wet.

Ball played a flower-shop clerk in which 1935 Astaire and Rogers musical?

Top Hat used her as an uncredited florist's clerk while she was an RKO contract player. In the late 1950s she and Desi Arnaz bought RKO's studios, so the bit player ended up owning the lot.

Which actor, Ball's radio colleague from 1938, later played her blustering boss on The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy?

Gale Gordon announced The Wonder Show when she joined it in 1938. She wanted him as Fred Mertz in 1951, but Our Miss Brooks had him committed, so he became her regular foil only in the 1960s.

Ball and Desi Arnaz fell in love while making which 1940 college musical together?

Too Many Girls brought Arnaz to Hollywood to repeat his Broadway role, a football star hired to guard Ball's heiress. They eloped that November, months after meeting.

What nickname did Ball earn in Hollywood for her string of low-budget films?

'Queen of the Bs', a title Fay Wray had held before her, summed up Ball's 1930s run of RKO programmers; Marie Windsor later inherited the label.

What did Ball first show filmgoers in the 1943 musical Du Barry Was a Lady?

Her red hair. MGM dyed it a vivid shade to stand out in Technicolor, and she got the part after her friend Ann Sothern turned it down.

Which radio comedy starring Ball did CBS ask her to turn into a TV show?

My Favorite Husband began in 1948 with Ball as Liz Cugat, soon renamed Liz Cooper, reportedly to avoid confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat, Desi Arnaz's old boss. On screen Liz became Lucy Ricardo.

Why did CBS at first resist casting Desi Arnaz in I Love Lucy?

Viewers might reject the couple, CBS feared: a Cuban bandleader with a heavy accent beside an all-American redhead. So the two took a stage act on the road, audiences loved it, and CBS gave in.

Ball and Arnaz took a pay cut on I Love Lucy in exchange for what?

Ownership of the episodes looked like a small concession in 1951. Desilu later sold the reruns back to CBS for millions, money that helped it buy RKO's studios.

Which sponsor of I Love Lucy wanted the couple to move to New York rather than film in California?

Philip Morris, the cigarette sponsor, wanted a live New York broadcast because poor-quality kinescopes would reach eastern markets; shooting on 35 mm film in Hollywood was the compromise.

I Love Lucy's longest studio-audience laugh came when a tango with Ricky crushed what hidden in Lucy's blouse?

Eggs. In Lucy Does the Tango she hides them in her blouse, Ricky pulls her close, and the audience laughed so long that the editors had to cut the laugh in half for broadcast.

Which word did CBS ban from I Love Lucy's 1952-53 Little Ricky storyline?

'Pregnant' was out; 'expecting' was used instead, and the episode title borrowed the French: 'Lucy Is Enceinte'.

On the 1953 night Lucy Ricardo gave birth on TV, what happened in Ball's real life?

She had a son, Desi Jr., that same day, and about 44 million people watched the episode. That was more than saw the presidential inauguration the next day.

Ball and Arnaz played newlyweds whose honeymoon keeps going wrong in which 1954 MGM comedy?

The Long, Long Trailer. MGM feared nobody would pay to see a couple they could watch free on TV, yet the film, shot during a break from I Love Lucy, became one of the studio's biggest hits of 1954.

In 1962 Ball became the first woman in Hollywood to do what?

Run a major television studio: Ball bought Arnaz's share of Desilu after their divorce and became its president, an executive role she took on reluctantly.

Ball sold Desilu in 1967 to the owner of which next-door studio, later home of The Godfather?

Paramount: its new parent Gulf+Western paid about $17 million for Ball's shares, merged the neighbouring lots and renamed Desilu as Paramount Television.

Ball played a prospector in which 1960 Broadway musical, source of 'Hey, Look Me Over'?

Wildcat opened in December 1960 with Ball as Wildy Jackson, broke but set on striking oil, and closed early after she fell ill; co-star Paula Stewart introduced her to comedian Gary Morton.

Ball's 1964-65 CBS radio show, in which she interviewed celebrities as herself, was called what?

Let's Talk to Lucy was a short weekday chat with her Hollywood friends. The tapes then sat unheard for decades, until SiriusXM revived them as a channel and podcast in 2021.

Which co-star left The Lucy Show in 1965?

Vivian Vance, tired of the weekly commute from her Connecticut home, asked for better terms to stay and was turned down. She left as a regular in 1965 and came back only for guest spots.

Which family members were regulars on Ball's sitcom Here's Lucy?

Her children Lucie and Desi Jr. played her TV kids, Kim and Craig. Having sold Desilu, Ball made the 1968 sitcom at her own new company and built it around her teenagers.

On the Dick Cavett show, Ball claimed she once picked up a Japanese radio signal through what?

The fillings in her teeth, she told Cavett in 1974, buzzed with Morse code on a drive home, and she said her tip led authorities to a hidden Japanese transmitter.

Frank Sinatra wanted Ball as the scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962); who got the part?

Angela Lansbury got it because director John Frankenheimer had just used her as a mother in All Fall Down and insisted on her.

Which younger comedian did Ball mentor from 1959, sending flowers on her birthday every year?

Carol Burnett learned of Ball's death on her own birthday, April 26, 1989. That afternoon Ball's flowers arrived anyway, with a note reading 'Happy Birthday, Kid.'

Lucille Ball's 1985 dramatic TV film Stone Pillow cast her, against type, as what?

An elderly homeless woman named Florabelle. Ball wore heavy layers on New York streets through a heat wave, finished the shoot, and was hospitalized for dehydration afterward.

Which producer of glossy prime-time soaps co-produced Ball's short-lived 1986 sitcom Life with Lucy?

Aaron Spelling co-produced Life with Lucy with Ball's own company; it was pulled after about two months in 1986 amid poor ratings, and it was her last series.

Ball's second husband, Gary Morton, was a stand-up comic from which circuit?

The Borscht Belt's Catskills hotels were Morton's beat when Ball met him in New York in 1960. He said he had never seen I Love Lucy because he always worked nights.

When Ball registered to vote in 1936, which party affiliation did she list?

She registered as a Communist in 1936 at the insistence of her socialist grandfather Fred Hunt, she told HUAC in 1953, and said she never intended to vote that way; the committee cleared her.

Why does Lucy Ricardo get drunk while filming her Vitameatavegamin commercial?

The tonic is full of alcohol, 23 percent of it, and every rehearsal means another dose, so by the final take Lucy can barely get the name out.

Ball said she voted for which candidate in the 1952 presidential election?

Dwight D. Eisenhower got both their votes the previous November, Desi Arnaz told the studio audience in September 1953, having just called his wife as American as Ike himself.

In the I Love Lucy episode 'Job Switching', where do Lucy and Ethel fall hopelessly behind a speeding conveyor belt?

A candy factory hires them to wrap chocolates, and when the belt speeds up they stuff the sweets into their mouths and blouses to hide the ones they missed.

Days after Desi Arnaz died in 1986, which Desilu crime-drama star read his tribute at Ball's Kennedy Center Honors?

Robert Stack, Eliot Ness in Desilu's The Untouchables, read the note Arnaz had written for the night, which ended: 'I Love Lucy was never just a title.'

Ball has been on the cover of which magazine more often than anyone?

TV Guide was still putting her out front in 2001, when it marked I Love Lucy's 50th anniversary with a set of eight Lucy covers.

Ball died in 1989 of what?

A ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm killed her on April 26, 1989, eight days after surgeons at Cedars-Sinai replaced part of her aorta and she seemed to be recovering.

What was Lucy Ricardo's maiden name on I Love Lucy?

Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy; her mother, Mrs. McGillicuddy, played by Kathryn Card, joined the Ricardos on the 1955 trip to Hollywood.

Which US president awarded Ball a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom in July 1989?

George H. W. Bush presented the posthumous medal on July 6, 1989, ten weeks after her death; Ball had received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986.

A much-mocked 2009 statue of Lucille Ball in Celoron, New York, earned what nickname from locals?

'Scary Lucy', sculptor Dave Poulin's 2009 bronze, was so mocked that Celoron unveiled a replacement by Carolyn Palmer in 2016 and kept the original nearby as a curiosity.

Who earned an Oscar nomination for playing Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos (2021)?

Nicole Kidman won the Golden Globe for the performance; Cate Blanchett had originally been announced for the role in 2015.

Which two famous series did Desilu launch in 1966, the year before Ball sold the company?

Star Trek and Mission: Impossible both reached the air in September 1966, the year before Desilu was sold and folded into its new owner's studio.