Q 01/05

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

A) Jamestown

B) Rochester

C) Utica

D) Elmira

Answer · why

A) Jamestown

The street she was born on is now Lucy Lane, and the town has the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum.

Q 02/05

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

A) Western Union

B) New York Central Railroad

C) Bell Telephone

D) General Electric

Answer · why

C) Bell Telephone

His job kept the family moving, to Anaconda, Montana, and Trenton, New Jersey, before he died of typhoid fever at 27.

Q 03/05

Ball traced her lifelong fear of birds to what?

A) Being pecked by a rooster at her grandparents' farm

B) A bird trapped in the house on the day her father died

C) A crow attack on the Celoron Park boardwalk

D) A prank by her brother with a stuffed owl

Answer · why

B) A bird trapped in the house on the day her father died

She was three at the time; the phobia is called ornithophobia.

Q 04/05

Ball's puritanical Swedish step-grandparents banned what from the house except one over the bathroom sink?

A) Radios

B) Books

C) Clocks

D) Mirrors

Answer · why

D) Mirrors

When she was caught admiring herself in it she was scolded for vanity, an episode she said affected her for years.

Q 05/05

Which future star was Lucille Ball's fellow student at the John Murray Anderson drama school?

A) Katharine Hepburn

B) Joan Crawford

C) Barbara Stanwyck

D) Bette Davis

Answer · why

D) Bette Davis

Ball said all she learned there was how to be frightened; her teachers told her she would never make it.