lunes, 17 de marzo de 2014

Lucille Ball the lady of comedy.

Lucille Desiree Ball, she became one of the most successful female comediennes of all time in USA. Lucille Desiree Ball was born on 6 August 1911 in Jamestown, New York to telephone lineman Henry Durell Ball and his wife Desiree or DeDe. At the age of three years, the family moved to Montana before settling in Michigan. When DeDe was pregnant with her second child Frederick, Henry contracted Typhoid fever and died in February 1915. A young Ball remembered nothing about this day except for a bird getting trapped in the house leading to a lifelong fear of them. After her father's death, Lucille and her brother were raised by their mother and grandparents. Their grandfather often took them to vaudeville shows and encouraged Lucille to audition for roles in her school plays. Their mother remarried four years after Henry's death and while living with her step-father's parents did little for her self-esteem, her step-father Edward was a Shriner and when his organisation needed female entertainers for the chorus line, he encouraged a 12-year-old Lucille to take part. At age 15, she started studying at the Robert Minton - John Murray Anderson School of Drama, only to be told by John Murray Anderson to forget her dreams of ever making it. Working as a dress model and on Broadway chorus-lines, she became the Chesterfield Cigarette Girl model in 1933 and became a Goldwyn Girl in the Eddie Cantor film musical, 'Roman Scandals'. She continued to struggle throughout the 1930s, with minor parts in films such as 'Stage Door', 'Room Service' and 'Sorrowful Jones'. On the set of a 1940 production called 'Too Many Girls', she met her future husband and business partner, Desi Arnaz. They were soon married. Deciding to try radio, she recorded many programmes, finally developing a truly individual style in 1948, with 'My Favourite Husband'. Aiming to save her troubled marriage, she persuaded studio bosses to let her co-create a TV show with Arnaz in 1950. The show was to become 'I Love Lucy', and she was shot to instant fame. In 1951, just a few days before her 40thbirthday and after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child Lucie Desiree Arnaz. Just 18 months later she gave birth to her second child Desiderio Alberto Arnaz JR. Films: Movies: The Long, Long Trailer, Yours, Mine and Ours with Henry Fonda, Stage Door, Mame, Forever, Darling, The Big Street, The Dark Corner, Stone Pillow, Follow the Fleet, Dance, Girl, Dance, DuBarry Was a Lady, Lured, Room Service, Critic's Choice, Fancy Pants, The Fuller Brush Girl, Best Foot Forward, The Facts of Life, Easy to Wed, All the Right Moves, Three Little Pigskins, Easy Living, Five Came Back, Happy Anniversary and Goodbye, Lucy Calls the President, I Love Lucy, Lucy in London, A Guide for the Married Man, Valley of the Sun, Meet the People, I Love Lucy: The Movie and Other Great Rarities, Seven Days' Leave, Miss Grant Takes Richmond, Hollywood Party, Joy of Living, Sorrowful Jones, I Dream Too Much, Lover Come Back, Having Wonderful Time, Bunker Bean, Her Husband's Affairs, Chatterbox, Two Smart People, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob, The Affairs of Annabel, Go Chase Yourself, Annabel Takes a Tour, Beauty for the Asking, Panama Lady, Without Love One of the most successful shows in television history, it made Lucy a star, and the couple millionaires. They bought out the studio and renamed it Desi-lu. After making two films together, they ended 'I Love Lucy' in 1957, while it was still at its peak. Lucy and Arnaz divorced in 1960. Marrying nightclub comic Gary Morton, she made a whole raft of television projects through the 1960s and 1970s. Becoming a powerful TV executive, she was the guiding light behind such projects as the creation of the 'Star Trek' and 'Mission: Impossible' series. Lucy's last television appearance was at the Academy Awards in 1989 with Bob Hope. Lucille Ball-Arnaz-Morton, the 'First Lady of Television' died only weeks later on 26 April 1989 after undergoing heart surgery to fix an aortic aneurysm, which ruptured for a second time killing her. She had been married to Mr. Morton for 27 years.