Oscar Profile #584: Lucille Ball

Born August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York to a telephone lineman and his wife, Lucille Ball’s father died of scarlet fever at the age of 27 when she was 3. With her mother working several jobs to make ends meet, she and her brother Fred (1915-2007) were raised by their paternal grandparents until her mother remarried four years later when they were looked after by her stepfather’s puritanical parents. When she was 12, her stepfather encouraged her to audition for the Shriners who were looking for new performers for their latest show.

In 1926, when Lucy was 14, her mother enrolled her in the John Murray Anderson School for Dramatic Arts to get her away from her 21-year-old gangster boyfriend. Ball was discouraged by her teachers whose star pupil was Bette Davis. She left but returned to the city in 1928 as an in-house model for Hattie Carnegie. Her fledgling acting career was put on hold in 1930 when she became ill with rheumatic fever. She returned in 1932 and found minor work on Broadway and in touring shows, moving to Hollywood in 1933 where she was put under contract to RKO.

Among her numerous uncredited roles were those in Roberta and Top Hat both starring Fred Astaire and Ball’s distant cousin, Ginger Rogers. She received billing in the Astaire-Rogers 1936 musical Follow the Fleet and had a major role in the 1937 smash hit, Stage Door starring Rogers and Katharine Hepburn. Major roles followed in such films as 1939’s Five Came Back and 1940’s Dance, Gril, Dance and Too Many Girls, marrying Desi Arnaz, her co-star in the latter after a whirlwind romance.

1942’s The Big Street was her last film for RKO. She then went to work for MGM where she starred in 1943’s DuBarry Was a Lady and Best Foot Forward and had a major supporting role n 1945’s Without Love. On loan out to MGM and United Artists respectively, she had major hits with films noir The Dark Corner and Lured. Her 1947 radio show, My Favorite Husband morphed into the long-running 1951 TV series I Love Lucy opposite real-life husband Arnaz, one of the most groundbreaking and influential TV series in history.

The success of I Love Lucy and other shows produced by the couple’s Desilu Productions enabled them to buy their former studio, RKO, making her the first woman to run a Hollywood studio.

The couple split in 1960, the year Ball returned to the big screen opposite Bob Hope in The Facts of Life and starred in Broadway’s Wildcat. Divorced in 1961, she married comedian Gary Morton later that year, to whom she remained married until her death.

Ball’s subsequent career included three more TV series, The Lucy Show (1962-1968), Here’s Lucy (1968-1974), and Life with Lucy (1986) as well as appearances on many TV shows and starring roles in the theatrical films, Yours, Mine and Ours in 1968, and Mame in 1974, as well as the TV movie The Stone Pillow in 1985.

Lucille Ball died on April 26, 1989, less than a month after presenting the Best Picture award to Rain Man at the 1988 Oscars. She was 77.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

STAGE DOOR (1937), directed by Gregory La Cava

Nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture. Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actress (Andrea Leeds), this adaptation of the Broadway hit about a residence for aspiring actresses was a great showcase for stars Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, as well as up-and-comers, Ball, Eve Arden, Ann Miller, and Leeds. Ironically, all of them except Leeds had long, celebrated careers in front of them. The other main players were Adolphe Menjou as a lecherous producer, Gail Patrick as a temperamental star, and Constance Collier as the boarding house mother hen. Hepburn’s “the calla lilies are in bloom” originated here.

DANCE, GIRL, DANCE (1940), directed by Dorothy Arzner

Maureen O’Hara stars as an aspiring ballerina who ends up in burlesque where she is tutored by burlesque queen Ball whose stage name is “Bubbles” in this early feminist comedy-drama from Arzner, the only working female director at the time. Both stars are terrific, bonding in real life as they did in the film. O’Hara was having lunch with Ball when she discovered future husband Desi Arnaz across the room. They remained inseparable friends until Ball’s death nearly fifty years later. The superb supporting cast includes Louis Hayward, Ralph Bellamy, and Maria Ouspenskaya in oe of her signature roles as the head of O’Hara’s dance troupe.

THE FACTS OF LIFE (1960), directed by Melvin Frank

Ball nominated for Emmys thirteen times and won six. She was never nominated for an Oscar, but she did receive three Golden Globe nominations for her film work beginning with this one in which she and Bob Hope leave spouses Don DeFore and Ruth Hussey to run off together but don’t follow through with their planned interlude. Even in 1960, this plot device was moldy, but audiences loved Lucy and Bob together for the third of four times and it was nominated for four Oscars including Best Screenplay, winning for Best Costume Design – Black-and-White. Hope and Ball would be back together again in 1963’s Critic’s Choice.

YOURS, MINE AND OURS (1968), directed by Melville Shavelson

Ball received her second Golden Globe film nomination for this hit comedy based on a true story in which she plays a widow with eight children who falls in love with her The Big Street co-star Henry Fonda as a widower with ten of his own. The film, which inspired TV’s long-running The Brady Bunch, also stared Van Johnson, her co-star in 1947’s Easy to Love, Louise Troy, Tom Bosley, and among the kids, Tim Matheson, Morgan Brittany, Tracy Nelson (Bosley’s co-star on Father Dowling Mysteries, Mitch Vogel, and Eric Shea.

MAME (1974), directed by Gene Saks

Ball received her third Golden Globe film nomination for this generally reviled film version of Jerry Herman’s smash hit Broadway musical that reinvigorated Angela Lansbury’s career in the role originally made famous by Rosalind Russell on Broadway and in the 1958 film version of Auntie Mame. Bea Arthur, reprising her Tony winning Broadway role, was also nominated for a Golden Globe. Theirs were the only awards recognition the film got. The problem with Ball’s interpretation was that following a ski accident at 63, she was too old and stiff to play the part, barley moving through several dance scenes. Robert Preston co-starred.