Lucille Ball Reaches Top After Battle For Stardom

 December 4, 1953

When you see Lucille Ball cavorting about the Ricardo apartment in the CBS Television “I Love Lucy” series, you can rest assured that he expert comedienne is giving her all to the role of Lucy Ricardo. 

It is doubtful, in fact, that there is another TV trouper who gives as much of her physical and mental energies as does Lucille to the preparation of a comedy show. She gears herself up for each performance, works like a demon, and has been known to faint dead away after the director called ‘cut’ for the final scene. 

Being “on the ball” is no novelty to Lucille. At the beginning of her theatrical career in the role of a Broadway model she almost lost her life in an automobile accident, and was told that she would never walk again. It took her eight months in bed and three years of persistent effort to reverse the doctor’s gloomy prediction. And from then on, her luck changed and she skyrocketed to the show business goal on which he’d set her eye since childhood. 

Lucille and Desi Arnaz were married in 1940, and it was 10 years later, when they were touring the country with comedy act, that she got word of an impending visit from the stork. It was also at this time that they made the audition program for “I Love Lucy,” which was promptly sold, and made its debut Oct. 15. 1951. 

The daughter, Lucie Desiree Arnaz. was born July 17, 1951. And it is well known that a second child was on its way in the fall of 1952 when Lucille was doing ‘enceinte" scenes for the TV show. And the newspapers made much of the fact that Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV arrived January 19, 1953 on a TV show day which presented the birth of the Ricardo’s baby boy as the theme of script. 

Born in Jamestown, N.Y., August 6, the daughter of Fred and Desiree Ball, mining engineer and concert pianist respectively, Lucille was taken at the age of two to Wyandotte, Mich., and then to Jamestown, N.Y. Mrs. Ball started her daughter’s music lessons at the age of five, then enrolled her in the Chautauqua Institute of Music for two seasons. 

At 15, Lucille entered the John Murray Anderson dramatic school in New York and was told at the end of the first year of study, that she’d be better off applying her energies in some ether field. Determined to show her teacher that she could make good in show-business. 

Miss Ball landed a chorus job in the third road company of Ziegfeld’s “Rio Rita” and lost the job after five weeks of rehearsal. Three other chorus jobs followed, none of which lasted beyond the rehearsal period. Her “first real job on Broadway” was as a soda jerk in a drug store. 

A job as a $25-a-week model for a wholesale dress company led to a modelling job with Hattie Carnegie. Then came the tragic accident in Central Park, and three years and eight months of learning to walk again. 

Back to work as a model, Lucille was featured in magazine and billboard cigarette advertisements, and Hollywood scouts brought her to the film capital for a showgirl role in Eddie Cantor’s “Roman Scandals.” Columbia Pictures gave her a contract as a stock player, and Lucille, convinced that her luck finally had turned, sent for her mother, grandfather and sister to join her in California. But it turned out to be just another stumbling block. The morning after she’d wired her family, the studio decided to dissolve its stock company. 

When the family arrived, Lucille was working as an extra at Paramount. Bit parts and extra roles in a number of pictures kept Lucille busy but not prosperous, until she was cast in “Roberta.” RKO officials, impressed by her work, gave her a contract. When not busy before the cameras, she was a mainstay of the studio’s Little Theatre. 

Her performance in the second lead in “The Girl from Paris” drew Broadway’s attention to Miss Ball, and she was offered a lead in the musical, “Hey Diddle, Diddle.” After satisfying her yen to perform on the Great White Way, “Stage Door” and “Too Many Girls.” In the latter picture, she was co-starred with Desi Arnaz. They were married Nov. 30, 1940, in Greenwich, Conn. 

Back from her honeymoon, Lucille walked into her first really big break, a role in “The Big Street,” based on a story by Damon Runyon. Overnight, it made her a star. In it, she played a showgirl who was paralyzed from the hips down. Her own three-and-a-half years in a similar predicament enabled her to play the role so convincingly that she had every studio bidding for her services. 

She signed with MGM on her birthday in 1942. Her first assignment at MGM was the title role in the Technicolor production, “Du Barry Was A Lady.” Stellar roles followed in “Best Foot Forward” and “Meet The People." 

After completing "East To Wed” with Van Johnson, she headed for New York to be with her husband, then out of the Army and on his way to success in the orchestra business.

Shortly after completing “Her Husband’s Affairs,” Miss Ball went on tour as star of Elmer Rice’s play. “Dream Girl.” Between pictures and stage appearances, Lucille and her husband live at Desilu, their five-acre ranch at Northridge, some 30 miles from Hollywood. 

Lucille, who is five feet, six inches tall and weighs 120 lbs. sleeps in a bed seven by seven feet. She likes spicy dishes and enjoys knocking around the house in dungarees. 

In her role as Lucy Ricardo in “I Love Lucy,” she is starred as the feminine half of a closely-knit married couple. And that’s the role she plays in real life.