Rheumatoid Arthritis Support

Ball was born to Henry Durrell Ball (September 16, 1886 – February 19, 1915) and Desiree "DeeDee" Evelyn Hunt (September 21, 1892 – July 20, 1977) in Jamestown, New York. Although Lucy was born in Jamestown, New York, she told many people that she was born in Butte, Montana. At age 3, her family moved to Anaconda, Montana and then to Wyandotte, Michigan. Her family was Baptist; her father was of Scottish descent, and his mother was Mary Ball. Her mother was of French, Irish and English descent. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies.

Her father, a telephone lineman for Anaconda Copper, was frequently transferred because of his occupation, and within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved many times, from Jamestown to Anaconda, and then to Trenton. While DeeDee Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915.

After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred were raised by her mother and grandparents in Celoron, New York a village just west of Jamestown. Her grandfather, Fred Hunt, was an eccentric who also enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.

In 1927, Ball dated a gangster's son by the name of Johnny DeVita. Because of this relationship, her mother decided to ship Ball off to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City. There, Ball attended with fellow actress Bette Davis. Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer".

Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1929. She landed work as a fashion model. Her career was thriving when she became ill with rheumatoid arthritis and was unable to work for two years. She moved to New York City once again in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and had some success as a fashion model for designer Hattie Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. She began on Broadway as Dianne Belmont. She was hired—but then quickly fired—by theatre impresario Earl Carroll from his ''Vanities'', and by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of ''Rio Rita''.

She was let go from the Shubert brothers production of ''Stepping Stones''. After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn Girls in ''Roman Scandals'' (1933) she permanently moved to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges (''Three Little Pigskins'', 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (''Room Service'', 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film ''Roberta'' (1935) and briefly as the flower girl in ''Top Hat'' (1935), as well as a brief supporting role at the beginning of ''Follow the Fleet'' (1936) another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant cousin of Ball's on her mother's side of the family. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film ''Stage Door'' (1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn.

In 1936 she also landed the role she hoped would lead her to Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack play ''Hey Diddle Diddle'', a comedy whose setting was a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey on January 21, 1937 with Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of three roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead." The play received good reviews, but there were problems, chiefly with its star, Conway Tearle, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to replace him, but the producer, Anne Nichols, said the fault lay with the character and insisted that the part needed to be reshaped and rewritten. The two were unable to agree on a solution. The play was scheduled to open on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre, but closed after one week in Washington, D.C. when Tearle suddenly became gravely ill.

Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those films.



She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's"—a title previously held by Fay Wray—starring in a number of B-movies, such as 1939's ''Five Came Back''. Like many budding starlets Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In 1937 she appeared as a regular on ''The Phil Baker Show''. When that completed its run in 1938, Ball joined the cast of ''The Wonder Show'', starring future ''Wizard of Oz'' tin man Jack Haley. It was here that she began her fifty year professional relationship with Gale Gordon, who served as the show's announcer. ''The Wonder Show'' only lasted one season, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.

In 1940, Ball met Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of the Rodgers and Hart stage hit ''Too Many Girls''. Ball and Arnaz connected immediately and eloped the same year. Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army in 1942. He ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. That same year, Ball appeared opposite Henry Fonda in ''The Big Street'', in which she plays a paralyzed nightclub singer and Fonda portrays a busboy who idolizes her.

Ball filed for a divorce in 1944. Shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory, however, she reconciled with Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz were only six years apart in age but apparently believed that it was less socially acceptable for an older woman to marry a younger man, and hence split the difference in their ages, both claiming a 1914 birth date until this was disproved.


Adapted from the Wikipedia article Lucille Ball, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki