First woman to run a major television studio
Lucille Ball (1911–1989) turned slapstick into network power: five Emmy wins from thirteen nominations, co-creator of I Love Lucy, and, by 1962, the first woman to run a major TV studio at Desilu—home to Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Time later ranked her among the twentieth century’s most influential women.
Born 6 August 1911 in Jamestown, New York, to a Bell Telephone lineman who died of typhoid when she was three, Ball modeled from 1929, tried Broadway as Diane Belmont, then spent the 1930s and 1940s as an RKO contract player in chorus lines, B-picture leads, and A-picture support. She eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in November 1940; their sitcom I Love Lucy made them household names, and children Lucie in 1951 and Desi Jr. in 1953 arrived before a March 1960 divorce. She married comedian Gary Morton the following year.
After producing and starring in Broadway’s Wildcat from 1960 to 1961, she took control of Desilu in 1962. Reuniting with Vivian Vance for The Lucy Show, then continuing with Gale Gordon until 1968, she launched Here’s Lucy with her children and Gordon through 1974. A late dramatic turn in the television film Stone Pillow in 1985 preceded the short-lived Life with Lucy the next year, canceled after only three months on air.
She died 26 April 1989 at seventy-seven from an abdominal aortic aneurysm tied to arteriosclerotic heart disease; the American Comedy Awards were later nicknamed The Lucy in her honour. Accolades spanned a Kennedy Center Honor, Television Hall of Fame induction, two Hollywood Walk of Fame stars, and a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom from George H. W. Bush. The redhead who once sold laughs as a model ended as the executive who green-lit science-fiction empires.
Source: Lucille Ball
