How much is Lucille Ball worth?
| Net Worth: | $70 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional actress |
| Date of Birth: | 6 August 1911 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.71 m |
About Lucille Ball
After receiving severe criticism from her tutors at her theater school, Ball resolved to show her instructors that they were wrong and moved back to New York City in the year 1928. She started working for Hattie Carnegie as an in-house model in the same year as she started the job. Carnegie gave Ball the order to bleach her dark brown hair to a lighter shade of blonde, and Ball obeyed. “Hattie taught me how to slouch properly in a $1,000 hand-sewn sequin dress and how to wear a $40,000 sable coat as casually as rabbit.” Ball recalled about this time in her life.
Lucille Désirée Ball was the first child and only daughter of Henry Durrell “Had” Ball, a lineman for Bell Telephone, and Désirée Evelyn “DeDe” (née Hunt) Ball. She was born on August 6, 1911 at 60 Stewart Avenue in Jamestown, New York. She was the first child and only daughter of her parents.
The majority of her ancestors were from England, although others came from Scotland, France, and Ireland. She moved returned to New York City in 1932 with the intention of resuming her acting career, and she did so while continuing to work for Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. She started earning chorus work on Broadway under the name Diane (often written Dianne) Belmont, but it did not last long at all.
As a contract performer for RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930s, she appeared in a number of bit parts in movies, one of which being a two-reel comedy short starring The Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934). In 1936, she was cast in the Bartlett Cormack play Hey Diddle Diddle, which was a comedy that took place in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. She had high hopes that this role would propel her to Broadway. The first performance of the play took place on January 21, 1937 in Princeton, New Jersey.
Ball made her debut as the lead role in the musical Too Many Girls in 1940. It was around this time that she met and fell in love with Desi Arnaz, who portrayed one of the four bodyguards that her character had in the film. In the 1940s, Ball secured a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but he was never able to reach considerable stardom with the studio.
While filming the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls in 1940, Ball crossed paths with Desi Arnaz, a bandleader who was born in Cuba. They hit it off right away and decided to run away together on November 30, 1940, which was just two months after the movie was released. Ball sued for divorce in 1944 and was granted an interlocutory decree; however, she and Arnaz later reconciled, which prevented the entry of a final order. Ball sought for divorce in 1944 and was granted an interlocutory decree.
In the film The Big Street, which was released in 1942, Lucy played opposite Henry Fonda. Ann Sothern’s real-life best friend, Ball, was cast in the role of Du Barry Was a Lady when MGM producer Arthur Freed obtained the rights to adapt the hit musical play Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) specifically for Ann Sothern. However, Ann Sothern declined the role, and Freed gave it to Ball.
I Love Lucy was not only a platform for Lucille Ball to establish herself as a star, but it was also an opportunity for her to save her marriage to Desi Arnaz. Their relationship had become severely strained over the course of the past few months, in part as a result of their extremely busy performance schedules.
Time zone logistics made it difficult for Ball and Arnaz to continue living in their Los Angeles home while I Love Lucy was airing, despite the fact that they desired to do so. Filming in California would have meant giving most of the television audience a subpar kinescope picture that was at least one day late because prime time in Los Angeles was too late to air a major network series live on the East Coast. This would have been the case because prime time in Los Angeles was too late.
Desilu was able to convince CBS to give up their post-first-broadcast rights, but CBS did not realize what they were giving up at the time: a significant and long-lasting asset. In 1957, CBS paid a total of one million dollars to regain the rights to the show, which is equivalent to $9.65 million in today’s currency. With this money, Ball and Arnaz were able to put a down payment on the studios that had formerly been used by RKO Pictures and which they renamed Desilu Studios.
Lucy and Desi starred together in two feature films during the production breaks of their television show. These films were titled The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Forever, Darling (1956). After the final episode of “I Love Lucy” aired in 1957, the show is principal cast continued to make appearances until 1960 in rare one-hour specials that were given the moniker “The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour.”
After many weeks of returned ticket sales, the producer and star of the 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat, Ball, was unable to recover from a virus in time to complete the run of the show, which led to the musical’s premature cancellation.
The song “Hey, Look Me Over” which she made famous by performing it on The Ed Sullivan Broadcast with Paula Stewart, was first heard on the show and was the source of the song’s inspiration. During the 1964–1965 season, Ball was the host of the CBS Radio discussion show Let us Talk to Lucy.
She made an appearance on the Dick Cavett show in 1974 and spoke about her work on the I Love Lucy television show. She also reminisced about her family history, the friends she missed from the entertainment industry, and how she discovered how to be happy while married.
Up until roughly the year 1980, Ball starred as the principal character in a variety of comedic television specials. These include Lucy Moves to NBC and Lucy Calls the President, both of which also starred Vivian Vance, Gale Gordon, and Mary Jane Croft. In addition to her profession as an actress, she began teaching at California State University, Northridge as an assistant professor in the year 1979.
In 1982, she was the host of a two-part retrospective on the television show Three’s Company. During the event, she displayed footage from the show is first five seasons, discussed notable storylines, and expressed her enthusiasm for the program.
Her comedy comeback, Life with Lucy, which aired on ABC in 1986 and costarred her longtime adversary Gale Gordon and was co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and prolific producer Aaron Spelling, was canceled by the network after less than two months of airing.
After complaining of chest issues on April 18, 1989, Ball checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for treatment. She had surgery after receiving the diagnosis that she had an aortic aneurysm that was dissecting. Ball was the recipient of numerous tributes, accolades, and awards both during her lifetime and after she passed away. She was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960. The first star was placed at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard in recognition of her services to the film industry. The second star was placed at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard.
