This date in 1911 saw the birth of Lucille Ball. 10 things you might not know about her:
She started performing at the age of 12, when her stepfather encouraged her to audition for a show. She loved performing from that point on.
Her mother enrolled her in drama school at the age of 14, even though the family couldn’t really afford it. Part of her mother’s motivation was to get her away from an undesirable boyfriend. Instructors at the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts didn’t think she was cut out to be a performer and said so. However, Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong.
She worked as a model for Hattie Carnegie for a while, sometimes using the name Diane Belmont.
Although she’s known mostly for her work in television, she also appeared in over 50 films. Her first was the 1933 movie, Roman Scandals, where she played an uncredited chorus girl. She became a contract player for RKO Pictures, which landed her roles in films with both the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, and even auditioned to play Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.
It was on a film set that she met her husband, Desi Arnaz. The film was a musical called Too Many Girls, where he played one of her bodyguards. They eloped together soon after the film opened. However, in 1944, she filed for divorce and they split up for 7 years, but reconciled before the divorce became final. They stayed together until 1960 when they split up for good and both re-married, but remained close friends until they died.
Lucy had a lifelong fear of Birds, and especially pictures of birds, when stemmed from when her father died when Lucy was three. All she could remember about that day was a picture falling off the wall and a bird flying into the house. She would refuse to stay in any hotel room which had pictures of birds on the walls.
When she and Desi formed Desilu Productions in 1950, Lucy became the first woman to run a major Hollywood studio. There was more to their studio than I Love Lucy, too. They took on Star Trek when CBS turned it down, and they also produced Mission: Impossible, and The Untouchables.
Desi and Lucy were TV's first interracial couple: she was white American, he was Cuban. They’d been performing together on a radio show called My Favourite Husband and CBS approached Lucy about turning it into a TV show. Lucy agreed on condition Desi played her husband on screen, as well. CBS weren’t keen, thinking a mixed race couple would never be popular with audiences. So Lucy and Desi went on tour with a vaudeville act, to prove that it would work. Lucy was right, theatre audiences loved them, so CBS relented.
As a struggling actress in her early career, Lucy made friends with Carole Lombard, so she could study her style. In 1942, Lombard, who was married to Clark Gable, died in a plane crash while touring the country selling war bonds. Lucy would often ask herself, when making a difficult decision, what Carole would have done. She even attributed the decision to concentrate on her TV career rather than the movies, on Carole appearing to her in a dream. “She was wearing one of those slinky bias-cut gowns of the '30s,” Lucy said, “waving a long, black cigarette holder in her hand. 'Go on, kid,' she advised me eagerly. 'Give it a whirl.'"
Lucy’s mother was always in the studio audience when the shows were taped. She can be heard saying "Uh oh" when Lucy gets into one of her predicaments.
Character birthday
He was difficult to catch but as knowledge of genetic variant powers and neutralising agents grew, he was eventually apprehended and spent some time in jail.
As well as making useful contacts his time inside gave him a more political motivation as the lack of help for released prisoners angered him. He joined the Gunpowder Lot, a group of political activists whose aim was to destroy the government.
No comments:
Post a Comment