Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy. Lucille Ball was one of the most popular stars in America during her lifetime and had one of Hollywood's longest careers. She was a movie star from the 1930s to the 1970s, and appeared on television for more than thirty years.
Ball received thirteen Emmy Award nominations and four wins. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name "Diane Belmont". She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then husband, Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Ethel and Fred Mertz, the Ricardos' loveable landlords. After the show ended in 1960, Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show, which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1968, and Here's Lucy from 1968 to 1974. Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life With Lucy. The show proved to be a critical and commercial flop which was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC.
Ball met and eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940. On July 17, 1951, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Desiree Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960. On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm at age seventy-seven. At the time of her death, she had been married to her second husband, standup comedian and business partner Gary Morton, for twenty-eight years.
“I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn't think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.”
“Responsibility is the ability to respond.”
“I'm happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways.”
“Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
“I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.”
“I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not”
“Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”
“I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.”
“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn’t.”
“People either have comedy or they don't. You can't teach it to them.”
“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
“Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.”
“It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy. ”
“I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't.”
“It doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optismism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself”
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
“I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.”
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”