Great Americans #4 Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball died on 26th April, 1989, after a performance and producing career that started in the 1920’s and stretched into the ’80’s. With her first husband, Desi Arnaz, she co-created the situation comedy genre through starring in I Love Lucy. Later on, she approved the initial production of Star Trek. Desilu Productions also created Mission:Impossible, The Untouchables and Mannix.

Her breakout role was in 1939 as Peggy Nolan (pictured above), a woman with a shady past, in Five Came Back, a B-grade project which was a box office hit. It was both a pioneering disaster movie and an inspiration for Gilligan’s Island. Lucille Ball really understood creativity. “The more things you do”, she said, “the more things you can do.”

In World War Two, when freedom was on the line, she didn’t mind being a glamorous babe to help keep up the spirits of the guys in uniform risking their lives fighting against tyranny. No third wave feminist crap to weaken our culture in that era.

“Women’s lib?” she asked, later on, to answer, “Oh, I’m afraid it doesn’t interest me one bit. I’ve been so liberated it hurts.”

in her youth, she appeared to have communist sympathies, but in 1952 she voted for Eisenhower.

She was an intelligent, life long worker. Her first audition was at the age of 12 and in 1979, in her late sixties, she became an assistant professor at California State University.

“The secret of staying young” she explained,”is to live honestly, eat slow and lie about your age.” On television, having great celebrity friends, helps career youth too.

Even in 1974, in her early sixties, Lucy could still steal the scene in between two of the greatest and most charismatic actors in cinema, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor:

Geoff Fox, 26th April, 2023, Down Under