Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Interment LocationVisited 
Jamestown, NYJanuary 9, 2016 

Photographed January 9, 2016.

On December 2, 1986, musician, actor, and television producer Desi Arnaz died of lung cancer at age 69. Lucille Ball, Arnaz’s co-star on the immensely popular CBS sitcom I Love Lucy, had been divorced from him for 26 years at that point, but the two remained friendly. They last spoke on the telephone two days before Desi’s death. A week later, Ball — the nation’s preeminent comedienne — was honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. for her lifelong contributions to American culture and the arts. Presenter Robert Stack read aloud a tribute to Ball that Arnaz wrote shortly before his passing. “I Love Lucy had just one mission, to make people laugh,” Arnaz’s letter read. “Lucy gave it a rare quality. She can perform the wildest, even the messiest physical comedy without losing her feminine appeal. The New York Times asked me to divide the credit for its success between the writers, directors, and the cast. I told them, ‘Give Lucy 90% of the credit and divide the other 10% among the rest of us.’ […] Lucy was the show. Viv and Fred and I were just props. Damn good props, but props nevertheless.” An emotional Ball listened as Stack read Arnaz’s concluding remarks. “p.s. I Love Lucy was never just a title.” Ball herself died in 1989, but decades on, the love for Lucy is still felt in her hometown of Jamestown, New York, including at her final resting place in Lake View Cemetery. A stone heart is embedded in the path that leads visitors to her tombstone.

The eastern face of the Ball gravestone has a large, carved heart, with the family surname written in cursive within it. Though it is not a perfect replication, the symbol and script are reminiscent of how the actress’s name appeared in the introductory sequence of I Love Lucy reruns and syndicated episodes. When I visited with my father and my friend, Kelvis, the grave goods that decorated the burial plot included artificial flowers, American flags, wristbands, a paper guide to Jamestown, and admittance wristbands from visitors to the Lucy Desi Museum downtown. Scroll down on this page to see various artifacts and an interactive exhibit in photos from our excursion to the center.

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

Lucy is the third of four people memorialized on the Ball family tombstone. First is her father, Henry, followed by her mother, Désirée, known as “DeDe,” who attended every single I Love Lucy taping. At the bottom is Lucy’s younger brother, Fred, who served on the board of directors for Desilu Productions (named after Desi and Lucy). The epitaph beneath Lucy’s name says, “You’ve come home.” Upon her death in 1989, Lucy’s body was cremated and her ashes were placed in a niche next to her mother’s cremains at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. In 2002, daughter Lucie Arnaz revealed her intentions to relocate her mother’s and grandmother’s ashes from Los Angeles to the family plot in Jamestown, in what decades prior Ball told interviewer Dick Cavett was “a hell of a cemetery.” In comments to the press, I Love Lucy writer Madelyn Pugh Davis remarked she thought Ball would “be alarmed” about the disinterment. “She didn’t like a big fuss made over her,” Davis said. “If you complimented Lucy she’d say, ‘Oh come on.’ She was a very down-to-earth person and she might wonder what all the fuss is about.” Though Davis and fellow show alum William Asher questioned the move, Arnaz and her brother, Desi, Jr., believed it was the right thing to do. By moving both Lucy and DeDe, the children felt that they would continue to honor Ball’s express wish that she be laid to rest with her mother. In 2003 their ashes were transferred to Lake View Cemetery and buried with DeDe’s parents, Fred and Florabelle Hunt, as well as Henry Ball. Fred Ball joined them after his death in 2007.

Ball’s first forays into showbusiness had less than desirable outcomes. After she initially made the cut to perform in impresario Florenz Ziegfeld’s acclaimed theatrical revue on Broadway, she was unceremoniously fired five days later with a swath of other aspiring “Ziegfeld Girls.” In her despair, Ball almost immediately threw herself in front of a limousine, which stopped short of striking her. Later, in Hollywood, she appeared nearly nude as an enslaved woman in the 1933 Eddie Cantor movie Roman Scandals. Disaster almost struck when Ball fainted and fell from 16 feet in the air; her injuries of a bruised knee and sprained leg could have been worse had she not been caught by actor Dewey Robinson. Ball’s fortune steadily improved. At 23, she appeared in one of the Three Stooges shorts by Columbia Pictures, Three Little Pigskins. The Stooges often were depicted opposite a trio of women whose affections they pursued, and Ball was Larry Fine’s romantic interest in that 1934 film. In time, small, uncredited parts gave way to meatier, credited roles. She became frequently cast in low-budget B movies, and she eventually landed co-leads in dramatic and comedic films alike with George Sanders, Henry Fonda, Red Skelton, Franchot Tone, William Holden, and Clifton Webb.

Photographed January 9, 2016.

Fast Facts

Born: August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York

Spouses: Desi Arnaz (m. 1940-1960); Gary Morton (m. 1961-1989)

Emmy Awards: Best Comedienne (1953); Best Actress — Continuing Performance (1956); Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series (1967-1968)

Kennedy Center Honors: 9th Annual (1986)

Presidential Medal of Freedom: Posthumously Awarded by George H.W. Bush (1989)

Died: April 26, 1989 in Los Angeles, California

Cause of Death: Ruptured Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

Age: 77

Interment: Lake View Cemetery, Jamestown, New York

"I had made many pictures for 15 years, and each part was different. You never really are recognized for any particular type of person, any one personality. And I love television for that reason, because I picked my own type of person I wanted to be, and I was it. And I stayed that way. I like that."
- Lucille Ball
March 9, 1971 on The Dick Cavett Show
Photographed January 9, 2016.

This privately-owned home at 69 Stewart Street in Jamestown, New York, was built in 1910. The following year, it was here that Désirée “DeDe” Ball gave birth to her daughter, Lucille. She was aided in the delivery by her mother, Florabelle Hunt, who was a midwife. The Balls did not live on Stewart Street long. DeDe’s husband, Henry, was employed as a lineman by the Bell Telephone Company, and the nature of his work required that the family frequently move. During Lucille’s first three years of life, she and her parents relocated from Jamestown to Anaconda, Montana; from Anaconda to Trenton, New Jersey; and from Trenton to Wyandotte, Michigan. That would be Henry’s last move, as he contracted typhoid fever and suffered for four weeks before he died in February 1915 at the age of 27.

The “First Lady of Comedy” was partly raised in a house at 59 Eighth Street in Celoron, New York (the address is now 59 Lucy Lane). The garage in back is painted to resemble the blue dress with white polka dots that became associated with the red-head’s beloved, ditzy TV character, the showbiz-starved housewife, Lucy Ricardo. Ball shared the house with her extended family, which included her grandparents. The beginning of the end of that arrangement came on July 3, 1927, when Ball’s grandfather, Fred Hunt, brought home a .22-caliber rifle for her 11-year-old brother, Freddy. Freddy’s 14-year-old friend, Johanna Ottinger, was aiming the rifle and pulled the trigger when neighbor Warner Erickson, age eight, stepped in front of her. Erickson was inadvertently hit, with the bullet passing through his spine and paralyzing him. Ball’s grandfather was found legally accountable and placed under house arrest in the county seat of Mayville. Unable to work, Hunt declared bankruptcy. The house was foreclosed upon and its furnishings sold. It was this same grandfather whom Ball was trying to honor when, in 1936, she registered with the Communist Party. This led to a 1953 media frenzy and her testimony to an investigator from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ball and Desi Arnaz visited the Celoron home in 1956.

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

Much of the Lucy Desi Museum in Jamestown focuses on I Love Lucy, and includes artifacts such as props and Ball’s wardrobe pieces. Ball used the thimble-tipped gloves at the bottom of this picture to play a washboard during a song in the 1954 episode, “Tennessee Ernie Hangs On.”

It is a common misconception that, in developing I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz created the three-camera technique that became commonplace in television production for decades to follow. Although Arnaz advocated for its use and may have popularized it, the system was used on the previous shows Public Prosecutor and Truth or Consequences. I Love Lucy expert Bart Andrews credited producer Al Simon and cinematographer Karl Freund with improving the system’s mechanics and lighting. Regardless, with triple the typical amount of film to review, editors quickly found themselves under a time crunch. Film operations manager George Fox provided them with the multi-screened Moviola editing machine shown here, which the editors nicknamed the “three-headed monster.” Series creator Jess Oppenheimer said the device “was a life-saver for us, eliminating hours of time in the editing room.”

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

Real-life spouses Lucy and Desi played Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in the 180-episode series, which ran for 6 seasons between 1951 and 1957. The show’s most frequent setting was the Ricardos’ New York apartment. In episode 61, the Ricardos changed apartments within their building. The props and color scheme of the Lucy Desi Museum’s set recreation are based off of that second apartment’s 1953 appearance. The new space’s picture window is crucial to the plot of the 1957 episode, “Lucy and Superman,” guest starring George Reeves.

My friend, Kelvis, is shown here watching clips of I Love Lucy in front of the recreated set kitchen. Episodes I most associate with the Ricardos’ kitchen are the 25th episode, season 1’s “Pioneer Women,” and the 36th, “Job Switching,” from season 2 (although, as stated above, the recreated set at the Lucy Desi Museum represents the apartment they moved to after those episodes, in the 61st entry).

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

“Spoon Your Way to Health” — look, I’m on television! An interactive exhibit in the Lucy Desi Museum allows patrons to pitch Vitameatavegamin like Lucy Ricardo does in episode 30, titled, “Lucy Does a TV Commercial.” There were not opportunities for me to stomp grapes or scarf down candies.

Several I Love Lucy-themed murals decorate downtown Jamestown, including this colorful display. Adapted from the season 4 episode “California, Here We Come!”, it depicts the Ricardos singing while driving a 1955 Pontiac Star Chief Convertible across the George Washington Bridge with their friends and landlords, the Mertzes. Ethel Mertz was played by Vivian Vance, and her husband, Fred, was portrayed by William Frawley. Ball and Frawley are the only main cast members with graves to visit. After her death due to metastatic breast cancer in 1979, Vance’s cremains were scattered into the sea in Marin County, California. Arnaz died seven years later from lung cancer, and his ashes were scattered into the sea by his home in Baja, California.

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

The Ricardo-Mertz road trip to California and subsequent stay in Hollywood necessitated a new set. This is an image of the recreated hotel set, which was used during the story arc that stretched from season 4 into season 5. The change in fictional scenery from Manhattan to Hollywood allowed for guest appearances by celebrities the likes of Eve Arden, Tennessee Ernie Ford, William Holden, Van Johnson, Harpo Marx, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, and Cornel Wilde.

In 1960, Ball was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star that recognizes her television influence is located at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard. The one for her film contributions, shown here, can be found at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard.

Photographed March 30, 2023.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

Born in 1917, Desi Arnaz fled with his family to the United States during the Cuban Revolution of 1933. A few years later, in the U.S. he became a successful conga drum player and singer. In 1939 he acted in the Broadway production, Too Many Girls, and he was cast in the RKO film adaptation in 1940. It was there that he and Lucille Ball met and fell in love. They eloped in November 1940. Ball was 29; Arnaz was 23. A decade later, when CBS wanted to develop Ball’s popular radio show, My Favorite Husband, for television, the actress insisted that her real-life husband play her on-screen husband, replacing radio co-star Richard Denning. The network initially resisted pairing Ball with her Cuban-born, thick-accented spouse, but she got her way. Pictured here is Arnaz’s collection of Abraham Lincoln books, along encyclopedias about Cuba, and also a letter to the “Babalu” singer from President Richard Nixon, dated August 5, 1970. Nixon thanked Arnaz, a Republican, for agreeing to serve as a member of the Advisory Council for Minority Enterprise.

Captain’s log, stardate 3652.7. Ball bought out Arnaz’s ownership interest in Desilu in 1962 and became the first woman to head a Hollywood studio. In the ensuing years as president and chief executive officer, she backed the shows Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. NBC’s rejection of Star Trek‘s 1965 pilot would have been the end of the concept at the network if Ball did not step in and back a second shoot. The second pilot was deemed more appealing and got the show its start. Per studio accountant Edwin Holly, “If it were not for Lucy, there would be no Star Trek today.” Production costs for Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were high, though, and in 1968 Ball sold her studio to Gulf and Western Industries for $17 million. G+W’s subsidiary, Paramount Pictures, absorbed Desilu. Ball’s post-Desilu activities included television specials and a new show co-starring her children that was named, Here’s Lucy, which ran for 144 episodes over six seasons. In 1985, Ball took on a dramatic role in a made-for-tv film titled, Stone Pillow. The boots she wore as Stone Pillow‘s unhoused “bag lady” lead, Florabelle, are shown in the case here. Accompanying signage says, “Lucy was commended for heightening awareness of the life of the homeless.”

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

In July 1989, Ball was posthumously awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor by President George H.W. Bush. Her Presidential Medal of Freedom is shown here displayed at the Lucy Desi Museum, along with one of Ball’s favorite pink suits and a collection of hand-painted Limoges trinket boxes in which she retained “all kinds of personal things such as baby teeth from her children and dogs, baby hair, rosary beads, and pictures of her children.”

Ball remains best known for her work on I Love Lucy, but she won just as many Emmy Awards for her performances on The Lucy Show, which was in production from 1962 to 1968. This display case holds Ball’s four competitive Emmys, as well as the Governors Award that the Television Academy bestowed upon her posthumously in September 1989. Comedian Bob Hope presented the award to Ball’s husband of 27 years and widower, producer Gary Morton.

Photographed January 9, 2016.
Photographed January 9, 2016.

Thanks to RoadsideAmerica.com, my travel party knew of an unflatteringly-inaccurate statue of the comedienne at Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Celoron. Just the previous year, the pilloried sculpture went viral and received the nickname, “Scary Lucy.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but “Scary Lucy” was given a face even its creator couldn’t love. Artist David Poulin conveyed “disappointment in the final outcome.” The Vitameatavegamin-hawking figure terrorized the park alone for seven years after its 2009 unveiling. Then, in August 2016 (the 105th anniversary of Ball’s birth and seven months after our visit) a more accurate statue sculpted by Carolyn D. Palmer was dedicated. Poulin’s “Scary Lucy” was slated to be relocated to Jamestown, but ended up being moved to a different part of the Celoron park in order to still attract the fans of oddball tourism. Celoron mayor Scott Schrecengost recalled, “One time, some people were boarding a bus after taking pictures with the new statue. I was walking past and I said, ‘You know, Scary Lucy is still right over there.’ They nearly ran me over getting back off that bus!”

Sources Consulted and Further Reading

@thelucylounge. “90 years ago today, Lucille Ball got her first individual mention in the coast-to-coast newspapers.” Instagram, August 16, 2023. Accessed June 12, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/CwAZeFMOJX9/.

Anderson, Jack and Dale Van Atta. “APPARENTLY, THE FBI DID NOT LOVE LUCY.” Washington Post. December 6, 1989. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1989/12/07/apparently-the-fbi-did-not-love-lucy/ca6ccf7b-269b-4992-abb8-26afef7bae28/.

Begley, Sarah. “The ‘Scary Lucy’ Statue Will Get a New Home.” TIME. May 11, 2015. https://time.com/3854597/scary-lucy-statue-new-york-relocation/.

Chan, Melissa. “That ‘Scary’ Lucille Ball Statue Has Finally Been Replaced.” TIME. August 7, 2016. https://time.com/4442285/lucille-ball-statue-scary-lucy/.

Chronic Nostalgia. “The Kennedy Center Honors w. Lucille Ball (1986).” YouTube video, 18:06. December 11, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9prLbpEY8.

Hollywood Graveyard. “FAMOUS GRAVE TOUR – Forest Lawn Hollywood #1 (Bette Davis, Liberace, etc.).” YouTube video, 15:01. January 29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Mw0o2_lE4.

IMDb. “Lucille Ball (1911-1989).” Accessed June 3, 2024. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000840/.

Kaplan, Don. “LUCY WOULD’VE HATED THIS IDEA – HER DAUGHTER WANTS MOM’S ASHES MOVED FROM L.A. TO A CEMETERY IN UPSTATE N.Y.” New York Post. March 20, 2002. https://nypost.com/2002/03/20/lucy-wouldve-hated-this-idea-her-daughter-wants-moms-ashes-moved-from-l-a-to-a-cemetery-in-upstate-n-y/.

Krampner, Jon. “Myths and Mysteries Surround Pioneering of 3-Camera TV : Broadcasting: A popular belief is that Desi Arnaz created the technique for ‘I Love Lucy’ in 1951, but evidence of the system dates to 1947.” Los Angeles Times. July 29, 1991. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-29-ca-176-story.html.

Rapaport, Bill. “59 Lucy Lane — Lucille Ball’s Childhood Home: An Illustrated History and a Visit.” University at Buffalo. Updated May 31, 2024. https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/59LL/59LL.html.

RoadsideAmerica.com. “Scary Lucy, Lovely Lucy.” August 30, 2020. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/47178.

StarTrek.com Staff. “How Lucille Ball Helped Star Trek Become a Cultural Icon.” StarTrek.com. August 6, 2023. https://www.startrek.com/news/how-lucille-ball-helped-star-trek-become-a-cultural-icon.

The Dick Cavett Show. “Lucille Ball: Renowned for Stag Films and Eddie Cantor Roles | The Dick Cavett Show.” YouTube video, 11:18. January 4, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_6DCyH6b3w

The Dick Cavett Show. “Lucille Ball Discusses Type Casting | The Dick Cavett Show.” YouTube video, 8:25. July 31, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao2D7hRcNgI.

The Dick Cavett Show. “Lucille Ball Reflects On Being Fired By Florenz Ziegfeld | The Dick Cavett Show.” YouTube video, 6:06. July 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5g_BuRcYC4

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