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The woman who will always be remembered as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York.
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Her father died before she was four, and her mother worked several jobs, so she and her younger brother were raised by their grandparents. Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and young cousins, she was a restless teenager who yearned to "make some noise".
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She entered a dramatic school in New York City, but while her classmate Bette Davis received all the raves, she was sent home; "too shy".
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She was put under contract to RKO Radio Pictures and several small roles, including one in 'Top Hat' (1935), followed.
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Ball was a tough-talking woman who had used her stardom and show business savvy to become, with her then-husband, the late Desi Arnaz, head of one of Hollywood’s major studios, Desilu.
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In 1948, she took a starring role in the radio comedy "My Favorite Husband", in which she played the scatterbrained wife of a Midwestern banker. In 1950, CBS came knocking with the offer of turning it into a television series.
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After convincing the network brass to let Desi play her husband and to sign over the rights to and creative control over the series to them, work began on the most popular and universally beloved sitcom of all time.
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With I Love Lucy (1951), she and Desi promoted the 3-camera technique now the standard in filming sitcoms using 35mm film. It would solidify her work in the history books of global television.
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Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, age 77, of an acute aortic aneurysm on April 26, 1989.
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After many decades since her passing it's safe to say that the world truly did love Lucy. Hers is a legacy that very few have been able to come close to.
Lucille Ball, the leggy showgirl, model and B-grade movie queen whose pumpkin hair and genius for comedy made her an icon of television, died early Wednesday, a week after undergoing emergency heart surgery.
The co-creator and star of 'I Love Lucy,' a product of TV’s Golden Age that continues via syndication to be viewed by millions around the world, was 77 and died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.