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##### April 27, 1989 OBITUARY ## Lucille Ball, Spirited Doyenne Of TV Comedies, Dies at 77 ##### By PETER B. FLINT Lucille Ball, the irrepressible queen of television comedy for nearly a quarter-century, died yesterday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles a week after undergoing heart surgery there. She was 77 years old. A hospital spokesman, Ron Wise, said the actress had suffered a rupture of the aorta after having improved steadily from a seven-hour operation. Miss Ball, noted for impeccable timing, deft pantomime and an endearing talent for making the outrageous believable, was a Hollywood legend: a contract player at RKO in the 1930's and 40's who later bought the studio with Desi Arnaz, her first husband. She made her last public appearance four weeks ago at the Academy Awards ceremonies, when she and Bob Hope introduced a production number. The elastic-faced, husky-voiced comedian was a national institution from 1951 to 1974 in three series and many specials on television that centered on her ''Lucy'' character. The first series, ''I Love Lucy,'' was for six years the most successful comedy series on television, never ranking lower than third. The series, on CBS, chronicled the life of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban band leader played by Mr. Arnaz, who was Miss Ball's husband on and off screen for nearly 20 years. It was a major national event when, on Jan. 19, 1953, Lucy Ricardo gave birth to Little Ricky on the air the same night Lucille Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha 4th. The audience for the episode was estimated at 44 million, a record at the time, and CBS said 1 million viewers responded with congratulatory telephone calls, telegrams, letters or gifts. Miss Ball's first child, Lucie Desiree Arnaz, was born July 17, 1951, three months before the show went on the air. The Ricardos were the best-known, best-loved couple in America, and the first ''Lucy'' series is still in syndication in more than 80 countries, at times with six episodes a day in a single area. Analyzing the reasons, Miss Ball explained why her inspired exaggeration of an average middle-class housewife was credible: ''I believe it all the way. I do what I do with all my strength and heart.'' ''Lucille Ball will always be the first lady of CBS,'' William S. Paley, the chairman of the network, said yesterday in a tribute issued by his office. ''Lucy's extraordinary ability to light up the screen and brighten our lives is a legacy that will last forever.'' Miss Ball was also an astute business executive. From 1962 to 1967, she headed Desilu Productions, one of the biggest and most successful television production companies. Also, starting in 1968, she and her second husband, Gary Morton, a former nightclub comic, headed Lucille Ball Productions. She bought Mr. Arnaz's share of Desilu Productions in 1962 with a $3 million bank loan, and she sold the company to Gulf and Western Industries in 1967 for $17 million. Her share totaled $10 million. Discussing how she became an executive, Miss Ball said: ''My ability comes from fairness and a knowledge of people. I ran my studio like I run my home, with understanding of people. We touch in our house. I tell my children, 'There's so little time.' '' Miss Ball was a tireless worker. ''I have to work or I'm nothing,'' she once said. ''I've never been out of work except for two hours once between contracts.'' On the set, she was said to know every term, every lighting fixture and every worker. A Veteran of Motion Pictures Before entering television, Miss Ball appeared in more than 50 films, beginning in 1933 as an unbilled chorus girl in an Eddie Cantor musical farce, ''Roman Scandals.'' Her other films included ''Having Wonderful Time'' (1938), ''Room Service'' (1938), ''The Big Street'' (1942), ''Best Foot Forward'' (1943), the title role in ''Du Barry Was a Lady'' (1943), ''Without Love'' (1945), ''Sorrowful Jones'' (1949) and ''Fancy Pants'' (1950). James Agee, the writer and film critic, observed that Miss Ball ''tackles a role like it was sirloin and she didn't care who was looking.'' Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times wrote in 1938 that she ''is rapidly becoming one of our brightest comediennes.'' In 1960 she also starred in a Broadway musical, ''Wildcat.'' In 1964 there was a Lucy Day at the New York World's Fair, and in 1971 she became the first woman to receive the International Radio and Television Society's Gold Medal. Her many other awards included four Emmys, induction into the Television Hall of Fame and a citation for lifetime achievement from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Daughter of a Pianist Lucille Desiree Ball was born on Aug. 6, 1911 in Celoron, outside Jamestown, N.Y. She was the daughter of the former Desiree Hunt, a pianist, and Henry Dunnell Ball, a telephone lineman, who died when she was 3. As a girl she spent a great deal of time with her maternal grandparents, who instilled in her a deep family loyalty and a commitment to hard work. Her favorite times were attending vaudeville shows and silent films and acting out episodes and plays. Of a school production of ''Charley's Aunt,'' she said, ''I played the lead, directed it, cast it, sold tickets, printed the posters and hauled in furniture for props.'' She embarked on a show-business career at 15 by going to Manhattan and enrolling in John Murray Anderson's dramatic school. From the first, she was repeatedly told she had no talent and should return home. She tried and failed to get into four Broadway chorus lines. From Soda Jerk to Cigarette Girl She worked variously as a waitress and as a soda jerk in a Broadway drugstore. She then became a hat model in Hattie Carnegie's salon and also modeled for commercial photographers. She won national attention as the Chesterfield Cigarette Girl in 1933. This got her to Hollywood as a Goldwyn chorus girl in ''Roman Scandals.'' Over two years, she played unbilled and bit roles in two dozen movies and made two-reel comedies with Leon Errol and the Three Stooges. She then spent seven years at RKO Radio Pictures, getting many leading roles in low-budget movies. She was typed and mostly wasted in films, but a few roles suggested her talents - a cynical young actress in ''Stage Door'' (1937), a temperamental movie star in ''The Affairs of Annabel'' (1938), a rejected lover in the 1939 melodrama ''Five Came Back,'' a gold-digging stripper in ''Dance, Girl, Dance'' (1940), a handicapped egotist in ''The Big Street'' (1942) and a tough-talking secretary in ''The Dark Corner'' (1946). ''I never cared about the movies,'' she said later, ''because they cast me wrong.'' A Regular on the Radio In radio, Miss Ball did regular stints on Phil Baker's and Jack Haley's comedy-variety shows in the late 30's and 40's and, from 1947 to 1951, she played the precursor to Lucy: the hare-brained wife of a Midwestern banker (Lee Bowman and later Richard Denning) in the CBS radio comedy ''My Favorite Husband.'' The show's writers were Madelyn Davis and Bob Carroll Jr., who were to write many Lucy scripts in later decades. On the stage, Miss Ball won favorable notices for a 22-week tour in the title role of Elmer Rice's fantasy ''Dream Girl.'' In 1950, she and Mr. Arnaz tried to sell the ''I Love Lucy'' television show to CBS. Network executives objected, contending the public would not accept the team of an American redhead and a Cuban bandleader with a heavy accent. To prove their case, the couple went on a nationwide vaudeville tour with a 20-minute act that included a ''Cuban Pete-Sally Sweet'' medley. They produced a 30-minute film pilot with $5,000 of their own money. The broadcast officials were won over. Premiere in 1951 ''I Love Lucy'' had its premiere on Oct. 15, 1951, and within a few months millions of Americans tuned in every Monday evening to watch the antics of the Ricardos and their best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance). ''I Love Lucy'' was one of the first shows to be filmed rather than performed live, making it possible to have a high-quality print of each episode for rebroadcast, compared with the poor quality of live-show kinescopes. The change eventually led to a shift of television production from New York to Hollywood. The show was the first to be filmed before an audience, and crew members used three cameras at once to permit motion-picture-type editing. The series won more than 200 awards, including five Emmys. Jack Gould of The Times offered this analysis: ''The extraordinary discipline and intuitive understanding of farce gives 'I Love Lucy' its engaging lilt and lift. Only after a firm foundation of credibility has been established is the element of absdurdity introduced. It is in the smooth transition from sense to nonsense that 'I Love Lucy' imparts both a warmth and a reality to the slapstick romp that comes as the climax.'' Miss Ball's superb timing, Mr. Gould wrote, makes her ''the distaff equivalent of Jack Benny,'' her professional idol. A Fortune in Rerun Rights Mr. Arnaz made a fortune for the couple by obtaining rerun rights for the series. He later sold the rights to CBS, allowing the couple's production company, Desilu, to buy a studio, the former RKO lot where Miss Ball's film career had languished and where they had met in 1940 while appearing together in ''Too Many Girls.'' Despite the continuing popularity of ''I Love Lucy,'' the couple sought a less demanding schedule and ended the series in 1957 after making 179 episodes. The format persisted, however, for three more years through a series of hourlong, high-budget, around-the-world specials called ''The Luci-Desi Comedy Hour.'' Their collaboration ended with their divorce in 1960. Mr. Arnaz died in 1986. Two years after their divorce, Miss Ball revived ''Lucy,'' playing a widow in ''The Lucy Show'' for 156 episodes until 1968, then did ''Here's Lucy'' for 144 episodes from 1968 to 1974. In these two series she was joined by her two children, her longtime friend Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon, who succeeded Mr. Arnaz as her masculine foil. In shaping situation comedies, Miss Ball consistently sought superior writers, followed their advice, gave them unstinting credit and paid close attention to production details. In later movies, she co-starred with Bob Hope in two comedies, ''The Facts of Life'' (1961) and ''Critic's Choice'' (1963), and appeared with Henry Fonda in ''Yours, Mine and Ours,'' a 1968 farce about a couple with nearly a score of children. In 1974 she starred in a film version of the stage hit ''Mame.'' Last Series Failed Miss Ball also appeared occasionaly in television specials and played a spunky bag lady in a 1985 television movie, ''Stone Pillow.'' John J. O'Connor of The Times said she was ''as wily and irresistible as ever'' and ''in total control.'' In 1986, she returned to weekly television as a grandmother in another sitcom series called ''Life With Lucy,'' but it failed to gain an audience. Addressing a group of would-be actors, she said the best way to get along with tough directors was ''don't die when they knock you down.'' She said she was very shy at the start of her career, but overcame it when ''it finally occurred to me that nobody cared a damn.'' Associates called Miss Ball self-reliant, sympathetic and sometimes tempestuous. ''Life is no fun,'' she once said, ''without someone to share it with.'' For many years she and Mr. Morton had homes in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs and in Snowmass, Colo. Miss Ball is survived by her husband, her daughter, her son and three grandchildren. Funeral plans were incomplete last night.
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