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Lucille Ball

General Purpose: To inform
Specific Purpose: I want to explain the life and times of Lucille Ball

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world." That quote was one that Lucille Ball lived by throughout her twisted and turbulent life. As one of the most recognized faces in the world, she is known to millions simply as Lucy. She went from waitress and salesgirl to model to Goldwyn Girl to radio clown to an unlikely leading lady in a ground-breaking sitcom that is still seen in regular syndicated reruns more than 40 years after the series ended. Beyond being a television legend, she was the first woman president of a major Hollywood studio—a studio she co-founded. This is the life and times of Lucille Ball.
The eldest child of two, Lucille Désirée Ball was born August 6, 1911, in the small town of Celoron, New York, a suburb of Jamestown. Her father, Henry Durrell Ball, was a telephone lineman for the Bell Company, while her mother, Désirée (DeDe) Hunt, was often described as a lively and energetic young woman. While DeDe was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915. During her childhood, Ball and her brother lived with their independent mother, grandmother and grandfather, Fred Hunt, who was an eccentric socialist who enjoyed theatre. He frequently took the family to local vaudeville shows (acts using music, costuming, and dialogue with comedy, juggling, magic, clowning, acrobatics, singing, mime, and dancing) and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.
At fifteen, Lucille dropped out of high school, and with her mother's approval, enrolled in a school of theatre to study drama in New York City. Nervous and shy in a large city she despised, she lasted only six weeks at the school and returned home to Celoron. While waiting for her big break, Ball modeled under the name Diane...