Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: How did Lucille Ball die?
Attempts to revive her failed and her death was officially pronounced at 5:47a.m. PDT. Doctors determined that Ball had succumbed to an abdominal aortic aneurysm and subsequent rupture, and that it was not directly related to her upper aneurysm and surgery the previous week. Cigarette smokers are known to have increased risk of abdominal aneurysm. Ball had been a heavy smoker most of her life. She was 77 years old.[77][78]
Lederer had performed with Duna in the Berlin, Germany presentation of "Die Wunderbar". In 1936, she played the part of Nedda in the British film version of "Pagliacci", starring Richard Tauber. Films in which she played lead roles, such as "Panama Lady" (1939) with Lucille Ball, were popular but did not make her a major star. Her best remembered films include "Anthony Adverse" (1936) and "Waterloo Bridge" (1940).
Arnaz appeared live on stage in Jamestown at the Reg Lenna Palace Civic Center on August 3, 2012, to promote the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy in which new comedians are invited to perform. She gave tribute to both her parents, and expressed a desire to further expand the Festival of New Comedy and expand the Jamestown, New York, Lucy Fest. She gave the history behind the Lucy-Desi Museum and Lucy-Desi Playhouse, and the 2011 birthday centenary for Lucille Ball (which was recorded in the "Guinness Book of World Records" for the highest number of people dressed like Lucille Ball in one place at one time), and announced intent to start using the recently renovated Jamestown train station to further the mission and vision of the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy. Lucie Arnaz praised and appeared on stage with the new executive director of the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Center and applauded her work and dedication to the festival.
Not all the reviews were bad. Vincent Canby in "The New York Times", for example, expressed "great reservations" about the film and Ball's close-ups, but noted that the film is "as determined to please in its way as Mame is in hers" and that the opening credits, "which look like a Cubist collage in motion, are so good they could be a separate subject." Canby went on to praise Ball as well: "When the character of Lucy, an inspired slapstick performer, coincides with that of Auntie Mame, the Big-Town sophisticate, 'Mame' is marvelous. I think of Lucy's turning a Georgia fox hunt into a gigantic shambles, or of her bringing the curtain down on a New Haven first-night when, as a budding actress, she falls off a huge cardboard moon. I even treasure her prying loose the fingers of a sloshed Beatrice Arthur who won't give up her martini glass." "Variety" reported in its February 27, 1974 review that Ball was "showcased, coiffed, made-up and ably guided from almost television-like slapstick to character sincerity with loving care." Molly Haskell in "The Village Voice" was "pro-Ball but anti-'Mame'" and felt that Lucy made the character of Mame—someone "you'd walk a mile to avoid" in real life—palatable. In the March 18, 1974 issue of "New York" magazine, Judith Crist was similarly displeased with the film but supportive of its star: "Lucille Ball is – and no 'still' about it – a first-rate entertainer, supplementing her superb comedic sense with a penetrating warmth and inner humor. She is without peer in making a hung-over stagger from bed to bathroom an exercise in regal poise, in using her slightly crooked smile to vitiate the soppiness of an overly sentimental sequence, in applying her Goldwyn Girl chorine know-how to a dash of song and dance." Milton Krims, the film critic for "The Saturday Evening Post", wrote (in the magazine's March 1974 issue) a breathless paean to Lucille Ball and the film, concluding that "Mame is Lucille Ball and Lucille Ball is Mame."
A 1974 film version of the musical starred Lucille Ball as Mame, Beatrice Arthur as Vera and Robert Preston as Beauregard. It was both a US box office failure and a critical disappointment with Lucille Ball being considered not up to the musical demands of the title role.
The Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum & Center for Comedy is a museum at 2 West 3rd Street, Jamestown, New York, dedicated to the lives and careers of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The museum officially opened in 1996 "to preserve and celebrate the legacy of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and enrich the world through the healing powers of love and laughter". Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown on August 6, 1911.
The Friars Club named a room in its New York clubhouse for Lucille Ball (the Lucille Ball Room).[90] She was posthumously awarded the 'Legacy of Laughter' award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards in 2007.[91] In November 2007, Lucille Ball was chosen as number two on a list of the '50 Greatest TV Icons'; a public poll, however, chose her as number one.[92]
In 1970, Singleton was featured on an episode of ABC sitcom, "Make Room For Granddaddy" (an updated version of "The Danny Thomas Show") which had Lucille Ball as the guest star. In this installment, titled "Lucy Carter, Houseguest", Singleton played Grace Munson, another character from "I Love Lucy". Her final appearance on "Here's Lucy" was in 1974 as Lucille Ball's studio secretary in an episode titled "Lucy (Carter) Meets Lucille Ball". Singleton and Ball were reunited one last time, again as Ball's studio secretary, in the 1980 special "Lucy Moves to NBC".
In the face of this harsh criticism, Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong and returned to New York City in 1928. That same year, she began working for Hattie Carnegie as an in-house model. Carnegie ordered Ball to dye her then-brown hair blonde, and Ball complied. Of this time in her life, Ball said, "Hattie taught me how to slouch properly in a $1,000 hand-sewn sequin dress and how to wear a $40,000 sable coat as casually as rabbit."[31][32]
Lucille Ball appeared in movies and on television from 1927 until 1986.
Oppenheimer died of heart failure on December 27, 1988, following complications after being hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for intestinal surgery. He was survived by his wife, Estelle, his son, Gregg, and his daughter, Jo Oppenheimer Davis. His wife, Estelle, died on December 23, 2007 at the age of 85; she was survived by their children, two grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. Upon his death Lucille Ball called Jess Oppenheimer "a true genius," adding, "I owe so much to his creativity and his friendship." His memoir, "Laughs, Luck...and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time", was completed after his death by his son, Gregg Oppenheimer. That memoir inspired the younger Oppenheimer to write the play "I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom", which had its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 12, 2018, starring Seamus Dever as Oppenheimer, Sarah Drew as Lucille Ball, and Oscar Nuñez as Desi Arnaz. The play was recorded in front of a live audience for nationwide public radio broadcast and online distribution.
Oppenheimer is memorialized in the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York.
Actress Lucille Ball was also a prominent icon from this period. In Lee Tannen's book "I Loved Lucy: My Friendship with Lucille Ball", the author describes his experience when he witnessed Lucille Ball being labeled a gay icon for the first time by a mutual friend. Ball was told of the adoration she received from gay men, as a bar in West Hollywood was known for routinely playing episodes of her television series "I Love Lucy" every weekend.
On August 1, 2016, it was announced that a new statue of Ball would replace the original. Carolyn Palmer was unanimously chosen out of a national competition of more than 65 sculptors. She said in a statement, "I not only wanted to portray the playful, animated and spontaneous Lucy, but also the glamorous Hollywood icon" and "I just hope that all the Lucy fans are pleased and that Lucille Ball herself would have enjoyed this image of her." On August 6, 2016, the day that would have been Ball's 105th birthday, the replacement statue was revealed.
"Guestward, Ho!" began as a CBS/Desilu Studios pilot episode for Vivian Vance, who had played Lucille Ball's neighbor, Ethel Mertz, on the hit comedy series "I Love Lucy" and "The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show" from 1951 to 1960.
Annabel Takes a Tour is a 1938 comedy directed by Lew Landers, starring Lucille Ball and Jack Oakie. Annabel (Lucille Ball) is on a promotional tour and, as a publicity stunt, leaks a story that she is having a romantic fling with a famous romance novelist. The film is a sequel to "The Affairs of Annabel".
The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum is in Jamestown, New York, and the Desi Arnaz Bandshell in the Lucille Ball Memorial Park is in Celoron, New York.
A Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum is in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatre was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor.[82] Ball was among Time magazine's "100 Most Important People of the Century".[83]
Arnaz was portrayed by Oscar Nuñez in "I Love Lucy: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom", a comedy about how Arnaz and Lucille Ball battled to get their sitcom on the air. It had its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 12, 2018, co-starring Sarah Drew as Lucille Ball, and Seamus Dever as "I Love Lucy" creator-producer-head writer Jess Oppenheimer. The play, written by Jess Oppenheimer's son, Gregg Oppenheimer, was recorded in front of a live audience for nationwide public radio broadcast and online distribution.
The 1940 film version of "Too Many Girls", which starred RKO contract star Lucille Ball and the Broadway hit's cast member Desi Arnaz (who met and fell in love on the set, and married soon afterwards), did not feature the song. The song would appear in a later musical revue turned into a Lucille Ball film, "Meet The People" (MGM, 1944), and was sung by the film's supporting player, June Allyson, who met her own future husband in that film's co-star, Dick Powell.
Bankhead's most popular and perhaps best remembered television appearance was the December 3, 1957, "The Ford Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show". Bankhead played herself in the classic episode titled "The Celebrity Next Door". The part was originally slated for Bette Davis, but Davis had to bow out after cracking a vertebra. Lucille Ball was reportedly a fan of Bankhead and did a good impression of her. By the time the episode was filmed, however, both Ball and Desi Arnaz were deeply frustrated by Bankhead's behavior during rehearsals. It took her three hours to "wake up" once she arrived on the set and she often seemed drunk. She also refused to listen to the director and she did not like rehearsing. Ball and Arnaz apparently did not know about Bankhead's antipathy to rehearsals or her ability to memorize a script quickly. After rehearsals, the filming of the episode proceeded without a hitch and Ball congratulated Bankhead on her performance.
Osborne began his career working as a contract actor for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's Desilu Studios. There, Osborne became part of Lucille Ball's Desilu Workshop, in which Ball worked with and nurtured such young performers as Osborne and actress-singer Carole Cook.
In 1925, Ball, then only 14, started dating Johnny DeVita, a 21-year-old local hoodlum. DeDe was unhappy with the relationship, but unable to influence her daughter to end it. She expected the romance to burn out after a few weeks, but that did not happen. After about a year, DeDe tried to separate them by exploiting Lucille's desire to be in show business. Despite the family's meager finances, she arranged for Lucille to attend the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts, in New York City,[28][29] where Bette Davis was a fellow student. Ball later said about that time in her life, "All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened."[30] Ball's instructors felt she would not be successful in the entertainment business, and were not afraid to say this to her face.
In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced many popular television series, including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.[6] Ball did not back away from acting completely. She appeared in film and television roles for the rest of her career until her death in April 1989 from an abdominal aortic dissection at the age of 77.[7]
Lucille Ball and Van Johnson sang and danced to this song on an episode of "I Love Lucy".
In 1928, a then-unknown Lucille Ball began working for Carnegie as an in-house model. Carnegie ordered Ball to dye her then-brown hair blonde, and Ball complied. Of this time in her life, Ball said, "Hattie taught me how to slouch properly in a $1,000 hand-sewn sequin dress and how to wear a $40,000 sable coat as casually as rabbit." Later, Ball moved back to New York City in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress and supported herself by again working for Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl.