Lucille Ball Biography

lucille ball

Television comedienne and film actress. Born on August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, New York, to Henry Durrell Ball and his wife Desiree. The oldest of the couple's two children (a brother Fred, was born in 1915), Lucille's childhood was a bit of a hardscrabble affair, one shaped by tragedy and a lack of money.

Ball's father Henry, or Had as he was known to his family, was an electrician and not long after his daughter's birth he relocated the family to Montana for work. Then it was off to Michigan, where Had took a job as a telephone lineman with the Michigan Bell Company. Life came undone in February 1915 when Had was struck with typhoid fever and died. For Ball, just three years old at the time, her father's death not only set in motion a series of difficult childhood hurdles, but also served as the young girl's first real significant memory.

"I do remember everything that happened," she said. "Hanging out the window, begging to play with the kids next door who had measles the doctor coming, my mother weeping. I remember a bird that flew in the window, a picture that fell off the wall."

Desiree, still reeling from her husband's unexpected death and still pregnant with Fred, packed up and returned to Jamestown, New York, where she eventually found work in a factory and a new husband, Ed Peterson. Peterson, though, wasn't a fan of kids, especially young ones, and with Desiree's blessing, he moved her to Detroit without his wife's young son or daughter. Fred moved in with Desiree's parents while Lucille was forced to make a new home with Ed's folks. For Ball that meant contending with Peterson's stern mother who didn't have much money to lavish on her step-granddaughter. The family, Lucille would later recall, lacked enough money even for school pencils.