Not entirely.. She had many, many great years. My parents were close friends of theirs and I KNOW> before Lu and Desi divorced. During the good years. And when I was a tiny little girl.. and before I was born. We lived nextdoor to each other both in the San Fernando Valley-- Sherwood Forest, Northridge and they built nextdoor to our house in Palm Springs too. I love them so. And I miss Aunt LU terribly.
7:40 She had beautiful gams. 8:00 pictured with Jimmy Cagney's brother William at a cafe in 1934. Lucy didn't dye her hair red by herself. Sydney Guillaroff did that for her for DU BARRY WAS A LADY in 1942
I wouldn"t say she had a scurrilous past, the men who abused and coerce her certainly did. Women have always been subjected to the wims of powerful men, especially in Hollywood.
Well I guess she did what she had to do, those were hectic times. Sad that she, like many other's before and after her she had to endure the casting couch directors and whoever. If you are Hell bent on making yourself famous, sadly there is often a hefty price to pay. To me she was very funny.
Great video, l was aware of some of her early struggles. Besides all of the obvious extraordinarily things what stands out for me the most about Lucy was that she was one of the toughest people to ever walk this earth. The term whatever it takes was made for her. Red Skelton told a story about a routine that they had to do together. He said that Lucy worked harder than anyone he had ever seen to do it perfectly. Skelton said that even though this was new material for Lucy her sheer will to put on a good performance carried her through and she was totally his equal in the show. Martha Graham said that she couldn't dance. Though in the beginning of the scene for affect she's acting as if she's nervous check out her routine with Van Johnson on Love Lucy. It was excellent. The way she survived on the streets during her early days would be yet another example. Nobody was tougher than she was.
She was awesome, but they said that she wouldn't have been so famous if Joan Davis hadn't have died so early due to cancer. She was before I Love Lucy. Check out the Joan Davis Show. Love for a video on her sometime. RIP both Lucy and Joan.
The main thing that Lucy had that Joan Davis didn't - Lucy was beautiful and could be glamorous. Joan was an old style female comic who for the most part was would not be beautiful - like Martha Raye. They "looked" like a comic.
I disagree. Although I loved Joan and her series, Lucy was by far the bigger of the stars, just look up Lucy's filmography and her costars in those films compared to Joan's career. Don't get me wrong, Joan was a brilliant comedienne but her movie career was mainly in non-starring roles and only as a comedienne. Lucy did many very dramatic films in which she was the lead and which were well received. Lucy also starred in a wildly popular pre-curser to I Love Lucy on radio called My Favorite Husband which pre-dates Joan's series. They both were talented ladies but Lucy does not owe the success of I Love Lucy to Joan's death.
Great Video - very informative.🤔 My father was in Show Business as a musician & arranger; from Vaudeville through most of the 1950's. He used to talk quite a bit about the "Casting Couch" method of success. Fact is, those women who refused to cooperate got Nowhere & Fast. However, the women were the only ones who got blamed for cooperating. This POV pretty much continued until Harvey was publicly exposed (& recently) for his abuses. Notwithstanding that fact, there continues to be a slew of men who will point to the fact that the Bible proves that women should be blamed - after all, it was Eve who first ate the apple. 👎👎😝
She deserved the empire, wealth, and prosper that she got because she worked hard to get it. This was a nice biography of her. I've heard her biography before including some to all of the shady business before. But thank you for uploading this. I love Lucille Ball.
They weren’t interracial though. They were both White, otherwise the show would’ve NEVER aired in the first place. They both just came from two different cultures/ethnic groups.
Back then, it was considered inter-racial. Desi wasn't black, but he definitely was not considered white. There was even a time in the US, when even Germans weren't considered white. The same with Irish and Jewish people.
@@StoneSurvivor Well. Not in my experience. Im fact the label white didn't exist until the late 1960s when the democrats started encouraging black people to move from the south to the cities up north in great numbers to divide the country.
@@themysteriousdomainmoviepalace That’s stupid! The existence of the white label has existed for centuries. The first immigration act of 1792 specifically limited immigration/citizenship to “free white persons of good moral character.”
@@StoneSurvivor That’s ridiculous! Of course Desi Arnaz, Germans, and Irish were considered white, otherwise he would’ve never been allowed to marry Lucille nor would any of them have been allowed to immigrate here. They just weren’t considered the right kind of whites. Jews on the other hand, are a completely different story.
Not inter-racial. Desi Arnaz was Cuban, not Asian or African. It was an inter-curtural liason not inter-racial, or are you dense thinking an island in tbe Caribbean can only be inhabited by Afrivans? Very disappointed in your assumptions & brings into suspicion other narratives.
Sigh. Ball's father died when she was 3, not 4. Ball lived with stepfather Ed Peterson's parents, not grandparents, and it was for about a year, not most of her childhood. The rest of her childhood was largely lived with her grandparents Fred and Flora Belle Hunt and her working mother. A lot of the rest here is rumor, 3rd hand stories, or exaggerated; for instance, the bathtub incident involved 1 ricocheted bullet that drilled a single hole in the bathtub. The room was not "riddled" with bullets. Sensationalism may get you views, but not likes when people figure out it's not factual.
@@lindseycarribean5113 and a "latin" person (born in Cuba) can't be white??? You obviously don't know much about race/ethnicity. FYI, the original "latinos" were/are people who spoke Latin, those would be the Romans. They are also considered white/caucasian. Latins/Hispanics come in all shades of the rainbow. It's not a race, Latin America is made up of people from all over the world, some are mixed, some are not. Desi Arnaz was not mixed.
@@Bigbadwhitecracker Since Spain the mother country is European White and she settled at least 20+ countries yes and the majority of the population of many of the Latin American countries are white, thats when.
I am _so_ intrigued by early 1900's make up. I do not miss the 20's "line" eyebrows, though 😂 but she had had perfect ones @1:05. I'm curious what Era @0:43 was... just a dark line drawn right over your natural ones... really interesting. Make up fads are wild.
The Weinstein-Me Too era brings to fore the vicious double standard of long history: men gain 'experience' and hyped image as women lose their 'decent' reputations.
I wouldn’t call Lucille Ball’s first marriage to Desi Arnaz interracial. It may have been an uncommon match for the day (and Desi had a foreign accent), but he was a Caucasian Cuban whose ancestors came from Spain.
Casting couch! Now let's be serious, the whole of Hollywood is a ces pool of absolute filth as is being exposed at present. What is sad is that certain celebrities are our children's role models. Truely a disgusting industry. Having said this, there are some good moral productions that have come out of the industry, but not much in the 21st century so far. Regarding Lucille Ball, yes she did give people plenty of joy and very funny moments. Her private life and behind the scenes moments were sad.
I think she was the right act at the right time. Intrinsically funny? Not in my opinion. Good writers and she had a plethora of good actors around her. Sad to learn of all the shit she endured to finally get good casting. Biographies of Hollywood folk make for some of the saddest reading, deserving of their own genre.
What do I think? I think the so-called Golden Era was anything but. It was depressing, unfair and once you know about the dark side and the disgusting louts who made the rules for far too long, you can't even watch a rerun of I-frickin-Love-Lucy without briefly enduring a slight feeling of nausea over what she, and many others, had to endure. And no one was ever held to account. Hollywood could disappear from the face of the earth and I'd be absolutely fine with it (and humanity would be better for it.) _That's_ what I think.
What ever she did in her private life was her business and her problem. I only care about the image she projected on TV and the comic icon she became. I still love Lucy, no matter how somebody tries to smear her image! That's an evil side of people who wait until you die to dig up all the dirt they can find and try to ruin their reputation and image. Nobody is perfect. We all know that.
I never thought she was that funny, nor Bob Hope, for that matter, so it must have been something else that enabled them to reach the top of the business.
She was a direct descendat of Georgev Washington. His mother was Mary Ball Washington. Being related to warmonger, devil worshiper GW of course would make you shady, to say the least.
@@mitzithompson6585 Don't know if she was, but from what I understand her ancestors were. I have read that it does get passed down to generations, but I do know for sure, she was a card carrying Communist.
These people were popular in the past but probably wouldn’t make it today. Lucy joined the commie party ..duh hope wasn’t funny either but things change of course
That episode where Lucy and Ethel go to a charm school and get makeovers! Makes me squeal with laughter….
That’s one of my favorite episodes of I Love Lucy.
Can you imagine how difficult it was for a woman to do what she did and accomplish what she accomplished? She was tough as nails and had a hard life.
Not entirely.. She had many, many great years. My parents were close friends of theirs and I KNOW> before Lu and Desi divorced. During the good years. And when I was a tiny little girl.. and before I was born. We lived nextdoor to each other both in the San Fernando Valley-- Sherwood Forest, Northridge and they built nextdoor to our house in Palm Springs too. I love them so. And I miss Aunt LU terribly.
@@ShogunHull Yes. i am aware of those salad days for them.
@@jamesdellaneve9005 Right on, Doll. And they were So happy. There were no cracks. It was a great time of the life.
She definately was a badass ...much much respect ... beauty with street cred
She did what she had to, to survive and get through the depression. It did not define her life course.
You Got That Right
I agree#
7:40 She had beautiful gams. 8:00 pictured with Jimmy Cagney's brother William at a cafe in 1934. Lucy didn't dye her hair red by herself. Sydney Guillaroff did that for her for DU BARRY WAS A LADY in 1942
She was my favorite actress.
Clearly one of the most talented, funny actresses that ever graced the screen. Brenton 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
Wholeheartedly agree!
She was beautiful. I loved her. Her past is no big deal. She did the same as many before her and many after her.
She did a what those times dictated for women. You go girl!
Does not make it any kind of right.
Desi didn't belong to a different race. He belonged to a different culture.
Exactly! They were both White, otherwise they would’ve never aired the show in the first place.
I wouldn"t say she had a scurrilous past, the men who abused and coerce her certainly did. Women have always been subjected to the wims of powerful men, especially in Hollywood.
she wanted fame.. its not clean cut.... men who abused her ,,,, think of a better line
You sound as though women have zero agency and are always the helpless innocent victims.
A great many of those 'abused' women were quite willing too
Why did you show a picture of Debra Messing dressed as Lucy from the "Vitametavegamin" sketch when your subject was Lucille Ball?
bet he didn't know the difference
@@glennjones6574 OMG!....lol
Well I guess she did what she had to do, those were hectic times. Sad that she, like many other's before and after her she had to endure the casting couch directors and whoever. If you are Hell bent on making yourself famous, sadly there is often a hefty price to pay. To me she was very funny.
She was a badass! She lived life by her own rules.
Turning tricks for fame? Badass? Submitting to grabber studio heads for jobs? If you see it that way. But submission is not badass. Really not.
Those were rough times.Survival can take a toll.Glad she made it.Enjoyed her on television immensely.Hopefully she had a happy life
Thankyou for all your hard work, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
The cancellation of "Life with Lucy" broke Lucy's heart.
Great video, l was aware of some of her early struggles. Besides all of the obvious extraordinarily things what stands out for me the most about Lucy was that she was one of the toughest people to ever walk this earth. The term whatever it takes was made for her.
Red Skelton told a story about a routine that they had to do together. He said that Lucy worked harder than anyone he had ever seen to do it perfectly. Skelton said that even though this was new material for Lucy her sheer will to put on a good performance carried her through and she was totally his equal in the show.
Martha Graham said that she couldn't dance. Though in the beginning of the scene for affect she's acting as if she's nervous check out her routine with Van Johnson on Love Lucy. It was excellent.
The way she survived on the streets during her early days would be yet another example. Nobody was tougher than she was.
She was awesome, but they said that she wouldn't have been so famous if Joan Davis hadn't have died so early due to cancer. She was before I Love Lucy. Check out the Joan Davis Show. Love for a video on her sometime. RIP both Lucy and Joan.
The main thing that Lucy had that Joan Davis didn't - Lucy was beautiful and could be glamorous. Joan was an old style female comic who for the most part was would not be beautiful - like Martha Raye. They "looked" like a comic.
@@auapplemac1976 true, but I loved her in Hold That Ghost with Abbott and Costello.
I disagree. Although I loved Joan and her series, Lucy was by far the bigger of the stars, just look up Lucy's filmography and her costars in those films compared to Joan's career. Don't get me wrong, Joan was a brilliant comedienne but her movie career was mainly in non-starring roles and only as a comedienne. Lucy did many very dramatic films in which she was the lead and which were well received. Lucy also starred in a wildly popular pre-curser to I Love Lucy on radio called My Favorite Husband which pre-dates Joan's series. They both were talented ladies but Lucy does not owe the success of I Love Lucy to Joan's death.
Really a tough and beautiful actress anyone that work with her should be honored. Awm
Great Video - very informative.🤔 My father was in Show Business as a musician & arranger; from Vaudeville through most of the 1950's.
He used to talk quite a bit about the "Casting Couch" method of success. Fact is, those women who refused to cooperate got Nowhere & Fast. However, the women were the only ones who got blamed for cooperating. This POV pretty much continued until Harvey was publicly exposed (& recently) for his abuses.
Notwithstanding that fact, there continues to be a slew of men who will point to the fact that the Bible proves that women should be blamed - after all, it was Eve who first ate the apple. 👎👎😝
Like the saying goes, fame comes at a very high price in the entertainment and music industry. Sadly, that’s the reality.
She deserved the empire, wealth, and prosper that she got because she worked hard to get it. This was a nice biography of her. I've heard her biography before including some to all of the shady business before. But thank you for uploading this. I love Lucille Ball.
A communist !!! Enough said !!! Get an education !!!
I love Lucy ❤️
Lucy did what she had to do to make it in Hollywood. She was a grand lady us entertained us with grace and dignity.
That's my ♡♡♡Aunt Lu♡♡♡ and Uncle Desi♡◇♡◇
WHATEVER Ms. Ball did in her past....the joy she brought to the 🌎 world ....she WAAAY overpaid in karma . She was fearless and FANDAMNTASTIC!
I'm surprised Lucy and Ricky were considered inter-racial. Its more like inter-ethnic. They were really funny together.
They weren’t interracial though. They were both White, otherwise the show would’ve NEVER aired in the first place. They both just came from two different cultures/ethnic groups.
Back then, it was considered inter-racial. Desi wasn't black, but he definitely was not considered white. There was even a time in the US, when even Germans weren't considered white. The same with Irish and Jewish people.
@@StoneSurvivor Well. Not in my experience. Im fact the label white didn't exist until the late 1960s when the democrats started encouraging black people to move from the south to the cities up north in great numbers to divide the country.
@@themysteriousdomainmoviepalace That’s stupid! The existence of the white label has existed for centuries. The first immigration act of 1792 specifically limited immigration/citizenship to “free white persons of good moral character.”
@@StoneSurvivor That’s ridiculous! Of course Desi Arnaz, Germans, and Irish were considered white, otherwise he would’ve never been allowed to marry Lucille nor would any of them have been allowed to immigrate here. They just weren’t considered the right kind of whites. Jews on the other hand, are a completely different story.
I LOVE LUCY ❤️
Her beauty was sublime a wonderful talent
Hopefully nicole kidman will honor her with her portrayal.
I hope so Lindsey.
@@johnjepsen500 wait to see.
Thank God to go through life being nobody.
Yup, women in Hollyweird had to use the oldest form of currency available to them to get to be a star.
Not inter-racial. Desi Arnaz was Cuban, not Asian or African. It was an inter-curtural liason not inter-racial, or are you dense thinking an island in tbe Caribbean can only be inhabited by Afrivans? Very disappointed in your assumptions & brings into suspicion other narratives.
You are so right, how can marring someone who is white but happens to speak spanish be considered inter-racial?
Technically he's right... if you go back to ancient history to where Hispanics are mixed with.
@@enriquemino9963 Many Cuban's ancestry comes directly from Spain. Spanish are considered "White."
I caught that too.
@@auapplemac1976 True, especially if you came from a well-to-do family which Desi did come from.
You’ve omitted her radio career which was the basis for the I Love Lucy character of the dizzy wife. Lucy had made a movie with Bob Hope.
Enjoyed, TYVM!
Fabulous lady.
Did anyone else notice the picture of Grace as Lucy?
Such a dirty business isn't it? I guess it's only gotten worse since then.
Maybe not. Look what recently happened to Harvey Weinstein. When women are strong enough to file a complaint, the mighty do fall.
Sigh. Ball's father died when she was 3, not 4. Ball lived with stepfather Ed Peterson's parents, not grandparents, and it was for about a year, not most of her childhood. The rest of her childhood was largely lived with her grandparents Fred and Flora Belle Hunt and her working mother.
A lot of the rest here is rumor, 3rd hand stories, or exaggerated; for instance, the bathtub incident involved 1 ricocheted bullet that drilled a single hole in the bathtub. The room was not "riddled" with bullets. Sensationalism may get you views, but not likes when people figure out it's not factual.
Thank you so much for this informative video 🌹
Interracial? Both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were white.
Desi is a latino.
@@lindseycarribean5113 and a "latin" person (born in Cuba) can't be white???
You obviously don't know much about race/ethnicity.
FYI, the original "latinos" were/are people who spoke Latin, those would be the Romans.
They are also considered white/caucasian.
Latins/Hispanics come in all shades of the rainbow.
It's not a race, Latin America is made up of people from all over the world, some are mixed, some are not.
Desi Arnaz was not mixed.
@@deedeeotero4475 Thats right, you are right on queue. Why everyone want to act like all of us hispanics are some race?
Since when did Hispanics become white?
@@Bigbadwhitecracker Since Spain the mother country is European White and she settled at least 20+ countries yes and the majority of the population of many of the Latin American countries are white, thats when.
I am _so_ intrigued by early 1900's make up. I do not miss the 20's "line" eyebrows, though 😂 but she had had perfect ones @1:05. I'm curious what Era @0:43 was... just a dark line drawn right over your natural ones... really interesting. Make up fads are wild.
The Weinstein-Me Too era brings to fore the vicious double standard of long history: men gain 'experience' and hyped image as women lose their 'decent' reputations.
More like who didn't pose nude and casting couch auditions back then?
She really went and said : I'd rather die than sleep in another room than mine
This woman was incredible. She had more balls than any man I know. Bi racial marriage, movie a
Who in Hollywood didn't grace the casting couch?
I am sure Lucy did her time on the casting couch, that's the way things worked back then.
You get the picture.
At 9:17, idk who this is dressed up from Lucy's famous vitameatavegimen scene-- but that's NOT Lucy.
I wouldn’t call Lucille Ball’s first marriage to Desi Arnaz interracial. It may have been an uncommon match for the day (and Desi had a foreign accent), but he was a Caucasian Cuban whose ancestors came from Spain.
Casting couch! Now let's be serious, the whole of Hollywood is a ces pool of absolute filth as is being exposed at present. What is sad is that certain celebrities are our children's role models. Truely a disgusting industry. Having said this, there are some good moral productions that have come out of the industry, but not much in the 21st century so far. Regarding Lucille Ball, yes she did give people plenty of joy and very funny moments. Her private life and behind the scenes moments were sad.
Now that was a life! WOW! MCGILICUDDY HAD IT ALL! EXCEPT HER TRUE LOVE DIZZY DEZI! ❤
Better, apply modern standards to those who knew about the wolves but did nothing to stop them - or even abetted their perfidies.😡😡
Lucy seemed hard, now I know why. I wish I didn't know these things. 😞
Lucille and Desi were NOT an interracial couple. They were both WHITE but came from two different cultures.
Interracial marriage?! Wasn't Desi of Spanish descent? That's Caucsian same as Lucy.
Abah, Ahh bah... Lucy was at a dance school. Lucy was trying to move her leg down off the dance bar. Right?
At 9:18……. Is that Lucille Ball or Debra Messing???? Pretty sure it’s latter……
All the late great actresses slept around casting couches is still on going on.
I think she was the right act at the right time. Intrinsically funny? Not in my opinion. Good writers and she had a plethora of good actors around her. Sad to learn of all the shit she endured to finally get good casting. Biographies of Hollywood folk make for some of the saddest reading, deserving of their own genre.
What do I think? I think the so-called Golden Era was anything but. It was depressing, unfair and once you know about the dark side and the disgusting louts who made the rules for far too long, you can't even watch a rerun of I-frickin-Love-Lucy without briefly enduring a slight feeling of nausea over what she, and many others, had to endure. And no one was ever held to account. Hollywood could disappear from the face of the earth and I'd be absolutely fine with it (and humanity would be better for it.) _That's_ what I think.
Resembles my mom blonde but in black and white
What ever she did in her private life was her business and her problem. I only care about the image she projected on TV and the comic icon she became. I still love Lucy, no matter how somebody tries to smear her image! That's an evil side of people who wait until you die to dig up all the dirt they can find and try to ruin their reputation and image. Nobody is perfect. We all know that.
How big of a stigma was it for her to marry a Cuban really ? She couldn't have married Joe Louis .
She wasn't pregnant-- SHe was "Spectin"
lets see young and on her own in NYC during the depression, its spun as she just dated non sexual dating to eat, im betting more went on.
Interracial marriage? That perspective was unexpected.
I never thought she was that funny, nor Bob Hope, for that matter, so it must have been something else that enabled them to reach the top of the business.
Just imagine--people in the world who became successful in spite of your opinion! 🤪
Again gossip and hearsay
She was a direct descendat of Georgev Washington. His mother was Mary Ball Washington. Being related to warmonger, devil worshiper GW of course would make you shady, to say the least.
Yup, I found that out and no big surprise since she was a card carrying registered Commie.
Really??? She was a devil worshipper???
@@mitzithompson6585 Don't know if she was, but from what I understand her ancestors were. I have read that it does get passed down to generations, but I do know for sure, she was a card carrying Communist.
@@marshamarshamarsha4567 oh boy!
He was a man just look at the last name. Take a close look if you have eyes to see!
I heard she was racist but i never believed it
I'm not really of fan of hers but I doubt very much she was racist. She married a Cuban for crying out loud.
@@Bigbadwhitecracker I guess the silly rumor came about because supposedly she wasn't very fond of black people.
Or the rumors came about cuz shes been dead over 30 years and cannot defend herself.
It's no wonder that Lucy turned commie, with tough times being what they were.
These people were popular in the past but probably wouldn’t make it today. Lucy joined the commie party ..duh hope wasn’t funny either but things change of course
Lotsa good people joined the Communist Party.
I never liked her kind of comedy but TV options in those years were limited.
M2f trans.
3 Stooges much better and funnier than LB.
What’s that got to do with the price of fish ?🤷♀️