About Lucille Ball.

Didn’t you love those old television shows with Lucille Ball?

She was one of the most popular actresses of her day and won just about every professional award you can imagine.

I thought that today I’d get together a few facts and tidbits about her fascinating career and  her life.

Her career was long and varied but no-one doubted her genius or her business acumen. Although she was best known as a comedienne, her talents were much more far-reaching.

And she always claimed that she wasn’t good looking and maintained that she envied actresses who got the parts that required look. I think she was wrong – she was a stunning woman with a great figure.

So let’s start with a few beauty tips.

Lucille Ball trivia

In an interview, she revealed that her mother-in-law provided her with a special Cuban oil that made her eyelashes long and lustrous. She could get hold of it all the time, I guess mom smuggled it into the country, but she said that castor oil did the trick too.

Although she was known for her red hair, it wasn’t natural. She had rather nondescript brown hair. She called it a shade of ‘nothing-brown’. She claimed to use henna to colour it rather than the harsh chemicals used in those days.

Her name and that of her husband, Desi Arnaz, are invariably linked because of the TV shows they made together. The couple were married for twenty years. Lucille was married to her second husband for twenty eight years (until her death).

She was almost forty – just a month shy – when she had her first child. When she had her second baby,the event was written into the fictional TV show. This was very controversial for the time. The television network insisted that the word ‘pregnant’ should not be used on air.

Her second husband was a stand up comedian by the name of Gary Morton. He was very unlike Desi Arnaz – he was Jewish and thirteen years younger than Lucille. When they met, he said he had never seen her TV show because he worked in clubs in the evenings.

When she proposed the idea of the I Love Lucy show to the network,  she only agreed to do it if Desi Arnaz was cast as her husband. The network was very dubious about a show featuring an all-American girl and a Cuban.

Even in old age she was famed for her fabulous complexion. She said that she used soap and water for cleansing plus her once monthly facial treatment. “I put honey on straight from the jar and it closes my pores for a month” she explained.

She was a great believer in nutrition. She said that if meals were planned to be nutritious, then there was no need to follow any special diet and that children who were brought up eating that way wouldn’t have weight problems in adult life..

Her last public appearance was at the sixty first Academy Awards in 1989. This was only a month before she died of heart complications. She and Bob Hope were the joint presenters of the awards show.

She died eight days after she had had a heart operation. Her first words after the operation – said to her daughter – were:
‘Wouldn’t you know – this is the day I was going to get my hair done”.

See a famous scene from I Love Lucy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jackie Jackson, also known online as BritFlorida, is a highly experienced designer and writer. British born and now living in the USA, she specialises in lifestyle issues, design and quirky stories. You can see a wide range of articles here, or visit her website Tastes Magazine. See The Writer’s Door for more information.