Lucille Ball is one Hollywood figure whose legacy is sure to live on forever.
The model-turned-actress had a rare gift for making people laugh and bringing joy to those who watched her entertain.
She also later became the first woman to head a production company when the couple started Desilu Productions.
However,things weren’t always successful and happyfor Ball.
The studio believed that Arnaz’s Cuban descent and thick accent may be a problem at the time.
However, she insisted that Arnaz star alongside her, and the result was comedy gold.
Sadly, that wasn’t the only hurdle that Ball had to face in her life.
When she was just four years old, her father Henry Ball died of typhoid fever.
Shortly after his passing, a bird flew into the room where she and her family were mourning.
Eventually, Ball’s mother remarried a man named Edward Peterson.
In her memoir, “Love, Lucy,” Ball recalled a moment that changed her family forever.
Peterson set up some cans for Freddy to practice shooting at targets.
The shout startled the girl and caused Johanna to inadvertently shoot Erickson.
The boy suffered a severed spinal cord and his parents sued Ball’s family (viaHuff Post).
My grandfather never worked again.
The heart went out of him …
It destroyed our life together there," Ball wrote of the incident.
However, she didn’t receive praise and guidance from teachers.
Instead, she was cut down and told she wouldn’t make it as an entertainer.
Sadly, Ball may have lost a little confidence in her comedy skills along the way.
“I am not funny,” Ball told Rolling Stone in 1983 (via theLos Angeles Times).
“My writers were funny.
My directors were funny.
The situations were funny … What I am is brave.
I have never been scared.
Sadly, off-screen, Ball and Arnaz had a different dynamic.
The actress eventually filed for divorce a second time in 1960 and the two went their separate ways.
“It was always the same booze and broads.
I’d seen it coming.
I was always hoping things would change.
She thought that having a baby would hold them together,” she toldPeople Magazine.
“I think he felt more sensitive about those things and stopped some of that.
For a while, at least.”
“I tried to listen.
I tried to be understanding.
I tried to be tough and strong.
It tore me apart.”
Arnaz passed away on Dec. 2.
After Arnaz’s death, Ball and others gathered for a private funeral.
