Lucille Ball Quotes

It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't.

Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous red head.

I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. —Lucille Ball

Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn’t.

Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

People either have comedy or they don't. You can't teach it to them.

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.

It doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optismism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself

I cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn't think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.

Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn’t." — Lucille Ball

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do. Lucille Ball (Source: brainyquote dot com) .

There's a quote of hers [Lucille Ball] that I've always loved: 'I guess I would rather regret the things I've done than to regret the things I've never done.

Responsibility is the ability to respond.

I'm happy that I have brought laughter because I have been shown by many the value of it in so many lives, in so many ways.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimisim a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields.

Knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can. -Lucille Ball

I'm not funny. What I am is brave.

The way to stay young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age.

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore you faith in yourself.

jenna had felt sexy-funny, like lucille ball with flour streaks on her face, a crumb-covered apron that didn't exactly flatter her, and yet nick had kissed her like a prom king falling for the reinvented girl in a movie.

You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience. Keep your head up, keep your shoulders back, keep your self-respect, be nice, be smart. And remember that there are practically no "overnight" successes.

I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not

I believe that we're as happy in life as we make up our minds to be.

I have a theory about the assists we get in life. Only rarely can we repay those people who helped us, but we can pass that help along to others.

I’d rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven’t. Lucille Ball

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line,” Lucille Ball advised. “You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.   Lucille Ball

I would rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done. ~Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball talking to me from the TV is weirder by several orders of magnitude than anything that’s happened to me so far,

I feel sorry for young people today who feel so alone that they have to mate with their first crush. It shocks me that so many young brides are pregnant at the alter. When you have kids late in life, you appreciate them more. They keep you young, and you see the world through better eyes. You can give your children a finer sense of values, too, because if you're lucky, you own values have improved with time.

Blonde movie stars in the 1950s seem to have been pretty much divided between breathy bombshells (Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield) and slim, elegant swans (Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint). Producers didn’t really know what to do with Judy Holliday, a brilliant, versatile actress who simply didn’t fit into any easy category. Though she left behind a handful of delightful films, one can’t help feeling a sense of waste that her gifts were not better handled by Hollywood (or, for that matter, by Broadway). Perhaps, like Lucille Ball, Judy Holliday would have blossomed with a really good sitcom; but, unlike Lucy, she never got one.

The big three television companies (CBS, ABC, and NBC) measured their audiences in tens of millions: when CBS broadcast the episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy had a baby to coincide with the actress who played Lucy, Lucille Ball, also having a baby, on January 19, 1953, 68.8 percent of the country’s television sets were tuned in, a far higher proportion than were tuned in to Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration the following day.

In December, Angela Lansbury had been signed to play Raymond’s mother, the arch-villainess Eleanor Shaw Iselin. Apparently, Sinatra originally wanted Lucille Ball for the role, a fascinating casting notion, as Tom Santopietro points out: “As Ball aged, she grew into an increasingly hardened performer, losing all traces of the vulnerability that so informed her brilliant multiyear run on television’s I Love Lucy. The resulting quality of toughness would have suited the role of [Eleanor] very well, although it is anyone’s guess whether or not Ball would have felt comfortable delving into the dark recesses of [her] warped character.

Temperament is something you welcome creatively, for it is based on sensitivity, empathy, awareness . . . but a bad temper takes too much out of you and doesn’t really accomplish anything.

I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie. I remember how much I used to stutter. I remember the first time I saw television. Lucille Ball was taking ballet lessons. I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book. I remember a very poor boy who had to wear his sister's blouse to school. I remember shower curtains with angel fish on them. I remember very old people when I was very young. Their houses smelled funny. I remember daydreams of being a singer all alone on a big stage with no scenery, just one spotlight on me, singing my heart out, and moving my audience to total tears of love and affection. I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face. I remember saying "thank you" in reply to "thank you" and then the other person doesn't know what to say. I remember how embarrassed I was when other children cried. I remember one very hot summer day I put ice cubes in my aquarium and all the fish died. I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off.

The only way to conquer Barbara Stanwyck was to kill her, if she didn’t kill you first. Lynn Bari wanted any husband that wasn’t hers. Jane Russell’s body promised paradise but her eyes said, “Oh, please!” Claire Trevor was semi-sweet in Westerns and super-sour in moderns. Ida Lupino treated men like used-up cigarette butts. Gloria Grahame was oversexed evil with an added fey touch—a different mouth for every role. Ann Sheridan and Joan Blondell slung stale hash to fresh customers. Ann Dvorak rattled everyone’s rafters, including her own. Adele Jergens was the ultimate gun moll, handy when the shooting started. Marie Windsor just wanted them dead. Lucille Ball, pre–Lucy, was smart of mouth and warm as nails. Mercedes McCambridge, the voice of Satan, used consonants like Cagney used bullets. Marilyn Maxwell seemed approachable enough, depending on her mood swings. And Jean Hagen stole the greatest movie musical ever made by being the ultimate bitch. These wonderwomen proved that a woman’s only place was not in the kitchen. We ain’t talkin’ Loretta Young here.

Albert Einstein, considered the most influential person of the 20th century, was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read. His parents thought he was retarded. He spoke haltingly until age nine. He was advised by a teacher to drop out of grade school: “You’ll never amount to anything, Einstein.” Isaac Newton, the scientist who invented modern-day physics, did poorly in math. Patricia Polacco, a prolific children’s author and illustrator, didn’t learn to read until she was 14. Henry Ford, who developed the famous Model-T car and started Ford Motor Company, barely made it through high school. Lucille Ball, famous comedian and star of I Love Lucy, was once dismissed from drama school for being too quiet and shy. Pablo Picasso, one of the great artists of all time, was pulled out of school at age 10 because he was doing so poorly. A tutor hired by Pablo’s father gave up on Pablo. Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the world’s great composers. His music teacher once said of him, “As a composer, he is hopeless.” Wernher von Braun, the world-renowned mathematician, flunked ninth-grade algebra. Agatha Christie, the world’s best-known mystery writer and all-time bestselling author other than William Shakespeare of any genre, struggled to learn to read because of dyslexia. Winston Churchill, famous English prime minister, failed the sixth grade.

claque, aka canned laughter It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that some things had a history—the Constitution, rhythm and blues, Canada—but it’s the odd little things that surprise me with their storied past. This first struck me when I was reading about anesthetics and I learned that, in the early 1840s, it became fashionable to hold parties where guests would inhale nitrous oxide out of bladders. In other words, Whip-it parties! We held the exact same kind of parties in high school. We’d buy fourteen cans of Reddi-Wip and suck on them till we had successfully obliterated a couple of million neurons and face-planted on my friend Andy’s couch. And we thought we were so cutting edge. And now, I learn about claque, which is essentially a highbrow French word for canned laughter. Canned laughter was invented long before Lucille Ball stuffed chocolates in her face or Ralph Kramden threatened his wife with extreme violence. It goes back to the 4th century B.C., when Greek playwrights hired bands of helpers to laugh at their comedies in order to influence the judges. The Romans also stacked the audience, but they were apparently more interested in applause than chuckles: Nero—emperor and wannabe musician—employed a group of five thousand knights and soldiers to accompany him on his concert tours. But the golden age of canned laughter came in 19th-century France. Almost every theater in France was forced to hire a band called a claque—from claquer, “to clap.” The influential claque leaders, called the chefs de claque, got a monthly payment from the actors. And the brilliant innovation they came up with was specialization. Each claque member had his or her own important job to perform: There were the rieurs, who laughed loudly during comedies. There were the bisseurs, who shouted for encores. There were the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbors and say, “This is the good part.” And my favorite of all, the pleureuses, women who were paid good francs to weep at the sad parts of tragedies. I love this idea. I’m not sure why the networks never thought of canned crying. You’d be watching an ER episode, and a softball player would come in with a bat splinter through his forehead, and you’d hear a little whimper in the background, turning into a wave of sobs. Julie already has trouble keeping her cheeks dry, seeing as she cried during the Joe Millionaire finale. If they added canned crying, she’d be a mess.

We needed to drive down the road a couple of miles to meet the rest of the cowboys and gather the cattle from there. “Mom, why don’t you and Ree go ahead in her car and we’ll be right behind you,” Marlboro Man directed. His mother and I walked outside, climbed in the car, and headed down the road. We exchanged pleasant small talk. She was poised and genuine, and I chattered away, relieved that she was so approachable. Then, about a mile into our journey, she casually mentioned, “You might watch that turn up ahead; it’s a little sharp.” “Oh, okay,” I replied, not really listening. Clearly she didn’t know I’d been an L.A. driver for years. Driving was not a problem for me. Almost immediately, I saw a ninety-degree turn right in front of my face, pointing its finger at me and laughing--cackling--at my predicament. I whipped the steering wheel to the left as quickly as I could, skidding on the gravel and stirring up dust. But it was no use--the turn got the better of me, and my car came to rest awkwardly in the ditch, the passenger side a good four feet lower than mine. Marlboro Man’s mother was fine. Lucky for her, there’s really nothing with which to collide on an isolated cattle ranch--no overpasses or concrete dividers or retaining walls or other vehicles. I was fine, too--physically, anyway. My hands were trembling violently. My armpits began to gush perspiration. My car was stuck, the right two tires wedged inextricably in a deep crevice of earth on the side of the road. On the list of the Top Ten Things I’d Want Not to Happen on the First Meeting Between My Boyfriend’s Mother and Me, this would rate about number four. “Oh my word,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.” “Oh, don’t worry about it,” she reassured, looking out the window. “I just hope your car’s okay.” Marlboro Man and his dad pulled up beside us, and they both hopped out of the pickup. Opening my door, Marlboro Man said, “You guys okay?” “We’re fine,” his mother said. “We just got a little busy talking.” I was Lucille Ball. Lucille Ball on steroids and speed and vodka. I was a joke, a caricature, a freak. This couldn’t possibly be happening to me. Not today. Not now. “Okay, I’ll just go home now,” I said, covering my face with my hands. I wanted to be someone else. A normal person, maybe. A good driver, perhaps. Marlboro Man examined my tires, which were completely torn up. “You’re not goin’ anywhere, actually. You guys hop in the pickup.” My car was down for the count.

I regret the passing of the studio system,” Lucille Ball once said. “I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent. Believe me. What could I do? I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t sing. I could talk. I could barely walk. I had no flair. I wasn’t a beauty, that’s for sure.

[Lucille Ball]'s such a TV icon it’s hard for some to separate the two Lucys—the gorgeous, snappy actress of film and the wacky, slapstick queen of television. On TV she was a middle-aged housewife, on film she was a dazzling beauty. The difficulty with her movie career wasn’t that she was bad or not up to the roles. Quite the contrary: They were rarely up to her.

It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” —Lucille Ball,

GRANBY’S GREEN ACRES, situation comedy. BROADCAST HISTORY: July 3–Aug. 21, 1950, CBS. 30m, Mondays at 9:30. CAST: Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet as John and Martha Granby, ex-bank teller and wife who moved to the country to become farmers. Louise Erickson as Janice, their daughter. Parley Baer as Eb, the hired hand. ANNOUNCER: Bob LeMond MUSIC: Opie Cates. WRITER-PRODUCER-DIRECTOR: Jay Sommers. Granby’s Green Acres grew out of characters played by Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet on the Lucille Ball series My Favorite Husband. The names were changed, but the basic characters remained the same.

Ask her to play a role—she was happy. Ask her to be Lucille Ball and she immediately became self-conscious and ill at ease.

The best person to get something done is a busy person

You know, it's a peculiar thing. At funerals one's inclined to laugh; and at weddings, weep.

To CBS boss Bill Paley, who had come of age building his radio network to rival NBC, the simple formula to keep up was to transfer his radio stars to TV. The transition worked for America’s most famous newscaster, Edward R. Murrow, who had become famous for broadcasting from London during the Battle of Britain. But two far bigger stars would emerge in a different genre. In the late forties, Lucille Ball had been a star of a CBS radio program known as My Favorite Husband, a situation comedy that chronicled the domestic life and squabbles of an all-American couple.

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. Lucille Ball

French martinis or lemon drops or cosmos and impromptu viewings of Auntie Mame (the Rosalind Russell version, not the Lucille Ball version) or Steel Magnolias.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on my father's lap, watching Here's Lucy, a Lucille Ball situation comedy on CBS that began with a dancing little doll Lucy. The credits would come on, and at the end, the little doll Lucy pulled back a stage curtain, revealing the real Lucy. Although I wasn't able to put it into words then, I think what i found so compelling about that moment each week was the expression of truth - we are all just little dolls of ourselves who occasionally pull back the curtains to reveal the real us.

Ahwahnee has hosted dozens of celebrities, including Queen Elizabeth, Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (who arrived via helicopter). Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and Judy Garland stayed here while filming The Long, Long Trailer, as did William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy while filming Star Trek IV. Robert Redford worked at the Ahwahnee before launching his film career, and Steve Jobs was married on the back lawn in a Buddhist ceremony.

Nowhere is America’s unease with reproduction better demonstrated than on a 1952 episode of “I Love Lucy.” The TV comedy made the bold move to incorporate Lucille Ball’s real-life pregnancy into its storyline. The actors, however, weren’t allowed to say the word “pregnant.

The late comedian and actress Lucille Ball had her own secret to staying young: live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

Lucille Désirée Ball was born on August 9, 1911

TV actress Lucille Ball once remarked, ‘I’d rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I’ve not done.’ This

A great number of Americans have made the same startling discovery that Francis Dane did: They are related to witches. American presidents descend from George Jacobs, Susannah Martin, and John Procter. Nathan Hale was John Hale’s grandson. Israel “Don’t Fire Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes” Putnam was the cousin of Ann Putnam. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louisa May Alcott descended from Samuel Sewall; Clara Barton from the Townes; Walt Disney from Burroughs. (In a nice twist, the colonial printer who founded the American Antiquarian Society, where Cotton Mather’s papers reside today, was also a Burroughs descendant.) The Nurse family includes Lucille Ball, who testified before an investigator from the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Yes, she had registered with the Communist Party. No, she was not a Communist. In 1953, a husband leaped to a wife’s defense: “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair,” Desi Arnaz explained,

«Ámate a ti mismo primero y todo lo demás llegará por sí solo.» ― Lucille Ball

Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields. And in some of these cases, it may well have been true that they did not stand out from the crowd early on.

I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than the things I haven’t done. —Lucille Ball

that at all. We’re so used to failure, to being hurt and rebuffed, that we can easily come unhinged by success.

I know that humour can take on anything.

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done

The center of activity on Pierce Street was Connie’s Superette, a little market housed on the bottom floor of a large, asbestos-shingled apartment building. Connie, a fat woman with Lucille Ball red hair, sat behind the counter on a webbed porch chair. She kept a whirring electric fan trained on herself and was careful not to risk breaking her two-inch fingernails as she grudgingly rang up people’s stuff.

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. Lucille Ball

Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” ~Lucille Ball

We don’t have to relive the sad and bad memories of Christmas Past. We can create new Christmas memories in the present for the future.

I doubt the hotness of the teacher has anything to do with my ability to learn the foxtrot. When I dance, I look more like Lucille Ball than Ginger Rogers.

I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not.

My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband's side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the planner and the dreamer.” – Lucille Ball

We're willing to take a lot of punishment, but the minute we hit a little bit of success we are liable to run from it. We're frightened of it and develop all kinds of phobias as a consequence. Outsiders who don't understand think we have a chip on our shoulder, but it's not that at all. We're so used to failure, to being hurt and rebuffed, that we can easily come unhinged by success.” – Lucille Ball