August 06, 2010

Lucy would have been 99 today!

Just a quick "Happy Birthday" to our leading lady of comedy, Lucille Ball. She would have been 99 today, born August 6th, 1911 in Jamestown, NY.

A few years before she died in 1989, she was honored by The Kennedy Center on December 7, 1986, here are video clips from that Honors ceremony:



Walter Matthau gives a presentation on Lucy's career with some great video clips:



Desi Arnaz, who had just died five days earlier following a long bout with cancer, had written a touching statement for this event, which is read here by Robert Stack. (Lucy had to fly almost immediately to Washington following Desi’s funeral in order to attend this event.) Lucy struggles to keep her composure, but the mood quickly changes when Bea Arthur, Valerie Harper and Pam Dawber come out for a musical tribute to Lucille Ball — a musical medley of WILDCAT, MAME and I LOVE LUCY, set to special new lyrics. “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had this thing to keep me occupied. Desi died and my show got canceled. If I hadn’t had this, if I hadn’t this reassurance that I was still wanted, I don’t think that I could have gone on.” — Lucille Ball



Lucy - Happy Birthday - We still Love Lucy!

August 02, 2010

Results of Recent Lucille Ball Auctioned Items

As previously reported, Heritage Auction Galleries held an auction that contained a number of Lucille Ball's personal items that had passed to her husband, Gary Morton upon her death. These items were then put up for auction by Susie McAllister Morton, who married Gary Morton in 1996, after the death of Lucille Ball in 1989.

Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball tried to block the items from going up for auction by court order. Although she won, she lost in technicality as she could not come up with the imposed $250,000 bond in order to stop the auction. The auction house then agreed to return some items to Lucie. They gave her Lucille Ball's lifetime achievement awards but the other items remained up for auction.

So what happened to those items that went up on the auction block? A trove of more than 120 lots from the Estate of Gary Morton and his wife, Lucille Ball, brought $230,780 on Saturday, July 17, as part of a $1.3 million+ Music & Entertainment auction at Heritage Auctions Beverly Hills. Lucille Ball’s 1984 Rolls Royce Silver Spur was the highest priced item from that consignment at $29,875. All prices include 19.5% Buyer’s Premium.

"What we saw here today was an amazing outpouring of love and respect from Lucy’s fans," said Doug Norwine, Director of Entertainment Auctions at Heritage. "Collectors paid top prices to obtain a cherished piece of Lucy’s personal legacy – far beyond our expectations – and they came out in droves, not only in the auction room, but by the hundreds online."

Other top lots of the Lucille Ball consignment was $7,768 for the painting L’Opera, Paris, by Regis (Count) de Cachard, from Morton and Ball’s collection, and $8,963 for her personal address book, containing the names, phone numbers and addresses of many of the top stars of the 1950s and 1960s.