Lucille Ball Filmography

Intimate Portrait: Lucille Ball

Lucy's Lost Episodes

Synopsis: In addition to highlighting some of Lucille Ball's funniest TV moments, Lucy's Lost Episodes includes various commercial endorsements and appearances, as well as providing information on her contribution to charities. The actress herself was very much involved with making a difference in the lives Read More

Army-Navy Screen Magazine

Synopsis: The original Army Navy "screen magazine" was a news and information film that was shown before the main feature in military movie theaters during World War II. These presentations consisted of human-interest stories from the home front, news about combat events, updates on defense-related Read More

The Best of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts

Actors: Dean Martin

Judy Garland's Hollywood

Synopsis: Though many fans will always fondly recall Judy Garland's wonderful portrayal of young Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Garland herself was apparently most proud of the role she played in A Star Is Born. In this film, which opened in 1954, Garland portrayed an actress who sees her career blossom as Read More

Wisecracks

Actors: Phyllis Diller, Whoopi Goldberg, Sandra Shamas, Jenny Lecoat

Synopsis: This concert and interview documentary features the racy wit of Canada and the U.S.'s most popular female comedians, including Jenny Jones, Whoopi Goldberg, Phyllis Diller, Ellen DeGeneres, and Paula Poundstone. In addition to screening their stand-up gigs and providing interviews with these funny Read More

Babalu Music! I Love Lucy's Greatest Hits

Synopsis: Here's a slew of songs taken from the popular I Love Lucy series. Included here are: "Babalu Rap" (Produced by "Weird" Al Yankovic), and Lucy's theme song, the "Friendship" duet, "Cuban Pete," "Straw Hat Song," "Cheek to Cheek," "Babalu," "California Here I Come," "We're Having a Baby." ~ All Read More

A Tribute to Lucy

Lucy, Queen of Comedy

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is honored in this program which features many of her television and film appearances. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Entertaining the Troops: American Entertainers in World War II

Synopsis: Entertainment history. Uses film clips and contemporary interviews to show what Hollywood did during World War II in raising money for the war and entertaining the troops. Shows entertainer Bob Hope and his performing troupe today. Other entertainers include Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, The Andrews Sisters Read More

Smoke That Cigarette

Synopsis: This program includes a parade of jingles and authentic advertisements for cigarettes - all from the carefree days when smoking still seemed to be fun and glamorous (before sobering medical information made abstaining from smoking both a prudent lifestyle choice and an inflammatory social cause). Read More

Stone Pillow

Actors: Lucille Ball, Daphne Zuniga

Synopsis: The ads for The Stone Pillow tended to suggest that this TV movie was Lucille Ball's dramatic debut--completely ignoring the fact that Ball had started out as a "straight" actress in the 1930s who only occasionally played comedy until I Love Lucy came along. Whatever the case, the Ball we see in Read More

Celebrity Commercials and Bloopers

Synopsis: This entertaining vintage video offers up some very funny classic commercials from TV and movie personalities. Watch for "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and "You Bet Your Life." ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Mame

Actors: George Chiang, Lucille Ball, Robert Preston, Bea Arthur, Kirby Furlong, Bruce Davison

Synopsis: Lucille Ball stars in this film version of the hit Jerry Herman Broadway musical, which featured an electrifying performance by Angela Lansbury. As Patrick Dennis' plucky and resilient Auntie Mame, Ball's low-pitched, growling moan of a voice (a spine-chilling reminder of the sound of Linda Read More

Lucky Luciano

Actors: Gian Maria Volontè, Rod Steiger, Charles Siragusa, Edmond O'Brien, Vincent Gardenia

Synopsis: Director Francesco Rosi returns to his recurring theme of the connections between legal and illegal exercises of power in this sensationalized account of the infamous gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano (Gian Maria Volonte). The film examines the life of Luciano after serving nine years of his Read More

Yours, Mine and Ours

Actors: Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, Van Johnson, Tom Bosley, Louise Troy

Synopsis: This story is taken from the real-life marriage of two people in the early 1960s. Helen North (Lucille Ball) is a widow with eight children who falls in love with Naval officer Frank Beardsley (Henry Fonda), a widower with ten children of his own. The two marry as comedy ensues from the sheer Read More

Critic's Choice

Actors: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Maxwell, Rip Torn, Jesse Royce Landis

Synopsis: Ira Levin wrote the stage comedy Critic's Choice as a good-natured retort to a comment made by critic Walter Kerr. In his essay How Not to Write a Play, Kerr noted that the worst possible scenario would involve a drama critic forced to review a play written by his wife (we should mention that Read More

Hedda Hopper's Hollywood

Synopsis: Originally aired as an NBC special on Sunday, January 10, 1960, this program went head-to-head with the hit Ed Sullivan Show and had the star power to garner decent ratings. This video features gossip columnist Hedda Hopper interviewing some of the top entertainers of the day. Highlights include Read More

The Facts of Life

Actors: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Ruth Hussey, Don DeFore, Louis Nye

Synopsis: Unlike the typical Bob Hope and Lucille Ball vehicles, The Facts of Life is essentially a domestic drama with comic undertones. Hope is married to Ruth Hussey, while Ball is the wife of Don DeFore. All four are old friends, who for many years have taken each other for granted. A series of Read More

I Love Lucy: Season 06

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley, Richard Keith

Synopsis: Several changes occurred in the I Love Lucy format during the series' sixth and final season on the air. For one thing, little Richard Keith, a talented six-year-old drummer, was cast in the role of Little Ricky, the son of Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) and his wacky wife Lucy (Lucille Ball Read More

Forever Darling

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, James Mason, Louis Calhern, John Emery

Synopsis: When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz beat the odds against TV stars succeeding on the big screen in The Long, Long Trailer (1954), MGM contracted America's favorite couple for a second theatrical feature. Forever Darling casts Desi as Lorenzo Xavier Vega, a brilliant scientist and Lucy as Susan, his Read More

I Love Lucy: Season 05

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley

Synopsis: I Love Lucy boasted a new sponsor (General Foods, taking over from Philip Morris Cigarettes), a new director, and new addition to its writing staff for its fifth season on the air. Otherwise, it's the same old zany redhead Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) making life hilariously chaotic for her Cuban Read More

The Long, Long Trailer

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Marjorie Main, Keenan Wynn, Gladys Hurlbut

Synopsis: At the height of their TV fame, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were contracted by MGM to make two theatrical films. The first of these, The Long, Long Trailer, stars Lucy and Desi as an upwardly mobile couple who decide to buy a trailer so they can live together while his job takes him around the Read More

I Love Lucy: Season 04

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley

Synopsis: Even though I Love Lucy was still America's top-rated series as it entered its fourth season, the producers -- including Desi Arnaz, who also starred as Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo -- decided it was time to freshen up the format a bit with a change of scenery. Thus, Ricky, his zany wife Lucy (Lucille Ball Read More

I Love Lucy: Season 03

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley

Synopsis: Though it was hard to top the "pregnancy" throughline that permeated the second season of I Love Lucy, the series maintained its ranking as America's favorite TV program throughout its third year on the air. Back for more fun and laughter were Lucille Ball as wacky housewife Lucy Ricardo, Desi Arnaz Read More

I Love Lucy: New Neighbors

Actors: Allen Jenkins, Hayden Rorke, K.T. Stevens

Synopsis: Dying of curiosity, Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Ethel (Vivian Vance) are determined to get a glimpse of their somewhat secretive new neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien (Hayden Rorke, K.T. Stevens). Unbeknownst to the girls, the O'Briens are professional actors, currently rehearsing a play in which they Read More

I Love Lucy: Season 02

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley

Synopsis: America's third most popular TV show during its first season, I Love Lucy skyrocketed to number one during Season Two -- no small thanks to the fact that the real-life pregnancy of Lucille Ball was brilliantly written into the script (though such was TV censorship at the time that the would Read More

I Love Lucy: Season 01

Actors: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley

Synopsis: By the time the first 35 episodes of I Love Lucy had been shown on CBS' Monday night lineup, virtually everybody in America loved zany redhead Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), her Cuban bandleader husband Ricky (Desi Arnaz) and their landlords and best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance, William Frawley Read More

I Love Lucy [TV Series]

Synopsis: Arguably the most popular TV situation comedy in the known world (and possibly a few worlds beyond that!), I Love Lucy has never stopped playing in rerun form since it originally aired over CBS from October 15, 1951, through June 24, 1957. It can be said without much fear of contradiction that Read More

The Magic Carpet

Actors: Lucille Ball, John Agar, Patricia Medina, George Tobias, Raymond Burr

Synopsis: Hoping to force Lucille Ball into breaking her contract, Columbia Pictures chieftain Harry Cohn assigned her to the low-budget Arabian Nights escapade The Magic Carpet. Much to Cohn's amazement, the plucky Ball agreed to appear in the film, forcing Columbia to pay her salary until her option ran Read More

Fancy Pants

Actors: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Bruce Cabot, Jack Kirkwood, Lea Penman, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Fancy Pants is a musicalized remake of the oft-filmed Harry Leon Wilson story Ruggles of Red Gap, tailored to the talents of "Mr. Robert Hope (formerly Bob)". The basic plotline of the original, that of an English butler entering the service of a rowdy nouveau-riche family from the American West Read More

The Fuller Brush Girl

Actors: Lucille Ball, Eddie Albert, Carl Benton Reid, Gale Robbins, Jeff Donnell

Synopsis: Hot on the heels of such Red Skelton slapstick comedies as The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man came The Fuller Brush Girl, starring Lucille Ball in a fascinating dry run for her wacky "Lucy Ricardo" TV character. Unable to hold a job because of her tendency to get into trouble, Sally Read More

Easy Living

Actors: Victor Mature, Lizabeth Scott, Lucille Ball, Sonny Tufts, Lloyd Nolan

Synopsis: No relation to the 1937 screwball comedy of the same name, Easy Living is a film about the world of professional sports. Victor Mature plays Pete Wilson, star halfback of the New York Chiefs. Well past his prime, Wilson would like to retire to a coaching job, but his rival Tim McCarr (Sonny Tufts) Read More

Sorrowful Jones

Actors: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, William Demarest, Mary Jane Saunders, Bruce Cabot, Thomas Gomez

Synopsis: This second of four film adaptations of Damon Runyon's Little Miss Marker is tailored to the talents of Bob Hope. A shifty Broadway bookie, Sorrowful Jones (Hope) becomes a reluctant foster parent when an anxious gambler leaves behind his little girl Martha Jane (Mary Jane Saunders) as a "marker," Read More

Miss Grant Takes Richmond

Actors: Lucille Ball, William Holden, Janis Carter, James Gleason, Gloria Henry

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is Miss Grant, an efficient but naïve secretary hired by William Holden. Ostensibly a legit real estate salesman, Holden is actually the brains of a bookie ring. It takes forever for Ball to tumble to what's going on, but when she does she settles matters in the same fashion as her Read More

Her Husband's Affairs

Actors: Lucille Ball, Nana Bryant, Franchot Tone, Edward Everett Horton, Mikhail Rasumny, Gene Lockhart, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: Lucille Ball offers a seminal version of her Lucy Ricardo TV character in Her Husband's Affairs. Ball is cast as Margaret Weldon, the wife of advertising executive William Weldon (Franchot Tone). Though Weldon is successful, Margaret can't help but feel that he'd be more successful if she were to Read More

Lured

Actors: George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn, Alan Mowbray, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is an American taxi-dancer living in London whose roommate has disappeared. The missing girl had left to answer a job offer in the "personal" column of the Times...just like several other women who've vanished without a trace. Scotland Yard detective George Zucco suggests that Ball Read More

Ziegfeld Follies

Actors: Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue Read More

The Dark Corner

Actors: Lucille Ball, Clifton Webb, Mark Stevens, William Bendix, Cathy Downs

Synopsis: This grade-A example of "film noir" stars Mark Stevens as Brad Galt, an embittered ex-convict who returns to the private detective business upon his release. Sour and surly, Galt behaves himself only when he's around his faithful and adoring secretary Kathleen (top-billed Lucille Ball). When Read More

Easy to Wed

Actors: Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball, Keenan Wynn, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: This Technicolor musical remake of the 1936 comedy classic Libeled Lady isn't quite up to the standards of the original, but on its own terms is quite entertaining. Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn expertly assume the roles originally played by William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow Read More

Two Smart People

Actors: Lucille Ball, John Hodiak, Lloyd Nolan, Hugo Haas, Lenore Ulric

Synopsis: One of two con-artists ends up arrested and given five days of freedom before he must go to jail. This comedy chronicles those five days. The man loves to eat; knowing that prison food is lousy, he decides to spend his days stuffing himself with the finest foods available. He is accompanied to Read More

Lover Come Back

Actors: George Brent, Lucille Ball, Vera Zorina, Charles Winninger, Carl Esmond

Synopsis: Lucille Ball stars as the wife of a war correspondent, anxiously awaiting her husband's return. Ball is convinced that hubby (George Brent) is looking forward to feminine companionship after four long years at the front. Imagine her surprise when it looks as though her husband wasn't quite as Read More

Without Love

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Keenan Wynn, Gloria Grahame, Patricia Morison, Carl Esmond, Lucille Ball

Synopsis: In their third film together, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn created one of the box-office sensations of 1945, a sparklingly witty wartime comedy about a marriage entered on the theory that love only gums up a relationship. Invited by a drunken Quintin Ladd (Keenan Wynn), devoted scientist Read More

Meet the People

Actors: Lucille Ball, Dick Powell, Virginia O'Brien, Bert Lahr, Rags Ragland

Synopsis: MGM's musical extravaganza Meet the People top-bills two future powerful TV executives: Dick Powell and Lucille Ball. Ball plays a popular but stuck-up Broadway star who leaves the bright lights to become a welder in a shipyard. Here she meets and falls in love with coworker Powell. This being a Read More

Du Barry Was a Lady

Actors: Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, Virginia O'Brien, Zero Mostel, Rags Ragland

Synopsis: The racy, ribald Cole Porter musical Du Barry Was a Lady is here given a thorough dry-cleaning by prudish MGM. Richard "Red" Skelton takes over the role of Louis Blore (played on Broadway by Bert Lahr), while Lucille Ball steps into the shoes of the original play's Ethel Merman. The story proposes Read More

Best Foot Forward

Actors: Lucille Ball, Tommy Dix, William Gaxton, Virginia Weidler, Nancy Walker, June Allyson, Gloria de Haven

Synopsis: Five original cast members of the hit Broadway musical Best Foot Forward appear in this Technicolor MGM screen adaptation. Set at a small town military prep school, the story gets under way when movie star Lucille Ball (played by movie star Lucille Ball) pays a visit to the campus for publicity Read More

Seven Days Leave

Actors: Victor Mature, Lucille Ball, Harold Peary, Mapy Cortes, Ginny Simms

Synopsis: Victor Mature and Lucille Ball top the star-studded cast of RKO Radio's Seven Days Leave. Mature plays Johnny Grey, an eternally smiling GI who suddenly falls heir to $100,000. There's just one catch: Johnny must marry heiress Terry (Ball), whom he's never met, within a seven-day period. Once this Read More

Valley of the Sun

Actors: Lucille Ball, James Craig, Cedric Hardwicke, Dean Jagger, Peter Whitney

Synopsis: Though officially based on a Saturday Evening Post story by Clarence Buddington Kelland, RKO Radio's Valley of the Sun was obviously inspired by the blockbuster comedy western Destry Rides Again (indeed, both films were directed by George Marshall). James Craig stars as Indian scout Jonathan Read More

The Big Street

Actors: Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Agnes Moorehead, Barton MacLane, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Lucille Ball delivers the finest dramatic performance of her career in this satisfying adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Big Street. Ball is cast as Gloria, aka "Your Highness," the vain and thoroughly selfish star attraction of gangster Case Ables' (Barton MacLaine) New York nightclub. Henry Fonda Read More

Look Who's Laughing

Actors: Edgar Bergen, Dummy: Charlie McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan, Lucille Ball

Synopsis: Several popular radio personalities converge in the RKO Radio "comedy salad" Look Who's Laughing. Taking a vacation from his radio series, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen sets out in his private plane, accompanied by his dummy Charlie McCarthy. Developing engine trouble, Bergen makes a forced landing Read More

A Girl, a Guy and A Gob

Actors: George Murphy, Edmond O'Brien, Henry Travers, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: The girl is stenographer Dot Duncan (Lucille Ball); the guy is her boss, stuffy young shipping magnate Stephen Herrick (Edmond O'Brien); and the gob is a brash sailor known as Coffee Cup (George Murphy). Not surprisingly, the plot involves the efforts by the self-effacing Stephen and the Read More

Dance, Girl, Dance

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Virginia Field

Synopsis: Based on a story by Vicki Baum (of Grand Hotel) fame, Dance, Girl Dance finds innocent young Judy (Maureen O'Hara) journeying to the Big Apple in hopes of gaining fame as a classical dancer. Instead she ends up as the "stooge" for raucous strip-tease artist Bubbles (Lucille Ball), who attempts to Read More

The Marines Fly High

Actors: Richard Dix, Chester Morris, Lucille Ball, Steffi Duna, John Eldredge

Synopsis: Set in the Central American jungle, Lucille Ball plays plantation owner Joan Grant in The Marines Fly High. When a platoon of US Marines need a safe place to stay, Joan (Ball) allows them inside of her home, oblivious to the fact that two of the Marines would later compete for her affections. All Read More

Too Many Girls

Actors: Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Eddie Bracken, Frances Langford, Desi Arnaz

Synopsis: Now immortalized as the film on which Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz met, Too Many Girls is a faithful adaptation of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart-George Abbott Broadway musical hit. The light-as-a-feather plotline finds four football players hired to escort dizzy heiress Connie Casey (Lucille Read More

You Can't Fool Your Wife

Actors: Lucille Ball, James Ellison, Robert Coote, Virginia Vale, Emma Dunn

Synopsis: In the RKO programmer You Can't Fool Your Wife, Lucille Ball gets mixed up in a storyline that would have been right at home on her future TV series I Love Lucy. Feeling neglected by her husband Andrew (James Ellison), drab housewife Clara Hinklin (Ball) walks out on him, much to the delight of Read More

Panama Lady

Actors: Allan Lane, Lucille Ball, Steffi Duna, Evelyn Brent, Donald Briggs

Synopsis: Panama Lady is a cleaned-up remake of the 1932 Helen Twelvetrees vehicle Panama Flo. Lucille Ball essays the old Twelvetrees role as Lucy, a nightclub "hostess" stranded in Panama by her ex-lover Roy (Donald Briggs). Victimized by a shakedown orchestrated by Roy, oil rigger McTeague (Allan Lane) Read More

That's Right - You're Wrong

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Lucille Ball, Dennis O'Keefe

Synopsis: Lucille Ball plays young starlet Sandra Sand in That's Right -- You're Wrong, the 1939 musical comedy directed by David Butler. Led by musician Kay (Kay Kyser), a popular band sets off for Hollywood in hopes of making their debut on the big screen. A series of misadventures follow, including a Read More

Twelve Crowded Hours

Actors: Richard Dix, Lucille Ball, Donald MacBride, Cy Kendall

Synopsis: Another worthwhile entry from the RKO Radio B-picture division, 12 Crowded Hours stars stalwart Richard Dix as crime-busting reporter Nick Green, who within the course of a single night (hence the title) topples a gangland empire. Hoping to gather enough evidence to send numbers racketeer Costain Read More