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Chris Abele and Herb Kohl and Taxes

Thursday 31 March 2011 0 comments
I think Herb Kohl's most recent newsletter might be of interest to Chris Abele.

From Kohl:

Tax time is stressful for everyone, especially in this tight economy where every dollar counts. I know how complicated it can be to fill out tax forms and deal with the IRS, and I want to let you know about some good places to go for help this tax season.

If you still need to file your tax return this year, free tax preparation services are available for many individuals and families. Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) locations throughout Wisconsin generally serve people who make less than $49,000 a year. For elderly taxpayers, the AARP offers a similar service.

A list of VITA locations in Wisconsin is available here. AARP locations near you can be found here.

Another excellent resource for taxpayers is the Taxpayer Advocate Service. This is an independent agency within the IRS that speaks for the taxpayer – not the tax collector. If you are having a problem with the IRS that you are unable to resolve, you can call 1-877-777-4778 to speak to a taxpayer advocate who will fight for you. You can also visit the Taxpayer Advocate’s website to learn more about their work and leave your own feedback for how to improve the tax system.

For more information on these resources and other helpful links, I encourage you to visit my Tax Time Assistance Web page. In addition to the resources listed above, my website has information on getting paper tax forms and making your voice as a taxpayer heard at the IRS. As always, my office is also available to assist you. If you have additional questions, please call 800-247-5645.

Tax time is never easy, but I hope these tools will help make it a little less difficult this year.

Sincerely,


Chris Abele probably doesn't find tax time stressful.

Slap a $2.3 million tax lien on him. No big whoop.

He should be concerned about paying his share required by law, but he's not troubled by certainties in life like taxes.

I wonder if death bothers him.
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Naima Adedapo, American Idol

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Milwaukee's Naima Adedapo was voted off American Idol on Thursday.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee singer Naima Adedapo left "American Idol" after failing to capture enough votes to remain on the show - the first of two casualties Thursday night.

Thia Megia, the 16-year-old from Hayward, Calif., also was voted off. Two contestants were marked for departure because the judges saved the scruffy-headed, scraggly-bearded Casey Abrams last week when his version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" earned the fewest number of votes. Abrams trimmed his generous amount of hair - an event given its own vignette on the show Wednesday - and avoided elimination with a performance of "Your Song" Wednesday.

The public's response to Adedapo's showings on "Idol" has been mixed. Some displays, such as last week's performance of "Dancing In The Street," mesmerized viewers with her powerful presence and a dazzling African dance that hearken back to her days with the Ton Ko-Thi, the children's ensemble of the Ko-Thi Dance Company in Milwaukee.

But this week her rendition of Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" was slammed by "Idol" judge Randy Jackson as corny. And bloggers noted that her reggae-inflected island accent came off as inauthentic because she doesn't speak - or normally sing - with one at all.

"I am very proud of her," Adekola Adedapo, Naima Adedapo's mother, said Thursday evening. "The outpouring of support has been tremendous. She wants to return the love."

Although the Idol competition is over for Naima Adedapo, she did make the Top 11 - meaning she'll be on the American Idol Tour.

Being in the Top 11 is a tremendous accomplishment.

Naima, a 2003 graduate of St. Joan Antida High School in Milwaukee, has every reason to be proud. She's a very talented and very classy young woman.

Congratulations, Naima!
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Chris Abele - Lifestyles of the Rich and Scandalous

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I like this radio ad from Milwaukee County Executive candidate Jeff Stone. I think it's very effective.

It uses humor to convey the message. I also think people can relate to what Stone has to say.

Abele doesn't know what it's like to be one of us. He doesn't get it.


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Katherine Windels

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UPDATE, April 21, 2011: Woman charged in lawmaker threats can't be on Capitol grounds
Katherine Windels, 26, charged with sending threatening emails to 16 Republican senators cannot be on the State Capitol grounds.

On Thursday morning Windels made a court appearance where a judge released her on a signature bond. Conditions include she cannot possess a weapon, no computer use except for work, school and looking for work, as well as being on Capitol grounds.

She waived her preliminary hearing. Her next court appearance is May 16.

Windels, of Cross Plains, faces four charges including using a computer to send a threat and creating a bomb scare.

Two of the counts are felonies, two are misdemeanors.

...If convicted on all counts, she could face up to 7.5 years in prison.

________________

UPDATE, April 1, 2011: Investigators look into additional threats allegedly emailed by Cross Plains woman
Investigators on Friday looked into an additional violent threat by email — this one against Gov. Scott Walker — allegedly sent by the same Cross Plains child care provider already charged with emailing death threats to Republican state senators.

The threat against Walker, emailed Feb. 17, uses language including "watch your back Adolf Walker" and "we will not hesitate to punch where it hurts." It says it's from Katherine Windels.

Journalists discovered it as part of a review of thousands of emails sent to Walker's state account in response to his controversial budget repair bill. The Department of Justice was informed of the email — it apparently had gone unnoticed amid the electronic avalanche — and was investigating to verify its source, said spokesman Bill Cosh.

...News of the charges brought shock Friday to people who know the Windels family.

"You can't find finer people than those two," Pastor Rick Lund of St. Martin's Lutheran Church said of Bill and Karen Windels, Katherine Windels' parents. Her father is a mental-health nurse and her mother is a teacher, he said; both volunteer extensively at the church.

Of their daughter, Lund said: "Katherine is a good-hearted, bright young lady," while acknowledging that she "has had some struggles."

No one answered the door at the family's two-story yellow house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Cross Plains on Friday. Phone calls went unanswered.

Neighbor Kyle Roessler said the family moved into the new subdivision about four or five years ago and that their daughter always lived with her parents. He described the family as "really close," spending a lot of time in their garden in the warmer months and maintaining a cordial, if somewhat distant, relationship with neighbors.

An online profile lists Windels as a 2010 graduate of Madison Area Technical College with an associate's degree in early childhood education who's held multiple jobs as a home-care provider and teacher of young children.

At one of the jobs, Windels worked as a teacher's helper from 2007 to 2009 for an after-school program at St. Martin's called Jesus and Me. She left that job due to health problems that required surgery, said program director Virginia Diebold, but appeared healthy and happy the last time she saw her last Easter.

Notice that the language of the threat e-mailed to Governor Walker, "watch your back Adolf Walker" and "we will not hesitate to punch where it hurts," is typical of the stuff we saw and heard from the protesters in Madison when the Capitol was under siege.
________________

Katherine Windels, 26, is an early childhood teacher and a thug.

When protesters in Madison occupied the Capitol, they chanted, "This is what democracy looks like."

Here is what hate, violence, and thuggery looks like.

This is an ugly, ugly woman.

Photos of Katherine Windels:



PeekYou profile photo


October 2004 photo

Read her PeekYou profile.

She has an interest in psychology. What? No interest in criminology?

Good grief.


Finally, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne got around to charging Windels for crimes she confessed to more than two weeks ago.

Ozanne had come under fire for failing to act on the case.

Did Ozanne think we were just going to forget about the horrific threats that Windels made?

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A 26-year-old woman was charged Thursday with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making email threats against Wisconsin lawmakers during the height of the battle over Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill.

Katherine R. Windels of Cross Plains was named in a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Criminal Court.

According to the criminal complaint, Windels allegedly sent an email threat to State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) March 9. Later that evening, she allegedly sent another email to 15 Republican legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).

The subject line of the second email was: "Atten: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!" In that email, she purportedly wrote, "Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks."

"I hope you have a good time in hell," she allegedly wrote in the lengthy email in which she purportedly listed scenarios in which the legislators and their families would die, including bombings and by "putting a nice little bullet in your head."

According to the criminal complaint, Windels told investigators “I sent out emails that I was
disgusted and very upset by what they were doing.”

Asked if she intended to follow through on any of her threats, Windels told the investigators "No," according to the complaint.

Windels was charged with two felony counts "bomb scare" and two misdemeanor counts of "computer message-threatening injury/bodily harm." If convicted, each felony count carries a maximum penalty of three years and six months in prison and a $10,000 fine, and each misdemeanor count carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in prison and a $1,000 fine.

This woman is dangerous. She is deranged. She confessed to being a criminal.

She's also incredibly stupid. Did she really think that an e-mail death threat couldn't be traced? Did she really think that she was anonymous?

According to the criminal complaint, Windels sent the threats from a Gmail account, user name "Lisa Patterson" with an e-mail account address of lessylisa@gmail.com.

The IP address from which the aforementioned e-mails were sent belonged to Karen and William Windels, who reside...in the village of Cross Plains, Dane County, Wisconsin.

...[During an interview with police at her home,] Windels confirmed that the email account nickydoodlebug@rocketmail.com belonged to her and Windels stated that she was the only one that used the account.

[Special Agent] Tijerino reports at 5:41 p.m., he received information from [Special Agent] King that the subscriber for email account: lessylisa@gmail.com had a secondary email account: nickydoodlebug@rocketmail.com.

Unbelievably stupid.

Windels had been investigated by police last fall for harassing Lisa Patterson.

From WKOW:

A Cross Plains woman charged with felony crimes for allegedly threatening state senators over the budget repair bill was investigated by Madison police officers last fall over text messages.

Police reports released to WKOW27 News show a Madison woman contacted police over concerning text messages from Katherine Windels.

Dane County district attorney Ismael Ozanne Thursday charged Windels for allegedly sending e-mails to all nineteen republican state senators, threatening to kill them over their actions on proposed public employee collective bargaining revisions. A criminal complaint states Windels set up an email address under the name of acquaintance Lisa Patterson and used that address to deliver the email threats.

Madison police reports show Patterson told police on Oct. 14, 2010 she had received text messages from Windels and wanted follow up from officers.

Madison police’s records custodian redacted all reference to the content of the text messages in reports released to WKOW27 News.

In the reports, an officer stated he tried to contact Windels, but was unsuccessful, and ultimately left a voice mail message telling her to cease any contact with Patterson.

That's a weird twist.

Is Windels out to harm Lisa Patterson?

From WMSN:

The same day the Department of Justice released a letter critical of the prosecution of a woman suspected of sending threatening emails to Republican Senators, the Dane County District Attorney's Office released a criminal complaint, detailing four charges against Katherine Windels of Cross Plains.

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne really is a partisan hack. It's a disgrace that it took pressure for Ozanne to charge Windels. His failure to act quickly on the matter was a dereliction of duty, a disgrace.

Read the full criminal complaint.


More, from WKOW:
According to the complaint, Windels told the senators "you will be killed and your familes [sic] will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks." She threatened to "put a nice little bullet in your head," and made reference to several bombs.

Investigators visited Windels at her home the next day. According to the complaint, she told them she had sent the emails, and did so because she was very angry about what the senators had done. She also said she didn't intend to carry out the threats, and was not arrested.

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne filed the charges Thursday. He says "it's odd" law enforcement never took Windels into custody.

"The reality is, the person was not placed into custody, so law enforcement didn't see her as an imminent threat," Ozanne said. "It's not that the case was not taken seriously by law enforcement or by this office."

This morning, the Justice Department sent a letter to the media, saying it was concerned about the "lack of action" on the case by the D.A.'s office. The Justice Department had referred the case to Ozanne two weeks prior.

Ozanne says his office filed charges in an appropriate amount of time.

"The file was reviewed as quickly as possible," he said.

He declined to comment on whether the letter could be the result of mounting tensions between his office, and the Justice Department. The two are pitted against each other in the lawsuit against the Governor's budget repair bill.

Windels is not in custody. The D.A.'s office says she won't be arrested.

The 26-year-old is expected to be served Friday and make her first court appearance in late April.

Windels is a flight risk. I don't know why she's not in custody. We know how opponents of Scott Walker, Republicans, and Wisconsin taxpayers act when they don't get what they want.

They run away. They head for the border. They go to a supposedly undisclosed location and do interviews on MSNBC.

Katherine Windels should not be teaching children. She should never have been a teacher. She's demented and not fit to be entrusted with children. Windels should not serve in the role of educator.

Her career as a teacher should be over.

Katherine Windels' actions are violent and disgusting and inexcusable.

Congratulations, Katherine! You're just 26 years old and you've achieved a lot. Everyone knows your name and your face. You've enlightened us about the sort of person you are. You've admitted to being a criminal.

Fame.

_____________

Video from WISN, via Breitbart:

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Maryann Sumi, March 31 - Budget Repair Law Not in Effect

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UPDATE, June 14, 2011: Maryann Sumi's ruling overturned by Wisconsin Supreme Court
_______________

UPDATE, May 26, 2011: Maryann Sumi strikes down law.
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Judge Maryann Sumi rules AGAIN.

Another day, another order.

Judge Maryann Sumi, mother of foul-mouthed, union hack Jake Sinderbrand, has ordered that the budget repair law is not in effect.

She issued the order this morning even though on Tuesday she said that would be a move she would not make. Sumi said, "I hesitate to do that at this point because testimony is not closed and argument is not closed."

Although no testimony whatsoever has taken place since she said that, Sumi issued the order anyway.

Why did Sumi no longer "hesitate"?

What changed?

Did her husband, Carl Sinderbrand, and son, Jake Sinderbrand, convince her to quit "hesitating"?

Did she receive promises of support from union bosses?

That would be a corruption of our legal system.

Something is rotten in Dane County.

A state law to sharply curb union bargaining by public employees is not in effect, a Dane County judge ruled Thursday, continuing the turmoil over a measure that sparked massive protests and prompted Democrats to boycott the Senate for three weeks.

Gov. Scott Walker's administration said it would comply and discontinue the implementation of the law.

"Based on the briefs of counsel, the uncontroverted testimony, and the evidence received at the March 29, 2011, evidentiary hearing, it is hereby DECLARED that 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 has not been published within the meaning of (state statutes), and is therefore not in effect," Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled in a two-paragraph order.

...In response to the order, Walker's administration said it was halting action on putting the law in force.

"While I believe the budget-repair bill was legally published and is indeed law, given the most recent court action we will suspend the implementation of it at this time," said a statement from Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch.

"I am pleased that now we have a clear statement that the law is not in effect and that we have to straighten this out," said La Follette, a Democrat.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said the order was needed because he said Walker's administration had ignored past warnings from the judge.

"This morning with her added order she has taken away their last excuse," his statement said.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) called the order "judicial activism at its worst."

"Once again, one Dane County judge is doing everything she can to stand in the way of our efforts to improve the economy and create jobs," said a statement he issued.

...Sumi's latest order is in sharp contrast to what she said two days earlier in court. Then, Ozanne asked her to issue an order declaring the law was not in effect, but Sumi declined to do so.

"That is yet to be determined," she said then. "I hesitate to do that at this point because testimony is not closed and argument is not closed."

No testimony has been taken since Sumi said that.

Clearly, Sumi is doing the bidding of the unions.

She pulled this latest order out of thin air, something she said she would not do.

This is judicial activism.

This is Dane County.

______________

Read Sumi's March 31, 2011, ruling.
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Lucille Ball

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Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in America during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ball received thirteen Emmy Award nominations and four wins. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name Dianne Belmont. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then husband, Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Ethel and Fred Mertz, the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. They then changed the format a little - lengthening the time of the show from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first one went 75 mins), adding some characters, altering the storyline somewhat, and renaming the show from "I Love Lucy", to "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour", which ran for three seasons (1957–1960) and 13 episodes. Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show, which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1968 (156 Episodes), and Here's Lucy from 1968 to 1974 (144 episodes). Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life with Lucy - which failed miserably after 8 episodes aired although 13 were produced.
Ball met and eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940. On July 17, 1951, almost 40 years old, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.
On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm, at age 77. At the time of her death, she had been married to her second husband, standup comedian and business partner Gary Morton, for twenty-eight years

Early life and career

Ball was born to Henry Durrell Ball (September 16, 1886 – February 19, 1915) and Desiree "DeeDee" Evelyn Hunt (September 21, 1892 – July 20, 1977) in Jamestown, New York. Although Lucy was born in Jamestown, New York, she told many people that she was born in Butte, Montana. At age 3, her family moved to Anaconda, Montana and then to Wyandotte, Michigan. Her family was Baptist; her father was of Scottish descent, and his mother was Mary Ball. Her mother was of French, Irish and English descent. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies.
Her father, a telephone lineman for Anaconda Copper, was frequently transferred because of his occupation, and within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved many times, from Jamestown to Anaconda, and then to Trenton. While DeeDee Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915. Ball recalls little from the day her father died, only fleeting memories. A picture fell, and a bird got trapped in the house. Ever since that day she had an intense bird phobia.
After her father died, Ball and her brother Fred Henry Ball (July 17, 1915 - February 5, 2007) were raised by her mother and grandparents in Celoron, New York a summer resort village on Lake Chautauqua just west of Jamestown. Her grandfather, Fred Hunt, was an eccentric who also enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.
Four years after the death of her father, Ball’s mother DeeDee remarried. While her new step-father, Edward Peterson, and mother went to look for work in another city, Ball was left in the care of her new step-father’s parents. Ball’s new guardians were a puritanical Swedish couple who were so opposed to frivolity that they banished all mirrors from the house except for one over the bathroom sink. When the young Ball was caught admiring herself in it she was severely chastised for being so vain. This period of time affected Ball so deeply that in later life she claimed that it lasted seven or eight years, but in reality, it was probably less than one. One good thing did come out of DeeDee's new marriage. Her new husband Ed was a Shriner. When his organization needed female entertainers for the chorus line of their next show, he encouraged his twelve-year-old stepdaughter to audition. While Ball was onstage she began to realize that if one was seeking praise and recognition this was a brilliant way to receive it. Her appetite for recognition had thus been awakened at an early age, In 1927 her family suffered misfortune when their house and furnishings were taken away in a legal judgement after a neighborhood boy was accidentally shot and paralyzed by someone target-shooting in their yard, under Ball's grandfather's supervision. The family then moved into a small apartment in Jamestown.
In 1927, Ball dated a gangster's son by the name of Johnny DeVita. DeDe was unhappy with the relationship, but did nothing about it. She expected the romance to burn out in a few weeks. When that didn't happen DeDe took advantage of Lucille's desire to be in show business and "allowed" her to go to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City. There, Ball attended with fellow actress Bette Davis. Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer".
Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1929. She landed work as a fashion model. Her career was thriving when she became ill with rheumatoid arthritis and was unable to work for two years. She moved to New York City once again in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and had some success as a fashion model for designer Hattie Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. She began on Broadway as Dianne Belmont. She was hired—but then quickly fired—by theatre impresario Earl Carroll from his Vanities, and by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of Rio Rita.
She was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones. After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn Girls in Roman Scandals (1933) she permanently moved to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Roberta (1935) and briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat (1935), as well as a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936) another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant cousin of Ball's on her mother's side of the family. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door (1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn. In 1936 she also landed the role she hoped would lead her to Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack play Hey Diddle Diddle, a comedy set in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey on January 21, 1937 with Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of three roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead." The play received good reviews, but there were problems, chiefly with its star, Conway Tearle, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to replace him, but the producer, Anne Nichols, said the fault lay with the character and insisted that the part needed to be reshaped and rewritten. The two were unable to agree on a solution. The play was scheduled to open on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre, but closed after one week in Washington, D.C. when Tearle suddenly became gravely ill. Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those films.
A young Lucille Ball, in character, looking serious.
from the trailer for Stage Door (1937)
She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's"—a title previously held by Fay Wray—starring in a number of B-movies, such as 1939's Five Came Back. Like many budding starlets Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In 1937 she appeared as a regular on The Phil Baker Show. When that completed its run in 1938, Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show, starring future Wizard of Oz tin man Jack Haley. It was here that she began her fifty year professional relationship with Gale Gordon, who served as the show's announcer. The Wonder Show only lasted one season, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.
In 1940, Ball met Cuban-born bandleader Desi Arnaz while filming the film version of the Rodgers and Hart stage hit Too Many Girls. At first, Arnaz was not fond of Lucy. When they met again later that day, the two connected immediately and eloped the same year. Arnaz was drafted to the United States Army in 1942. He ended up being classified for limited service due to a knee injury. As a result, Arnaz stayed in Los Angeles, organizing and performing USO shows for wounded GIs being brought back from the Pacific. That same year, Ball appeared opposite Henry Fonda in The Big Street, in which she plays a paralyzed nightclub singer and Fonda portrays a busboy who idolizes her.
Ball filed for a divorce in 1944. Shortly after Ball obtained an interlocutory decree of divorce, however, she reconciled with Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz were only six years apart in age but apparently believed that it was less socially acceptable for an older woman to marry a younger man, and hence split the difference in their ages, both claiming a 1914 birth date until this was disproved.

I Love Lucy and Desilu

 Ball  and  Vance in character, both with a comically dubious facial expression.
Ball as Lucy, Vivian Vance as Ethel on the "Job Switching" episode of I Love Lucy
In 1948, Ball was cast as Liz Cugat (later "Cooper"), a wacky wife, in My Favorite Husband, a radio program for CBS Radio. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it for television. She agreed, but insisted on working with Arnaz. CBS executives were reluctant, thinking the public would not accept an All-American redhead and a Cuban as a couple. CBS was initially not impressed with the pilot episode produced by the couple's Desilu Productions company, so the couple toured the road in a vaudeville act with Lucy as the zany housewife wanting to get in Arnaz's show. The tour was a smash, and CBS put I Love Lucy on their lineup, The I Love Lucy show was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had become badly strained, in part by the fact that each had a hectic performing schedule which often kept them apart.
Along the way, she created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts". Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu, the company that she and Arnaz formed. After their divorce, Ball bought out Arnaz's share of the studio, and she proceeded to function as a very active studio head. Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today such as filming before a live studio audience with a number of cameras, and distinct sets adjacent to each other. During this time Ball taught a thirty-two week comedy workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. Ball is quoted as saying, "You cannot teach someone comedy, either they have it or they don't."
When the show premiered, most shows were aired live from New York City studios to Eastern and Central Time Zone audiences, and captured by kinescope for broadcast later to the West Coast. The kinescope picture was inferior to film, and as a result the West Coast broadcasts were inferior to those seen elsewhere in the country. Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but the time zone logistics made that broadcast norm impossible. Prime time in L.A. was too late at night on the East Coast to air a major network series, meaning the majority of the TV audience would be seeing not only the inferior picture of kinescopes but seeing them at least a day later.
Sponsor Philip Morris did not want to show day-old kinescopes to the major markets on the East Coast, yet neither did they want to pay for the extra cost filming, processing and editing would require, pressuring Ball and Arnaz to relocate to New York City. Ball and Arnaz offered to take a pay cut to finance filming, on the condition that their company, Desilu, would retain the rights to that film once it was aired. CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after initial broadcast, not realizing they were giving away a valuable and durable asset. Desilu made many millions of dollars on I Love Lucy rebroadcasts through syndication and became a textbook example of how a show can be profitable in second-run syndication. In television's infancy, the concept of the rerun hadn't yet formed, and many in the industry wondered who would want to see a program a second time. In fact, while other celebrated shows of the period exist only in incomplete sets of kinescopes mostly too degraded to show to subsequent generations of television viewers, I Love Lucy has virtually never gone out of syndication since it began, seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world over the past half century. The success of Ball and Arnaz's gamble was instrumental in drawing television production from New York to Hollywood for the next several decades.
Desilu hired legendary German cameraman Karl Freund as their director of photography. Freund had worked for F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, shot part of Metropolis (1927) and had directed a number of Hollywood films himself. Freund used a three-camera setup, which became the standard way of filming situation comedies. Shooting long shots, medium shots, and close-ups on a comedy in front of a live audience demanded discipline, technique, and close choreography. Among other non-standard techniques used in filming the show, cans of paint (in shades ranging from white to medium gray) were kept on set to "paint out" inappropriate shadows and disguise lighting flaws.
I Love Lucy dominated the weekly TV ratings in the United States for most of its run. (There was an attempt to adapt the show for radio; the cast and writers adapted the memorable "Breaking the Lease" episode—in which the Ricardos and Mertzes fall out over an argument, the Ricardos threaten to move, but they're stuck in a firm lease—for a radio audition disc that never aired but has survived.) In the scene where Lucy and Ricky are practicing the tango in the episode "Lucy Does The Tango", the longest recorded studio audience laugh in the history of the show was produced. It was so long, in fact, that the sound editor had to cut that particular part of the soundtrack in half. The strenuous rehearsals and demands of Desilu studio kept the Arnazes too busy to comprehend the show's success. During the show's production breaks they starred together in feature films: Vincente Minnelli's The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Alexander Hall's Forever, Darling (1956).
Desilu produced several other popular shows, most notably Our Miss Brooks (starring Ball's 1937 Stage Door co-star Eve Arden), The Untouchables, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible. Many other shows, particularly My Three Sons in its first seven of twelve seasons, Sheldon Leonard-produced series like Make Room for Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and I Spy, were filmed at Desilu Studios and bear its logo.

Testimony Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities

When Ball registered to vote in 1936, she listed her party affiliation as Communist. (She was registered as a Communist in 1938 as well.) In order to sponsor the Communist Party's 1936 candidate for the California State Assembly's 57th District, Ball signed a certificate stating "I am registered as affiliated with the Communist Party." The same year, she was appointed to the State Central Committee of the Communist Party of California, according to records of the California Secretary of State. In 1937, Hollywood writer Rena Vale, an admitted former Communist, attended a Communist Party new members' class at Ball's home, according to Vale's testimony before the United States House of Representatives' Special Committee on Un-American Activities, on July 22, 1940. Two years later, Vale reaffirmed this testimony in a sworn deposition:
...within a few days after my third application to join the Communist Party was made, I received a notice to attend a meeting on North Ogden Drive, Hollywood; although it was a typed, unsigned note, merely requesting my presence at the address at 8 o'clock in the evening on a given day, I knew it was the long-awaited notice to attend Communist Party new members classes... on arrival at this address I found several others present; an elderly man informed us that we were the guests of the screen actress, Lucile Ball, and showed us various pictures, books and other objects to establish that fact, and stated she was glad to loan her home for a Communist Party new members class...
In a 1944 British Pathe newsreel, titled Fund Raising For Roosevelt, Ball was featured prominently among several stage and film stars at a fund-raising event in support of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign for re-election. She also stated that in the 1952 US Presidential Election, she voted for Republican Dwight Eisenhower.
On September 4, 1953, Ball met privately with HUAC investigator William A. Wheeler in Hollywood and gave him sealed testimony. She stated that she had registered to vote as a Communist "or intended to vote the Communist Party ticket" in 1936 at her socialist grandfather's insistence. She stated she "at no time intended to vote as a Communist."
Ball stated she has never been a member of the Communist Party "to her knowledge";... did not know whether or not any meetings were ever held at her home at 1344 North Ogden Drive; stated... [that if she had been appointed] as a delegate to the State Central Committee of the Communist Party of California in 1936 it was done without her knowledge or consent; [and stated that she] did not recall signing the document sponsoring EMIL FREED for the Communist Party nomination to the office of member of the assembly for the 57th District... A review of the subject's file reflects no activity that would warrant her inclusion on the Security Index.
J. Edgar Hoover, then director of the FBI, named "Lucy and Dezi" [sic] among his "favorites of the entertainment world." Immediately before the filming of episode 68 ("The Girls Go Into Business") of I Love Lucy, Arnaz, instead of his usual audience warm-up, told the audience about Lucy and her grandfather. Arnaz quipped: "The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate." Then, he presented his wife and she received a standing ovation from the audience.

Children and divorce

Casual shot of Ball and Arnaz outside, sitting in director chairs. Ball is smiling slightly; Arnaz is looking the other way with his hand over his mouth.
Lucille Ball, with her husband Desi Arnaz in 1953.
On July 17, 1951, one month before her fortieth birthday and after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to her first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to her second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr When he was born, I Love Lucy was a solid ratings hit, and Ball and Arnaz wrote the pregnancy into the show (indeed, Ball gave birth in real life on the same day that her Lucy Ricardo character gave birth). There were several challenges from CBS, insisting that a pregnant woman could not be shown on television, nor could the word "pregnant" be spoken on-air. After approval from several religious figures the network allowed the pregnancy storyline, but insisted that the word "expecting" be used instead of "pregnant". (Arnaz garnered laughs when he deliberately mispronounced it as "'spectin'"). The episode's official title was "Lucy Is Enceinte", borrowing the French word for pregnant; however, episode titles never appeared on the show. The birth made the first cover of TV Guide in January 1953.
Ball's business instincts were often astonishingly sharp, and her love for Arnaz was passionate, but her relationships with her children were sometimes strained. Lucie Arnaz, her daughter, spoke of her mother's "controlling" nature. Ball was outspoken against the relationship that Desi Jr. had with Liza Minnelli. She was quoted as saying, "I miss Liza, but you cannot domesticate Liza." Her close friends in the business included Ginger Rogers, Vivian Vance, Mary Wickes and Carole Cook.
In October 1956, Ball, Vivian Vance, Desi Arnaz, and William Frawley all appeared on a Bob Hope special on NBC, including a spoof of I Love of Lucy, the only time all four stars were together on a color telecast.
By the end of the 1950s, Desilu had become a large company, causing a good deal of stress for both Ball and Arnaz; his increased drinking further compounded matters. On May 4, 1960, just two months after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, the couple divorced. Until his death in 1986, however, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke very fondly of each other. Her real-life divorce indirectly found its way into her later television series, as she was always cast as a single woman.
The following year, Ball did a musical on Broadway, Wildcat, co-starring Paula Stewart. It was Stewart who introduced her to second husband Gary Morton, a Borscht Belt stand-up comic who was thirteen years her junior. Morton claimed he had never seen an episode of I Love Lucy due to his hectic work schedule.That marked the beginning of a thirty-year friendship between Lucy and Paula Stewart. Ball immediately installed Morton in her production company, teaching him the television business and eventually promoting him to producer. Morton also played occasional bit parts on Ball's various series.

Later career

The 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat ended its run early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show. The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over", which she performed with Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show. She made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), and the musical Mame (1974), and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show (1962–68), which costarred Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy (1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball appeared on the Dick Cavett show in 1974 and spoke of her history and life with Arnaz. She revealed how she felt about other actors and actresses as well as her love for Arnaz. She continued by telling Cavett that the success to her life was, "getting rid of what was wrong and replacing it with what is right", talking about her divorce from Arnaz and marriage to Morton.
Ball also revealed in this interview that the strangest thing to ever happen to her was after she had some dental work completed and after placing lead fillings in her teeth, she started hearing radio stations in her head. She explained coming home one night from the studio and as she passed one area, she heard what she thought was morse code or a "tapping". She stated that "as I backed up it got stronger. The next morning, I reported it to the authorities and upon investigation, they found a Japanese radio transmitter that had been buried and was actively transmitting codes back to the Japanese." The extraordinary theory that dental fillings could pick up radio signals would ultimately be tested and debunked on the TV show Mythbusters nearly thirty years later.
Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs. Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate. Director/producer John Frankenheimer, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury in a mother role in another film and insisted on having her for the part.
An aged Ball standing in a crowd of celebrities,  wearing a black and gold sequinned dress with her characteristic red hair, looking fragile.
Ball at her last public appearance at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989 just four weeks before her death
During the mid-1980s, she attempted to resurrect her television career. In 1982, Ball hosted a two-part Three's Company retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show. A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, received mixed reviews. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy, costarring her longtime foil Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and prolific producer/former actor Aaron Spelling was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC. The failure of this series was said to have sent Ball into a serious depression, and other than a few miscellaneous awards show appearances, she was absent from the public eye for the last several years of her life. Her last public appearance, just one month before her death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards telecast in which she and fellow presenter, Bob Hope, were given a standing ovation.

Death

On April 18, 1989, Ball was at her home in Beverly Hills when she complained of chest pains. An ambulance was called and she was rushed to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She was diagnosed as having a dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent heart surgery for nearly eight hours, receiving an aorta from a 27 year old male donor. The surgery was successful, and Ball began recovering, even walking around her room with little assistance. On April 26, shortly after dawn, Ball awoke with severe back pains. Her aorta had ruptured in a second location and Ball quickly lost consciousness. All attempts to revive her proved unsuccessful, and she died at approximately 05:47 PST. She was 77 years old. Her ashes were initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, but in 2002 her children moved her remains to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York, where Ball's mother, father, brother, and grandparents are buried.

Legacy and posthumous recognition

Ball's signature.
Ball received many prestigious awards throughout her career including some received posthumously such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush on July 6, 1989, and The Women's International Center's Living Legacy Award.
There is a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatre was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor Ball was among Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the Century.
On August 6, 2001, on what would have been her ninetieth birthday, the United States Postal Service honored her with a commemorative postage stamp as part of its Legends of Hollywood series. Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide more than any other person; she appeared on thirty-nine covers, including the very first cover in 1953, with her baby son Desi Arnaz, Jr. TV Guide voted Lucille Ball as the Greatest TV Star of All Time and later it commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of I Love Lucy with eight collector covers celebrating memorable scenes from the show and in another instance they named I Love Lucy the second best television program in American history, after Seinfeld. Because of her liberated mindset and approval of the women's movement, Ball was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Finally, she was awarded the Legacy of Laughter award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards in 2007. and I Love Lucy was named the Greatest TV Series by Hall of Fame Magazine. In November of that year, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the 50 Greatest TV Icons, after Johnny Carson. In a poll done by the public, however, they chose her as the greatest icon.

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