Ball, Lucille (b. Aug. 6, 1911 d. Apr. 26, 1989), beloveed comic actress who was one of the first female television stars, the first woman to be pregnant on screen, and, in 1953, the first woman to give birth in front of a live, cheering studio audience. The six-hour special made TV history on several levels with its unedited, single-camera shot of a sweating, profanity-spewing Ball laboring through contractions while surrounded by a crew of attentive doctors and nurses. The episode smashed all previous ratings records as more than 70 million Americans gathered around TV sets in living rooms or stood outside electronics stores to watch doctors successfully perform a caesarian section on Ball. In commemoration of the classic TV moment, portions of Ball's placenta are on permanent view at the Paley Center For Media in Los Angeles.
A friend gave me a copy of The Onion Book of Known Knowledge for Christmas. Learning so very much here. And yes, I thought it might be an apt way to wrap up my blogging for 2012.
2 comments:
That was a famous episode but at the time I was too young to be allowed to watch it - besides, we didn't get a tv set until 1954. :-)
I hope the New Year will see all your best dreams come true.
Well apparently you could have caught it in a department store home electronics dept, but hindsight's 20/20.
Who knows what the year will bring? We'll make the best of it.
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