The National Comedy Center also
features the George Carlin Archives. Carlin’s daughter Kelly donated his papers
and other memorabilia to the museum. The basement of the Comedy Center, the adults-only
Blue Room, is adorned with Carlin’s “seven dirty words you can’t say on TV” in
various languages. Other comedians who were also criticized for pushing
boundaries, such as Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, are also examined in the
Blue Room.

“This is the best thing that ever happened to comedy.” - George Schlatter, producer of "Laugh In." Photo from the National Comedy Center's website

The National Comedy Center official website

Website

The National Comedy Center opened in August 2018 in Jamestown, New York, the hometown of actress Lucille Ball. Before her death, Ball suggested that her hometown make a museum celebrating comedy rather than her career specifically. After years of work, her suggestion has become a reality in the form of the $50 million National Comedy Center. The center is located in a 37,000 square-foot space that includes a former train station, trolley garage, and a new building. The museum focuses on individual comics as well as the art of comedy in general. On display are props such as the polka-dot dress Lucille Ball wore on “I Love Lucy” and Jerry Seinfeld’s puffy shirt seen on his sitcom. In addition, the museum screens clips from comedic bits and sketches as well as contextual pieces. Exhibits include the Hologram Theater, where visitors can watch holograms of comedians over the years.

The National Comedy Center

Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York in 1911. She died after a successful career in film and on television. She is most remembered for the sitcom "I Love Lucy." The tour begins at Ball's final resting place, includes stops at the Lucy-Desi Museum and National Comedy Center, and ends at the Lucille Ball Statues in the Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Celoron.

Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, in 1911. Though her family lived in the city only a short time, she apparently always had a soft spot for Jamestown and returned there numerous times over her life. Ball remains Jamestown's most famous citizen. Ball died on April 26, 1989. She was cremated and her ashes were buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a cemetery known for the many celebrities buried there. In 2002, however, her children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr., decided to move her remains to the family plot at Lakeview Cemetery in Jamestown. Ball's parents and grandparents are also buried in the plot.&nbsp; Lakeview Cemetery was dedicated in 1859 and there are currently 44,000 burials there. The cemetery replaced Jamestown's original burial ground, which was located at the present-day site of Prendergast Library and Dow Park. The early residents of Jamestown who were buried there were disinterred and buried at Lakeview. Lakeview Cemetery is the final resting place of many of Jamestown's earliest residents, as well as prominent business and political leaders. Reuben Eaton Fenton, a former Congressman, Senator, and Governor of New York is buried there. The cemetery is also home to a memorial to pre-World War I veterans. The memorial includes a shell from the USS Maine.&nbsp;Self-guided tours of the cemetery are available.&nbsp;

The beloved actor and comedian Lucille Ball died in 1989.  She was originally buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, the final resting place of many Hollywood celebrities. In 2003, Ball's ashes were moved to Lakeview Cemetery in Jamestown, her birthplace.  Ball's parents, grandparents, and brother are buried in the same plot.

Lucille Ball's Final Resting Place (Lakeview Cemetery)

Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York on August 6, 1911. Her father, Henry Durrell Ball, died when she was only three years old. Her mother, Desiree Ball then remarried. Her new husband, Ed Peterson, did not like young children, so he and Desiree moved to Detroit and left Lucille with his parents and her brother Fred with Desiree’s. The family was reunited when Lucille was eleven, but at age fifteen, she moved to New York to be an actress. Though her acting school suggested she give up her dream, Lucille Ball remained in New York and worked as a model, temporarily taking the name Diane Belmont. After a battle with rheumatoid arthritis, Lucille was discovered by a Hollywood agent from her appearance in a Chesterfield cigarette ad. In Hollywood, she slowly built up from bit parts to supporting roles.

Desiderio Alberto Arnaz III was born in Cuba on March 2, 1917. At sixteen, Desi fled from Cuba and joined his father in working part-time at a pet store in Florida. He then found work as a guitarist for Siboney Septet. After playing in Xavier Cugat’s band, Desi started one of his own. Its popularity led to a role on Broadway in the musical Too Many Girls. When the show was made into a movie, Desi reprised his role. He also met Lucille Ball, and the two were married in 1940. While Ball earned the nickname “Queen of the Bs” for her roles in B pictures (often low-budget films), Arnaz toured with his band and made a few more movies. Ball also took the role as Liz Cooper, a zany housewife, on the radio show My Favorite Husband.

CBS became interested in turning My Favorite Husband into a television show. However, Ball refused unless Arnaz could play the part of her husband. CBS executives doubted audiences would welcome an interracial couple on TV, so they refused. Ball and Arnaz then came up with a vaudeville show, with him as a bandleader and her as the wife always trying to get into the act. The tour was such a success that CBS changed their minds. The next battle was that the couple wanted to do the show in Hollywood, but at the time TV was broadcast live in New York because it offered better quality to the majority of audiences, who lived on the east coast. In another compromise, Ball and Arnaz requested that they film the show ahead of time, and CBS agreed so long as the couple’s new company, Desilu, paid to store the filmed episodes.

I Love Lucy premiered on October 15, 1951 and quickly became the most popular show on TV. The episode in which Lucy Ricardo gives birth to Little Ricky brought in more viewers than President Eisenhower’s inauguration (the first inauguration ever to be televised). Desilu also produced other successful TV shows, including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. Despite this success, Ball retained a relationship with her hometown. In 1956, Jamestown welcomed Ball and Arnaz, who were promoting their film Forever Darling. The couple divorced in 1960 but remained amicable. Ball eventually took over Desilu, becoming the first woman to run a television studio. She later sold the company to Gulf + Western for $17 million.

In her later years, Lucille Ball appeared in The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy, which co-starred her children, Desi Arnaz. Jr. and Lucie Arnaz. She also returned to movies, including the musical Mame and the made-for-TV drama Stone Pillow. Arnaz also continued to produce and make appearances on TV. He died from cancer in 1986 and was survived by his second wife, Edith. Ball also remarried, to Gary Morton. She passed away three years after starring in her last show, Life with Lucy, in 1986. Her remains were moved by her children from California to Jamestown in 2002.

The Lucy-Desi Museum was opened by the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center on May 25, 1996. The museum showcases props and costumes from “I Love Lucy,” family photographs, and awards, including an Emmy. Ten years later, the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center expanded with the Desilu Playhouse, named for the studio where TV shows such as “I Love Lucy,” “Star Trek,” and “The Andy Griffith Show” were filmed. The Desilu Playhouse contains exact replicas of the New York City and Hollywood apartments seen on “I Love Lucy.” Each year, the Lucy-Desi Center hosts the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival, which has welcomed comedians such as Ellen DeGeneres, Joan Rivers, and Ray Romano.

Lucy Desi Museum & Desilu Playhouse

Madelyn Jones Osgood created “The Players Club” in Jamestown in 1920 with the help of other local thespians. The group produced two or three plays annually throughout Jamestown. They rehearsed in a carriage house owned by Osgood’s father Cyrus Jones. In 1929, the troupe welcomed the young Lucille Ball in their production of Within the Law. Ball would later find fame in film and on TV’s I Love Lucy. Despite her success, she remembered her start with The Players Club and donated $5,000 for a new building in 1968.

In 1936, husband and wife George and Harriet Warren moved to Jamestown from Cleveland, Ohio. They and The Players Club formed a new troupe called “The Little Theatre of Jamestown.” Mr. and Mrs. Warren became the organization’s directors, and nineteen others joined the board to run the non-profit. Initial funds were raised by pre-selling season tickets. By 1945, the Little Theatre had grown to be the largest membership theatre in the United States. When World War II ended, many women quit theater groups such as the Little Theatre, and membership dropped.

It was also after the war that the Little Theatre of Jamestown decided to find a more permanent home. When the first round of fundraising failed to meet its goal, the board decided to move forward anyway and hope more donations would come. The organization purchased a former Howard Johnson and a carriage house. Renovations began, and the group moved to the Scottish Rite Temple for rehearsal and production. The organization then hired a group of experts to determine how likely it was that the Little Theatre could raise the rest of the necessary funds; the answer was negative. So, the Little Theatre continued operating from the Scottish Rite Temple.

The Warrens resigned from the Little Theatre of Jamestown in 1955, and they were succeeded by a series of other directors. The organization’s luck turned when it was offered $80,000 for its property in 1968. The board accepted the offer and began searching for a new home. They decided upon the Shea’s Theatre, owned by The Dipson Theatre Corporation. The theater had been closed for five years as it had struggled to compete with the booming popularity of television. The inside of the theater was reconfigured to allow for a larger lobby. Work was led by architect Warren Howard and the Ludwig Construction Company. The final cost of the project was $239,000.

The new Little Jamestown Theatre opened on April 19, 1969. Twenty years later, the President of the Board of Directors, Robert Ostrom, asked Lucille Ball if they could rename the theater in her honor. She agreed but passed away before a ceremony could make it official. The formal ceremony finally occurred on May 24th, 1991. Ball’s daughter Lucie Arnaz and her family attended the event.

In 1936, The Players Club and a new theater group merged to create The Jamestown Little Theatre. The non-profit organization put on plays at different locations throughout town. In 1969, the group moved into its current home after months of renovations. Donations for the project came from many current and former Jamestown residents, including Lucille Ball. Ball was born in Jamestown and got her start acting in a Players Club production. She then went on to find success in Hollywood on the big and small screen, most notably on the sitcom “I Love Lucy.” The Little Theatre was renamed in her honor in 1991.

Lucille Ball Little Theatre

Lucille Ball was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. Her father, Henry Durrell Ball, was an electrician who moved the family around while she was young. He died from typhoid fever when she was only three years old. Lucille’s mother, Desiree Ball, was pregnant with the couple’s second child during this ordeal, and she moved back to Jamestown to live with her parents. Desiree remarried, but because her new husband did not like children, she left Lucille and her baby brother Fred behind when the couple moved to Detroit. Fred stayed with Desiree’s parents, while Lucille stayed with her new grandparents, the Petersons. Desiree and her husband Ed returned when Lucille was eleven, and the family lived together again.

At age fifteen, Lucille convinced her mother to send her to a drama school in New York City. Eventually, the teachers at the school gave up on Lucille and wrote to her mother suggesting she drop out. She did, but Lucille kept working in New York as a model and sometimes as a showgirl. During this time, Lucille died her hair platinum blonde and tried out the name Diane Belmont. She gave up the pseudonym by the time Hollywood came calling, however. She had been hired by MGM to work as one of twelve “Goldwyn Girls” who would appear in the film Roman Scandals. Once shooting finished, Lucille decided to stay in California and take whatever bit parts she could. In the 1930s, she worked her way up from chorus member to the “Queen of the Bs,” so called because she starred in many “B,” or low budget, films. It was for a B film that MGM requested that Lucille dye her hair red so that it would stand out in Technicolor. Make-up artist Max Factor was the man to dye Lucille’s hair in the shade that would become her signature red.

In 1940, Lucille met and married the Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. The marriage would prove to be a tumultuous one, with Lucille filing for divorce four years later but ultimately reconciling with her husband. One of the main sources of struggle for the couple was that while Lucille was in Hollywood recording her radio show My Favorite Husband, Desi was touring the country with his band. When CBS decided to make a TV version of My Favorite Husband, Lucille and Desi realized that they had a prime opportunity to work together. CBS did not like the idea of having an interracial couple on TV, however, claiming that audiences would never accept an all-American redhead with a Cuban. To prove the station wrong, Desi and Lucille embarked on a vaudeville tour about a bandleader whose wife tries to break into the act. It was a hit, and CBS relented. They also agreed to let the show be shot in California on film as opposed to live in New York so long as Lucille and Desi’s production company, Desilu, took over the storage costs for the film.

I Love Lucy premiered on October 15, 1951. The series focused on a happily married couple, with Lucille playing the zany housewife, much like her character in the radio program. It also borrowed the show business elements from Lucille and Desi’s roadshow. The sitcom was wildly successful, remaining the number one TV show for its first four seasons. When presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson interrupted the show’s broadcast to give a message, he received piles of angry letters. One large department store posted a sign explaining "We Love Lucy, too, so from now on we will be open Thursday night instead of Monday [the night I Love Lucy was on]." This success was seemingly going to be thwarted on two important occasions. In 1952, the House of Un-American Activities Committee found out that Lucille had registered as a communist in 1936. This was during the Red Scare when even an insinuation of communist sympathies could ruin an actor’s career, much less proof of an affiliation with the party. Lucille’s name was cleared when it was learned that she never voted as a communist and had only registered as one to please her ailing and political grandfather. Shortly after that scandal, Lucille found out that she was pregnant. Having a pregnant woman on TV was unheard of in the 1950s, but producer Jesse Oppenheimer insisted that audiences would love to see the characters Lucy and Ricky Ricardo have a baby. Indeed, the episode in which Lucy gives birth to Little Ricky was viewed by more people than President Eisenhower’s inauguration, the first presidential inauguration broadcast on TV. 

I Love Lucy ended in 1957, and Lucille and Desi’s marriage ended three years later. Still, Desilu churned out hit TV shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show and Star Trek. Lucille married Gary Morton in 1962. That same year, Lucille bought out Desi, making her the first woman to run her own television studio. She sold the company to Gulf + Western in 1967. She also acted in two more beloved sitcoms: The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy. Her last TV role came in 1986 in the less successful Life with Lucy. Lucille Ball died three years later from complications from open heart surgery.

A couple from Celoron, New York (near Jamestown) commissioned a statue in Lucy’s likeness which was completed in 2009. The six-foot-tall bronze statue, designed by artist Dave Poulin, gained attention almost immediately. Unfortunately, it was not flattering attention. The statue was soon nicknamed “Scary Lucy,” and a local resident set up a Facebook page to voice the community’s displeasure with the piece. Poulin later admitted that it was not his best work and offered to improve it, but the community was hesitant. Instead, a search was conducted to find a new sculptor. Carolyn Palmer, who has also designed statues of other historical figures, took on the task. She watched and re-watched episodes of I Love Lucy to get a sense of what Lucy looked like and who she was. Palmer completed the work in 2016, on what would have been Lucille Ball’s 105th birthday. Since then, the statue has been well-received by fans.

Lucille Ball was an actress who appeared in over one hundred film and television roles, most notably playing Lucy Ricardo on I Love Lucy. After the whirlwind success of I Love Lucy, Lucille went on to become the first woman to run her own TV studio, Desilu, which produced shows like Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. Lucille was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. The Lucille Ball Memorial Park near her hometown is now home to two statues of Lucille Ball. One was not well-received and became known as “Scary Lucy,” while the more recent is thought to better capture her likeness. 

Lucille Ball's Hometown Driving Tour

The National Comedy Center

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