During the French and Indian War, for example, he suffered terrible privations in the service of King George III. Rather than take pride in his early career, she used it as a lever to pry favors from him. Hardly had George left home when Mary began to complain publicly about her son's neglect. Actually, George Washington's relationship with his mother was one that grew increasingly unpleasant and embarrassing. She was delighted to note that there was "some Ball blood in George Washington" since "his mother's maiden name was Mary Ball." If there were any deeper investigations of the Ball genealogy, Lucille did not record them. "My mother, Desirée Hunt," her account proudly states, "was of French-English descent, with a touch of Irish from her father's side that showed in her porcelain-fine English complexion and auburn hair." Lucille's father, Henry Durrell Ball, was descended from landed gentry in England some of the family came to the New World as early as the seventeenth century. Compared to them she is a bloodline aristocrat. Lucille had little in common with the generation that was to beget laughter in vaudeville, in the legitimate theater, and on the sound stages of the 1930s. Moreover, the great majority of them came from the streets of New York City, where demonic energy was the only résumé they needed, and where opportunity lay all around them-from larceny and murder to medicine, law, and entertainment. But most often these comedians and clowns were first-generation Americans, breaking out from the poverty, illiteracy, and prejudice that still afflicted their parents. There have been, of course, many such "sports" in show business, performers who sprang from generations of laborers or small-time entrepreneurs. Hers is a classic instance of the comic talent that surfaces without genetic antecedent. Few intimations of Lucille Ball's character and career can be found on her family tree.
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