Vivian Vance Biography
Born: July 26, 1909
Died: August 17, 1979
Born in Kansas, Vivian Vance began appearing in community theater productions when her family relocated to Albuquerque, NM. Her friends and neighbors financed Vance's move to New York, where she planned to study with Eva LeGalliene. When these plans fell through, she made the auditions rounds, landing a job in the long-running Broadway production +Music in the Air. She supplemented her income with nightclub performances, then received her big break when, with only a few hours' notice, she stepped into the female lead of the 1937 Ed_Wynn musical +Hooray for What? Subsequent Broadway credits included +Anything Goes, +Red, Hot and Blue, and +Let's Face It, each one a hit. In 1951, Jose_Ferrer cast Vance in the La Jolla Playhouse production of +Voice of the Turtle. It was on the strength of her performance of this play that Vance was offered the role of Ethel Mertz on the Lucille_Ball/Desi Arnaz TV sitcom I_Love_Lucy. She played Ethel from 1951 through 1960, winning an Emmy in the process -- which hopefully compensated for the fact that, throughout the I_Love_Lucy run, she was contractually obligated to outweigh star Lucille_Ball by 20 pounds. In 1962, Vance signed on for another lengthy co-starring stint with Ball on TV's The Lucy Show. Throughout her five decades in show business, Vance appeared in only three films: The_Secret_Fury (1950), The Blue Veil (1951), and The Great Race (1965). Married twice, Vivian Vance's first husband was actor Philip_Ober. Hal Erickson, Rovi
Browse More Actresses:
