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Fred Ball

American movie studio executive

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ5494523
Source-derived summary

Frederick Henry Ball (July 17, 1915 – February 5, 2007) was an American movie studio executive and younger brother of Lucille Ball.

Early life

Ball was born on July 17, 1915, to Henry Durrell Ball (1887–1915) and Désirée "Dede" Evelyn Hunt (1892–1977) in Jamestown, New York. He was named after his grandfather. He grew up in a Baptist family; his father was of English and Scottish descent. His mother was of French, Irish and English descent. His genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies, including Edmund Rice, a founder of Sudbury, Massachusetts. Another direct ancestor, William Sprague, left England on the ship Lyon's Whelp for Plymouth/Salem, Massachusetts.

His father was a telephone lineman for the Bell Telephone Company, and his mother was a concert pianist. His father contracted typhoid fever while DeDe Ball was pregnant with Fred, and died in February 1915. In 1918, his mother married a Swedish Lutheran salesman named Edward (Ed) Peterson.

Editorial summary

“Fred Ball” enters the record as american movie studio executive. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fred, Ball and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1915, 2007, 1887, 1892—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1915-07-17, 1938-12-28—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Fred, Ball and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Fred Ball” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Fred, Ball and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5494523. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 2007, 1887 and 1892.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Fred Ball”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Fred Ball primary sources, Fred Ball archive and Fred research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Fred Ball”?
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  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Fred Ball” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.