Lucille Ball, the irrepressible queen of television comedy
for nearly a quarter-century, died yesterday at Cedars-Sinai
Medical Center in Los Angeles a week after undergoing heart
surgery there. She was 77 years old.

A hospital spokesman, Ron Wise, said the actress had
suffered a rupture of the aorta after having improved
steadily from a seven-hour operation.

Miss Ball, noted for impeccable timing, deft
pantomime and an endearing talent for making the
outrageous believable, was a Hollywood legend: a
contract player at RKO in the 1930's and 40's who later
bought the studio with Desi Arnaz, her first husband.

She made her last public appearance four weeks ago at
the Academy Awards ceremonies, when she and Bob Hope
introduced a production number.

The elastic-faced, husky-voiced comedian was a national
institution from 1951 to 1974 in three series and many
specials on television that centered on her ''Lucy'' character.
The first series, ''I Love Lucy,'' was for six years the most
successful comedy series on television, never ranking lower
than third. The series, on CBS, chronicled the life of Lucy
and Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban band leader played by Mr. Arnaz,
who was Miss Ball's husband on and off screen for nearly 20 years.

It was a major national event when, on Jan. 19, 1953,
Lucy Ricardo gave birth to Little Ricky on the air the
same night Lucille Ball gave birth to her second child,
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha 4th. The audience
for the episode was estimated at 44 million, a record at the
time, and CBS said 1 million viewers responded with
congratulatory telephone calls, telegrams, letters or gifts.
Miss Ball's first child, Lucie Desiree Arnaz, was born July
17, 1951, three months before the show went on the air.

The Ricardos were the best-known, best-loved couple in
America, and the first ''Lucy'' series is still in syndication
in more than 80 countries, at times with six episodes a
day in a single area.

Analyzing the reasons, Miss Ball explained why her
inspired exaggeration of an average middle-class housewife
was credible: ''I believe it all the way. I do what I do with
all my strength and heart.''

''Lucille Ball will always be the first lady of CBS,'' William S.
Paley, the chairman of the network, said yesterday in a tribute
issued by his office. ''Lucy's extraordinary ability to light up the
screen and brighten our lives is a legacy that will last forever.''

Miss Ball was also an astute business executive. From 1962 to
1967, she headed Desilu Productions, one of the biggest and
most successful television production companies. Also, starting
in 1968, she and her second husband, Gary Morton, a former
nightclub comic, headed Lucille Ball Productions.

She bought Mr. Arnaz's share of Desilu Productions in 1962
with a $3 million bank loan, and she sold the company to
Gulf and Western Industries in 1967 for $17 million.
Her share totaled $10 million.

Discussing how she became an executive, Miss Ball said:
''My ability comes from fairness and a knowledge of people.
I ran my studio like I run my home, with understanding of
people. We touch in our house. I tell my children, 'There's
so little time.' ''

Miss Ball was a tireless worker. ''I have to work or I'm
nothing,'' she once said. ''I've never been out of work
except for two hours once between contracts.'' On the set,
she was said to know every term, every lighting fixture and
every worker.

A VETERAN OF MOTION PICTURES

Before entering television, Miss Ball appeared in more
than 50 films, beginning in 1933 as an unbilled chorus girl in
an Eddie Cantor musical farce, ''Roman Scandals.'' Her other
films included ''Having Wonderful Time'' (1938), ''Room
Service'' (1938), ''The Big Street'' (1942), ''Best Foot Forward''
(1943), the title role in ''Du Barry Was a Lady'' (1943), ''Without
Love'' (1945), ''Sorrowful Jones'' (1949) and ''Fancy Pants'' (1950).

James Agee, the writer and film critic, observed that Miss
Ball ''tackles a role like it was sirloin and she didn't care
who was looking.'' Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times
wrote in 1938 that she'' is rapidly becoming one of our brightest
comediennes.'' In 1960 she also starred in a Broadway musical,
''Wildcat.''

In 1964 there was a Lucy Day at the New York World's Fair,
and in 1971 she became the first woman to receive the
International Radio and Television Society's Gold Medal.
Her many other awards included four Emmys, induction
into the Television Hall of Fame and a citation for lifetime
achievement from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

DAUGHTER OF A PIANIST

Lucille Desiree Ball was born on Aug. 6, 1911 in Celoron,
outside Jamestown, N.Y. She was the daughter of the former
Desiree Hunt, a pianist, and Henry Dunnell Ball, a telephone
lineman, who died when she was 3.

As a girl she spent a great deal of time with her maternal
grandparents, who instilled in her a deep family loyalty and
a commitment to hard work. Her favorite times were
attending vaudeville shows and silent films and acting out
episodes and plays. Of a school production of ''Charley's
Aunt,'' she said, ''I played the lead, directed it, cast it, sold
tickets, printed the posters and hauled in furniture for props.''

She embarked on a show-business career at 15 by going to
Manhattan and enrolling in John Murray Anderson's dramatic
school. From the first, she was repeatedly told she had no
talent and should return home. She tried and failed to get
into four Broadway chorus lines.

FROM SODA JERK TO CIGARETTE GIRL

She worked variously as a waitress and as a soda jerk in
a Broadway drugstore. She then became a hat model in
Hattie Carnegie's salon and also modeled for
commercial photographers. She won national attention
as the Chesterfield Cigarette Girl in 1933. This got her
to Hollywood as a Goldwyn chorus girl in ''Roman Scandals.''

Over two years, she played unbilled and bit roles in two
dozen movies and made two-reel comedies with Leon
Errol and the Three Stooges. She then spent seven years
at RKO Radio Pictures, getting many leading roles in low-
budget movies. She was typed and mostly wasted in films,
but a few roles suggested her talents - a cynical young
actress in ''Stage Door'' (1937), a temperamental movie star
in ''The Affairs of Annabel'' (1938), a rejected lover in the
1939 melodrama ''Five Came Back,'' a gold-digging stripper
in ''Dance, Girl, Dance'' (1940), a handicapped egotist in
''The Big Street'' (1942) and a tough-talking secretary
in ''The Dark Corner'' (1946).

''I never cared about the movies,'' she said later, ''because
they cast me wrong.''

A REGULAR ON THE RADIO

In radio, Miss Ball did regular stints on Phil Baker's and
Jack Haley's comedy-variety shows in the late 30's and 40's
and, from 1947 to 1951, she played the precursor to Lucy:
the hare-brained wife of a Midwestern banker (Lee Bowman
and later Richard Denning) in the CBS radio comedy ''My
Favorite Husband.'' The show's writers were Madelyn Davis
and Bob Carroll Jr., who were to write many Lucy scripts in
later decades.

On the stage, Miss Ball won favorable notices for a 22-
week tour in the title role of Elmer Rice's fantasy ''Dream Girl.''

In 1950, she and Mr. Arnaz tried to sell the ''I Love Lucy''
television show to CBS. Network executives objected,
contending the public would not accept the team of an
American redhead and a Cuban bandleader with a heavy
accent. To prove their case, the couple went on a nationwide
vaudeville tour with a 20-minute act that included a ''Cuban Pete-
Sally Sweet'' medley. They produced a 30-minute film pilot with
$5,000 of their own money. The broadcast officials were won
over.

PREMIERE IN 1951

''I Love Lucy'' had its premiere on Oct. 15, 1951, and within
a few months millions of Americans tuned in every Monday
evening to watch the antics of the Ricardos and their best friends,
Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance).

''I Love Lucy'' was one of the first shows to be filmed
rather than performed live, making it possible to have a
high-quality print of each episode for rebroadcast, compared
with the poor quality of live-show kinescopes. The change
eventually led to a shift of television production from New York
to Hollywood. The show was the first to be filmed before an
audience, and crew members used three cameras at once to
permit motion-picture-type editing. The series won more
than 200 awards, including five Emmys.

Jack Gould of The Times offered this analysis: ''The
extraordinary discipline and intuitive understanding of
farce gives 'I Love Lucy' its engaging lilt and lift. Only
after a firm foundation of credibility has been established
is the element of absdurdity introduced. It is in the
smooth transition from sense to nonsense that 'I Love Lucy'
imparts both a warmth and a reality to the slapstick romp
that comes as the climax.'' Miss Ball's superb timing, Mr.
Gould wrote, makes her ''the distaff equivalent of Jack
Benny,'' her professional idol.

A FORTUNE IN RERUN RIGHTS

Mr. Arnaz made a fortune for the couple by obtaining rerun
rights for the series. He later sold the rights to CBS, allowing
the couple's production company, Desilu, to buy a studio, the
former RKO lot where Miss Ball's film career had languished
and where they had met in 1940 while appearing together in
''Too Many Girls.''

Despite the continuing popularity of ''I Love Lucy,'' the
couple sought a less demanding schedule and ended the
series in 1957 after making 179 episodes. The format persisted,
however, for three more years through a series of hour long,
high-budget, around-the-world specials called ''The Luci-Desi
Comedy Hour.'' Their collaboration ended with their divorce
in 1960. Mr. Arnaz died in 1986.

Two years after their divorce, Miss Ball revived ''Lucy,''
playing a widow in ''The Lucy Show'' for 156 episodes until
1968, then did ''Here's Lucy'' for 144 episodes from 1968 to
1974. In these two series she was joined by her two children,
her longtime friend Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon, who
succeeded Mr. Arnaz as her masculine foil. In shaping
situation comedies, Miss Ball consistently sought superior
writers, followed their advice, gave them unstinting credit
and paid close attention to production details.

In later movies, she co-starred with Bob Hope in two
comedies, ''The Facts of Life'' (1961) and ''Critic's Choice''
(1963), and appeared with Henry Fonda in ''Yours, Mine
and Ours,'' a 1968 farce about a couple with nearly a score
of children. In 1974 she starred in a film version of the
stage hit ''Mame.''

LAST SERIES FAILED

Miss Ball also appeared occasionally in television specials
and played a spunky bag lady in a 1985 television movie,
''Stone Pillow.'' John J. O'Connor of The Times said she
was ''as wily and irresistible as ever'' and ''in total control.''
In 1986, she returned to weekly television as a grandmother
in another sitcom series called ''Life With Lucy,'' but it
failed to gain an audience.

Addressing a group of would-be actors, she said the best
way to get along with tough directors was ''don't die when
they knock you down.'' She said she was very shy at the
start of her career, but overcame it when ''it finally occurred
to me that nobody cared a damn.''

Associates called Miss Ball self-reliant, sympathetic and
sometimes tempestuous. ''Life is no fun,'' she once said,
''without someone to share it with.''

For many years she and Mr. Morton had homes in
Beverly Hills and Palm Springs and in Snowmass, Colo
.

Miss Ball is survived by her husband, her daughter, her
son and three grandchildren.

Funeral plans were incomplete last night.