I Love Lucy was an instant hit all over the United States when it premiered in 1951.
But behind the scenes, all was not as happy as it
appeared on screen. Here’s what even the show’s biggest fans didn’t know.
Before Lucille Ball became known to the world as Lucy Ricardo, she worked as a B-film
actress in the 1940s, starring in films for MGM. When her big break didn't come on the big screen,
Ball decided to make a more direct play for the public's attention with a radio show.
Ball quit film to star in the radio series My Favorite Husband, for CBS Studios in 1948.
My Favorite Husband followed the story of Liz Cugat and her husband, George, a man
who was constantly frustrated with his eccentric wife. Sound familiar? By the second season, with
television on the rise, CBS brought Ball an offer to convert the show into a visual format. Husband
ended after nearly four years to be adapted into the beloved television sitcom, I Love Lucy.
Lucille Ball met Desi Arnaz in Hollywood on the film set of Too Many Girls in 1940. Before the
end of the year, they eloped to Connecticut to marry. Ball's career in film started to
take off with an MGM contract, while Arnaz's petered out. Though his wife was earning money,
Arnaz was going a little stir crazy at home. So, Arnaz, who had a successful career as an orchestra
leader before doing movies, returned to his first love and began touring the country with his band.
By 1944, Ball had filed for a divorce. According to Biography, she was tired of his, quote,
"infidelities and heavy drinking." He was always out of town or out all night. Before the divorce
was final, the couple made an agreement to make it work. To do that, Ball believed she
needed to find a way to keep Arnaz at home. When CBS offered her the opportunity to turn
My Dear Husband into a series, she agreed to do it as long as it starred her husband.
When Lucille Ball demanded Desi Arnaz be the lead in the televised version of My Dear Husband, CBS
did not like the idea. Ball biographer, Kathleen Brady, told PBS that the studio was resistant
because they didn't believe audiences would buy the American Ball's marriage to a Cuban immigrant.
"No one wanted him to play my husband because he was Cuban,
and they wanted a real American couple."
In order to prove America would love it, Ball and Arnaz took their act on the road.
They created a well-reviewed slapstick routine they'd do on tour with Arnaz's band. By the
end of 1950, CBS had given in and greenlit the couple to star in My Favorite Husband,
which became I Love Lucy and starred America's favorite sweethearts - Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.
Now that Lucille Ball had her first demand met, having her real life husband, Desi Arnaz, star in
I Love Lucy, it was time for her second - that the show be filmed in Los Angeles. The problem was,
no show at that time had ever been shot in Los Angeles. It was a technical impossibility.
Shows were broadcast from New York, then recorded on kinescopes. A kinescope was a camera that
recorded live TV, so the recording could be sent to other markets throughout the country.
The quality was terrible. According to the Directors Guild of America,
Phillip Morris, the show's sponsor, hated the idea of making I Love Lucy in Los
Angeles. The sponsor feared that the kinescope process would mean the East
Coast market would end up watching a terrible version of the show they were paying for.
So, Arnaz and Ball decided to shoot on film, that way the show would always be
preserved on a high quality format. It's the reason you can still watch reruns
of I Love Lucy to this day. But, film was expensive, so more innovation was needed.
To streamline the film production process, the show developed the multi-camera format
of sitcom production. The show had adjoined sets - putting all the action in one place,
with a studio audience, and shot continuously as if it were a play.
They used three cameras simultaneously to record their wide, medium, and close-up shots.
The technique was so fast and efficient that it's still used by sitcoms today.
Even with the technical innovations created to shoot I Love Lucy as efficiently as possible,
the show was still going over CBS's proposed budget. So, Ball and Arnaz
formed Desilu Productions and used $5,000 of their own money to produce the show's pilot,
on the condition that they would fully own the final product.
This was a genius move. Ball and Arnaz owned the show, meaning that if it was
successful they would make a lot more money than their weekly salary as actors.
It also meant they would get any residuals or profits made off of the show's reruns.
I Love Lucy became a hit show, so Arnaz and Ball began to grow Desilu into a TV empire.
After producing hits like The Untouchables and The Ann Sothern Show,
Desilu sold their syndication rights back to CBS for $5 million.
They would no longer receive money off of reruns, but they had enough money to buy
RKO Studios in 1957. The massive studio lot soon became home to other hits like The Andy
Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, turning Desilu into an independent production powerhouse.
During the second season of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball became pregnant
with the couple's second child, Desi Arnaz, Jr. Desi Arnaz, Sr. wanted to
work this into the storyline of the show, but sponsor Phillip Morris wasn't into the idea.
Eventually, CBS and Phillip Morris conceded. By that time I Love Lucy
was the number-one-rated show on television, and Ball and Arnaz were never the type to back down.
They were allowed to show Ball being pregnant and talk about her pregnancy,
on the condition that they were never allowed to use the word "pregnant."
This censorship actually assisted in making the episode fun. Lucy tries to tell Ricky she's in
the family way but is continually blocked and distracted until finally she interrupts Ricky
during a performance with his band. Ricky then begins singing, "We're Having a Baby."
The storyline was a massive hit, and stretched for seven episodes leading up to the Season 2 finale.
“I’m going to be a father. How ‘bout that?”
The Ricardos' relationship was not the only one
drawing viewers into the show. The partnership between characters Ethel Mertz and Lucy Ricardo
was just as fraught with humor and conflict, and became a key part of I Love Lucy's legacy.
In an interview with PBS, Lucille Ball biographer Kathleen Brady agreed that the
friendship between Ethel and Lucy was the show's, quote, "most enduring influence."
Their relationship is what inspired a long legacy of TV shows where female friendship is one of, if
not the most important theme - shows like Laverne and Shirley, Sex and the City, and Broad City.
In the well-known and loved episode, "Lucy Does a TV Commercial," Lucy Ricardo wants to prove to her
husband Ricky Ricardo that she is a good actress, but he won't give her a chance. So, to retaliate,
she sneaks onto a commercial set, dismisses the woman who was hired, and takes over her job.
Of course it's immediately funny when she has to pronounce the name of the product,
"Vitameatavegamin" - which would be hard to say even if you came prepared.
As she pitches the "health tonic" to viewers, she takes sips of it,
not realizing one of the main ingredients is grain alcohol. The laughs grow exponentially as she gets
more and more drunk but remains determined to show Ricky she's good at commercials.
"The answer to all your problems is in this lil ol' bottle!"
According to Stefan Kanfer's Lucille Ball biography, Ball of Fire,
during the episode even Desi Arnaz himself had to bite the inside of his lip to hold back laughter.
Lucille Ball's talent was undeniable, and her husband was more than a little jealous.
“Vita-veedee-villi-meenee-mie-nee-mo”
While the official title of the episode is "Job Switching," many folks may remember
another iconic I Love Lucy installment as "The Candy Episode" - the one where
Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz get jobs working at a candy factory. In an effort to keep up
with a conveyor belt carrying chocolates, Lucy begins stuffing them in her mouth.
According to the book, Ball on Fire, Desi Arnaz found a real-life candy dipper at a local farmer's
market to play the guest star in the episode. The woman, Amanda Milligan, plays another
factory employee who works alongside Lucy and Ethel.
Arnaz's thought was that the experienced candy maker would make an ideal deadpan expression to contrast with Lucy's silliness.
When it was time to film the episode, Ball got nervous. According to Ball of Fire, she recalled:
"We explained the scene to her a couple of times, and she thought we were all crazy.
She never cracked a smile once. We began to think, 'Is this funny or isn't it?'"
In the scene Milligan is supposed to hit Lucille Ball, but in rehearsals she'd merely "tap" her.
When they finally shot the scene, Ball recalled:
"Well, it came time for me to hit her, which I did, and then for her to hit me,
which she did! Bam! She gave me such a shot. I thought she had broken my nose."
The "Grape Stomping" episode is actually called "Lucy's Italian Movie." In it,
an Italian director wants Lucy to play the role of an American tourist, but she thinks
she's supposed to be a grape stomper. Grape stomping was an outdated and unnecessary practice
since vineyards now had machines to squish their grapes, but it made for good comedy.
According to Ball of Fire, Arnaz managed to find one of the last remaining real
grape stompers. He hired her, a woman named Teresa Tirelli, to play Lucy's counterpart.
Once again, using another non-actor proved to be an interesting experience on set.
Teresa didn't speak English and needed a translator to tell her what to do.
As Lucille Ball recalled in Ball of Fire,
"The time came for us to get in the vat, which was full of real grapes.
We started stomping grapes, and I made a dance out of it, and then I slipped."
She accidentally hit Teresa, who in turn, hit her back. Ball recalled,
"She just held me down, hitting me. I thought she was trying to
kill me. I had grapes up my nose, up my ears. She was choking me."
No one knew Ball was struggling, as they thought it was all a part of the show,
and that Ball would do anything for a laugh.
Fred and Ethel Mertz were unabashedly angry and displeased with each other on screen,
and that's why audiences loved them. But the actors,
Vivian Vance and William Frawley, hated each other in real life too.
"He's no dream, he's a nightmare."
Vance came from Broadway and thought she was better than Frawley, who came from Broadway
as well but spent the majority of his career as a character actor starring in over one hundred
films. According to The Other Side of Ethel Mertz: The Life Story of Vivian Vance, Vance said,
"How can anyone believe that I'd be married to that old coot..."
What Frawley said in response is not safe for prime-time television. Frawley had a bad
reputation for drinking and being unprofessional, but he was a great actor, so they kept him around.
Hedda Hopper, the scariest gossip columnist in Hollywood, was friends with Lucille Ball
and was able to keep any unfavorable press about the I Love Lucy cast out of print.
Instead of gossip about the feud between the co-stars, the studio wrote press releases
that said things like a, quote, "four-way admiration society" existed between the stars,
and they'd even pepper in quotes from Vance about how much she loved Frawley.
No one knew for years about the constant bickering behind the scenes.
Coming off a successful first season of I Love Lucy, in the spring of 1952, Lucille Ball
discovered she was being investigated by the House Committee of Un-American Activities. In 1936,
Ball had registered as a Communist, and that eventually put her on the committee's radar as
it worked to eliminate, quote, "radical" influence from Hollywood via an infamous blacklist.
Ball was summoned to testify before Congress. According to the The New York Times,
"Ball explained that she had done it to humor her eccentric Socialist
grandfather - Ball's mother had also registered as a Communist,
for the same reason - and that she hadn't actually voted in the election."
The committee accepted this story, and let Lucille Ball go. As The New York Times later wrote,
"The charges prompted Desi Arnaz to quip,
'The only thing red about this girl is her hair and even that we're not so sure about.'"
I Love Lucy continued airing and gaining in popularity,
but the investigation was never quite over. According to The Washington Post,
"The committee forgave her, but J. Edgar Hoover never forgot.
The FBI director continued to collect evidence about Ball..."
The FBI continued to keep files on Ball and her husband well into the 1950s, because
Hoover was never going to let an opportunity to gather dirt on a potential enemy pass him by.
“Merry Christmas, everybody.”
In 1989, CBS unearthed an old I Love Lucy Christmas special and aired it. The ratings
were terrific, prompting a search for other missing episodes that eventually struck gold.
In 1951, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball shot their own pilot for I Love Lucy,
at studio in New York, but it never aired. It was recorded on a kinescope, though, and a copy
wound up in an unexpected place. According to a 1990 article in The Washington Post,
Desi Arnaz had given a copy of the episode to Pepito, a clown who appeared in the pilot. Years
later Pepito's widow discovered it and passed it on to B. Donald Grant, former head of CBS
Entertainment. Through Grant, the original pilot finally found its way to television.
CBS aired the special on April 30, 1990 under the title of I Love Lucy:
The Very First Show. The special was hosted by Lucie Arnaz, Ball,
and Arnaz's first child, with whom Ball was pregnant when the original pilot was filmed.
According to The Associated Press, an estimated 40 million viewers tuned in to watch,
making The Very First Show another ratings hit even decades after I Love Lucy ended.
The first pilot never aired because the show was drastically changed after landing Phillip
Morris as a sponsor. The initial pilot had Arnaz's agent as a main character,
which was later cut because, according to Ball biographer Stefan Kanfer,
that plot detracted from the central relationship between Lucy and Desi.
So, they made Lucy and Desi Ricardo more working class and relatable, and added Fred and Ethel
Mertz as their neighbors to make the version of I Love Lucy that we know and love today.
In many ways I Love Lucy was an example of art imitating life;
In real life Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were married, Arnaz was a band leader,
and they had a baby the same day Lucy and Ricky Ricardo had a baby. But behind the scenes,
the marriage between Ball and Arnaz was tumultuous. According to Ball of Fire,
"With all of the efforts to create a nuclear family, Lucy spent much of the
week alone with the baby, while Desi went to his thirty-eight-foot power cruiser Desilu
and joined the roistering buddies who had been banished from the ranch."
Jerry Hausner, who played Ricky's agent in the series,
talked about Arnaz to The Washington Post, saying,
"He screamed at me and called me names in front of the audience. He was drunk a lot
of the time. [...] I went to the producer and said, 'Write me out of this thing.'"
Ball had hoped the show would bring their family together, but Arnaz continued to party and engage
in affairs. Eventually, the tabloids caught on, and in 1955 a magazine called Confidential ran a
story about Arnaz's philandering in which he was quoted telling a friend that Lucy
shouldn't be upset by his affairs because he only dated sex workers and not, quote,
"other broads." The image of the Ricardos as a great American love story persisted on
I Love Lucy, but the relationship between Ball and Arnez was never a completely happy one.
In 1960, when the stress of the show and their marriage had been enough,
Lucille Ball filed for a divorce from Desi Arnaz. Arnaz and Ball shared their last
kiss on the last episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Ball went on to run Desilu,
helping produce shows like The Untouchables and Star Trek. While Ball has received a
lot of fanfare for being a "girlboss," her biggest dream was to be a housewife.
“I was delighted to be pregnant. Nothing else mattered.”
According to PBS, Ball was fond of dusting her office even while doing interviews to
promote Desilu, in an effort to reinforce a sense of domestic life. It seemed throughout
all her success, all she ever wanted was Arnaz and for their family to be together.
According to The I Love Lucy Book, in the years before the show began,
when Ball looked back on her film career, she was quoted as saying:
"Of all the thirty or forty films I had made up to that time,
I could find only find three or four scenes in those pictures that I cared
anything about. [...] I discovered they were domestic scenes where I portrayed a housewife."
It turns out that what Lucille Ball really wanted was to be Lucy Ricardo forever.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Grunge videos about your favorite stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.