For more than 50 years they’ve held the title of television’s most beloved couple, on screen and off, earning their timeless appeal by sharing the one thing we all say we want in an ideal partner: a sense of humor. But while Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz delivered countless laughs to multiple generations of fans, their 20-year marriage was also filled with its share of heartache.
When they met in 1940, Lucille Desiree Ball, 29, was a former model and Zeigfield Girl who had become a rising contract player in Hollywood’s studio system–she was not yet the accomplished comedienne she would be (nor the redhead the world remembers her as). Desidario Alberto Arnaz ye de Acha III was a Cuban émigré six years her junior who had left Xavier Cugat‘s band to form his own hot Latin orchestra. Desi was a hit on Broadway in the stage musical Too Many Girls and quickly headed to Hollywood to appear in the big-screen version, in which Lucy had been cast. There were plenty of differences–cultures, personalities, lifestyles, religions, age–but the two fell madly in love and swiftly eloped to Conneticut.
Returning to California, they settled in a ranch home they called Desliu, a name that would soon symbolize not just their marriage but the mightiest business partnership in the hot new emerging medium of television. Not all was perfect, however: Desi was an unrepentant womanizer whose philandering ways never tore the couple apart more than once. In 1950 it was Desi who–in an attempt to save their troubled marriage by bringing them closer together professionally–convinced Lucy to take her popular radio show My Favorite Wife to TV, and CBS bit instantly–balking only at Lucy’s insistence on casting the Latin Desi as her on-screen husband.
Lucy was steadfast, however, and raised her own money to create the pilot episode, thus ensuring the couple’s ownership of the show. She also created a vaudeville-style act to prove audiences would accept her and Desi as a couple–which they did. CBS relented and aired the first episode of I Love Lucy in 1951–and a comedy legend was born. For his part, Desi realized his wife worked much better in front of a live audience and came up with the idea of shooting the series live with three cameras–pioneering the classic sitcom format. Most shows were shot live in New York but the couple loved California and insisted on shooting it there and sending the film to New York to be broadcast.
Bolstered by their comedic innovation and on-screen warmth, the couple’s ingenuity and business savvy turned their Desilu studio into one of the most powerful in showbiz, producing other major hits like TV’s Hogan’s Heroes and Star Trek. America embraced the wacky antics of Lucy and Ricardo, due primarily to the genuine affection that radiated off the screen. In the episode in which Lucy tells Ricky she’s pregnant by passing him an anonymous note, when he finally comes face-to-face with Lucy he does a double take, sinks to his knees and asks if the news is true. While filming the scene, the couple–also expecting in real life–became overcame by emotion. A second, more upbeat scene was shot, but the original take was ultimately with all of its emotional honesty preserved for future generations of fans.
Sadly, despite their obvious love for one another, Desi’s infidelities contiued, By 1960 Lucy could not simply tolerate another betrayal. Just as the Ricardos said goodbye to television, Ball and Arnaz said goodbye to each other with a divorce. Lucy also bought him out of his share of Desilu, becoming the first female studio executive in Hollywood. Despite their marital failures, Lucy and Desi always remembered the laughter they shared–and brought to millions of homes around the country–and remained fond friends for the rest of their lives, while for the rest of us the Ricardos’ only slightly imperfect union endures in reruns forever. We still love Lucy, and we love Desi, too.
