Lucille Ball is the undisputed Godmother of Comedy. The show that keeps her a household name over 60 years later, I Love Lucy, is still often ranked among the greatest TV shows of all time and has inspired countless inimitable sitcom bits, from the chocolate conveyor belt scene to Lucy’s vitameatavegamin commercial. Even after the series ended, Ball remained a singular figure in popular culture for the rest of her life.
For all the laughs Ball provided, though, her life off-screen was decidedly less funny. Ball’s interpersonal relationships, from her birth through the end of her life, were complicated, to say the least. To make matters more difficult, many of the issues that befell her personal life played out in the public sphere; Desi Arnaz wasn’t just her husband, but her co-star as well. Her relationships with her parents, her ex-husband, and her son were all complicated and often ended in tragedy.
Lucille Ball lost her father at a young age
As a child, Lucille Ball’s family moved around quite a bit. Ball was born in upstate New York but spent time in Montana and Michigan (via Biography). It was in Michigan that she would encounter life’s first major tragedy at just three years old. While Ball’s mother was pregnant with her second child, Lucille lost her father to typhoid fever. The disease had no cure at the time, and, according to Patch, it’s believed that her father caught the disease from eating contaminated ice cream.
The death had a profound impact on the young comedian, and not just for the obvious reasons. The family was forced to quarantine, and a sign was placed on their door, warning others to stay away from the infected house, ostracizing them from the rest of their community. At such a young age, Ball couldn’t understand why other children wouldn’t play with her, and many biographers, including Charles Higham, theorized that the experience led to her desire to make people laugh.
Lucille Ball’s marriage to Desi Arnaz was messy
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz played a married couple on television, and they lived as one off-screen, too. According to Closer Weekly, part of the reason Ball wanted Arnaz in the show was because it would help their marriage; his constant touring strained their relationship, and I Love Lucy would keep him in one place for longer. “You can’t have a marriage over the phone,” Ball once told interviewers, per the Los Angeles Times. “You can’t have children over the phone. It became obvious that something had to be done.”
Having Arnaz around didn’t prove to be the solution to their problems, however. Many have noted that he had a significant drinking problem, with Ball comparing him to Jekyll and Hyde, saying, “He drank and he gambled and he went around with other women. It was always the same: booze and broads.” When the show ended in 1960, Ball filed for divorce, though they stayed friends for the rest of their lives. “They spoke so lovingly of each other, you almost forgot they weren’t together anymore,” friend of the couple Carol Channing told Closer Weekly.
Lucille Ball struggled to have children
Lucille Ball was something of a pioneer when she became pregnant with her son, Desi Arnaz Jr. The pregnancy was incorporated into the storyline of I Love Lucy, and while it wasn’t the first time a storyline like this was on TV, CBS still thought it was scandalous, only allowing the series to use the euphemism “expecting” instead of “pregnant” according to USA Today.
Offscreen, however, the situation was significantly less jovial. While Arnaz Jr. was her second child — Lucie Arnaz was the first — it was at least her fourth pregnancy. Closer Weekly reported that Ball had suffered two miscarriages before having Lucie, telling her psychologist, “I had children very late in life, making you appreciate them even more.”
For all of her success, Ball still said that having her children was her greatest achievement. “Any woman would say the birth of her children was her greatest achievement, unless she was Madame Curie,” the comedian quipped to People in 1980.
Her son struggled with addiction
Though Lucille Ball loved her children deeply and considered them her greatest achievement, that didn’t mean everything was easy after they were born. Ball divorced Desi Arnaz when the children were young, and the kids had a fairly turbulent upbringing that lacked privacy. Her son, Desi Jr., told Closer Weekly in 2020, “No matter what we did or said ended up somewhere in the press or media. I didn’t really know who I was.”
and early 20s. Ball said, according to Psychology Today, “I can’t tell you how much his addiction hurt me, hurt us. I tried to listen. I tried to be understanding. I tried to be tough and strong. It tore me apart.” Arnaz, Jr.’s addiction issues nearly cost him his life; by 25, his brain seemed nearly 60 years old. He did eventually go to rehab and successfully cleaned up his act. “They were very supportive, and I think they were helped tremendously by what happened to me,” Arnaz, Jr. said of his parents to Closer. Today, he stays out of the spotlight, living in Nevada.
The Strange Marriage Of Desi Arnaz And Lucille Ball
While playing the starring role in the 1940 musical Too Many Girls, Lucille Ball met Cuban rumba singer Desi Arnaz. Soon enough, they embarked on a whirlwind romance, though their relationship was anything but picture-perfect.
The husband and wife duo teamed up for the iconic sitcom I Love Lucy, which premiered on CBS in Oct. 1951. The Desliu Productions co-founders quickly became household names and television pioneers, with Ball playing the zany, fiery troublemaker, Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo, and Arnaz acting as her husband, Conga player Ricky Ricardo. Their characters’ relationship was full of fun, laughter, and many touching moments, but Ball and Arnaz’s real-life romance was riddled with infidelity, dysfunction, and threats of violence, which ultimately led to Ball filing for divorce from her co-star multiple times. They officially parted ways in 1960 after two kids and almost 20 years of marriage.
From Ball pulling a gun out on her hubby, to Arnaz proposing marriage after he was caught hooking up with a former lover, here are all the strange things about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s marriage.
They were mismatched from the start
By all outward appearances, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were complete opposites. She was the beautiful redhead with a fiery personality, and he was the personable Cuban-born musician who could charm the pants off of anyone … literally. They didn’t necessarily hit it off when they first met, either. According to Country Living, Ball usually “dated taller, older men.” As for Arnaz, he was engaged to another woman when he first laid eyes on the stunning actress.
Not only that, Ball was Protestant and Arnaz was Catholic, the actress wrote in Love, Lucy. She also admitted she was anything but impressed when she met the Latin actor. “Desi was in greasy makeup and old clothes, and I thought he wasn’t so hot,” Ball later recalled, according to People. Arnaz reportedly asked director George Abbot: “This is an ingenue?” when he noticed Lucy’s “bedraggled costume and fake black eye,” the publication reported.
Despite their differences, their Too Many Girls co-star, Eddie Bracken, told People, “You could tell the sparks were flying with Lucy.”
Even Lucy didn’t think they would last
The year was 1940, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were on an RKO movie set to star in the musical Too Many Girls. 28-year-old Ball and 23-year-old Arnaz fell for one another, despite Arnaz being known as a ladies man. When asked by People magazine if his “playboy reputation” bothered her, Ball answered, “No, it intrigued me.” She was so intrigued, in fact, that when Arnaz asked her to marry him just six months after meeting, she said yes.
Everyone who knew them were sure their marriage would never last. Even Ball was skeptical. “Everybody gave it about a year and a half. I gave it six weeks,” she said. Even their Too Many Girls co-star, Eddie Bracken told People that while on set, there were bets made on how long they would stick it out. How’s that for optimism?
Ball’s friend, actress Maureen O’Hara, told Ball to “go ahead” and marry Arnaz if she really loved him. She did just that and became Mrs. Desi Arnaz, in Nov. 1940.
Sadly, married life wouldn’t be easy…
The real reason he married her
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz pressed the fast-forward button on their courtship, and the real reason Arnaz asked for Ball’s hand in marriage is a true testament to how strange and arguably toxic their relationship was. After they wrapped Too Many Girls, Arnaz returned to Chicago to appear in a stage play, while Ball went on a promotional tour. During their time apart, Arnaz reportedly met up with his former lover, actress and pin-up model Betty Grable. When Ball caught wind of her then-boyfriend creeping around on her, she “stormed into the apartment he shared with his then divorced mother to abuse him,” the Herald Sun reported.
Ball reportedly called Arnaz a “Cuban sonofab***h” in the heat of the moment, and in order to get their relationship back on track and put a bandaid on their issues, he suggested they get married to “resolve their difficulties,” the publication wrote.
We now know this wasn’t the best solution as Arnaz continued to struggle with being faithful. Warren G. Harris, the author of Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple, claimed Arnaz “had a taste for prostitutes,” and adultery was something that was ingrained in him, thanks to his father and grandfather who kept a bevy of “mistresses” (via Chicago Tribune).
A spur-of-the-moment wedding and a brass ring
When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz decided to get hitched on Nov. 30, 1940, they met up in New York and hopped in a car with Arnaz’s business manager behind the wheel. They drove to Greenwich, Conn. to be married by a justice of the peace, according to her memoir, Love, Lucy. But when they arrived at their destination, Arnaz realized he hadn’t purchased Lucille Ball a wedding ring. So, according to the actress, Arnaz asked his business manager to go to Woolworth’s to pick up something nice. He came back with a “brass” ring that Ball would cherish for years. “Although Desi later gave me a platinum ring, that little discolored brass ring rest among the diamonds and emeralds in my jewel case for years,” she wrote.
The justice of the peace suggested they go to a more “romantic” spot to perform the ceremony. So Ball — all decked out in a black dress — and her groom ventured off to Byram River Beagle Club to say their “I do’s.”
Ball said at that moment, they were both “dazed with happiness.” She called their elopement the “most momentous day” of her life, but others would call it a hasty decision that she would soon regret.
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‘I Love Lucy’ was supposed to save their marriage
Lucille Ball was already making a name for herself in the entertainment industry as a model and audio actress in RKO Radio Pictures productions. When sitcoms became all the rage, she had played such a “wide variety of parts” that she didn’t exactly know who she was an actress. All she knew was that she needed to land a television program. Why? To keep her marriage afloat.
She told People that after their 1940 wedding, Desi Arnaz headed out on the road to continue touring with his band after he was discharged from the army. When they hit their 11th year of marriage, Ball knew something had to give. She wanted more time with her husband, and she was also ready to have children. Plus, being apart was getting expensive. The Los Angeles Times reported the couple spent “almost $30,000 on telegrams and long-distance telephone calls” in the early years of their marriage.
Before I Love Lucy premiered in 1951, Ball insisted that her real-life beau play her on-camera husband. Bob Weiskopf, a longtime writer for the couple, told People: “At the time the consensus was, ‘What the hell do we want with a Latin bandleader who can’t speak English?'”
But Ball fought to have Arnaz as her co-star for the simple fact that she knew if he went back on the road, he would be “catting around all the time,” Weiskopf said.
Half a decade of ‘booze and broads’
On screen, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were the ideal couple, but the actors behind the characters struggled to keep their marriage chugging along. I Love Lucy drew in viewers for its non-stop humor, but behind the scenes at the Arnaz home, it was no laughing matter. Lucille Ball told The Christian Science Monitor in 1984 that she thought her life was complete once she had her two children, Lucie and Desi Arnaz Jr., and she and Arnaz began to garner success. She said they were “so much in love,” but it wouldn’t last. “And then I saw it all disintegrate — you know drinking is so destructive, but it was his life,” Ball said.
Author Bart Andrews, who penned a series of books about the couple, told People that by 1956, they were only together for the sake of their two kids. “She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was ‘just booze and broads.’ That was in her divorce papers, as a matter of fact,” Andrews stated.
Even their daughter, Lucie, told Closer Weekly: “They were fighting all the time when we were growing up. There was a lot of anger and screaming.” Lucie also stated that although they didn’t suffer any abuse, “there was alcoholism” in their home. She added, “We did go through some pretty hard stuff and that’s why my parents didn’t stay together.”
Their fights became violent
When network executives weren’t onboard with the concept behind I Love Lucy, especially with Lucille Ball’s demand that Desi Arnaz play the role of her husband, she and Arnaz produced the pilot episode through the company they co-founded, Desilu Productions — “the very first independent television production company,” according to Entrepreneur.
As time progressed, Arnaz continued to push the company to new levels, and Desilu produced a ton of hits, including The Ann Sothern Show, and The Untouchables. Of course, taking control of their empire meant Arnaz was busier than ever. According to People, he would sometimes work 14-hours per day, and when the weekend would arrive, he would head out “on his boat with his latest hot tamale” by his side.
Ball reached her breaking point during one of their many explosive fights, when she allegedly “aimed a gun at Desi’s head and even pulled the trigger.” Thankfully for Arnaz, “only a tiny flame spurted from the muzzle.” (It was a gag lighter.)
Let’s see: constant arguing, infidelity, stress, and threats (albeit comical) of violence. Sheesh. No wonder it didn’t last.
The first divorce didn’t stick
Before getting pregnant with their first child, Lucie Arnaz, in 1950, Lucille Ball reportedly suffered “several miscarriages,” according to Country Living. Their struggle to conceive, coupled with their marital woes, reportedly turned their relationship into “unadulterated hell” during the time they were filming. Many of their issues also stemmed from Desi Arnaz’s issues with alcohol and chronic cheating, and Ball’s need to maintain control on the set of I Love Lucy, Warren G. Harris, the author of Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple (via Chicago Tribune) shared.
Country Living confirmed Ball and Arnaz first separated in 1944 after Ball filed for divorce. The problem? Arnaz’s alleged cheating and drinking. He also wasn’t around much, especially when he was in the army, and traveling around with his band. But he and Ball were able to patch things up, and never obtained a divorce decree.
They were able to ward off a divorce the first time around, but all they did was prolong the inevitable.
A secret separation
With the grueling final years of their union playing out behind the scenes, fans of I Love Lucy were clueless that their beloved actors were in the midst of marital strife. By the time Lucille Ball decided it was time to stick a fork in their marriage after nearly 20 years, her publicists had to “[work] overtime” to keep the couple’s volatile status under wraps, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Aside from letting down their fans, many of the show’s sponsors were “ultraconservative” companies, which meant Ball and Arnaz had to play by a different set of rules. For example, their on-screen characters were married, but they always slept in separate beds. They couldn’t even use the word “pregnant” when Ball’s character was expecting their first child, according to the AV Club. So the actors behind television’s most-loved sitcom definitely couldn’t get divorced.
To tiptoe around the issue, the announcement of Ball and Arnaz’s split wasn’t made “until the final program of the season had been filmed.” The Chicago Tribune also noted that fans were shocked and blindsided to find out “that America’s ‘ideal couple’ was calling it quits.”
It’s almost as if they were living double lives just to keep up appearances. This also makes us wonder if Ball and Arnaz weren’t television superstars, would they have stuck it out for as long as they did?
Marrying him was one of the ‘boldest’ things she ever did
By the time she agreed to marry Desi Arnaz in 1940, Lucille Ball was aware that Arnaz was a ladies man who was surrounded by “beautiful girls and good times.” In her memoir, Love, Lucy, she added that Arnaz’s life “seemed headed in another direction.” Regardless, they got married shortly after they began dating, something she would later call one of the “boldest” things she had ever done. Even her RKO bosses warned her not to marry him. Why? Because he had “left a trail of broken hearts from Times Square to Sunset Boulevard to East Hampton,” she wrote.
“Yet I sensed in Desi a great need,” she wrote. “Beneath the dazzling charm was a homeless boy who had no one to care for him, worry about him, love him. And I wanted him and only him as the father of my children.” Yeesh. That sounds like Ball viewed Arnaz as somewhat of a charity case. But despite her reasons for marrying him and how strange their marriage would turn out to be, there really was an immense amount of true love between them.
He still loved Lucy
Following the end of their marriage in 1960, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz both found love again. Arnaz married Edith Mack Hirsch in 1963, and Ball married Gary Morton in 1961, according to Closer Weekly. Still, the two remained good friends and were cordial up until their deaths.
Ball’s friend, Tom Watson, told Closer Weekly, “They could push all of the wrong buttons and all the right ones. It’s just, they were better off apart at the end.” He added that even after their divorce, “they never lost their affection for each other, ever.”
In Arnaz’s 1976 biography, A Book, he wrote, in conclusion, “As for Lucy herself, all I can say is that I loved her very much and, in my own and perhaps peculiar way, I will always love her.” Ball reportedly wept at Arnaz’s 1986 memorial mass, which she attended with Morton, according to AP News.
It would seem that following their strange marriage and friendly divorce, the love they had for one another never faded.