The series finale of the iconic I Love Lucy aired 65 years ago, May 6, 1957. After the series concluded, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz went on to make similar shows and produce several others, but it was never quite the same as I Love Lucy in its heyday. The documentary Lucy and Desi on Amazon Prime Video, directed by Amy Poehler, dives into the relationship between the couple during their iconic sitcom’s history.
While many people are familiar with Ball and Arnaz from I Love Lucy and its reruns over the years, there is so much that is lesser known about the two of them as individuals and as a couple. The documentary is amazing because it includes lots of audio from Lucy and Desi themselves, often telling their own story with close friends and family filling in the gaps. Take a look at these reveals.
Lucille’s Grandfather Was Sued For Everything He Was Worth
Many interviewees in Lucy and Desi share that Lucille “came from nothing,” and this is largely because her grandfather was sued by a neighbor and lost everything.
Lucy’s brother and a friend were playing with rifles for shooting practice, and there was a young neighbor boy over too. Their grandfather was with them, helping them learn and the brother’s friend shot just as the young neighbor boy popped up in the same direction. The boy was paralyzed as a result. The lawsuit motivated Lucy to head to the city to try to make money.
Desi Was A Cuban Refugee After The 1933 Cuban Revolution
Much like Lucy’s family, Desi’s family lost everything in an instant. His father was the mayor and had recently been elected to congress, which put a target on his back once the revolution started.
The family had to flee after their home was ransacked and burned, so they suddenly had nothing after 48 hours. Lucy and Desi bonded over this and both prioritized family above all after they had witnessed their families going through. It is likely what drove them both so vigorously to be such high achievers, always pushing for more success.
Desi’s First Reaction To Lucy
After achieving a lot of success individually, Lucy and Desi were cast in the same movie, Too Many Girls, in which Lucy was set to play the ingenue. However, she had been rehearsing earlier in the day and got pretty banged up doing so.
She met Desi for the first time in the commissary after her rehearsal, and she says she had a black eye at the time. After meeting her, once he heard she was going to be the ingenue, Desi remembers saying “She’s gonna be the ingenue? You’re out of your mind!” He later changed his mind once he saw her all dolled up for the role.
They Eloped Six Months After Meeting
While this seems very fast today, it was way more common in 1940. Once they met and hit it off on the set of Too Many Girls, Desi asked Lucy on a date to do the rumba.
It must have been a fantastic first date, because it launched into six months of dating became a marriage on November 30th. They bonded so swiftly due to prioritizing family the same way and sharing a lot of the same wants, but despite the best of intentions, the beginning of their marriage was pretty tough.
They Were Apart For Almost The First Decade Of Their Marriage
According to some of Lucy’s audio in Lucy and Desi, the two were apart for eight and a half years in the first nine years of their marriage. This was due to Desi’s time in the army and traveling with his band.
He wasn’t booking any work in entertainment anymore, perhaps due to some negative public reactions to their interracial relationship. He was in the army for three years and traveled with the band for a little over five years. Lucy was working on a radio show that was being turned into a TV show, and she said she would only do it if Desi played her husband.
Lucy Found Out She Was Pregnant From A Celebrity Gossip Show
The first time Lucy was pregnant, she went to a doctor’s office to take a test in the lab to confirm it, because she wasn’t sure. One radio personality who had spies out and about paid the doctor to leak the results to the show first.
Lucy found out that she was indeed pregnant from listening to the show, and she told Desi that’s how she found out as well when she broke the news to him. She retells it as a funny story, but other interviewees in Lucy and Desi sympathize with how hard that must have been for her underneath it all.
Lucy And Ethel Were The First Female BFF Duo In Entertainment
The documentary addresses that before Lucy and Ethel on I Love Lucy, women were only ever portrayed as being pitted against each other. There weren’t relationships in the media like Lucy and Ethel yet.
The two were different from what anyone had seen before because they supported each other, confided in each other, schemed together, and really did anything and everything together. They were partners in crime that laid the ground work for countless duos that came after them and similarly were up to no good.
Reruns Were Created By Desi Arnaz For Lucy’s Maternity Leave
Lucille had their first child Lucie near the beginning of the show, and was pregnant with Desi Jr. throughout the second season of I Love Lucy, although they couldn’t say the word. She was the funniest woman on TV while her body was doing lots of work.
Once she has Desi Jr., Desi Arnaz himself decided to air the episodes they’d already made, which was a brand new concept. People were only used to seeing an episode once at the time. The reruns gave Lucy the opportunity to get some much needed rest, and the idea shaped what we know television as today, thanks to their growing family.
The Show Exists Simply Because They Wanted To Be Together
It’s easy to look at I Love Lucy as the iconic piece of television history that it is and feel like it would have existed no matter what, but it so easily could have never happened.
There were talks about Lucy’s radio show My Favorite Husband being adapted for television, a risky new medium at the time. This is when Lucy spoke out saying she would only do it if Desi played her husband. One writer pitched a new idea that ended up as the premise for the pilot. Lucy and Desi toured live, Vaudeville-style to prove they could get audiences on their side as a married couple.
Lucy And Desi Were Married To Their Second Partners Longer
People know Lucy and Desi so well as Lucy and Ricky that it’s hard to forget all the time they spent apart. They were always business partners, but they weren’t always married. That said, they had a pretty decent run of 20 years.
They both remarried around the same time. Lucy was with her second husband for 27 years, and Desi was with his new wife for 26 years. Even when they were divorced, they kept working together for many years until Desi sold his share of Desilu to Lucy, which she later sold to Paramount Pictures. Lucy and Desi makes it seem like there was always love there until the end.
