Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made history by bringing her pregnancy into the ‘I Love Lucy’ storyline
Pregnancies and births are not a new trope of television sitcoms. In fact, they’ve proven to be a tried-and-true means of bringing attention to a show and in turn boosting its ratings. But back on January 19, 1953, they were unprecedented, and when Lucy and Ricky Ricardo became the parents of “Little Ricky” on I Love Lucy, it coincided with the actual birth of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s second child, Desi Arnaz Jr, capping off what turned out to be a phenomenal case of reel mirroring real life.
The historic episode: ‘Lucy Goes to the Hospital’
That episode, “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” was viewed by nearly 74% of all homes with televisions, which translated to about 44 million viewers, the highest audience ever at that time. And so impactful was this event, that it even knocked the inauguration of President Eisenhower off newspaper front page headlines nationwide.
“They were ready for the press and the press was ready for them,” explains pop culture historian Geoffrey Mark, author of the definitive The Lucy Book, regarding the I Love Lucy creative team. “All over the country, newspapers — back when newspapers were important and big cities had 11 or 15 of them — carried the headline, ‘Lucy Ricardo Has a Boy; Lucille Ball Has a Boy’ on their front page. In later years, when President Eisenhower met Desi Jr. as a little boy, he said, ‘So you’re the little guy that pushed me off the front pages.’ It just shows you the power of I Love Lucy.
“I would liken it to The Beatles when they first came to this country,” he adds, “or when 007 movies first started being made and it rippled across all of culture. It was that kind of a culture-changing thing.”
While the arrival of Little Ricky turned Lucy into a classic TV mom, Desi Jr was actually the second child of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (sister Lucie Arnaz was born on July 17, 1951), culminating what had been a long and painful journey for both of them that began years earlier following their November 30, 1940, wedding day.
Lucille Ball’s journey to motherhood
“Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz wanted a family, but Ms. Ball couldn’t conceive,” details Geoffrey Mark. “Finally, in about the 10th year of their marriage, while they were doing a small tour of stage presentation houses — which were theaters that had a stage show in between the showings of films — they found out that Ms. Ball was pregnant, so they cut their tour short. Unfortunately, she miscarried, but then when all of the stars in the universe came together to make what we now know as I Love Lucy, she got pregnant again.”
At the time, Lucille was starring in the radio sitcom My Favorite Husband (which would serve as the creative inspiration for I Love Lucy) while Desi was doing Your Tropical Trip, a radio quiz show with a Latin American theme.
“I believe the pilot for I Love Lucy was shot in March 1951 and Lucie wasn’t born until July, but Ms. Ball basically gets pregnant in 1950 twice, and by the time [producer] Jess Oppenheimer and Desi put together a small version of what the big crew would be for I Love Lucy, they were able to have a pilot episode to try and get a sponsor. While they were filming the pilot, Ms. Ball was already very pregnant, which is why she wears very loose costumes to minimize the pregnancy, because they knew that nobody in the public would be seeing it.”
The pilot was taken to New York and the Phillip Morris Company agreed to sponsor the show. As noted, baby Lucie was born in July 1951 and the first episode began shooting in late August, allowing Lucille to lose some of her pregnancy weight. And when the series made its debut, it was an instant hit.
“There was nothing in show business history that could have predicted the kind of success they had with that show, almost from the first episode,” says Mark. “There were universally good reviews and people were buying television sets just to watch Lucy and Uncle Miltie [Milton Berle]. A little later in the first season, they’re shooting ‘Lucy Does a Television Commercial,’ which is the famous Vitameatavegamin episode. While they were rehearsing, Ms. Ball found out she was pregnant again, which threw everybody into a panic, because here was this juggernaut of a success in its first season with more episodes still to be shot. They had had the experience of her previous pregnancy and knew how large she got when she carried babies, and her hair got funky, which is just what happens to women with hormones sometimes.”
Breaking barriers with TV’s first pregnancy storyline
“Everyone took credit,” Mark continues, “but it really was Jess Oppenheimer’s idea that they write the pregnancy into the storyline. He was wagering the success of the show — and all of their salaries — that this would work. That Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were so beloved by the American audience, and that despite the fact that pregnancy had never been discussed openly on radio or television, unless it was a soap opera where it was a scandal, the public would buy it.”
All involved worked things out so that Lucille Ball could stop filming in the early fall of 1952, knowing that she would be delivering in January. And because Lucie Arnaz was delivered by Cesarean, in those days once a woman delivered that way, the doctors wouldn’t allow subsequent childbirths to be natural.
A cultural phenomenon: Lucille Ball’s twin births
“With the second baby, they weren’t waiting for labor pains, they were waiting for a date,” laughs Mark. “They decided to air the episode where Lucy goes to the hospital the same day as Lucille Ball went to the hospital for her Cesarean. And they had decided in advance that whatever Ms. Ball had, the child on the show was going to be a boy. The reason for that was so that Lucie Arnaz wouldn’t get jealous of seeing a girl on Mommy and Daddy’s television show who was not her. When Ms. Ball had a boy, everyone patted themselves on the back and said, ‘We’re just brilliant prognosticators.’”
Despite becoming parents for a second time, Lucille and Desi didn’t have time to relish in the experience: they had to rush into filming the rest of the episodes for the season, and shifted right from that into production of season 2, the making of the feature film The Long, Long Trailer and then season 3, with only two weeks off in between. After that, they went right into production on the second and third seasons of I Love Lucy, at which point there was the brief controversy of Lucille Ball being accused of being a communist during the “Red Scare” that had to be dealt with and overcome (which they did).
Lucille Ball’s lasting legacy in TV history
“Those first two years …,” muses Geoffrey Mark. “I cannot imagine any human being going through all of that and not being changed by it or not feeling stressed out. And, of course, the more you get, the more you have to lose. Everything is just boom, boom, boom! It was an amazing, backbreaking two years in their lives.”
If you look closely enough, you can actually sense all the couple had been through in the first episode of the pregnancy arc (which aired on December 8, 1952, “Lucy is Enceinte,” in which Lucy Ricardo shows up during one of Ricky’s performances at the Tropicana club, secretly slips him a note telling him that someone in the audience is “with child,” and he starts singing “Rock-a-Bye-Baby” as he moves from table to table, asking people if it’s them. When he jokingly gets to Lucy but then she nods, he has such a genuine emotional reaction to his gradual realization that they’re going to be parents.
“That was not in the script,” Mark points out. “That was Desi Arnaz reacting to all of that pressure they’d been under and how much he wanted another child. And then Ms. Ball reacts to his reaction. And if you listen closely when you watch the episode, he looks off to his left after he screws up a line in the song, as though he’s asking, ‘What do we do now?’ and you can actually hear Jess Oppenheimer and director Bill Asher screaming, ‘Do the baby song; do the baby song.’ Now, how would someone in the audience know there was going to be a baby song? So, they keep going and he sings the song the way they rehearsed it, ‘We’re having a baby, my baby and me,’ and he nuzzles her neck with his nose. That wasn’t in the script either. That was real emotion and Desi’s favorite episode of the entire series.”
‘I Love Lucy’ Kid Facts
- Keith Thibodeaux under the stage name Richard Keith, played Little Ricky
- Little Ricky was kept in the music biz like his dad as it’s shown he plays the drums
- When Desi Arnaz Jr was born, he was featured on the cover of the first issue of TV Guide magazine
- Daughter Lucie Arnaz and Desi Jr made guest appearances on The Lucy Show
- Although he was barely seen, the Little Ricky character was a part of the Lucy Desi Comedy Hour
- Lucie and her brother Desi Arnaz Jr were regulars on Lucille Ball’s third series, Here’s Lucy
Watch Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’ Children Continue to Grow Up
Original caption: Comedienne Lucille Ball takes a break on a Hollywood TV film set to play hostess to her own youngsters at a movie “soda fountain.” Daughter Lucie Arnaz was making her acting debut with her mother in The Lucy Show, to be shown on the CBS-TV network on March 4th. Son Desi Arnaz Jr., was just visiting this time.
Circa 1965: Outdoor portrait of comedic actor Lucille Ball posing behind a tree branch with her second husband, Gary Morton, and her children Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr.
Original caption: This season TV viewers will have the opportunity to see Lucille Ball team up with her youngsters, Lucie(left), and Desi(right) as the two play the roles of daughter and son on her revamped series, Here’s Lucy. The youngsters are splendid and the threesome may rival the success of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson who managed a successful show including their own children.
A behind-the-scenes shot of (from left-to-right) Lucie Arnaz, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Jr. on the lot where Ms. Ball’s third series, Here’s Lucy, was shot.
Original caption: American actress and comedian Lucille Ball with her daughter, Lucie Arnaz, circa 1978.
Original caption: Lucille Ball with her children during a tribute to her by the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City, April 1984. From left to right, her daughter Lucie Arnaz, Lucille, and her son Desi Arnaz Jr. On the left is a poster designed by Al Hirschfeld, proclaiming Ball as the ‘First Lady of Comedy.’
