While it’s always fun to learn more about a famous star’s life story, people have mixed feelings about biopics. Some stray too far from the truth and others are just plain boring. Being The Ricardos is one of the most popular biopics that was released in the past few years.
There was a lot of buzz surrounding the film from the start, especially when it came to casting news. While Nicole Kidman played Lucille Ball, Debra Messing was originally interested in the part. People kept talking about the movie after its release and some even tweeted about a memorable line that Nicole Kidman said.
Even if Lucille Ball’s fans watched every single episode of her 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy and learned more about her marriage to Desi Arnaz in Being The Ricardos, some parts of her life weren’t public knowledge. Before she died in 1989, Lucille Ball experienced a horrible health condition.
What Health Issue Did I Love Lucy Star Lucille Ball Struggle With?
Before she died, Lucille Ball had a heart problem. I Love Lucy fans hadn’t known that the actress was so sick. According to People, Dr. Michael Hunter shared more about Ball’s health condition on the TV show Autopsy, The Last Hours…
Dr. Hunter said, “Lucille’s death certificate states cystic medial necrosis as a contributing cause to her death. Cystic medial necrosis is the breakdown of muscle, collagen and elasten in the large blood vessels throughout the body. When they lose this elasticity and support, it makes them more liable to tear and rupture,”
Dr. Hunter said that Ball took a drug called “poppers” because her heart and chest hurt. He said, “As early as 1984, four years before her death, Lucille Ball was using this inhalant to ease pains in her chest and heart. And that could be a warning sign of already established cardiovascular disease.”
In 2010, Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Lucille Ball, shared more about her mother’s health at an event put on by the Go Red For Women.
According to Times News, she said that Ball didn’t focus on self-care and explained, “It’s a common man’s story. It’s one of stress, not always taking care of yourself, and then your family is left without you because you thought it wasn’t worth doing because you were too busy taking care of your family or your work and not taking care of yourself.”
Arnaz said that her mother either wasn’t sure of what was going on or didn’t want her daughter or anyone else to worry. She explained, “There were no warning signs that I was aware of at the time or she was aware of at the time. If there were, she didn’t tell me, and that’s possible, too. She didn’t want to scare people,”Arnaz also mentioned that she did know that Ball’s arm hurt before she passed away. This condition is called bursitis. Arnaz explained that Ball had aortic dissection.According to The Mayo Clinic, when a patient has the health condition aortic dissection, they might need a prescription to help. In some cases, they have to get surgery. A doctor might diagnose someone with this health problem if they take an X-ray of the patient’s chest and see that the aorta has gotten bigger. A doctor could also observe a “blood pressure difference between the right and left arms.” Finally, someone’s chest could hurt a lot.
While Lucille Ball seems to have kept her health problems quiet, she definitely struggled before she died. According to UPI, she had surgery in April 1989 after having a heart attack. Gary Morton, her second husband, took her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Ron Wise talked to the media on behalf of the hospital and said that she would receive five-hour open-heart surgery. Sadly, she passed away on April 26, 1989, which was just over a week after she was brought to the hospital.
What Was I Love Lucy Star Lucille Ball’s Life Like Before Her Death?
For many TV comedy fans, there was nothing quite like I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz played Lucy and Ricky Ricardo who were married to each other. It was considered groundbreaking at the time since Lucy and her good friend Ethel Mertz would joke around and have fun together, and they didn’t always act the way that society expected them to.
Before Lucille Ball passed away in 1989, she hadn’t acted in several years. After I Love Lucy ended in 1957, she starred in The Lucy Show from 1962 to 1968. She then starred in Here’s Lucy, which aired from 1968 to 1978. It’s clear that she loved TV comedy.
According to Outsider.com, she had been in charge of Desilu Productions alongside her husband Desi Arnaz since 1950. In 1981, she spoke to Merv Griffin, who inquired if she would star in a TV show again. She sounded emotional about the fact that she wasn’t currently acting.
Ball mentioned her I Love Lucy co-star who had died and said, “Gale [Storm] is around but my Vivian’s gone and… well, let’s not talk about it.” She added, “Besides, there’s no sense trying to top what we’ve done.”
The actress did return to TV. In 1986, she starred in Life with Lucy, which aired for 13 episodes. She continued playing her famous character Lucy Barker who, this time around, was mourning the death of her husband and living with her daughter.
According to Outsider.com, Life with Lucy didn’t do well in the ratings, which is why it only had 13 episodes. This was tough for Ball since her other TV shows were incredibly popular.
It seems likely that Lucille Ball’s last years were affected by her heart problem. From what her daughter shared, it sounds like Ball was hurting a lot. However, since Ball didn’t talk about what was happening, she might have suffered in silence, which is sad to think about.
