I Love Lucy, in which Lucille Ball co-starred with husband Desi Arnaz, was the toast of 1950s America. But off-screen, matters were grimly different.
Lucille Ball's zany escapades as Lucy Ricardo made I Love Lucy into one of the most popular shows in television history. But in a new film, Being the Ricardos, Aaron Sorkin tells the hidden story of Ball, at a time when she was at the peak of her career – "a story that people think they know, but [are] wrong", as the Academy Award-winning screenwriter put it.
Among the controversial strands to Sorkin's behind-the-scenes tale of Ball and her on-screen real-life husband Desi Arnaz are the 1953 US government investigation of Ball's ties to communism, and the rancour and infidelity in her supposedly glittering marriage. While Sorkin's film unpeels some of the controversial elements of the Lucy-Desi drama, the true story is even unhappier: it is one of prostitutes, alcoholism, gambling and domestic violence.
I Love Lucy first aired on CBS on October 15 1951 and ran for 180 half-hour episodes over the next six years. Sorkin's film is set around a 1953 episode called Fred and Ethel Fight, a storyline about marital bust-ups. The trailer for Being the Ricardos, which was viewed by more than five million people in its first week, includes a scene in which Ball (played by Nicole Kidman), asks Arnaz (played by Javier Bardem), "Have you been cheating on me?", to which he replies: "The story is made up."
Lucille Ball seen here in an episode of "I Love Lucy". Photo / Supplied
This is sugar-coating reality. By 1953, Ball was well aware of her husband's adultery. Within four years of their November 1940 marriage, they were separated. In October 1944, Ball filed for divorce, telling judge Stanley Mosk – the celebrated Los Angeles magistrate who gave his name to the courthouse where Britney Spears sued her father last month – that her husband had turned her into a "a nervous wreck". She was blunter with her friends, telling one that Arnaz "was screwing everybody at Birmingham Hospital", during his time as a staff sergeant with the Army Medical Corps in Van Guys. Ball, however, suddenly changed her mind and dropped the divorce. A reporter wrote that "she walked out of court into Arnaz's arms".
Nothing over the ensuing decade changed Arnaz's philandering ways. On one occasion, he arrived home so drunk and aroused that he even tried to bed a friend of Ball's mother, a woman in her 70s, who was a house guest at the time. In Being the Ricardos, there is a brief image of a newspaper article headlined 'Does Desi really love Lucy?' In fact, this was the title of a 1955 story in the sleazy magazine Confidential, which hinted euphemistically at Cuban-born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III's taste for sex workers, referring to his use of a "door-to-door dame service" at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and his early-hours tryst with a "cuddle-for-cash babe" named Mindy.
When it was published, the article was the talk of the cast on I Love Lucy. Ball's longstanding publicist, Charles Pomerantz, later told People magazine that when Ball came out of her dressing room, faced by staff who were unsure what to say, "she tossed the magazine to Desi and said: 'Oh, hell, I could tell them worse than that.'" Arnaz was always unabashed by talk about his sex life. He reportedly told one friend: "What's she upset about? I don't take out other broads. I just take out hookers."
In her November 2021 book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate detailed Arnaz's close relationship with brothel owner Adler and his boasts about all the "delicious sex" he had enjoyed with sex workers at her bordellos in Los Angeles and New York. It is worth noting that Arnaz, born to a wealthy family in Santiago de Cuba, had visited brothels since the age of 12, when he was first escorted to one by his father.
This image released by the Sundance Institute shows Lucille Ball, left, and Desi Arnaz in a scene from "Lucy and Desi", a documentary by Amy Poehler. Photo / Sundance Institute, via AP
Darwin Porter, who went on to co-write the 2021 book Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy & Ricky Ricardo, recalled organising a visit by the two television stars to the University of Miami in the late 1950s. He was shocked by their bitter bickering. "She shouted denunciations at him… and accused him of having sex with two prostitutes the night before," he said. Porter also remembered that Arnaz had launched a similarly unashamed defence of his behaviour. "Arnaz didn't deny that, but claimed: 'It doesn't mean a thing, my fooling around with some hookers. Your wife is your wife. A few peccadilloes don't mean nothing."
It is no wonder that Ball wanted to keep her private life secret from her legion of smitten fans, and from the show's ultra-conservative sponsors, Westinghouse Electric. Ball had her troubled past. She was from a working-class background – her father Henry, an electrician for a mining company died of typhoid when she was just 3 – and her status as an American comedy icon came after a long, desperate battle to make it to the top.
Ball, who was born on August 6 1911 in Jamestown, New York, suffered numerous setbacks in her quest to make it in showbusiness. As a teenager, she was rejected by the Martha Graham Dance Company, with the founder telling her: "You're hopeless as a dancer. You're like a quarterback taking up ballet."
Hollywood actors Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem launched their latest film 'Being the Ricardos' in Los Angeles about two former Hollywood icons, Lucille Ball and Desi Arna https://t.co/jxXxnIaETupic.twitter.com/GpIh5wLFHP
At 14, Ball became involved in a sexual relationship with 23-year-old gangster Johnny DaVita, a predator who abused and beat her. When she left him to try to make it as an actress, she began using the stage name Diane Belmont for auditions. She was so hard up in her late teens that she often resorted to eating food left over in diners. At one point, sporting her original blonde hair, she took part in nude modelling sessions. A subsequent brief stint in the popular theatrical revue The Ziegfeld Follies was also a disaster. She was fired after two weeks and told, "You've got no t-ts, and you can't dance."
After failed attempts to find sustained work modelling for perfume advertisements, Ball resorted to selling her body for money. Applegate's book alleges that Ball "turned tricks on the side for Polly before she caught her big break in showbusiness". The claims that she was, for a time, "turning tricks" also appears in Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy & Ricky Ricardo. Even after getting her chance in Hollywood – where she played dozens of uncredited minor roles from 1927 to 1935 – she was subjected to further horrible treatment. There were stories that executives at RKO Radio Pictures made her "entertain" important clients.
During this period of playing small wise-cracking roles – including in films alongside Buster Keaton, Ginger Rogers and the Marx Brothers – she was, she admitted, "always falling in love". Unfortunately for Ball, her choice in men was usually terrible. She had an affair with a selfish married producer called Pandro S Berman, and was briefly engaged to Oscar-winning actor Broderick Crawford, who also subjected her to physical abuse. "When Lucille broke off our engagement, I tried to get my diamond ring back. She refused to give it to me. I gave her a black eye," Crawford boasted.
Ball met Arnaz, a former singer and congas player in a big band, while she was playing "Tiger Lily, the burlesque queen" in the 1940 movie Dance, Girl, Dance. His memory of their first meeting was hardly romantic. "Lucille Ball looked like a two-dollar whore who had been badly beaten up by her pimp," he recalled. "She had a black eye, her hair was hanging down in her face, and her skin-tight dress was coming apart at the seams."
The pair began an affair and were married a few months later, although their acting, singing and (in Arnaz's case) military-service duties kept them apart for long spells. The atmosphere was strained from the start. "We did a lot of fighting on the phone," Ball recalled. Although they patched up their marriage after their 1944 separation, it was not until 1951 – after Ball had continued to cement her Hollywood reputation in dozens of films – that they got their big career break with I Love Lucy, on which Arnaz also served as producer.
At first, CBS was resolutely opposed to the idea that Arnaz, who spoke with a heavy Cuban-American accent, would be accepted by the public as her on-screen husband. In the 1994 book Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball, biographer Kathleen Brady said television executives made the racist assumption that "the average viewer wouldn't accept a Cuban husband for a 'red-blooded American girl'." Ball and her husband came up with the bold strategy of taking a stage version of their act to around six different American cities. The reception was so overwhelmingly positive that CBS relented. They did, however, impose a few restrictions on how the inter-racial pair interacted on screen: they insisted that Ball and Arnaz were only ever shown sleeping in separate beds.
I Love Lucy, filmed in front of a live audience, was shot on 35mm film by Karl Freund. The Oscar-winning cinematographer, who had worked on Metropolis in 1927, created a sitcom of exemplary pictorial quality. While Ball was doing pre-production work on the first episodes of the show, she was heavily pregnant with her first child, Lucie, who was born in July 1951. Ball was so keen on having copies of I Love Lucy to show to her child in later years that she persuaded CBS to agree to a deal in which she retained the recordings and copyright.
It proved to be an astonishingly astute financial decision. Bob Hope called Ball's business sense "startling": she and Arnaz made a fortune from constant re-runs and worldwide syndication revenues. Arnaz crowed about "gold arriving in wheelbarrows". They made so much money from I Love Lucy that they eventually bought RKO Studios and launched a successful company, Desilu Productions. They also sold back the I Love Lucy films to CBS for what would be around $50 million in today's money, an amusing twist given that, according to Ball, Lucy Ricardo was a character who "was always in financial trouble".
And yet, just as she was starting to make serious money for the first time in her life, Ball was caught in a public row over her alleged communist sympathies, a scandal that is at the heart of Sorkin's film. Being with the Ricardos, which co-stars JK Simmons, Tony Hale and Nina Arianda, centres on the investigation of Ball by the House Un-American Activities Committee. "The producer Todd Black spent over a year having meetings with me to tell me stories about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz that I'd never heard," explained Sorkin. "For instance, that Lucy was accused of being a communist."
Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in "Being The Ricardos". Photo / Amazon Prime
In the trailer, Kidman's character freezes as she is about to deliver a line, during a live taping of I Love Lucy. Suddenly, the newspaper headline 'Lucille Ball is a Red: I Love Lucy Star Denies Commie Now' appears on screen. In 1953, Ball was featured on the front page of the New York Daily News, under the headline 'Registered Red'. Ball listed her party affiliation as "communist" when she registered to vote in 1936 and 1938. She also sponsored a Communist Party candidate for California's 57th district in 1936, signing a certificate that stated: "I am registered as affiliated with the Communist Party."
Decades later, when a researcher from the University of Nebraska obtained FBI files on Ball and Arnaz using a freedom of information request, it came out that the FBI had collected a 149-page file on Ball (they redacted seven pages, however, the contents of which remain secret), along with a 206-page dossier on Arnaz. It seems that FBI chief Edgar J Hoover was personally interested in their case. Many of the files are marked "confidential" and addressed to Hoover with the memo, "pursuant to your request". He was particularly interested in Arnaz's police record for public drunkenness and resisting arrest.
In the end, Congress dropped any action against Ball, accepting her explanation that she had registered as a communist only to placate her ailing grandfather. She also mollified the committee by telling them she voted for Republican President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1952. Arnaz made light of the matter, joking that Ball's hair was "the only thing red about her, and even that's not legitimate."
After the brouhaha over the "red" claims settled down, I Love Lucy continued to grow in popularity. It was pulling in audiences of more than 67 million at its peak, and won five Emmy Awards, including Best Situation Comedy (1953 and 1954) and Best Actress (Lucille Ball, 1956). Everything seemed to be going perfectly when Ball and Arnaz publicly announced the impending arrival of their second child, Desi Arnaz Jr. Although this baby plot was introduced into I Love Lucy, censors banned the actors from using the word "pregnant" on the shows (they had to say "expecting").
This image released by Amazon shows, from left, Alia Shawkat as Madelyn Pugh, Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance in "Being the Ricardos". Photo / Glen Wilson, Amazon, via AP
Off camera, however, there was little of the domestic harmony that the American public were feasting on through their television screens. "We were anything but Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. They had nothing to do with us," admitted Arnaz. "We dreamed of success, fame and fortune. And guess what? It all led to hell."
Both had numerous affairs, sometimes with other high-profile actors, and their dysfunctional marriage was an open secret in Hollywood. As Milton Berle is quoted as saying Porter and Danforth Prince's book: "Those two had a tempestuous marriage from day one. Lucille accused Desi of cheating, but she did, too, although she denied everything. During the run of I Love Lucy, it was hell. Often, they were not speaking to each other except on camera."
Both stars were shown in a bad light by other comments from Hollywood insiders. Actor Roger C Carmel, who appeared in I Love Lucy, said, "Desi Arnaz was a lech. Anything female from 13 to 30, he'd go after", while Ball's friend Kay Vaughn said that Ball was also unfaithful, and that "if a guy was good-looking enough, chances are he had a damn good chance of getting somewhere."
Ball said she struggled to cope with Arnaz's "roof-raising temper", but she had a violent streak of her own. Biographer Kelly reported that one of the couple's most bitter rows came to an end only when Ball hit Arnaz on the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious. Maury Thompson, who was the camera co-ordinator on I Love Lucy, said: "Lucille loves to hurt a man. She's kicked Desi in the nuts several times. Just bowled him over. She laughed about it."
This image released by Amazon shows Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz and Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball in a scene from "Being the Ricardos". Photo / Glen Wilson, Amazon, via AP
The star of the show was not always popular with her fellow cast members. There was a tale about Ball ripping off Vivian Vance's eyelashes and yelling "nobody wears false eyelashes on this show but me" at her co-star. Comedian Jack Benny and actress Joan Crawford would regale friends with tales of Ball's behaviour, while Richard Burton devoted four pages of his diaries, published in 2012, to an excoriating account of what it was like to work with her.
"I loathed her the first day. I loathed her the second day and the third. I loathe her today but now I also pity her," he wrote. "She can thank her lucky stars that I am not drinking. There is a chance that I might have killed her… She is a monster of staggering charmlessness and monumental lack of humour."
It seems that age did not mellow Ball, either. When actress Ricki Lake met Ball at the 1989 Oscars ceremony, she said: "She wasn't very nice. 'Salty' is putting it mildly." Even Lucie Arnaz, who along with her brother also went into acting, told Joan Rivers that her mother was "a complete control-freak who had to be in charge 24 hours a day".
Although Ball and Arnaz maintained a public image of unity during the show's final seasons – and throughout the 13 one-hour specials called The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show that ran from 1957 to 1960 – things came to a head 20 years into their marriage when, in Arnaz's words, "the s--t hit the fan". Lucie admitted that her parents were "fighting all the time" at the end of I Love Lucy. "Arnaz was like Jekyll and Hyde," Ball said years later. "He drank and he gambled and he went around with other women. It was always the same: booze and broads."
On 3 March 1960, a day after filming the final episode of their new show together, Ball again filed for divorce, telling the Superior Court in Santa Monica that her life with Arnaz was "a nightmare". Lucie, who was 9 at the time, talked about the events six decades later, saying, "their divorce was horrible… and after the divorce my father drank a lot. Progressively he was more and more depressed and went through his money gambling. He ended up a drunk." Arnaz died of lung cancer in 1989.
Ball remarried rapidly, wedding stand-up comedian Gary Morton in 1961. "Gary takes care of me like I was his mother," she told an interviewer in 1981. "Gary gives me protection. On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate my marriage to Gary a 12."
Although she continued to work up to her death at 77, from a heart attack on April 26, 1989, Ball was openly contemptuous of some of the "scroungy scripts" she had been offered in her post-I Love Lucy career. Her last flirtation with television, the ill-fated 1986 series Life with Lucy, in which she worked with old sidekick Gale Gordon, was cancelled by ABC after just one season because of its dire viewing figures. Ball, whose face had been one of the most recognisable on earth, later lamented that she had missed I Love Lucy "every day of my life" since 1960, because "you can't top what I have done".
Kidman now says she is thrilled to be playing "such an amazing woman", but Lucille Ball's story is one of pain behind the success. As she herself once put it: "I brought laughter to millions… even though, privately, I cried a lot."
