Lucille Ball: 6 Surprising Facts About Her Life and Career

That’s right. Ball’s iconic ginger hair was from a bottle. “A natural brunette who went platinum blonde as a young woman, Ball adopted her signature red color in the 1940s,” says Laura LaPlaca, head of archives at the National Comedy Center and Lucy Desi Museum. 

Interestingly, while Ball’s red hair became a trademark on “I Love Lucy,” the series was broadcast in black and white. “Storylines often referenced her hair color, while [color] images of Ball were ubiquitous in magazines and advertisements of the era,” LaPlaca says.

Before “I Love Lucy,” Ball starred in the CBS radio sitcom “My Favorite Husband” from 1948 to 1951, playing a lively housewife married to a banker played by Richard Denning. The show’s success led CBS to consider adapting it for television. But when CBS executives resisted casting Ball’s Cuban American husband as her co-star—reflecting the era’s xenophobia—Ball leveraged her considerable professional clout to insist that she would not do the series without him.

“Their real-life marriage became the premise for the most popular television show of the 1950s and expanded expectations about who could represent an American family during an era of sweeping social change,” LaPlaca says.

Ball and Arnaz were also pioneers behind the scenes. “When others balked at escalating costs resulting from their high standards of excellence, they made an unflinching bet on themselves and formed Desilu Productions to create ‘I Love Lucy,’” LaPlaca says. “They assembled an industry-shifting ensemble of creative, artistic and technical minds to perfect the technique of capturing a show on 35 mm film using multiple cameras before a live studio audience—a process so well-wrought that it remains in use today.” 

Ball and Arnaz also negotiated to retain ownership of the series’ rights. In 1955, “I Love Lucy” reruns began airing in what is believed to be a television first. Ball and Arnaz helped demonstrate the commercial value of reruns and television syndication, building a business model that changed the course of the entertainment industry.

Despite being known for her comedic talents, Ball didn’t believe she was funny.

“My writers were funny. My directors were funny. The situations were funny,” Ball told an interviewer for Rolling Stone magazine in 1983. “What I am is brave. I have never been scared. Not when I did movies, certainly not when I was a model and not when I did ‘I Love Lucy.’”

Still, Ball helped redefine what a female comedian could do, and her success as a performer and producer opened doors for generations of women in comedy.

Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960. Two years later, Ball bought Arnaz’s interest in Desilu Productions to solely helm their major Hollywood studio—which, at the time, was the largest independent producer of television in the world.

“While serving as president and CEO, Ball was also earning history-making consecutive Emmy Awards for her starring role in ‘The Lucy Show’—more than a decade after ‘I Love Lucy’ had ended its original run,” LaPlaca says. “Her longevity as a performer was rare and remarkable, as she remained a fixture on television screens for four decades.”

As president and CEO of Desilu Productions, Ball led the studio that chose to develop “Star Trek” and pitched it to the networks.

The original 1964 pilot for NBC was one of the most expensive television pilots produced up to that time, and Desilu absorbed a substantial portion of the cost. “When NBC declined to order the series but made the rare decision to commission a second pilot in 1965, Desilu, under Lucy’s leadership, took the risk of continuing—and investing still more,” LaPlaca explains.

By the time NBC ordered “Star Trek” as a series in 1966, Desilu had deficit-financed significant portions of two costly pilots and faced continuing losses because the network license fee wouldn’t cover the full cost of production. Members of Desilu’s senior management and board of directors argued that the financial risk was too great to proceed.

“She overruled those objections and chose to go forward,” LaPlaca says. The series eventually became one of television’s most influential franchises. “At those critical moments when Desilu could have walked away from ‘Star Trek,’ Lucille Ball continued to back the project,” LaPlaca says. “Her willingness to take that risk made ‘Star Trek’ possible—and changed television history.”