The network agreed, and in 1950 the couple sank everything they owned into creating Desilu Productions, the company that actually produced and owned the show. She saw it as a chance to save their already floundering marriage. Sure, Lucy said, she’d do it … provided real-life husband Desi played her fictional husband. Her timing couldn’t have been better because TV was coming into its own just then she was asked to develop the program for CBS Television. Her break came in 1948, when CBS Radio picked her to play a wacky housewife on a sitcom called My Favorite Husband. In 1940, she married dashing Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. The roles grew bigger because she worked at it. A two reeler with the Three Stooges, another with The Marx Brothers, a brief appearance with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

It was the typical story of an aspiring actress clawing her way to stardom: a little modeling, a few chorus roles on Broadway, then why not go west and try Hollywood?īit parts for Goldwyn and onstage scenery for RKO. (The only thing she recalled from that day was a bird getting trapped in the house, leaving her with a lifelong fear of the animals.)ĭreams of making it big led her to the Big Apple at age 17. Her father, a telephone lineman, died of typhoid fever when she was three. Lucille Désirée Ball was riding high as America sailed into the 1950s. And here’s the true story of how she got in it. Lucy found herself in countless zany predicaments over the years. Because everything (and I do mean everything) hinged on the response that would greet her when she walked out before 300 people in the television studio audience. She had performed hilarious stunts before movie and TV cameras alike with equal ease.īut nothing, nothing at all, was like the pressure facing her on Friday evening, September 11, 1953. For years, she had appeared on stage and in live radio broadcasts. Lucille Ball was no stranger to pressure.

Was America’s favorite redhead really a Red?

I love lucy in color