Lucille Ball has knives thrown at her in the television series ‘I Love Lucy’, 1951.
Photo by CBS/Getty Images
From 1951 to 1957, Americans welcomed Lucille Ball into their homes as the star of her groundbreaking sitcom, “I Love Lucy.” But Ball was more than the character of Lucy Ricardo, the quirky redhead always scheming to join the nightclub act of her husband, Ricky, played by Ball’s real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.
Born in Jamestown, New York, Ball got her start as a model in the 1930s before she moved to Hollywood and went on to became one of the biggest players in the entertainment industry. And while she was a well-known public figure, there’s a lot that people don’t know about the comedian—including these six surprising facts about her life.
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She wasn’t a natural redhead.
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.
Lucille Ball early in her career, circa 1930s.
Photo by Screen Archives/Getty Images
She fought for representation on TV.
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.
Lucille Ball receives a kiss on the cheek from her husband, Cuban-born bandleader and musician Desi Arnaz, on the set of their television series, ‘I Love Lucy.’
Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images