Lucille Ball's Marriage Was NEVER What I Love Lucy Showed You

You know the photograph. A couch in a New York apartment that was really a soundstage in Hollywood. He is exasperated. She is about to explain herself. Forty-four million Americans are watching. That was the marriage America bought. It was not the marriage they had. They eloped in 1940 with a ring from a five-and-dime because the jewelers were closed. She filed for divorce in 1944 and cancelled it the night before it became final. He admitted the drinking and the women in his own memoir. And the woman playing the wife would end up owning the studio that threw her out — and every frame of the marriage you think you remember. It started at a dime store in Greenwich, Connecticut. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz eloped in November 1940 and were divorced by May 1960. In between, they built the most watched program in the United States, invented the three-camera sitcom, and turned their own private life into a filmed product owned by a company named after their ranch. This is the story of what the show left out: the years they spent in different cities, the 1944 divorce she cancelled at the last hour, the eleven years without children, the week the House Un-American Activities Committee nearly ended her career, and the contract clause in 1951 that nobody at CBS thought mattered. Sourced from Desi Arnaz's own 1976 memoir, contemporary press coverage, HUAC records, and the accounts of the people who were in the room. Sources named on screen. 00:00 The photograph 00:46 A brass ring from Woolworth's 01:28 Two childhoods, two houses lost 03:22 The ranch, and the years apart 04:51 Eleven years, then two children 06:06 The divorce she cancelled 06:58 The condition she gave CBS 08:16 The contract nobody understood 09:29 The summer the rerun was born 10:05 A wife who cannot get in 11:22 Her labor, scheduled around a script 12:24 The week she was called a Communist 14:31 Buying RKO 15:12 The company eats the man 16:40 She buys him out 18:08 The daughter and the reels 19:59 What she owned #OldHollywood #ClassicHollywood #HollywoodHistory