According to the publication, the union between Lucy and Desi began with the couple lying about their ages to prevent the public from discovering that Lucy was actually six years older than her husband (she was 29 when they got married in 1940).

One of the most fascinating and surprising details we recently learned comes from Us Weekly. The 1950s sitcom paved the way for both women and interracial couples on television and inspired Americans for generations.īut in order to break down barriers, its stars, Lucille Bal l and her husband, Desi Arnaz, had to break some rules. More than a half-century after the final episode was first broadcast, viewers around the world continue to Love Lucy.I Love Lucy is one of the most impactful and influential shows in television history. It has been dubbed into twenty-two languages and seen in eighty countries. However, I Love Lucy was the company’s first and greatest achievement. Other Desilu productions included Star Trek, The Andy Griffith Show, Mission Impossible, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1955 I Love Lucy achieved a significant television first―it became the first television series to be broadcast as reruns, a phenomenon made possible because it was produced on film and not the grainier kinescope, as were most other programs of its time. The show continues to be rerun and is now also available on DVD.įollowing the completion of the final half-hour I Love Lucy episode broadcast on May 6, 1957, Desilu Productions, Inc., produced a series of thirteen additional Ricardos-and-Mertzes shows The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, (later rerun as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), broadcast between November 1957 and April 1960. In recent years, the show and its members, creators, and producers have been the subjects of numerous books-biographies, chronologies, coffee-table, trivia, and even The I Love Lucy Cookbook. I Love Lucy enjoyed enormous popularity during its six-season run-so much so that, beginning in the 1950s, it generated a line of I Love Lucy merchandise-including paper dolls, jewelry, clothing, knickknacks, and a comic book series. However, it soon developed into the relationship between millions of American television viewers and their Monday-evening neighbors. I Love Lucy initially centered on the relationship between bandleader Ricky (the “I” in I Love Lucy) and Lucy Ricardo and their friends, the Mertzes.

Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball