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After she recovered she toured the vaudeville circuits with Arnaz and his band in a situational comedy skit somewhat similar to her radio show. Arnaz had designed this skit with television in mind, and called it “My Favorite Husband.” Another pregnancy terminated this vaudeville tour and on July 17, ’51, Miss Ball gave birth (Caesarian) to a girl, who was christened Lucie Desirée.

Miss Ball has always given Arnaz credit for the idea of “I Love Lucy” and for the business acumen which made it a peerless tv success. Arnaz borrowed the $8000 which enabled them to form Desilu Productions Inc. He sold the idea of Miss Ball and himself doing a teleseries to CBS. When CBS didn’t want Desilu to retain ownership of the videotapes of the series that would be made from the live tv shows, it was Arnaz who wouldn’t give in on so lucrative a – for the future – point. And it was Arnaz who sold the all-important first show to Philip Morris for $30,000.

He did, however, give in when CBS argued that the series would play better if, instead of portraying their real-life selves, he and Ball portrayed a struggling Cuban band leader and a zany wife. The scripts were written by Jess Oppenheimer, Madalyn Pugh and Bob Carroll, and their essence was an amusing exaggeration of problems inherent in most marriages. The two major supporting roles – Lucy and her husband’s landlord-neighbor-friends were intelligently played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance. The original cinematographer was the late, great Karl Freund (THE LAST LAUGH; VARIETY; THE GOOD EARTH).

The scripts utilized references to persons and places in-n-around Miss Ball’s birthplace (Jamestown NY), and, when in ’52 she again became pregnant, this too was made use of in the scripts. The segment of “I Love Lucy” about the birth of the child got a rating higher than that of any other segment of the series.

The real-life child was born, by Caesarian section, on January 19, ’53, and was christened Desi.

In ’57 Miss Ball and Arnaz sold the re-run rights to all the segments of “I Love Lucy” made up to that time for $5,000,000, which they used to buy the RKO studio (reputed cost to them: $6,150,000). They transformed it into a well-equipped center for tv production. Some of the tvshows that have used it: “Our Miss Brooks;” “The Ann Sothern Show;” “The Untouchables;” “The Real McCoys;” “The Danny Thomas Show;” “Mission: Impossible;” “Star-Trek.”

During the first six years of “I Love Lucy” Miss Ball and Arnaz appeared together in two theafilms (i.e., films for theatres as distinct from films for television). The first, The LONG, LONG TRAILER, directed by Vincente Minnelli, provided a trailer-life background for marriage vicissitudes, and the second, FOREVER DARLING, had James Mason, as a guardian angel, endeavor to preserve their marriage.

The real-life marriage of Miss Ball and Arnaz had long been stormy, and on February 26, ’60, their separation was publicly announced. An interlocutory divorce decree was granted the following May. Each retained half of Desilu Productions; Miss Ball got their Beverly Hills home and $450 a month child support; Arnaz got their ranch in Riverside CA; and the Palm Springs hotel they owned was put in trust for their children.

After “I Love Lucy” went off the air Miss Ball appeared in a Bob Hope movie called THE FACTS OF LIFE (’60), and then lost several hundred thousand dollars of Desilu’s money, and about $50,000 of her own, by appearing in a show on Broadway called WILDCAT, in which she played an oil wildcatter on the Mexican border in 1912. It opened at the Alvin Theatre on December 15, ’60, and ran three months. But it had cost over $400,000.

During the run of WILDCAT Miss Ball went on a blind date with Paula Wayne, her co-star in that play, and met the man to whom she is now married: Gary Morton, né Goldapper. He was a stand-up comedian then appearing at the Copacabana who had been performing in nightclubs ever since the Army let him learn the rudiments of entertaining in its “Special Services” during World War II. They were married on November 19, ’61, in NYC’s Marble Collegiate Church by the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, whose book, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, Miss Ball frequently presents to friends and acquaintances. Morton, six years younger than Miss Ball, was first married to actress Jacqueline Inmoor (the marriage was annulled). At this writing he is the executive producer of Miss Ball’s current teleseries.

In the fall of ’62, after an absence from the air of almost three years, Miss Ball began the new teleseries called “Here’s Lucy,” in which she plays a widow with two children. Arnaz was its first executive producer. Vivian Vance, but not William Frawley (he and Vance had never liked one another), appeared in support. Frawley’s role was taken by Gale Gordon, who had been in Miss Ball’s radio show (“My Favorite Husband”).

Also in ’62 Miss Ball bought Arnaz’ interest in Desilu Productions and its studio (36 sound stages, 62 acres of land) for, according to the publicity, $3,000,000. To everyone’s surprise she then assumed the managerial reins formerly held so efficiently by Arnaz. She at first enjoyed such tasks and became something of a “finger poker,” but, finally tiring of it, sold Desilu and its studio to Gulf and Western Industries for a reported $10,000,000.

In ’68 she cast her own children, Lucie and Desi Jr., in her teleseries, but this year only the daughter will be in it. Miss Ball and her son have had some widely publicized differences over his interest in Patty Duke, who has alleged that a child, to which she gave birth in ’71, while being married to a rock-n-roll promoter named Mike Tell, is Arnaz’. Lucie Arnaz has recently become the fiancee of a Philip Vandervort.

Miss Ball’s recent theafllm work has not been too distinguished. She and Bob Hope were unable to vitalize the tired script of CRITIC’S CHOICE. Her sequence with Art Carney in A GUIDE FOR A MARRIED MAN was more on the vulgar, than the funny, side. But YOURS, MINE AND OURS (’68) has a great deal of humanity. In it she is a widow with eight children and Henry Fonda is a widower with ten. That theafllm was produced by Desilu, and written by Madalyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll Jr.

Miss Ball’s mother, who has been her “confidante and closest friend” throughout all, lives near her in California. Her brother, Fred, manages the Palm Springs hotel, which is in trust for her children.

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