Lucille Ball’s Daughter Reveals the Sad Fate of “I Love Lucy”
Lucie Arnaz was born into one of the most famous families in television history. Her parents, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, created and starred in I Love Lucy, a show that changed TV forever. But Lucie has spent more than five decades building a remarkable career of her own, on television, in film, on Broadway, and in concert halls.
Now she has opened another window into her parents’ lives with a new book, Lucy and Desi: The Love Letters, a collection of their private correspondence and photographs, along with her own perspective on their complicated and enduring love story. In a recent podcast interview, she talked about the letters, her parents’ legacy, a surprising conversation with a CBS executive, and what it has meant to spend a lifetime as “Lucille Ball’s daughter.”
Letters Tied With a Ribbon
After her mother died, Lucie found the letters in a drawer, tied together with a small ribbon. Lucille had kept everything: letters from before she and Desi married, from the war years, from their marriage and the early I Love Lucy years. Desi had saved Lucy’s letters to him, too, so in the end Lucille had both sides of the conversation.
For more than 30 years, Lucie didn’t know what to do with them. She couldn’t throw them away. She couldn’t easily give them to a museum, because no one would really be able to read or handle them.
Then they were digitized for the documentary Lucy and Desi, directed by Amy Poehler a couple of years ago. The production team gave Lucie back both the originals and beautiful digital copies, and she realized she could make them into a book where readers could see the actual handwriting, which she calls a lost art in itself.
Her goal was the same one behind her own Emmy-winning documentary, Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie. All her life, people have asked her what it was like growing up with her parents, and she never knew how to answer. When she finally dug into it, she discovered she was telling the story of a fairly ordinary American family that also happened to be famous.
The letters show exactly that. Her parents were ordinary in their love, their passions, their jealousies, and their youth. They jumped into a relationship when they barely knew how to do anything, Lucie said. She found it charming and deeply touching.
“I Didn’t Change a Comma”
Reading the letters, Lucie said, she can hear her parents’ voices. Her father, who was still learning English, spoke brilliantly and had a better vocabulary than most people, but some of his spellings were guesses. Her mother loved words and used interesting ones, though she sometimes wrote oddly too.
When Lucie and her assistant, Elizabeth Edwards, transcribed the letters, Edwards would sometimes ask whether to correct something. Lucie always said no. She didn’t change a word, a comma, or a capital letter. She only added context, such as who people were and when things happened. The mistakes don’t make them look foolish, she said. They just make them look normal.
Most of the letters were written before Lucy and Desi became truly famous. That, Lucie said, makes them the truest version of her parents that exists. They never imagined anyone else would read them, so there was no “best face.” Some letters get a little steamy, and some are full of complaints, but that’s what makes them human. Readers will find Lucille reminding Desi to please call his mother, or telling him she read his letter five times.
Lucie also noticed something interesting. On I Love Lucy, her parents brought American audiences an ordinary couple, something television had never really done before, and a Latin man married to an American woman, which was remarkable at the time. The letters show that behind the scenes, they really were “pretty normal folk.”
The Reluctant Family Historian
Lucie never volunteered to be the family historian, but it happened anyway. When people die, she said, they leave behind all their things, and someone has to decide what to keep, what to give away, and who gets the gravy boat. Ordinary families go through it too. But when the things belonged to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, it’s very hard to decide what to throw out.
Putting the letters into a book solved a problem she knew she would someday face. Now, even if the originals are lost, they will exist in the world.
“Do We Own That Show?”
Lucie has given herself a deadline. October 15 marked the 75th anniversary of I Love Lucy, and in July she turned 75 herself. She was born six weeks before the show went into production. After this year, she said, she plans to stop being the public face of her parents’ legacy, stop answering every question, appearing on every show, and accepting awards on their behalf. It doesn’t help her as a person or as an artist, she explained, and it’s simply enough.
Besides, she pointed out, her family doesn’t own the show. CBS does, and CBS doesn’t seem to care.
She recalled having lunch with a very high-ranking executive at the network, whom she declined to name. When she mentioned that the show’s 75th anniversary was coming up, he said how amazing that was. When she asked what CBS planned to do, he asked, “Oh, do we own that show?”
She insists it’s a true story. She noted the turmoil at the company, with the CBS and Paramount merger, and said she has little hope that classic television will be celebrated the way it once was.
To his credit, she said, the executive called her back days later. He said CBS would air a special broadcast on October 15, followed by two colorized episodes of her choosing. Lucie said that sounded great. But at the time of the interview, with less than a month to go, no one had followed up. “It’s just crickets,” she said.
A New Award
Ironically, just as the show seemed to be fading from public memory, the Television Academy created a new Legacy Award to honor groundbreaking shows that changed television, and gave the very first one to I Love Lucy.
Lucie was asked to accept it, but she declined, partly because she no longer does that sort of thing and partly because her husband needed surgery at the time. He is doing well, she said. She was delighted by the choice. The honor really belongs to creator Jess Oppenheimer, to writers Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Pugh Davis, who wrote the show together for years, and to her mother and father. When she heard it was a real physical award, she joked: who gets to keep it?
What They Kept, and What They Lost
Both of her parents were savers. Desi kept many scrapbooks of his career, put together with help from his parents. But he lived on the beach in Del Mar, California, and kept them on a shelf in his garage. When Lucie went through his belongings after he died, she discovered that the salt air had ruined them. When she opened the books, the old tape gave way and everything fell out.
Lucille, on the other hand, kept a great deal, which is why so many museums and tributes exist today. She saved trunks and closets full of items, including costumes from the vaudeville act she and Desi performed together, such as the professor outfit and the funny little tuxedo shirt.
But neither parent left instructions about what to do with any of it, or even what they wanted after their deaths.
“Put Her Ashes in the Ocean”
Lucie was with her father during the last four weeks of his life, as he was dying of lung cancer. Whenever she tried to talk with him about his wishes, he changed the subject.
Desi had been caring for his own mother until the very end. She was 92, suffering from Alzheimer’s and arthritis, and living in the next room with round-the-clock help. One day, Desi said to Lucie, “You know, when mother died, we had her cremated and put her ashes in the ocean.”
“She’s in the other room,” Lucie reminded him gently. She understood he was on morphine. But she took it as his way of telling her what he wanted. If it was good enough for his mother, it was good enough for him.
Lucie believes he simply couldn’t face it. He wasn’t someone who avoided hard conversations. He was a planner who always believed he could fix things, and one of the bravest people she ever knew. But at the end, she thinks, he was in a kind of terror and denial. He had stopped treatment and was at home with nurses around the clock, yet when Lucie tried to play soft, peaceful music, as caregivers are often told to do, he would complain that it sounded like a funeral in there. She still finds that funny.
Bringing Lucy Home
Her mother’s only instructions were that she hated funerals, didn’t want one, and wanted to be buried next to her own mother. Her widower, Gary Morton, placed her beside Lucy’s mother, known in the family as DeDe, in a wall crypt in a mausoleum at Forest Lawn.
After Lucille died, the whole family visited: her brothers and sisters, Lucie’s cousins, and Gary. Everyone agreed it felt cold and impersonal. Lucie’s cousin Pammy pointed to the trees blowing in the wind outside and said that was where Lucy and DeDe really were.
So the family decided together to move them back to their hometown of Jamestown, New York, to the beautiful Lake View Cemetery, with a lovely headstone. They also moved Lucy’s father, who had died when she was four, so that she could finally rest with both of her parents. Lucy’s brother Freddy and another relative agreed on one condition: that the family leave room for them. They lived into their nineties and are now buried there too.
When Lucie visits Jamestown, she finds flowers left by fans. She laughs that one person online keeps accusing her of moving her mother against her wishes. “You can’t please everybody,” she said.
An Ordinary Family, Under Extraordinary Pressure
Lucie says she always felt her family was more ordinary than people imagined. Her mother came home, they had dinner, watched TV, played Scrabble, and went away on weekends. The difference was that her parents worked far too much, for themselves and for their children. That pressure wore down their marriage, especially for her father, and their relationship fell apart, as many marriages do.
In the 1950s, she said, there was almost no help for couples or families in crisis. And if you sought therapy in show business, you risked being labeled crazy and blacklisted.
But even after the divorce, her parents stayed friendly for the rest of their lives. Both remarried. Desi was around all the time and came over when the grandchildren visited. Lucy visited Del Mar with Gary. Lucy loved Desi’s new wife, Edie, and they played cards together. Her parents, Lucie said, loved each other until the end. She is grateful that, on the whole, they were a very loving family.
“A Leg Up, but You Still Have to Ride the Horse”
Her parents never pushed her into show business, she said. They supported whatever she was passionate about, whether horseback riding or, for a time, becoming a veterinarian. Her mother even arranged for her to spend time at animal hospitals.
But Lucie kept drifting toward theater. She chose her high school because it had the best drama department and acted in many of its plays. During her junior year, her mother was changing the format of her show after six years and asked whether Lucie and her brother, Desi Jr., would play the kids on Here’s Lucy.
Lucie said no. She wanted to finish school, go somewhere like Northwestern, earn a theater degree, and work on stage. Her mother had to convince her that the show wouldn’t ruin those plans. Finally, Lucie made a deal: if it turned out they weren’t any good, her mother had to write them out. She didn’t want to fail in front of millions of people.
To this day, people say she only got that job because of her mother. “Well, yes,” Lucie said. “Duh. That’s how I got that job.” But it was only a leg up. You still have to ride the horse, she said, and she has been working for more than 55 years. She’s glad her mother talked her into it, because she learned more on that set than she ever could have in a classroom.
Advice for the Next Generation
When her own daughter, Kate, wanted to go into show business, Lucie told her she would need great training, because young performers today are triple threats who can sing, dance, and act. She also warned her that it’s a tough business, full of rejection, and that you have to save your money. You can make a killing in show business, she said, but you can’t always make a living.
Kate became a fine singer, a good dancer, and a very natural actress, and she put together her own nightclub act. But after years of hearing absurd things in auditions, such as being told she wasn’t “a babe” but wasn’t a character actress either, she told her mother she needed to pay rent and have health insurance. She went into the corporate world for 14 years and is now easing back into performing. Today, Kate is working to build a business that helps people get mental health care they can’t otherwise afford, something Lucie strongly believes in.
Lucie also warns anyone who thinks fame will make them happy. She grew up in a house with two people who became about as famous as anyone can. They weren’t always happy. They divorced, and her father drank. If you go into this business for fame, she said, it won’t get you anywhere. You have to love the work.
“I’m a Missionary”
Lucie herself has never considered leaving the business. She calls herself a missionary. She does this work because she loves it and because she believes entertainment does good in the world, whether through a song or a play that makes people see something in a new way. She has been performing concerts on and off for 38 years.
These days she has scaled back on film and television to spend more time with her husband, actor Laurence Luckinbill, who was about to turn 90. They have been married for 47 years. She calls this their “third act,” and she doesn’t want to miss a minute of it. Remarkably, all of her grandchildren now live in Palm Springs, near her and her husband. She still performs locally, at places like the McCallum Theatre, the Plaza Theatre, and the Purple Room, and takes short trips to places like Arizona.
On stage fright, she shared advice she was given long ago: don’t confuse nerves with excitement. If you’re unprepared, you should be nervous. If you’ve done your homework, what you’re feeling is excitement. It feels the same, butterflies and all.
The Lessons Her Parents Taught Her
Her parents had sayings that she still lives by almost every day.
Her father’s was: “There must be a way.” When television experts told him I Love Lucy had to be filmed on kinescope in New York, he kept asking why it couldn’t be done another way, and when he heard the reason, he asked how they could solve that problem.
He also told her: “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.” As a child, she thought that sounded silly. But he explained he wasn’t talking about choosing between a sandwich and soup. He meant a decision you have agonized over for days. If you still don’t know, he said, you don’t have enough information yet, and acting now will only make things worse. Lucie says it’s absolutely true.
Her mother’s lesson was simpler: “Take care of Lucy first.” It was like putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others. When Lucille was young, she became seriously ill for about two years and couldn’t walk, due to an infection that affected her bones. She learned early that without your health, you have nothing. So she always told her children to slow down, rest, eat right, and take care of themselves, Lucie noted with a laugh, “said the woman who smoked.”
Funny in Different Ways
Lucie says her parents were funny in very different ways. Her father had a sensational wit. In conversation, he was the one who made everyone scream with laughter. Her mother was essentially a clown. She could take words on a page and turn them into gold, acting out an experience bigger than life. But in person she wasn’t a quick quipster. Watch Lucy and Desi on Johnny Carson, Lucie said, and they’re like night and day.
Both of them loved to laugh. They surrounded themselves with people who could make them laugh, and their house was filled with laughter most of the time. Lucie believes that is one reason she “turned out not completely crazy.” She learned early that making people laugh could calm tense moments and keep things from escalating.
Her Proudest Moments
Asked about her own career highlights, Lucie named several.
She spent seven months on the road with Tommy Tune in My One and Only, mastering an enormous amount of tap dancing even though she doesn’t consider herself a dancer first.
She played the grandmother in a circus-style revival of Pippin, on the national tour and on Broadway. The role required a trapeze act about 25 feet above the stage, flying upside down without wires or a net. Instead, a group of performers below were ready to break her fall if needed. Luckily, they never had to. She learned it in three weeks and performed it night after night for six months.
She is extremely proud of the documentary she made about her parents. She spent three years interviewing people, gathering material, and editing it, and it won an Emmy.
She also played Bella in Neil Simon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Lost in Yonkers on Broadway, a rich mix of heavy drama and comedy. She recently rewatched a 1970s TV film about the Black Dahlia case in which she appeared and was surprised at how good it was, considering she had almost no rehearsal. She co-starred in The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier, and she is proud of that work. Her own TV series, including The Lucie Arnaz Show, were canceled too quickly to make much of a mark.
But her proudest accomplishment, she said, has nothing to do with her career: staying married to her husband for 47 years.
She and her husband have been fortunate to have steady work ever since Here’s Lucy, but she turned down many opportunities because she didn’t want to miss piano recitals and football games. Her parents had the best jobs in the world, she said, but they missed a lot, and they were sad about it. She didn’t want to repeat that.
Being “Lucille Ball’s Daughter”
Lucie admits that being introduced first as Lucille Ball’s daughter has grown more tiring over the years. When she was starting out, it made sense. But the more work you do, the harder it is to have every interview and every after-show conversation focus only on your parents.
She is enormously proud of them. She jokes that she could have been the daughter of Jack the Ripper. But she sometimes has to act as her own manager and tell herself, “Okay, Lucie, that’s enough.”
She also understands why people ask. Jane Fonda wrote about her father, Henry Fonda, in her memoir, but Henry Fonda isn’t on television every day for 75 years, known to five generations of viewers. “Some days I’m like, bring it on,” she said.
Correcting the Record
Even in the love letters, Lucille complains to Desi about magazine articles that got things wrong. Lucie still deals with the same thing. When she comes across false posts about her parents online, she sometimes scrolls past, and sometimes politely corrects them. But for every snarky or inaccurate post, she said, there are hundreds of pages run by loyal fans who know the real history, often better than she does, and who step in to set the record straight.
She has also learned to be careful about what she says. Years ago, on Joan Rivers’s show, she explained that her mother, as a working woman in the 1950s, felt responsible for keeping the household running even while she was gone all day, and so was a bit of a “control freak” about it. The headline became: Lucie Arnaz says her mother was a control freak. Everything else she said was lost.
Walking in Their Shoes
Looking back, Lucie said, making the documentary helped her understand what shaped her parents in their early lives and what they brought into their marriage and parenting. Once you walk a mile in your parents’ shoes, she said, much of the resentment fades. They did the best they could under the circumstances, as every parent does.
She didn’t resent their absences as a child, because she didn’t know any other life. The real cost came later, when she had her own children and didn’t know how to create the kind of family closeness she had missed. She wishes she’d had better guidance back then, the kind of resources that became available by the time her grandchildren were born.
Good parenting, she believes, lies somewhere in the middle. Children don’t need you to be their friend or their jailer. They need something like a caring boot camp sergeant who sets boundaries and consequences, keeps them safe, and celebrates when they succeed. Each generation, she said, tends to overcorrect for the one before.
For fans who want the book, Lucie encourages them to consider buying it from the Lucy Desi Museum or the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, which sell it online, since the proceeds help preserve her parents’ legacy. And she is still performing: a family New Year’s Eve big band show at the Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs, with some of her children joining her, and another big band show at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert in February.
Seventy-five years after I Love Lucy first aired, the network that owns it may have needed a reminder. But Lucie Arnaz, through a drawer of old letters tied with a ribbon, has made sure the real Lucy and Desi won’t be forgotten.
