8 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘I Love Lucy’

Lucille Ball’s mother became a laugh-track fixture. ​

In many episodes, just as Lucy is about to get into a hairy situation, a member of the audience can be heard nervously saying “Uh-oh!” That’s Ball’s own mother, Dede, who attended every taping! Her distinctive laugh has reportedly been recycled throughout the years. During a May 1983 interview with David Letterman, Arnaz confirmed the rumor: “Some of our laughter I hear in some other shows … Sometimes you get the regulars and you can detect the same laughter. Well, Lucille’s mother, you couldn’t miss her laugh.”​​​

The cast smoked real cigarettes on air.​

Philip Morris was a major sponsor of the show, re-upping their contract in 1953 for a then-whopping $8 million. Throughout the series’ run, that sponsorship included animated advertisements, in-character product placement and live-action commercials, in which Ball and Arnaz would tout the “benefits” of choosing Philip Morris (no cigarette hangover!). The only problem? Ball preferred Chesterfield cigarettes, so she would sneak them into scenes in a Philip Morris pack.​​​

​Spiritual leaders gave their blessing to the pregnancy plot.​

A rabbi, a minister and a priest walked into a writer’s room … and that was the only way CBS, the Blow Advertising Agency and Philip Morris Cigarettes would agree to sign off on any baby-related scripts. They required the religious leaders to consult on plots to make sure audiences wouldn’t be offended; the show never used the word “pregnant,” opting instead for euphemisms like “with child” and “expecting.” Episode titles were a different story: The episode in which Lucy reveals her pregnancy is called “Lucy Is Enceinte,” swapping in the French translation, while the following week’s show went a little bolder with “Pregnant Women Are Unpredictable.”

​Little Ricky and Desi Arnaz Jr. share a birthday.​

Little Ricky came into this world during a much-publicized Jan. 19, 1953, episode called “Lucy Goes to the Hospital.” Also born on that date? Desi Arnaz Jr., who emerged via a planned caesarean delivery at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Nearly 72 percent of American households were tuned in to the episode, the most watched in TV history up to that point, and according to Hollywood legend, water pressure dropped across the country when the show ended: People had been holding it in until Little Ricky was born, and when they all flushed at the same time after the episode ended, reservoir levels temporarily dipped. The birth episode also got higher ratings than President Eisenhower’s inauguration the next day and, according to Ball, Ike later joked about Arnaz Jr., “Is that the young man who knocked me off the front pages?”​

Archive Photos/Getty Images

​Watch it: “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” on Paramount+​

Lucy got her trademark hair color from henna.​

A natural brunette, Ball first started dyeing her hair bombshell-blonde in the 1920s and ’30s, before making the switch to red. As her on-set hairstylist Irma Kusely explained, her hair was actually more of a “golden apricot” hue, achieved by first applying dye and then finishing with a henna rinse. According to an interview with Kusely conducted by the Archive of American Television, Ball met a wealthy sheik in Las Vegas, and he sent her a huge supply of henna, which she kept in a safe in Kusely’s garage. “The length of time I’ve been around never occurred to me until one day recently, I found out I was outliving my supply of henna,” Ball later joked. After Ball’s death in 1989, Kusely said, “There was a lot of it left when she left this world, but I had to give it to the estate. I don’t know what little Lucie did with it, maybe sold it for a million dollars. Just for a spoonful, can you imagine what I could’ve made with that?”​

​“Babalu” is about an Afro-Cuban god of disease.​

The network was notoriously conservative (Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds), but did they know that Ricky Ricardo’s signature song, “Babalú,” was essentially a prayer to a non-Christian god? Written in 1939 by Margarita Lecuona, the song is an ode to Babalú-Ayé, a deity from the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria who focused on disease and healing. In the song, the narrator asks what to do with a statue of the god, suggesting that they should put 17 candles in the shape of a cross and offer him tobacco and cane liquor. In the book Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation, musician Bobby Sanabria says, “When you hear the song, ‘Babalu Aye,’ mainstream America was probably laughing it up, going, ‘Babalu’! Little did they realize they were being exposed to this incredibly deep West African culture we inherited in the Caribbean.”​

Nicholas DeRenzo is a contributing writer who covers entertainment and travel. Previously he was executive editor of United Airlines’ Hemispheres magazine and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Sunset and New York magazine.