During the second season, Lucy and Ricky have a son named Ricky Ricardo Jr. (" Little Ricky "), whose birth was timed to coincide with Ball's real-life delivery of her son Desi Arnaz Jr.

Both Arnaz and Ball wanted to adapt Ball's CBS radio series My Favorite Husband to television.

The studio's initial attempt to become involved in film production was the 1956 film Forever, Darling, Arnaz and Ball's follow-up to their highly successful The Long, Long Trailer ( 1954 ), but it failed at the box office.

The company also purchased Desilu Productions from Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in 1967, which included most of Ball's television product, as well as such properties as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible ( it and its successor companies would make millions on both series over the following decades with such projects as Star Treks various hit follow-up TV projects and films, beginning in the late 1970s ).

" Ball's reduced capacity for physical comedy gave the other members of the cast, such as Lucie Arnaz and featured players Mary Jane Croft and Vanda Barra a chance to shine.

Richard Denning ( March 27, 1914 – October 11, 1998 ), was an American actor who starred in such movies as Creature from the Black Lagoon ( 1954 ) and An Affair to Remember ( 1957 ), and on radio with Lucille Ball as her husband George Cooper in My Favorite Husband ( 1948 – 1951 ), the forerunner of television's I Love Lucy, for which Denning was replaced by Ball's real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.

The pair also wrote episodes for The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show ( aka The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour ) and Ball's final series, the unsuccessful Life With Lucy ( 1986 ).

A great deal of Lecuona's music was first introduced to mass American audiences by Desi Arnaz, a fellow Cuban and Lucille Ball's spouse.

Desilu Productions, jointly owned by Desi Arnaz and Ball during their marriage, was the production company for the Our Miss Brooks television show, which filmed during the same years as I Love Lucy.

Just before filming the show, Lucy and Desi learned that Lucy was once again pregnant ( after multiple miscarriages earlier in their marriage ) with their first child, Lucie Arnaz.

Some even referred to the Vigoreaux-Echevarria couple as the Lucy and Desi of Puerto Rico, in reference to the marriage of American comedians Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

Arnaz and Ball married on November 30, 1940.

* 1940 – Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In 1940, Lucy met Desi Arnaz, a Cuban bandleader who had just come off a successful run in the 1939 – 40 Broadway show Too Many Girls.

RKO's offerings were particularly influential, notably Too Many Girls ( 1940 ), in which Desi Arnaz appeared as a conga-playing Argentine student.

Desi Arnaz ( March 2, 1917 – December 2, 1986 ) was a Cuban-born American musician, actor and television producer.

While he gained international renown for leading a Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, he is best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo on the American TV series I Love Lucy, starring with Lucille Ball, to whom he was married at the time.

Desi Arnaz was born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III in Santiago de Cuba to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz II ( March 8, 1894-May 31, 1973 ) and his wife Dolores de Acha ( April 2, 1896-October 24, 1988 ).

Following the 1933 Cuban Revolution, led by Fulgencio Batista, which overthrew President Gerardo Machado, Alberto Arnaz was jailed and all of his property was confiscated.

Arnaz was told that it would be impossible to allow an audience onto a sound stage, but he worked with Freund to design a set that would accommodate an audience, allow filming, and also adhere to fire and safety codes.

Arnaz also pushed the network to allow them to show Lucille Ball while she was pregnant.

Arnaz was patriotic.

Arnaz was also suffering from diverticulitis.

"' I Love Lucy ' was never just a title ", wrote Arnaz in the last years of his life.

Arnaz was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986.

Arnaz was cremated and the whereabouts of his ashes are unknown.

She later co-starred with Kaye Ballard as her neighbor and in-law, Eve Hubbard, in the 1967 – 69 situation comedy The Mothers-in-Law, which was produced by Desi Arnaz after the dissolution of Desilu.

Lucille Ball was offered Gloria Grahame's role in the picture by DeMille, but dropped out when she discovered she was pregnant with her first child, Lucie Arnaz.

Only a photograph of the first specimen of this species was made at a local market by Arnaz and Mark Erdmann before it was bought by a shopper.

He received Roman Catholic funeral rites four days later, with fellow entertainers including Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Marty Allen, and Jack Carter in attendance, and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.

Arnaz convinced them to allow Desilu to cover all additional costs associated with the filming process, under the stipulation that Desilu owned and controlled all rights to the film.

While watching her perform, Arnaz was convinced he had found the right actress to play Ethel Mertz.

Patty was convinced that Arnaz was the father even though she was briefly married to Michael Tell and then later believed that John Astin was the biological father.

Desi Arnaz, Jr. voiced his support of the film, stating that he and his sister Lucie Arnaz, " loved the story being told in this movie.

When the cast was being chosen, Executive Producer Desi Arnaz had approached his old friend, Ann Sothern, who had worked on seven episodes of The Lucy Show as Lucy's old friend, the Countess Framboise ( née Rosie Harrigan ), to play the role of Eve Arden's next-door neighbor.

Ball insisted on Arnaz playing her on-air spouse so the two would be able to spend more time together.

When Ball sold her share of Desilu to what became Paramount Television, Arnaz went on to form his own production company from the ashes of his share of Desilu, and with the newly formed Desi Arnaz Productions, he made The Mothers-In-Law ( at Desilu ) for United Artists Television and NBC, this ran for two seasons from 1967-68.

Originally set in an apartment building in New York City, I Love Lucy centers on Lucy Ricardo ( Lucille Ball ) and her singer / bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo ( Desi Arnaz ), along with their best friends and landlords Fred Mertz ( William Frawley ) and Ethel Mertz ( Vivian Vance ).

Ball, who had only briefly known Frawley from her days at RKO, suggested him to both Arnaz and CBS.

Arnaz and Jess Oppenheimer went to see her in the play and hired her on the spot.

Arnaz, however, was impressed by Vance's work and hired her.

When Desi Arnaz and wife Lucille Ball were casting their new television sitcom I Love Lucy in 1951, director Marc Daniels, who had previously worked with Vance in a theater production, suggested her for the role of landlady Ethel Mertz.

After her death, Desi Arnaz remarked, " It ’ s bad enough to lose one of the great artists we had the honor and the pleasure to work with, but it ’ s even harder to reconcile the loss of one of your best friends.

In December, 1950, when CBS agreed to produce a TV pilot starring Lucille Ball and her first husband, Desi Arnaz, Sr., Lucy insisted on Oppenheimer to head up the project.

In 1967 her former boss Desi Arnaz approached her to co-star with Eve Arden as battling neighbors in The Mothers-in-Law.

In this new incarnation, she had two children named Kim and Craig, played by her real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. She was employed at ' Carter's Unique Employment Agency ' by her brother-in-law Harry, played by Gale Gordon in a role similar to his Mr. Mooney role from The Lucy Show.

For this one, it was established that Lucy McGillicuddy ( played by Lucille Ball ) and her best friend MacNamara were cruising Havana, where they encounter two tour guides, Lucy's future husband Ricky Ricardo ( Desi Arnaz ) and his pal, Carlos Garcia ( guest star Cesar Romero ).

In 1977, she starred in the film Joyride with Robert Carradine, Melanie Griffith and Desi Arnaz, Jr. She played the young Eunice St. Clair in the 1986 horror film Troll, with her mother playing the older version of her character.