Rare Photos of Lucille Ball as a Mom You Haven't Seen Before (2024)

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz welcomed their first child, daughter Lucie Désirée Arnaz, in 1951.

Lucille wasn't sure she would ever be a mother, after experiencing more than one miscarriage. “I had them late in life. I’d lost two and I thought, my God, I’ll be too old to have children," she shared with The Washington Star in 1980.

Desi's mother encouraged Lucille to turn to religion during her struggle to conceive, which included more than one pregnancy loss. As she told The Washington Star: "During my ninth year of marriage, my mother-in-law, who was one of the most beautiful South American ladies ever, said to me, ‘You become Catholic. You have baby.’ So I went and had instruction and—*claps hands*—five months later I was pregnant. For me, the birth of a child, it was a miracle. I couldn’t believe it.”

As a new parent, the actress often sought advice from famous friends. “She was always searching for answers herself. So she would talk to Jeanne Martin … or Debbie Reynolds, other women who had children, and she asked them, ‘How do you do it?’” Lucie revealed to KCRW.com in 2021.

Because their daughter was born just six weeks before I Love Lucy premiered, the couple had a lot to juggle during those first few years. “They were very busy,” Lucie recalled to the Television Academy Foundation in 2016. "So I think up from birth through 7, they weren’t home a lot, I would say."

As busy as their schedule was, the two stars made time for special family memories. Here, they celebrate Lucie's first birthday with some cake.

Lucille's own childhood wasn't the easiest. After her father died when she was just 4 years old, she lived with her grandparents while her mother worked. “She didn’t have much of a happy-go-lucky, bonded childhood with her own mother," Lucie later explained to KCRW.com. "So when she decided to have kids, she was kind of flying blind, as most of us are.”

In 1953, the trio became a family of four when Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV (known as Desi Arnaz Jr.) was born.

Desi, holding a "Proud Papa" mug, looks into his newborn son's eyes.

Fun fact: Lucille and Desi Jr. appeared on the cover of the first-ever national issue of TV Guide!

Lucille was more serious than her iconic TV character. "She was very responsible, took care of business. She worried a lot about her household, whether the kids were being taken care of, if the garage was being cleaned out, homework was being done," Lucie shared with the Television Academy Foundation.

The couple, along with Desi's parents, celebrate their son's christening.

With both parents working so much, Lucie and Desi Jr. learned to appreciate every little moment. "Home and being together is a fond and favorite memory—if she made me a grilled cheese sandwich and we sat in the living room and we talked, that is a great moment in my memory," Lucie said in a 2019 Good Morning America interview.

"I think because she was a working mom in the 50s, there probably was a lot of guilt involved in not being home with the kids," Lucie speculated in an interview for the Television Academy Foundation.

The actress loved to cook for her family when she got the chance. "She really enjoyed when she could get in the kitchen and make chicken and dumplings or something, but there wasn’t a whole lot of time for that,” Lucie told the Television Academy Foundation.

Amid her many career accomplishments, Lucille said that it was her family that made her happiest. “Just having a career, that would be very boring," she told The Washington Star. "The best part of my life is having children. They keep you young. They keep you worried longer."

Though working together put a strain on their relationship, the couple always shared a mutual feeling of love and respect. “Lucy was the show. Viv, Fred, and I were just props. Damn good props, but props nevertheless. P.S. I Love Lucy was never just the title," Desi wrote toward the end of his life.

Desi Jr. was always interested in music, even from an early age. That terrified Lucille, who worried it had the potential to pull him into the drug scene. “His peers were so much older. There were a great many things I worried about constantly. I’ve never had a problem, but they were exposed to it,” she told The Washington Star.

Desi reportedly struggled with alcoholism, gambling, and infidelity which, according to Lucille, caused a lot of hurt in the family. “My husband would frequently have temper outbursts in front of the children, and this was very bad," the actress told the court during their divorce hearing, according to the 2011 biography Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

In 1959, “I made my last effort toward a relationship with Desi. We took the children … and 48 pieces of luggage to Europe: Paris, Rome, Capri, and London," the actress wrote in her autobiography. "The kids saw and heard way too much. … Desi and I came back from the trip not speaking."