Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's daughter reveals the truth about her parents' split: "Their divorce was horrible"
While their fairytale romance was perfect, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's daughter Lucie Arnaz has revealed that the divorce was just as ugly. In a recent interview with Closer Weekly, the 67-year-old actress has called their split "horrible". This revelation comes after about 60 years of her parent's publicized divorce. "They were fighting all the time when we were growing up. There was a lot of anger and screaming," she said before adding, "Their divorce was horrible. And then there was the alcoholism. I had preferred those things had never been there. We didn’t have any abuse, but we did go through some pretty hard stuff and that’s why my parents didn’t stay together."
However, the divorce was painful for Lucille too. She once described it as one of the darkest moments in her life. She said, "When I got divorced, I disappointed millions of people by doing so," she once said. Lucille and Desi met in 1940 on the RKO set of a picture called 'Too Many Girls'. She was 28 at the time with little to no success and he was a 23-year-old handsome Cuban born nightclub frontman. The two tied the knot six months later and the rest was history. CBS's 'Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter', talks about this couple's iconic relationship and its downfall.
"I would defy anyone to deny that they were one of the 20th century’s greatest couples," Carol Channing, a friend of the couple told Closer, "There's Adam and Eve, Caesar and Cleopatra, Napoleon and Josephine, George and Gracie... and Desi and Lucy."
However, in spite of the split the two very very close. They both found love again, eventually. Lucille married Gary Morton and Desi found his heart stolen by Edith Mack Hirsch. Paula Stewart, a close friend of Morton revealed that after she passed away he believed that she had finally found peace - with her beloved Desi. "After she died, [Gary] said to me, 'I guess she’s happy now; she’s with Desi,'". Desi himself was no different than Lucille - they were both lovelorn. Before his death, Desi once wrote, "'I Love Lucy' was never just the title [of the show.]"
The show starred Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. It followed the life of Lucy Ricardo (Ball), a middle class housewife in 1950s New York City, who either concocted plans with her best friends (Vance & Frawley) to appear alongside her bandleader husband Ricky Ricardo (Arnaz) in his nightclub, or tried numerous schemes to mingle with, or be a part of the upper class.
'I Love Lucy' director William Asher told People in 1991, "I think she always loved him. And there’s no question that he loved her always. Later, he married her double. Edie [Mack Hirsch] was a marvelous girl in her own right, but she sure as hell looked like Lucy."