Random Fascinating Facts About Lucille Ball You Probably Didn't Know (16 items)

(#9) She Wasn’t Allowed To Say She Was Pregnant

When Ball was expecting her second child, she and her husband, Desi Arnaz, wrote her pregnancy into the show, making her one of the first women to have her pregnancy depicted on air. It might not seem like a big deal now, but in the '50s, it was fairly controversial. Because, in the era of poodle skirts and sexual repression, anything even remotely linked to sex was controversial. However, Ball's pregnancy didn’t spur a scandal – quite the opposite, actually. It helped rake in the viewers.
However, while the network allowed Ball to appear on the show very visibly with child, she and the rest of the cast weren't allowed to say the word “pregnant” on air. CBS thought the word was too vulgar.
(#3) She Insisted On Having Arnaz Play Her Onscreen Husband

It’s difficult to imagine the lines “Lucy, I’m home!” being delivered by someone other than Desi Arnaz, but if CBS and I Love Lucy’s sponsor Philip Morris had had their way, that might have been the case. They didn’t believe the American public would buy a marriage between Lucy, “a red-blooded American girl,” and a "foreigner," even though Ball and Arnaz had already been married for ten years in real life. Luckily, Ball stuck to her guns, insisting that Arnaz be signed on as her co-star, and the network caved.
(#14) She Hoarded Pencils

When Ball was young, her family was so poor that she could not afford a pencil for school. This poverty affected her well into her adult life. She would collect pencils from her studio offices and even had a closet filled with unopened pencil packages. When an executive asked her about the hoarding, she supposedly said, “If when you were a little boy you didn’t have a pencil in school, the way I didn’t, you would understand.”
(#8) She Was Not A Natural Redhead

Apart from her unparalleled comedic talent, Ball was also known for her iconic red hair. However, as they joked about on the show, red wasn’t her natural hair color. Ball was born a brunette and sported a blonde 'do during her modeling career, but she dyed her hair at her hair dresser's suggestion, a woman who once told Ball that her "hair is brown, but the soul is on fire." Ball kept her signature hair dye safely locked away in a garage safe.
(#13) She Was Responsible For The Longest Recorded Laugh In Television History

Considering the fact that Ball is still thought of by many as the Queen of Comedy, it’s no surprise that I Love Lucy holds the record for one of the longest audience laughs in history. The laugh in question can be heard on the episode “Lucy Does the Tango.” The audience laughs for a total of 64 joyous seconds.
(#6) She Was Registered With The Communist Party

In 1953, Ball’s family was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for their ties to the Communist Party. During her testimony, Ball told the committee that she and the rest of her family only registered as Communists to appease their dying grandfather who was an ardent supporter of the socialist cause. At the end of her testimony, she was told that she was cleared of all suspicion.

Arnaz told reporters that “[the] only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that is not legitimate.”