Lucille Ball Found Out She Was Pregnant When Her Medical Records Were Leaked During Radio Broadcast

Lucille Ball once found out she was pregnant not from her doctor — but from a radio broadcaster who had been tipped off by a medical lab staffer.

In his new book Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television, biographer Todd S. Purdum writes that Ball was on tour with her husband Desi Arnaz in June 1950 when she learned about her pregnancy in between shows.

At the time, Ball and Arnaz were starring in a vaudeville act that required an “exhausting schedule” and “vigorous physical stunts” from Ball. Off stage, they were trying for a baby.

Writes Purdum: “In June 1950, during the New York run of their vaudeville show, Lucy was relaxing in her dressing room between shows listening to Walter Winchell’s radio broadcast when she heard him announce she was ‘infanticipating,’ the columnist’s lingo for ‘pregnant.’ He’d been tipped off by a medical lab informant before the Arnazes themselves had learned the news.”

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The author writes that the couple, upon learning the news, then “trimmed the planned length of the tour,” though it was in vain — just weeks later, Ball, suffered a miscarriage.

Purdum writes in his book that Ball had more than one miscarriage during her marriage to Arnaz, with physicians ultimately discovering they had inadvertently closed a fallopian tube while treating her for one of the miscarriages. After reversing that procedure, Ball ultimately became pregnant again in 1950, at age 39.

On July 17, 1951, Ball gave birth via caesarean section, to a baby girl: Lucie. Ball would later give birth a second time, in January 1953, to what was then arguably the most famous baby in America: Desi Jr.

Desi Jr.’s birth came as the couple was starring in the now-iconic sitcom I Love Lucy, which premiered in 1951 and even incorporated their second child’s birth.

In interviews with the author, the now-adult children explained how different their parents were. Lucie recalled how her mother “took it personally” when one of the children would disappoint her. Desi, by contrast, “was not like that,” she described.

“He would get really angry and blow his stack, and be loud, but then he’d be done and it would be like it never happened,” Lucie said, adding that Ball, by contrast, “would get personally offended by childhood behavior or what you said, because you should have known not to say that somehow, even though no one’s taught you what to say.”

“And she would emotionally separate from you for however long she wanted to. And it would be sometimes days, sometimes weeks,” she added.

While audiences were delighted by his parents’ relationship, Desi Jr. told Purdum that behind the scenes, Lucy and Desi were incredibly argumentative

“It wasn’t good for anyone,” Desi Jr. told the author in the book. “And we’ll always remember when they sat us down and said, ‘Look, you know, things aren’t working.’ I mean, I remember word for word.”

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television (Simon & Schuster) is now available.