The 2013 article explained further: “Up to that point, no character was allowed to be pregnant on TV - even the word ‘pregnant’ was banned - so interest in Lucy's groundbreaking mommyhood was huge. on Jan. 19, 1953, was timed to coincide by cesarean with that of the character of Little Ricky on the show, which was an unprecedented publicity success with 44 million fans tuning in, equivalent to 72% of all American households at the time.

The whole of the country was in love with Lucy and thrilled with the addition to the family. The interest in the arrival of the TV stork was impossible to exaggerate. Twenty years after her first trip to the desert, Lucy was a household name, thanks to her groundbreaking television show. Publicity also came naturally to both Lucy and Desi, who together built an unlikely empire, the story of which has been recreated in a Hollywood movie and recounted in several documentaries of late.

(Lucy and Frank became good friends and would remain so for the rest of her life.) From her first arrival, she was a constant presence here. She’d come at first as an aspiring actress in the early 1930s and was photographed at the El Mirador Hotel where a young and exceedingly handsome Frank Bogert was the publicity man. The diminutive magazine made a fortune for its creator Walter Annenberg, who would find his way to the desert and build his iconic Sunnylands home in Rancho Mirage in the early 1960s.īut Lucille Ball was already here. TV Guide was eventually distributed to some 20 million American households and was valued at more than $3 billion dollars. The national version of the digest-sized guide bearing his baby picture launched the magazine. It's a lot of money, especially in 1953!' I can't imagine anyone thought I was worth that much. The inaugural issue of the national version of TV Guide published in April 1953 featured a photograph of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s newborn son emblazoned with a headline: “Lucy's $50,000,000 baby.” Sixty years later in 2013 when the grown-up baby boy, Desi Arnaz Jr., was interviewed, he mused that the headline was likely hyperbole.

Desi and lucy