Desi Arnaz Secretly Named He and Lucy’s First Child While She Was Sleeping

When Lucille Ball gave birth to her first child with husband Desi Arnaz, it was dad who named the baby — and Ball didn’t even know the name until it was already on the birth certificate.

In his new book Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television, biographer Todd S. Purdum writes that Ball had picked out two names for the couple’s future children by 1943 — writing letters to her husband that she signed, “Susan and Desi Jr.”

But Ball suffered a series of miscarriages in the earlier part of their marriage, 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.

Purdum writes: “Thrilled to be a mother at last, Lucy asked to see the newborn the moment her anesthesia wore off. ‘I want to see Susan!’ she told the nurse, using the name she believed that she and Desi had agreed on if the baby was a girl, after Lucy’s good friend, the young actress Susan Peters, who had been paralyzed from the waist down in a duck-shooting accident. ‘You mean Lucie?’ the nurse replied. Without consulting her, Desi had already written Lucie Desiree on the birth certificate, naming the little girl for her mother and maternal grandmother. Lucy was surprised but didn’t make a fuss. The name was, after all, a compliment she could hardly resist.”

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 was even incorporated into the couple’s show, I Love Lucy, and while he had his own foray into showbiz early on, he later retreated from the public eye and now rarely speaks to the press.

Desi Jr., 72, and Lucie, 73, both spoke to Purdum for his book, offering a rare window into their lives as the children of one of the most iconic couples in show business.

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

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Ball and Arnaz met in 1940, when the two were both cast in the musical comedy Too Many Girls. Theirs was a whirlwind relationship, with the two getting engaged later that same year and marrying just one day later. But arguments and affairs marred the marriage, and they briefly separated in 1944, when Ball filed for divorce and left the couple’s shared ranch in Chatsworth, Calif.

One night before they were to head to divorce court, the two reconciled — but Ball still went to court the next morning, ultimately returning directly to Arnaz’s arms and thereby invalidating the divorce in the eyes of the law.

The stars would divorce for good in 1960, after 20 years of marriage.  

“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.