15 Fun Facts About ‘I Love Lucy’ You Never Heard Before

I Love Lucy is one of the most enduring and beloved shows ever, but how much do you really know about the black and white comedy series (later colorized) that took viewers by storm? Though the show was on the air from 1951 to 1957, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley still reach around 40 million American viewers annually. It seems the timeless classic is always on somewhere, and generations of worldwide fans can’t get enough of it. Want to test your series’ knowledge? Keep reading!

1. My way or the highway!

In the summer of 1950, Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz were on a mission to make CBS and potential sponsors believe that they could work cohesively as a comedy duo. CBS was on the fence about Arnaz playing her husband, believing that the public wouldn’t believe the character “Lucy” would have a foreign husband. This might be hard to fathom today where diversity is more accepted, but Ball and Arnaz had a plan up their sleeves. She performed during the Desi Arnaz Ochestra tour in a kind of vaudevillian skit called “The Professor” and audiences loved it so much that it quelled the network’s fears about having Arnaz grace the screen alongside Ball, with his exotic features and Cuban accent.

2. Are you sure three cameras are enough?

Multi-camera shows are a dime a dozen nowadays, but I Love Lucy got the ball rolling as the first TV series to use the three-camera format. This works best for shows like this one, where the episodes are to be aired soon after shooting. By doing this, crew was able to get multiple shots in one take without missing any of the dynamic comedic action.

3. We’re number 1!

Many television series have a tendency to get out of the gates with a running start, amazing ratings and tons of viewers, only to taper off season after season. I Love Lucy ended its six-year run at number one in the Nielsen ratings, proclaiming to the world that the instant classic had every right to be revered as such. Other shows that have achieved this kind of success include The Andy Griffith Show (1968) and Seinfeld (1998).