LUCILLE & DESI Inside their REAL LOVE STORY

As I Love Lucy turns 70, the stars’ turbulent marriage is under the spotlight

In 1951, I Love Lucy swept onto US TV screens and became one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. And 70 years later, the world still loves Lucy.

But while queen of comedy Lucille Ball was undoubtedly the star of the show, she admitted there wouldn’t have been a show without her husband and co-star Desi Arnaz.

“TV started for me just as a means of keeping my husband Desi off the road,” Lucille once revealed. “He’d been on tour with his band since he got out of the army, and we were in our 11th year of marriage and wanted to have children.”

JEKYLL & HYDE

Their onscreen counterparts Lucy and Ricky Ricardo had the picture-perfect marriage, which swiftly turned Lucille and Desi into America’s sweethearts.

“We were an institution,” Lucille once declared. But the pair’s real-life, 20-year union was rocky, to say the least.

“He was like Jekyll and Hyde,” Lucy once said of her actor husband, with whom she had two children – Lucie Arnaz, now 69, and Desi Arnaz Jr, 68.

“He drank and he gambled, and he went around with other women. It was always the same – booze and broads. I had seen it coming. I was always hoping things would change. But Desi’s nature is destructive.”