Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars

by Kliph Nesteroff

I Love Lucy was the most popular television comedy in America. When its star, Lucille Ball, was expecting a baby in real life, a storyline was proposed about Lucy Ricardo being in a family way. Desi Arnaz, who produced the show and played the Cuban bandleader-husband, received immediate resistance from the sponsor, Philip Morris. “There’s no way you can do that,” they told him. “You cannot show a pregnant woman on television.” “She’s pregnant,” Arnaz insisted. “There is no way we can hide that fact from the audience. We have already signed the contracts. This is the number-one show on the air. There is only one way to do it—Lucy Ricardo will have a baby.” Getting nowhere, Arnaz wrote a letter directly to Alfred Lyon, the UK-based chairman of Philip Morris. He reminded him that I Love Lucy had made huge profits for the tobacco company, and now his American underlings were putting that at risk. Lyon sent a directive to his American representatives, “To Whom It May Concern: Don’t fuck around with the Cuban.”