According to Lucie Arnaz, daughter of I Love Lucy costars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, it wasn’t affairs that ended her famous parents’ marriage, though she said dad Desi was unfaithful.
“People say he had affairs,” Lucie said in a CBS News Sunday Morning interview that aired on June 15. “He never had an affair. He didn’t even know these dames’ names. You know, they were hookers.”
But Desi’s infidelity wasn’t for a lack of affection for Ball or their two children, Lucie and her brother, Desi Arnaz Jr. “He loved my mother, he loved his family,” Lucie said. “It was a very unique, weird problem to have. And I think that’s the reason she stayed with him so long, is that she understood it. I don’t think I could do what she did. … But somehow, at the time, with what they had, with what they needed from each other, they stuck it out as long as they could.”
In 1960, Desi and Ball sat with Lucie, then 8, and Desi Jr., then 7, at the family’s house in Palm Springs, California, to tell them they were separating.
“They said that, ‘We love each other, but the being-husband-and-wife part is broken, and we can’t live together anymore,’” recalled Lucie, pictured below. “And I remember that my brother said, ‘But if it’s broken, can’t you just fix it? Can’t you put stuff on it and fix it?’ And they said, ‘I don’t think so.’ The truth of it is … they were happier after they got divorced. The screaming and the arguing and all that stuff stopped.”
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Amid the divorce, Lucie felt “very protective” of her dad, saying he “was the one that got ousted” and “got a lot of the blame.”
Desi and Ball remained close after the split and until his 1986 death from lung cancer. Lucie was there for the last time her parents spoke, two days before his death, on what would have been their 46th wedding anniversary.
“He was very, very sick. And I said, ‘I’m going to put him on the phone now, so say what you want to say.’ And I just held the phone to his ear, And all I could hear her saying was, ‘I love you.’ Like, five times in a row. And he listened, and he said, ‘I love you, too, honey.’ And then he said, ‘Good luck with your shows.’”