HUAC Loves Lucy
Lucille Ball, star of the enormously popular television show I Love Lucy, was interviewed in private by an investigator with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) about her political beliefs and associations on this day.
She had registered to vote as a Communist in 1936 and 1938, but was not otherwise active in the Communist Party or other left-wing political issues. The I Love Lucy show was the most popular television program at the time, and HUAC was apparently reluctant to publicly challenge her.
In the 1952 presidential election she voted for the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Her husband Desi Arnaz told people that “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that is not legitimate.”
For more on I Love Lucy, go to the shows where Lucille Ball in real life was pregnant and that fact was woven into the program — except that in the prudish standards of the day, the word “pregnant” was not used (December 8, 1952, and January 19, 1953).
Watch I Love Lucy on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC84yX2_tIA
Read: Stefan Kanfer, Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball (2003)
Learn more about HUAC: http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac