In 1951 Desilu was formed by Desi and Lucy with $5,000 as the production company that filmed the half-hour television comedy series "I Love Lucy." Lucille Ball had starred in a radio show called "My Favorite Husband." The company started with 12 empoyees.
The show debuted on CBS on October 15, 1951. In January 1953 the episode featuring the birth of Little Ricky drew 44 million viewers, compared to the Eisenhower Inauguration's 29 million viewers.
Throughout the entire six-year run, the characters Fred and Ethel Mertz were Ricky and Lucy's older next-door neighbors. They were played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance. The four characters were intimately close. Fred and Ethel joined Ricky and Lucy on a trip to Hollywood in the fourth season. In the final season both couples left their New York apartments to become rural neighbors in Connecticut.
The comedy series was groundbreaking for women. The Lucy character challenged traditional female household roles. Lucy constantly found herself in situations where women did not belong in 1950s culture. Much of the humor centers on her awkwardness as she tries to break out of the typical housewife lifestyle, which creates friction with her husband.
For the first four seasons the consistent team of writers for "I Love Lucy" were producer Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll. Pugh and Carroll wrote the scripts while Oppenheimer edited them. In the fifth season Oppenheimer left for a job at NBC. A secondary team of Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf supported Pugh and Carroll in the fifth and sixth seasons.
By the mid-'50s the show brought Desilu annual income of $1 million. Desilu made a deal to sell the rights of the show to CBS for $4.3 million in 1956. Desilu then acquired RKO Studios two years later for $6.5 million. After 180 episodes, the husband-and-wife team decided to end the series in 1957. During its six-year run it was the top show on television four of those seasons including its final year.
After the demise of the series the stars agreed to do 13 hour-long specials from 1957 through 1960. At the time these specials were called "The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show," then "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour." Ball went on to star in another TV series called "The Lucy Show."