Lucille ball star trek snopes

Best known as the wacky physical comédienne who starred in four successive series, Lucille Ball was also a Hollywood powerhouse and the force behind Desilu studios, where everything from The Andy Griffith Show to I Spy were filmed, and where Star Trek was born.

But just how much did Lucy have to do with launching the starship Enterprise into the final frontier?

This topic arrived to us by way of an August 6, 2020 tweet that has been widely shared (including attracting the attention of both William Shatner and George Takei’s twitter accounts):

It’s a great story.  It’s wonderful clickbait.

But, as we always like to ask: is it true?

First things first—Star Trek as we know it would not exist without Lucille Ball. On November 9, 1962, she purchased Desi Arnaz’s stock interest in Desilu Productions and, with 52% of the company’s stock, became the majority owner of the studio.[2] With her ex-husband’s departure, Ball also became the company’s president.