One of her last television appearances was in 1989 on the 62nd Academy Awards, with Bob Hope, announcing the nominations and winner of Best Picture.
Originally interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California, USA, Columbarium of Radiant Dawn, Court of Remembrance. In 2003, she was re-interred in the Ball family plot in Lake View Cemetery, Jamestown, New York.
Pictured on a 34¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued 6 August 2001.
Profiled in "Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames" bu Ray Hagen and Laura Wagner (McFarland, 2004).
Profiled in book "Funny Ladies" by Stephen Silverman. [1999]
Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award posthumously in 1990.
Related by marriage to Sid Gould.
Related by marriage to Vanda Barra.
Second cousin of actress Suzan Ball.
She named herself Diane Belmont after the Belmont racetrack in New York.
She put her Chesterfield cigarettes in a Philip Morris package to please her sponsor (of the "I Love Lucy" (1951) show).
She signed her first promotional agreement with Max Factor in 1935 and again in 1942. Of all the stars, she had the longest association with the Max Factor company.
She was fired from working at an ice cream store because she kept forgetting to put bananas in banana splits.
She was proud of her family and heritage. Her genealogy can be traced back to the earliest settlers in the colonies. One direct ancestor, William Sprague (1609-1675), left England on the ship "Lyon's Whelp" for Plymouth/Salem, Massachusetts. They were from Upwey, Dorsetshire, England. William, along with his 2 brothers, helped to found the city of Charlestown, Massachusetts. Other Sprague relatives became soldiers in the Revolutionary War and 2 of them became governors of the state of Rhode Island.
Stricken by rheumatoid arthritis early in her modeling career and spent 2 years re-learning how to walk.
Suffered a miscarriage with her and Desi Arnaz's first child in 1942.
Suffered a second miscarriage with her and Desi Arnaz's second child in 1949.
Suffered third miscarriage in 1950 with husband Desi Arnaz.
The day she first met Desi Arnaz, she had a black eye and a torn dress from filming a fight scene for Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and he didn't find her at all attractive until they met again later in the day when she had changed into her own clothes and makeup. His oft-quoted first impression of her extraordinary beauty was "That's a hunk o' woman".
The original Desilu was her and Desi Arnaz's ranch in Chatsworth, CA. They used the same method of naming it that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford's did when they named their estate "Pickfair".