In 1951 Lucille Ball teamed up with her Cuban-born, bandleader husband, Desi Arnaz, to play the zany middle-class couple, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in television's prototypical situation comedy I Love Lucy. With near perfect timing and a genius for sightgags, redhaired Ball careened through 179 episodes of the original sitcom as a ditzy housewife; the 1953 episode on which she gave birth to "Little Ricky,' filmed to coincide with delivery of her real-life son, was said to attract more viewers than the concurrent inauguration of President Dwight D Eisenhower. Desilu Productions, which she and Arnaz founded in 1950, was a successful independent producer of television shows before Gulf Western acquired it.