Lucille Ball Made America Laugh for Decades While Hiding a Private Pain

Lucille Ball's life wasn't always as perfect as it seemed to be on TV.

In 1960, Lucy faced a devastating divorce from her on and off screen leading man, Desi Arnaz.

“She was playing a geisha in a show and wearing the white makeup,” Lucy’s best friend and longtime costar Carole Cook tells 'Closer.' “She had been crying so much that her eyes were all red, and she looked like a rabbit. It was a very rough time in her life."

Lucy and Desi in January 1952.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only tough patch Lucy — who passed away in April 1989 — had hit in her 77 years.

From her impoverished childhood through her stormy romance with Desi and less than idyllic second marriage to Gary Morton, Lucy endured her share of heartbreak. Yet she always spread happiness to others, even when she wasn’t feeling it herself.

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“Just being with her was a party,” her friend Lee Tannen, author of 'I Loved Lucy: My Friendship With Lucille Ball,' tells 'Closer.' “I wish she were around today — not a day goes by I don’t think of her.”

Now her loved ones are sharing their cherished memories of the Lucy nobody else knew.

Lucy on 'I Love Lucy' in May 1952.

Born on August 6, 1911, in Jamestown, NY, Lucy was shuffled among relatives after her dad, an electrician, tragically died of typhoid fever when she was three-years-old.

“She used to run away from home all the time when she was young,” Wanda Clark, Lucy’s personal secretary, tells 'Closer.' Like her future alter ego, Lucy Ricardo, “she’d go to NYC looking for work, trying to break into show business, but she’d always come back because home was so important to her.”

To read the full story on Lucille Ball, pick up the new issue of 'Closer Weekly,' on newsstands now!