The Hollywood Heist: The Unsolved Mystery of Lucille Ball’s 40-Carat Ring.
What Happened to Lucille Ball’s Stolen 40-Carat Engagement Ring?
The legendary comic actress eloped with Desi Arnaz in 1940.
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Lucille Ball wearing her engagement ring from Desi Arnaz
Screen Archives
Lucille Ball initially received a brass wedding ring from Woolworth’s when she eloped with Desi Arnaz in 1940.
She later received a 40-carat aquamarine ring which she called her “engagement ring” and wore on the fourth finger of her left hand.
Ball’s aquamarine engagement ring was stolen from a hotel room in June 1950. It was never recovered.
Lucille Ball entertained a generation as one-half of powerhouse duo Lucy and Desi, starring in I Love Lucy with on and off-screen husband Desi Arnaz.
The couple had eloped in November 1940, about six months after they’d met on the set of musical comedy Too Many Girls. “Friends gave our marriage six months; me, I gave it a week,” Ball wrote in her posthumously published 1996 memoir, Love, Lucy. They ended up staying together for nearly 20 years, divorcing in May 1960.
Ball and Arnaz had fallen fast—so fast that certain important details slipped their minds the day of their elopement. "Desi had planned to marry me at the office of Justice of the Peace John J.O'Brien,” Ball recalled in her memoir. “He had forgotten only one thing, a wedding ring.”
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Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the 1956 film 'Forever Darling'.
United Archives/Getty Images
Arnaz’s business manager came to the rescue, running to Woolworth’s and buying the bride a brass ring to mark her nuptials. The justice of the peace drove them into the Connecticut countryside and they at last said their ‘I do’s.’
While the plain ring had priceless sentimental value, Arnaz later gifted Ball a cushion-cut diamond and a flashier sparkler which she called her “engagement ring” in her memoir. The latter was a stunning emerald-cut aquamarine set in a platinum band. It would vanish one night from Ball and Arnaz’s Chicago hotel room, never to be seen again.
From its unique design to its mysterious disappearance, here’s everything to know about Lucille Ball’s aquamarine engagement ring.
The ring featured an emerald-cut aquamarine on a platinum band.
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Lucille Ball flashing her 40-carat engagement ring in a 1942 promotional photo.
Eric Carpenter/John Kobal Foundation
In lieu of the traditional diamond, Arnaz gave his wife an aquamarine. It’s unknown if Ball had any input in the ring-shopping process, but it’s popularly believed that Arnaz chose the colored stone to complement her blue eyes, per People. It also happened to be the actor’s birthstone, as he was born in March 1917.
Ball’s engagement ring had an emerald-cut stone. The classic style was a popular choice for A-listers of her era, with fellow actresses Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor famously receiving emerald-cut diamonds. Of course, the five-time Emmy winner’s ring had a key difference from theirs—its uncommon choice of jewel.
The aquamarine jewel was 40 carats.
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Lucille Ball in a 1944 portrait.
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group
In her posthumous 1996 memoir, the Television Hall of Fame inductee described her bauble as “the forty-carat aquamarine engagement ring Desi had given me,” confirming its weight.
Neither Ball nor Arnaz confirmed the cost of the mega-carat piece, but it undoubtedly tips the scale in comparison with other celebrity stones. Modern celebs who’ve received engagement rings over 30 carats include Jeff Bezos’s bride, Lauren Sánchez, and pop superstar Mariah Carey.
It was stolen from a hotel room in 1950, along with $6K in other jewelry.
Halfway through her marriage to the bandleader, Ball lost her colossal engagement ring. Ball recounts the morning of the alleged robbery, which was never solved, in her memoir. She describes how “[a]ll my jewelry was gone,” including the aquamarine ring.
According to Michael Karol’s Lucy A to Z: The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, a newspaper reported on the robbery on June 30, 1950. The quoted article from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph described how “$6,000 in jewelry” was taken from the couple’s Chicago hotel room while they were out at night. The stolen goods included the ring, a 62-carat aquamarine pendant, and other gold pieces.
What happened to Lucille Ball’s three engagement rings?
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Lucille Ball at Ciro's nightclub in West Hollywood, circa 1950, wearing her engagement ring.
Archive Photos
None of the jewelry taken in the 1950 theft was ever recovered, and no arrests were made. The 40-carat aquamarine may have been broken up and resold.
After the theft, Ball continued wearing oversized rings—notably flaunting a hefty heart-shaped bauble at the 1953 Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony—but may never have received an engagement ring from her second husband, comedian Gary Morton. (While in her memoir she describes him proposing twice before she said yes, she doesn’t mention any specific jewels marking the occasion.)
Little is known about the cushion-cut diamond ring Ball received sometime after her elopement. She was photographed wearing it in 1943, with the image’s original caption describing it as “the ring chosen by herself as a Hollywood bride to be.” The jewel may have been left to Morton or her children following her death in 1989.
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Lucille Ball wearing her cushion-cut diamond ring in 1943.
The same fate likely held for her sentimental brass ring from Woolworth’s. Despite receiving two gorgeous upgrades, the legendary comic actress remained fond of her simple wedding piece. In Love, Lucy, she wrote that “that little discolored brass ring rested among the diamonds and emeralds in my jewel case for years.”
Nicole Kidman wore a replica of the aquamarine ring while playing Ball in 2021.
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Nicole Kidman at the Australian premiere of "Being The Ricardos" on December 15, 2021.
Lisa Maree Williams
In Being the Ricardos, the 2021 Aaron Sorkin biopic about I Love Lucy’s star couple, Nicole Kidman donned a recreation of the 40-carat aquamarine engagement ring in several scenes.
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The film’s costume designer, Susan Lyall, told People she tried “to learn about Lucille and Desi and their story, not just their characters, but who they were as people and as a couple and as a marriage and as professionals and business people and artists, and all of those things that makes for this very, very complex duo."
Kidman also wore an original Eugene Joseff tassel necklace in the film that Ball had worn in a few ‘40s publicity photos, according to a Film Review Daily interview. Adorned in a mix of replica and real jewelry, Kidman sparkled through her performance as the fiery haired comedian. She won the Golden Globe for Best Actress and was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for the same role.
