For generations, reruns of I Love Lucy have kept Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in living rooms everywhere. Even people who never sat down to watch an episode know the iconic opening: a heart floating on velvet with the show's title written across it. It's one of television's most familiar images, almost as lasting as Lucy's wide-eyed reactions or Ricky's exasperated "Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do!" But that famous heart wasn't always part of the show. In fact, the real original opening has been missing from reruns for decades. The reason why says a lot about how television used to work—and how it changed forever. The first season of I Love Lucy didn't begin with a floating heart at all. Instead, audiences were greeted by animated versions of Lucy and Ricky. The two cartoon stick figures danced around a giant pack of Philip Morris cigarettes, occasionally climbing down ropes or pulling stunts to grab attention. The scene even came with an enthusiastic voice-over proudly announcing, "Philip Morris presents the Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show!" That animated opener wasn't a random creative decision. In the early 1950s, television shows were often directly tied to a single sponsor. For I Love Lucy, that sponsor was Philip Morris, and the opening sequence doubled as an advertisement. The animation itself came from William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who would later create Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and other cartoon classics. So why don't most viewers today remember Lucy swinging on cigarette packs? Part of the answer is sponsorship. Philip Morris dropped out in 1955, and the show no longer needed an animated ad attached to every episode. By the late 1950s, I Love Lucy had already proven itself as one of the biggest hits in television history, so CBS began rerunning the series with a new, more neutral opening. That's when the velvet heart appeared. The other part of the story came years later. In 1970, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act banned television ads for tobacco products. By that point, reruns were already using the heart design, but the law ensured the original cigarette-themed animations would never return to mainstream broadcasts. Image via Photo Images/Jupiter Images Even the music we now associate with Lucy had its own strange path. The signature I Love Lucy theme didn't appear in the very beginning. Instead, season one used classical music, a section of Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite, over the animated sponsor sequence. During the second season, the jaunty melody we all know was written by Eliot Daniel, though he asked to remain uncredited at first due to his contract with another studio. Only later did his name appear, thus allowing him to collect royalties for the rest of his life. The theme even had lyrics written for a season three episode where Ricky sings "I Love Lucy" to celebrate Lucy's birthday. That version never became the standard opening, but it showed how deeply the tune had already lodged itself in pop culture.
