This made Lucille Ball, in November 1962, the first woman to run a major Hollywood studio. The historical significance of this was not widely noted at the time — the trade press reported the transaction as a business story, not as a milestone — but it was a genuine first. The major studios were run by men. The independent production companies were run by men. Desilu, as of 1962, was run by the woman who had recently been the most watched person on American television.
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## The Studio in the 1960s: Before Star Trek Arrived
The Desilu that Ball took sole control of in 1962 was a substantial operation with structural vulnerabilities that the success of *I Love Lucy* had masked.
The studio’s most important asset was its physical plant: the sound stages, production facilities, and backlot acreage that Arnaz had assembled through the RKO purchase and subsequent investments. These facilities generated rental income from other producers who shot their shows at Desilu’s studios. *The Andy Griffith Show*, *The Dick Van Dyke Show*, and *Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.* were among the series that filmed at Desilu facilities in the 1960s without being Desilu productions.
The rental income was relatively stable, but it was not what made a studio valuable in the television era. What made a production company valuable was owning successful shows — holding the rights to series that could be sold in syndication, licensed internationally, and replayed across markets for years after initial broadcast. The lesson of *I Love Lucy* had been precisely this: by owning the film prints and negotiating ownership of the content, Desilu had created an asset that generated income long after the show’s original broadcast run ended.