KEITH THIBODEAUX

December 1, 1950

Keith Thibodeaux (aka Richard Keith) was born on December 2, 1950, in Lafayette, Louisiana.

At the age of three he was making $500 a week touring as a drummer with the Horace Heidt Orchestra.

When he was five, his father took him to audition for the role of Little Ricky Ricardo on the hit sitcom “I Love Lucy”.

LUCILLE BALL: “Okay, he’s cute, but what does he do?” 

Keith played the drums for the Arnaz’s and landed the job immediately.

Fearing no one would be able to pronounce his Cajun last name, Desi Arnaz made his professional name Richard Keith, although it was never listed in the credits.

“I really think the person I identified with the most was Desi Arnaz because of his Latin culture; I was a Cajun from Louisiana and our cultures were very similar, and the fact that he was a percussionist and I was a percussionist, we had something in common. When he died I really took his death harder than anyone else’s.”  ~ Keith Thibodeaux 

When the half-hour series ended in 1957, Keith (as well as the rest of the main cast) was also seen in “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”.

Despite being part of twelve of the thirteen episodes, he was simply billed simply as Little Ricky in the opening credits.

Sadly, although Little Ricky made the jump to the hour-long format, his dog Fred did not.

All together, Thibodeaux appeared in 24 of the 26 episodes of season six of “I Love Lucy” starting with “Lucy and Bob Hope” (ILL S6;E1) and finishing with “The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue” (ILL S6;E26).

At Desilu Thibodeaux got to work with such show business legends as Bob Hope, Orson Welles, George ‘Superman’ Reeves, Claude Akins, Hedda Hopper, Tallulah Bankhead, Danny Thomas, Betty Grable, Milton Berle, Fred MacMurray, Maurice Chevalier, and Ernie Kovacs, among others.

Thibodeaux was treated like a member of the family by Lucy and Desi, who welcomed someone they knew and trusted to be friend to Little Lucie and Desi Jr.

At the same time, Keith’s father was also employed by Desilu, causing some friction in the close working relationship between the Thibodeauxs and the Arnazes.

This closeness also contributed to confusion between Desi Arnaz Jr. and Keith Thibodeaux. Seeing Keith in Lucy’s company so often, people assumed he was her son, not an actor.

He does not appear in the season six episodes “Lucy Wants To Move To The Country” (ILL S6;E15) and “Visitor from Italy” (ILL S6;E5).

Thibodeaux was the 8th and last performer to play the role of Little Ricky. He was preceded by a newborn infant James Ganzer, the Simmons Twins, the Mayer Twins, and two uncredited and unidentified ‘dream’ Little Rickys featured in “Ricky’s Old Girlfriend” (ILL S3;E12).

He also appeared in the “I Love Lucy” Christmas Show in December 1956, which included both newly filmed footage and clips from previous episodes. After not being part of the syndication package, it was discovered and colorized for primetime holiday viewing in 1989 and has been repeated annually.

Although on screen Little Ricky got to travel to Miami Beach and Cuba, the episodes were all filmed on the Desilu soundstage in Hollywood.

In 1964, Thibodeaux appeared for a split second in an episode of “The Lucy Show” titled “Lucy is a Process Server” (TLS S2;E27). Initially he was featured in a comedic sequence at a train station in which a vending machine malfunctions. However, the scene was cut when the show ran too long. After the episode was edited, Thibodeaux is only seen for a moment, entering the station. Nevertheless, Thibodeaux remained in the credits listed as Richard Keith, the actor who played “Little Boy.”

It is possible that his very brief wordless cameo on this episode of “The Lucy Show” was timed to capitalize on him being on the Desilu lot to film “The Andy Griffith Show.”  CBS broadcast repeats of “The Lucy Show” on April 6 and April 13, 1964. Coincidentally, on April 6 “The Andy Griffith Show” (which followed Lucy on CBS) broadcast an episode that starred Richard Keith (aka Little Ricky) as Opie’s pal Johnny Paul Jason.

After his parents separated in 1966, Keith, his mother, and siblings moved back to Louisiana where he graduated from Lafayette High School. He left Louisiana for Mississippi in late 1969 to pursue a career with the band David and the Giants.

In 1976, he met and married a ballet dancer Kathy Denton. Thibodeaux, his wife and daughter Tara (born 1979), eventually settled in Jackson, Mississippi, where they founded Ballet Magnficat in 1986.

Thibodeaux’s autobiography Life After Lucy was published in 1994.