TomKat Has Kitten, Suri

Word of the world’s most famous silent birth has finally been heard. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, the public lovebirds dubbed TomKat by the media, “joyously welcomed the arrival” of a baby girl Tuesday, said Cruise spokesman Arnold Robinson. The girl, named Suri, came into the world at 7 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 inches long. Her name has its origins in Hebrew, meaning “princess,” or in Persian, meaning “red rose,” Robinson said in a statement. “Both mother and daughter are doing well,” the publicist said.

Details about the birth weren’t disclosed, but it had been planned to take place as a silent procedure under the tenants of the Church of Scientology, to which both Cruise and Holmes belong. Scientologists believe words spoken during times of pain are recorded by the “reactive mind” and can cause potential problems for both mother and child.

Suri’s birth, which happened in Los Angeles although the exact location was not disclosed, generated a huge noise among the world of Cruise-Holmes watchers. “Yay, yay, yay,” said actress and fellow Scientologist Kirstie Alley. “Bring her over so I can meet her.” “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno announced the birth to his studio audience. “I just got a phone call that Tom Cruise had a baby girl about two minutes ago. No joke,” he said.

Suri is the 27-year-old actress’ first child. Cruise, 43, has an adopted daughter and son â€” Isabella, 13, and Connor, 11 â€” with ex-wife Nicole Kidman.

In a strange twist of fate, Suri was born on the same day actress Brooke Shields gave birth to her daughter, Grier Hammond Henchy. Shields and Cruise had a public spat last year after he criticized the actress for taking antidepressants following the birth of her first child. Cruise, echoing the position of Scientology, said depression can be treated with exercise and vitamins rather than drugs. Shields dismissed the actor’s remarks as a “ridiculous rant.”

AP television writer Bob Thomas likens the event to the birth of “Little Ricky.”

The hoopla over the baby girl born Tuesday to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes recalls another highly anticipated birth 53 years ago â€” arguably, one of the most-covered births of the 20th century. Actually it was two births â€” one in a hospital and one on a TV sitcom. On Jan. 19, 1953, Lucille Ball gave birth to a boy named Desiderio Arnaz IV at Cedars of Lebanon hospital in Los Angeles. That evening, Lucy Ricardo, Ball’s character on the hit TV series “I Love Lucy,” had a son called Little Ricky before a record 44 million television viewers in one of modern media’s first examples of art and life intermeshing.

The Cruise-Holmes pregnancy and birth has attracted media attention around the globe â€” from online blogs to cable news shows. Those elements didn’t exist in 1953, but the Arnaz baby was a big story in newspapers worldwide, and on radio, too. And just as they did outside the Cruise estate in Beverly Hills, media types also gathered at Cedars of Lebanon waiting for word of the Arnaz birth.

The hugely popular series “I Love Lucy” was thrown into a turmoil at the start of its second season in the autumn of 1952 when Lucille Ball announced she and co-star Desi Arnaz were expecting a baby. The production team agreed the only solution for the show was to have Lucy Ricardo have a baby, too. The bosses at CBS were alarmed. No series character had ever been pregnant before. In fact, the word “pregnant” was banned from the network. The early “Lucy” episodes that season brought a scattering of complaints about how showing pregnancy on TV was in bad taste. Aware of a possible backlash, producer Jess Oppenheimer arranged for a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Protestant minister to review the scripts and attend the filmings. The word “pregnant,” for example, was substituted in the dialogue with “expecting a baby.”

As the real-life delivery approached, Oppenheimer and writers Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. faced another challenge: What sex should baby Ricardo be? One suggestion was to film two endings to the birth episode â€” one with a baby boy, one with a girl â€” and at the last minute, insert the ending that matched Ball’s real baby. Ultimately, Desi Arnaz decided the TV baby would be a boy, whether it matched the real one or not. “Lucy gave me one girl (Lucy Arnaz), she might give me another,” Desi Arnaz reasoned. “This is my only chance to get a son. You give me a boy on TV.”

As it turned out, timing of the TV baby was easy: Ball was having a Caesarean section. Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV was born in the morning, and Little Ricky Ricardo was born that night. The news was flashed around the world, including to countries like Japan, where “I Love Lucy” was yet to appear. Little Ricky became a character on the show, acted alternately by twin boys, not Desi Jr.

The comparison is, frankly, absurd. We no longer live in a three network world where half the country is watching a single show. Everybody was following Lucy’s birth; a relative handful care much about Cruise and Holmes. Indeed, a sizable number of Americans likely have no clue who Holmes is.

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TomKat Has Kitten, Suri

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