Desi Arnaz: Singer, husband, dad, and the person who “invented” TV

Within the fall of 1951, tv audiences had been launched to a present biz-obsessed redhead and her bandleader husband, performed by the real-life couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Whereas Lucy was undeniably the star on-camera, off-camera it was Desi, a refugee from Cuba with no connection to the world of leisure, who would change the way in which tv labored. 

Essentially the most vital factor about Arnaz that folks do not know, based on biographer Todd Purdum, is that he and his colleagues made the choice to movie “I Love Lucy” on 35mm black-and-white movie, “making potential its preservation, and basically the invention of the rerun, after which syndication gross sales, and the entire trendy manner that tv economics work.”

One of the hanging revelations in Purdum’s guide, “Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Tv,” is why the present was even created. “It was partly created to save lots of their marriage,” he mentioned. “Desi was on the street, which enabled him to philander, and that bothered Lucy an excellent deal. She’d form of reached the boundaries of her profession in motion pictures, and he or she’d gotten a radio present known as ‘My Favourite Husband,’ through which she performed a form of a zany housewife, married to the fifth vice chairman of a financial institution. And CBS then mentioned, ‘We might like this present to make the transition to tv.’ And Lucy mentioned, ‘Properly, I solely wish to do a tv present if Desi may be in it with me and play my husband.'”

CBS and sponsors had been nervous that audiences would not settle for them as a pair. (By no means thoughts they’d been married for ten years.) Desi and Lucy additionally needed to shoot the present in Los Angeles, the place they’d laid down roots. Again then, New York Metropolis was the hub of tv manufacturing.

“The whole lot was concerning the household,” mentioned daughter Lucie Arnaz, who was born simply six weeks earlier than her dad and mom shot the primary episode of “I Love Lucy.” “It was at all times about, ‘No, no, no. We’ve got a plan. We wanna be collectively. We wanna be in California.’ Which is loopy once you’re no one. He wasn’t an enormous star. She was an honest star, you understand, B footage. And that they’d put their foot down like that and say, ‘Properly, no, we do not wanna do this’? It is loopy!”

However Desi and Lucy had been keen to gamble. CBS agreed to their phrases solely after the celebrities agreed to a pay reduce. However in return, Arnaz demanded that the couple personal the rights to the present. The gamble paid off: with the very first episode, America fell in love with Lucy and Desi.

Lucy was 39. The person born Desiderio Arnaz was 33, and a world away from his upbringing as an solely little one to a distinguished household in Santiago, Cuba. His father had been mayor of town; his mom, the daughter of a cofounder of Bacardi Rum. Through the Cuban Revolution of 1933, the household misplaced every little thing. Teenaged Desi and his father fled to Miami, and lived in a rat-infested warehouse.

He referred to himself as a refugee, not an immigrant. “He was dislocated; he was not a voluntary arrival on our shores,” mentioned Purdum. “He got here right here because of tragedy, actually. And I feel he by no means acquired over that.”

However he may play the guitar. Employed by bandleader Xavier Cugat, Desi launched nightclub audiences to the Afro-Cuban conga, and what turned his signature music, “Babalu.”

In 1940, Arnaz jumped to the massive display screen in “Too Many Women,” the place he met his match in co-star Lucille Ball. The 2 married six months later.

“I Love Lucy” would make the couple very wealthy. It was Desi’s thought to purchase RKO Studios, which he and Lucy renamed Desilu, which turned a tv producing juggernaut, with extra sound phases than MGM, twentieth Century Fox or Warner Brothers. “That was their peak,” mentioned Purdum. “After which, it went downhill from there due to Desi’s consuming, actually.”

However consuming wasn’t his solely habit. “Individuals say he had affairs,” mentioned Lucie. “He by no means had an affair. He did not even know these dames’ names, you understand? They had been hookers.

“He beloved my mom. He beloved his household. It was a really distinctive, bizarre drawback to have, and I feel that is the explanation she stayed with him so lengthy, is that she understood it. I do not suppose I may do what she did. However one way or the other on the time, with what they’d, with what they wanted from one another, they caught it out so long as they may.”

In 1960, when Lucie Arnaz was eight and her brother, Desi Jr., was seven, America’s most well-known couple introduced the tip of their present – and their marriage. 

“We had been at their home in Palm Springs,” Lucie recalled. “And so they mentioned that, ‘We love one another, however the being-husband-and-wife half is damaged. And we will not dwell collectively anymore.’ And I keep in mind that my brother mentioned, ‘But when it is damaged, cannot you simply repair it? Cannot you set stuff on it and repair it?’ And so they mentioned, ‘I do not suppose so.’

“The reality of it’s, Mo, they had been happier after they acquired divorced. The screaming and the arguing and all that stuff stopped,” Lucie mentioned.

I requested, “And once you had been advised, did you form of instinctively change into protecting of your little brother?”

“I want you’d been my therapist rising up, Mo!” Lucie laughed. “I feel largely I form of was very protecting of my dad, consider it or not. I felt actually sorry for my dad.”

Why? “I do not know. I feel as a result of I felt like he was the one which acquired ousted. We had been nonetheless in the home. And I felt like he acquired a lotta the blame. Regardless that I used to be too younger to know what it was all about, I knew that he had issues. I knew that he would, you understand, drink generally. However that actually turned worse once I was older, once I was, like, an adolescent. However I simply felt dangerous for him.”

Each Ball and Arnaz remarried, he to household buddy Edith Hirsch. Lucy went on to star in a number of TV reveals. Desi produced the sequence “The Moms-in-Regulation,” wrote an autobiography, and ultimately acquired sober with the assistance of his son, himself a recovered drug abuser.

“It was improbable,” mentioned Lucie. “It, like, my biggest reminiscence of him to this present day, to have him, the man who mentioned, ‘I do not air my soiled laundry in entrance of different folks,’ after which when he lastly made his choice after his spouse, Edie, darling, great Edie died, he mentioned, ‘I am unable to do that anymore.’ And he acquired up and mentioned, ‘My title is Desi and I am an alcoholic.’ And that is my proudest second, that he stood up subsequent to me and I watched him do this, to take duty and to attempt to resolve it.”

Lower than a yr later, Arnaz was recognized with lung most cancers. “My mom got here down to go to my dad in Del Mar when he was sick,” mentioned Lucie. “And I ran and acquired as many VHS tapes as I may discover, and so they did sit there for a pair hours and take a look at outdated ‘I Love Lucy’ reveals and chuckle and bear in mind.”

On November 30, 1986, what would’ve been their marriage ceremony anniversary, Desi and Lucy spoke for a ultimate time.

“He was very, very sick,” mentioned Lucie. “And I mentioned, ‘I am gonna put him on the telephone now, so say what you wanna say.’ And I simply held the telephone to his ear. And all I may hear her saying was, ‘I really like you,’ like, 5 instances in a row. And he listened and he mentioned, ‘I really like you too, honey.’ After which he mentioned, ‘Good luck together with your reveals.'”

Two days later, Desi Arnaz died at 69.

We finish with the person himself, throughout a 1954 tribute hosted by Ed Sullivan, reflecting on his extraordinary journey: “We got here to this nation and we did not have a cent in our pockets. From cleansing canary cages to this night time right here in New York, it is a lengthy methods. And I do not suppose there’s another nation on this planet that will offer you that chance. I wish to say, ‘Thanks, thanks, America.'”

READ AN EXCERPT: “Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Tv” by Todd S. Purdum

      
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Story produced by Kay Lim. Editor: Joseph Frandino.

      
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