Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz Pt. 1

Two of the most legendary names in entertainment, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz met on the set of Too Many Girls in 1940. But "too many girls" was exactly Desi's problem, and their rocky marriage was a tabloid sensation. Fortunately their creative partnership was unfazed, and together they revolutionized comedy and negotiated what's still considered the greatest deal in television history! That's only the beginning...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, Oh hey everybody, so awesome to have you
with us day. Yeah, this is a great I've been
waiting for this episode. Honestly since we got the show.
I was like, I can't wait to do this episode,
and it's one of the first ones that are researched.
It's been sitting in our bank for a while. God,
I love this story. I love these people. Really enjoyed

(00:21):
learning about them too, because it was like so many things. Anyway, well,
we'll get into that. It sounds like we recorded that
beforehand because we like are deliberately not saying their names
like everyone's. It's just a real spoil I don't know
what the episodes about. You haven't read the title and
you've clicked on it in your phone and you didn't
make a meme about it. Probably social media account. No,

(00:42):
we recorded all this like oh this, I love this
episode so much. We just recorded fifty of those and
we just stick him at the beginning of every episode.
It was very cool to learn about Jackie and Rachel.
It was so great. But no, seriously, this episode about
Ricky and Lucy is very exciting. That's not even right.

(01:04):
It's Desi and Andy too. It's true. It's hard because
that's who we grew up with, you know what I mean.
I grew up like we were kids in the nineteen
fifties and sixties. But you know, I still was a kid.
Watched a lot of I love Lucy. I've watched more
as a kid than I do now, probably because I

(01:24):
don't just sit down and watch whatever is on the
TV anymore. I had the Barbie the vitam Seriously, Yeah,
it's still at my parents house. Don't tell them that
your parents are about to get ransacked raised. I love
Lucy enthusiasts, and they're out there, you know, right. Actually,
I have a kind of a valuable, probably valuable Barbie
collection of some in there somewhere. You have to like

(01:47):
do the toy thing where you're like, how good is
the condition of the box and it is all the
original ship and I'm you know, that's not me. I
don't do those things, you know what. And good luck,
because I will say that your parents house has literally
secret rooms. Yeah, and you will never find this collection
if you go there not knowing, so, so stay away.
Cat Burglars, Barbie Burglars. Well, before we get into all that,

(02:12):
it's just great to have you. It's great to be
back in front of the microphones again. You know, we
love doing this, We love telling these stories. And I
am pretty sure that today we've got to take a
mail called awesome. Yeah. Look, we got a bad stuff

(02:35):
full of mail and we want more because I'm using
it as a pillow at night, and all his letters
are just so comfy. You're electronic that you're sending us.
I love this idea that we're printing out. Everyone I
print out, I put an envelope, I mail it back
to myself so I can get an exciting piece of mail.

(02:56):
I thought we'd kill some trees. I just want to
read create that miracle on thirty fourth Street that you
know where all the guys come in and they dump
just thousands of letters on the desk. I always wanted
someone to do that for me. And then I'll be like,
I'm not saying I'm I'm afraid you've got the wrong address.
Return to Cender. Thinking about the mail that we get

(03:17):
these days, it's only bills and like requests for money
from like nonprofit. Please do not dump ten thousands, ten
thousands of those on me. I feel like it gets
ten thousands a day from wildlife, and I'm like, I
know I gave you a little bit when I had it,
and now you're like you must have. Oh you're a

(03:37):
bottomless pit of money, right, But who guess who didn't
reach out to us asking for money? Julia M that's right, Ulie.
Julia reached out on Instagram she wanted to thank us
for the episode about Serette Comma and Ruth Williams. Um
She wrote, there is a book and TV series called

(03:59):
The Number One These Detective Agency that takes place in Botswana,
and every now and then they referred to the times
of Seretse Comma and how wonderful those times were, but
I never took the time to dig deeper. This episode
just gave so much more depth to a wonderful book series.
It made my day cool. I've always wanted to read
that book series actually, so that I didn't know it

(04:19):
took place in Botswana. Now you'll have the context, right,
I'll be like, I know exactly what you're talking about,
Sidsa Comma, And you can have the context too if
you go back and listen to that episode if you
haven't already. Seretsa Comma and Ruth Williams were an interracial
couple that married in Botswana. He was the king there
of what was actually called Bechuana Land at the time,

(04:40):
and they were you know, had to deal with quite
a bit, especially out of England and South Africa was
going through apartheid at the time. Uh, they were exiled.
Um but eventually their marriage led to the founding of
the country at Botswana and changed a lot of perceptions
about um, you know, racial politics at the time. Yeah,

(05:01):
it's such a cool story, really cool story, very cool story.
So yeah, check that one out. I bet you were
never wondering about the origins of Botswana. I wasn't until
I realized I should have been, because it's an incredible story. Yeah, right,
and makes you want to think about how other countries
got their delineations that we know of today, because there's
been a lot of that shifting around our lifetime as well. Well. Anyway,

(05:25):
that's a cool episode. Yes, and thank you at Julia
for your note. I'm so glad that you took the
time to write in about this book series because again
it's always been on my list, so now I feel
like I have something new to read, So thank you
for that. Very exciting. Thanks Julia, all right. Well, I
would love to hang around in mail call all day
and just swim through this mail bag, but we're going

(05:46):
to get to our featured story today. Lucille Ball and
Desi Arnez. You probably know them, of course, as Lucy
and Ricky on I Love Lucy Lucy Desi Comedy Hour,
various other appearances is throughout history, and these two played
a married couple on TV. They were a married couple
in real life. It was a tumultuous marriage, lots of

(06:10):
yelling and screaming and throwing things, um, but they were
also an incredible couple of people, both together and apart,
and they absolutely, without question, changed the entire landscape of
television and the entertainment industry and left an impact that
we are still watching today. So I say that we

(06:31):
jump right into this story because I'm so excited about it.
I've been waiting ever since we started this podcast to
get to them, and it's a big story. I mean, again,
these were titans of their industry. They each individually were
incredibly powerful and remarkable and funny and creative and intelligent people.
And you know, we couldn't fit this one into one episode.

(06:53):
So we are here with the two parter so coming
up now, it's part one of Lucille Ball and DESI Arntz.
I love Lucy and Daisy. Let's go, hey the French comeation. Well,
Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no
match making, a romantic tips. It's just about pardiculous relationships,
a love. It might be any type of person at all,

(07:16):
and that striped concept on a concrete wall. But if
there's a story where the Second Clans show ridiculous roles
a production of I Heart Radio. Okay, so let us
start with Ms Lucille Ball. She was born in Jamestown,
New York, small town in the sort of southwestern corner
of New York State, not far from where I grew

(07:38):
up in Dansville, UM. And she was born in nineteen
eleven on August six. So a LEO that tells you
anything doesn't tell me anything. Is I don't care about astrology.
But she's a quintessential leo, just full of fire. Lions

(07:59):
right and Mainz. King of the Jungle, King of the
King of the Lion, The King of the Jungle. I
was thought lions were more like savannah, but I feel
like lions. The King of the jungle are lions and jungles.
I'm getting I just learned that I don't know enough

(08:20):
about lions. Oh okay. Lucile Ball born in nineteen eleven.
Her father was an electrician and they moved around from
New York to Montana to Michigan. Basically, he's just shifting
around in search of work. He actually died of typhoid
fever in February of nineteen fifteen. Lucy was just three

(08:43):
years old. Lucy's mother, Desiree or d d was pregnant
with her second child, Lucy's little brother Fred. At the time,
Lucy said that her father's death was one of her
first memories, and the day that he died, a bird
flew into the house and broke a pick your frame
and she cites that as the beginning of her lifelong ornithophobia.

(09:05):
So she's afraid of birds her whole life because of this,
you know, a very intense moment, at a very emotional time.
It's gonna makes sense to me. And she's young to like, bow, yeah, something.
Your brain is just taking everything in at that age
and making lifelong decisions for you. Stay away from those
things forever. Core Memory blogged Registered Fear and disgust create

(09:35):
a core memory. So obviously things are pretty tough for
the family. So they moved back to Jamestown, New York.
D D found work at a factory, and before long
she had met and married a man named Ed Peterson,
and he wanted to move d D to Detroit, but
he did not like children, so he convinced d D

(09:55):
to leave her kids behind. It's like, I love you
so much and everything about you. I just want to
take you with me to another city. You know, there's
one thing I don't like about you, and it's all
that baggage. You come with two children. Ass, why don't
we leave those little brats here and take off to Detroit.

(10:15):
She's like, he's everything I haven't wanted and needed, and
the only thing is that he doesn't like my children,
so I just have to abandon them. Like, what's the
big deal? If he didn't like you have to do
for love? If he didn't like my hair, I'd cut
my hair, you know, like my mermaid tail A good legs.
See it changed for your man? Yeah, yeah, you make

(10:36):
sacrifices for love. So Fred went to live with his grandparents,
d D's parents and Lucy went to live with Ed's parents,
which I think is a weird choice. She's not related
to them. I guess it was just like neither said
of grandparents could handle two kids. Maybe maybe it just
fair that's two mouths to feed. But still it's like, still,

(10:59):
if I'm if I'm Ed's parents, I'm like, so you
went off found yourself a girl who already had two kids,
and dumped one of them on us. You didn't want
to deal with them, so now I have to deal
with them. No, Well, anyway, for whatever reason, they decided
to split them up like this, And Ed's parents were
kind of stingy. They were really stern people. Yeah, you
wonder why Ed didn't like kids because parents didn't you know,

(11:23):
if they were so stingy and stern, they were probably like,
you know, childlike wonderment was probably trained out of you.
That's true. I wonder that's probably true. If you're like,
my experience of being a child and what parenting is
like makes me be like, forget it. I would never
even though you know, you just don't realize that you
can be a different parent than your parents, right, because

(11:44):
you're like, I'll just be exactly like them. So yeah,
maybe that's maybe we should cut at a break here,
just dealing with some childhood trauma. We don't know, but anyway,
Ed's parents super puritanical. Also, they banned mirrors from the house.
They wouldn't let any they didn't. You know, that's kind
of common, I think, to be like, don't look at yourself,

(12:06):
you know, be al vane and narcissistic. They did have
one mirror in the bathroom and she was punished for
admiring herself in it. You moved a hair that was
out of place in the bathroom mirror. They're obsessed with yourself.
I stayed at an airbnb once that didn't have a
bathroom a mirror in the bathroom at all, and it

(12:27):
just had like a painting like words on the wall
that was like looking word or something whatever beauties on
the inside or something like that. And I remember being like,
because I was there for like a shoot, like a
film shoot, I was like, but I kind of need
to know, like do you have anything my teeth? Like
I really needed this mirror right now. I appreciate the sentiment,
but what the fuck? Yeah, it was just very like

(12:51):
I had just sit in the car, like do my makeup?
So all right. Back to Ed's parents, they got no mirrors.
They're stern as hill. Lucy's growing up in this very
seems like kind of a grim place, unfun environment. Yeah,
I really really buttoned up in a place. And they
actually lost their home in a court case settlement when

(13:11):
a neighborhood boy was shot by someone who is doing
target practice on the property under her grandfather's supervision. So
just keep that in mind if you like to do
hunting on your private property, someone can sue you if
they get shot. Yeah, it was a pretty rough case too,
and they ended up losing just about everything they had. Um,
and the whole, the whole, the whole property. There's a

(13:34):
whole story about that in this book Comedians, Laugh and
Be a Lady by Darryl and Tuesday Littleton. Um just
super cool book about comedians. Um there's and there's just
a whole section there about about Lucille Ball and her upbringing.
So check that book out now. When she was eleven,
possibly as a result of that, Lucy's mother and stepfather

(13:56):
returned to Jamestown and the whole family was reunited. Ed
was a shriner her stepfather, and compared to his parents,
he actually wasn't like a stodgy guy. He was a
little more fun loving. I mean, you know, I'm sure
he was a real bozo of the clown around the kids,
you know, Like, I don't know that he was super entertaining,
but he compared to his parents, he was probably a

(14:19):
regular Steve from Blues Clues. Um. So they started to
get along. Actually, Lucy and her stepfather ed and he
encouraged her to audition for a local performance in town.
She did. She got the she got apart in the
chorus line, and she experienced the stage for the first
time when she was twelve years old, and she loved it.

(14:43):
She loved especially the attention that came with it. That's
that Leo coming out. I mean, I get it. I'm
not a Leo and I I you know, the first
time I got my applause on stage, it was like,
I will surrender all kind of security in my future

(15:03):
for this, so heady. When Lucy was fourteen, she dated
a twenty one year old bad boy named Johnny de Vida.
I'm a bad boy. There's not a ton of info
about Johnny, unfortunately. I'm just picturing John Trubles from Greece

(15:26):
kind of more or less, it's the impression even further
back in time will be more like, are we talking
about like al Capone gangster? Damn? All right? Well, anyway,
so she's dating full on, slick back hair al Capone
gangster boy. Well, a few blogs say that he was
the son of a gangster, but it's generally agreed that

(15:50):
he was bad news. Okay, you know they were like
those guy's not going anywhere you want to go. Her mother,
de d did not like Johnny. She was like, Okay,
I don't want you to be visiting him in jail.
Well you're barefoot and pregnant a few years from now. Um.
But she also didn't want to directly interfere smart because

(16:10):
usually if you tell a teenager don't do something, they're
probably gonna do it. R. That's true, Like Michael Scott,
I'm a data even harder. But she did use her
ingenuity and she came up with another way to kind
of get Lucy away from him. Um. She used her
love of acting and she enrolled Lucy and the John
Murray Anderson School for Dramatic Arts in New York City.

(16:31):
So it kind of was like, oh, so sorry, you
have to leave your boyfriend seemed like a nice boy,
but what about this amazing opportunity And Lucy, of course,
would take opportunity over a boy. Look, I'm telling you,
when you've got the acting bug, if you've got the
thirst for that kind of attention that comes from a
stage production, then nothing is more powerful than that. No boy, no, nothing. Yeah.

(16:56):
She was like, I'm not going to try to throw
a net over you. I'm just gonna put in a
reel with a bigger bag piece of bait on it,
and you're gonna come right over to my hook. But now,
on the website Lucy Lounge dot com, which is a
very cool website with a lot it's a forum of
lots of Lucy stands talking about history. H there's a

(17:17):
user named leon Orman who spent five years volunteering at
the Lucy Desert Museum in Jamestown. Shout out to Oh, yeah,
I guess that makes sense, leaner man. All right, Lee Norman,
that makes more sense, leaner man, Lee Norman. He's going

(17:42):
to have a superhero all right. On the website Lucy
Lounge dot com, user Lee Norman, who spent five years
volunteering for the Lucy Desert Museum in Jamestown claims that
Johnny Devita actually financially helped her get out of town
with her mother's approval. So yeah, so it seems like

(18:05):
Johnny actually might have encouraged her to go out it.
He might have been like, oh, you want to be
an actor and you've got this opportunity. That's so cool.
Let me help you raise some money. And then he
went like, you know, beat up some kids and took
their lunch money and was like, will you go, Lucy,
I got you something, and you know, tick it's a
New York city. Yeah, right, So it sounds like maybe

(18:25):
he was actually a part of it, and you know,
she could be grateful to Johnny for that. That's cool. Day.
That makes sense too if he was like, you know, Lucy,
I'm I'm not going anywhere you want to go. I mean,
you know, I mean if you to. So he's like
probably maybe a little more realistic about what his life
might be shaping up to be, and he's like, you're
really young, you have another opportunity, something different. Get out

(18:48):
of here. You've got to change the get out of
town that I never had. Lucy. I'm gonna I'm gonna
get you out of town. He sounds so different than
when he drapped out the money. That's just beating up
kids voice. When beat up kids, give me you all
your lunch money, and then go to my girlfriend and say, hey,

(19:09):
you know, really, just mom, what's best for you? Kristin
Baale Batman, I'm now so Lee Norman also says that
the now deceased mayor of Celeron, which was the village
kind of on the edge of Jamestown, this guy worked
originally as a bag boy in the grocery store where

(19:31):
Johnny Devita used to play cards in the back room.
Just such a nineteen that what a time to be alive.
But he says that Lucy brought Desi Arnez back there
in ninety six, long after they were famous, and she
introduced Desi to Johnny Devita. So it seems like they
had you know, they had a good parting of which

(19:53):
they're friendly for a long time. At school, Yeah, so
Lucy goes to this school. She took the bait. Obviously,
Johnny Devita helped her get out, whatever the story is,
and so she went to the school. Ultimately, though she
got very little out of it. The NPR affiliate in
Buffalo w BFO had a Heritage Moments segment where they

(20:14):
talked about Lucy a ball and they were saying that
teachers didn't like her great Lakes accent um. They said
she wasn't assertive enough, and they said Lucy had no
future as a performer. The school even wrote to her mother,
Lucy's wasting her time and hours. She's too shy and

(20:34):
reticent to put her best foot forward. It sounds like
you're not teaching very well. And Lucy was nervous and shy.
That is true. But also one of her classmates was
Betty Davis, who went on to be nominated ten times
for Oscars and win twice. That's like you think all
the former classmates of Meryl Streep are like. Boy, don't

(21:00):
feel like I was given a fair shot, right For
some reason, I wasn't measuring up in class. That somebody
really ruined the bell curve. Me and me and Lawrence Olivier.
You know, we're always competing for the same parts. And
wouldn't you know, I just couldn't look at anything. I
don't know what it was. I guess it's me. Lucy

(21:23):
later famously said all I learned in drama school was
how to be frightened. Honestly, that's so true, though, I mean,
if you're in a bad drama school, I was about
to say especially, I mean that the tactics for so long,
and especially in the twenties thirties were so like kind
of cruel. They were just like, we want to run
you through it and be as meant as possible. We're

(21:44):
going to get the best art out of you for
some reason if you're broken down and miserable. Um, and
I know we're still kind of a lot of people
still kind of do that, but I know, kind of
experiencing a bit of a shift change, which is nice.
I think that's the worst. I mean personally, I just
think that if you're like a director who's just like
berating your actors and to the point where they break,

(22:06):
and then you're saying that's, you know, that's the magic
of a performance, I just can't subscribe to that. And also,
I think quite honestly that if you can't give a
stellar performance without going through that, then you're not as
skilled of an actor. Well, and it's it's really hard
to duplicate if you're in rehearsal being broken down actively

(22:27):
by your director, you're going to react differently than when
you're doing I mean, you know sometimes on Broadway or
off Broadway, you're doing eight shows a week over and
over and over again. You have to find that time.
But you don't have someone sitting there telling you some bullshit.
So it's like, I don't think it really works overall.
I mean you talk about like um Cubrick torturing Shelley

(22:48):
Deal in the Shining, and I'm like, it's just unnecessary.
You can't tell me she wouldn't have given a good
performance if you hadn't put her through literal fucking tortures
one emotional torture, and would have had many more good
performances from her. He had not traumatized her on that set.
And she was like, actually, forget this whole thing exactly,

(23:09):
and and and actors do with it themselves. Also, I'll
go ahead, while we're talking about it, you know people
like uh, you know Letto or or Joaquin Phoenix that
just like I've got to I've got to put myself
through hell and everyone around me in order to give
you the best performance. And I'm like, well, you know
who doesn't need to do that? Also, great actors who

(23:29):
are amazing. Uh so, yes, yeah, it's just Florence Olivier say,
why don't you try acting? Yeah? Yeah, do you ever
try acting? My boy? Yeah? Anyway, So she leaves school,
she says, forget this, I I gotta get out of here,
and she goes back home to Jamestown. She kind of

(23:50):
collects herself for like a year or so, and then
she decides she's going to hold her head up high
and she's going back to New York City to prove
everyone wrong. It's she's seventeen, eighteen years old, and she
gets work as an in house model for the fashion guru,
Hattie Carnegie. Back to the Carnegie's, she went by the

(24:13):
name Diane Belmont, and she worked for Carnegie on and
off for years while she supported herself. Lucy said, had
he taught me how to slouch properly in a thousand
dollar hands own sequen dress and how to wear a
forty thou dollar sable coat as casually as rabbit? I
think that's so funny. Essential fashion skills as casually as rabbit.

(24:36):
Come on, that's gold. But during that time, she was
also down for two years with rheumatic fever. But she
got better in a nineteen thirty two, she was working
on Broadway, and the thing is, she got hired and
fired kind of on and off all the time on Broadway.
Perfect you everything we want, ye, you're going to be

(24:57):
the star that actually you know, we're gonna bubb you
to the chorus and actually it's now working out, So
why didn't you get out of here? That just kind
of happened on and off a few times, and she
kind of got sick of that and sort of gave
up on the New York City stage dream. She decides, Hey,
you know what, it's ninety two. If you want to
be an actor and you want to make a living
and if you want people to know who you are,

(25:19):
you gotta move. And in nineteen thirty three, she packed
up her bag and she moved west to the city
of Los Angels, to Tinseltown, to La La Land, to Hollywood,
California to get into the pictures. I'm gonna be in
the Flickers. But she didn't want to do the same

(25:40):
on again, off again work she was doing in New
York City. Right, She's like, I need to do better.
I want more, So she marches right into Hollywood. She
probably stood on the sign Hollywood land sign, climbs up
the hill, stands on the side, arms a kimbo and said,
I'm a full time actress. That's my job. That's what

(26:01):
I do, and in no time, that doesn't always work.
By the way, I just want to throw that out
that you can't just always do that. Setting an intention
is great, it's very personally motivating. It can help you
get a lot done, but it is absolutely not a
guarantee that anything good is going to happen for you. Unfortunately, no,

(26:22):
and I'm sure there was more to it her working
to get these things, but in a very short amount
of time she had signed with r KAO Pictures as
a contract player, and the next thing you know, she's
doing short films with the Three Stooges, with the Marx Brothers.
She worked several times with Fred Stare and Ginger Rogers,

(26:43):
the names, and Hollywood just pumping out content at this time.
In between all these big pictures, they're releasing dozens of
smaller ones or B movies. We all know and loves
some B movies. Um, She's landing parts in those left
and right, right. Eventually she gets the nickname Queen of
the Bees. You're kind of the Queen of the Bees,

(27:07):
Queen of the bee cups exactly literally what I was
going to the joke I was gonna make. I knew it.
I knew it. But also, the bee is the Atlanta
Fringe Festival logo, and you're the Queen of the Atlanta
Fringe Festival. Very true. We do call ourselves HBI c
s honey Bees in Charge exactly. And my B size boobs.
So now everyone knows about my B size boobs. Great,

(27:29):
they knew. We tell them our instinct. They saw you.
He can't hide those because they can their bees. Well anyway,
be movies aren't enough for Lucy, so she goes into
radio to get more exposure. Imagine, if you will, a

(27:52):
time when you could just speak into a microphone for
a living. Anyway, moving on, it's kind of making me
think though about how how many celebrities are doing podcasts
now like voice literally doubling back on that part of history.
It's all coming back. Yeah. Anyway, While she's in radio,
she met a man named Gayle Gordon and they would

(28:15):
have a professional relationship for the next fifty years. And
a big part came up around this time that everybody
wanted pretty much every woman actress there was was auditioning
for this part, including Lucy's old classmate Betty Davis. It
was for Scarlett O'Hara and Gone with the Wind, and

(28:38):
obviously Lucy did not get that part, and thank god
for that, because can you imagine Gone with the Wind
with Lucy Oball's completely different films look, and whoever talks
about Vivian Lee anymore, there's a film buff out there
screaming at you. Well. In nineteen forty, Lucy did land

(29:00):
a lead role in a film adaptation of the Broadway
musical Too Many Girls. This play is the story of
a girl who wants to go to college to be
near her bow and her tycoon father, without her knowledge,
gets four Ivy League football players to go with her
as bodyguards, and they all have to sign a contract

(29:22):
with him with a non romance clause so they won't
fall in love with her, and then, of course one
of them does, she falls in love with him. There's
a lot of back and forth. It's a very strange story,
but it was a hit at the time and they
decided to make a movie out of it. Then it
was gonna be starring Lucille ball Man, some of these
plays back in the Bay Man at anything. But that's

(29:48):
gonna take us back in time to nineteen seventeen in Cuba,
where a man named Desiderio Alberto Arnez the third was
born on March two. His family was wealthy and they
owned three ranches, a palatial home, and a vacation mansion
on a private island. Not a bad set up. His father,

(30:11):
Desiderio Alberto Arnez the Second, or Junior, as I always
like to say, I don't know why people go with
the second when Junior is right there and it's way
more fun. Yeah, well, they just don't want to be
called junior their whole act. I know. It's more like
we've said that last time, like it's more regal to
be the second than junior. But junior. Uh So. His

(30:32):
father had gone to what is now known as actually
Mercer University in Atlanta, and then he went back to
Cuba and ended up being the youngest mayor of Santiago
to Cuba, and he was elected to the Cuban House
of Representatives in two But in ninety three in Cuba
there was a little bit of a revolution kind of

(30:53):
changed things, and Desiderio was jailed and all of his
property was confiscated. He was in jail for six six months,
and after that his brother in law went and negotiated
his release and they agreed to let him out of
jail and said, okay, you can get out, but you
gotta go into exile. You can't hang out in Cuba anymore.
So Desi Dariel packed up his family and they left

(31:17):
Cuba for Miami and then included the sixteen year old Desi.
Desi Arnez took a job at Woolworth's at first when
they got there, and then eventually he helped his father
run his tile business before finally shifting his focus to
show biz. All this time he's in school. He graduates
high school. Once he's finished, he decided to start a
band and they were called the Sibney Septet. Sibney is

(31:41):
the coastal town in Cuba, not far from Desi's hometown.
So that and I guess there were seven of them,
all right? Yes? Is that Sibony sep set makes sense? Um?
This man got pretty big in Miami. He was doing
really well. He was hired for a touring show by
Xavier Cougart as a congo drummer and singer, and he
became the featured main attraction. And then he branched out

(32:04):
moving to New York and he started his own band,
the Desi Arnez Orchestra, and he took off in the
club scene in New York City. He really started to
make a name for himself in the mid thirties when
he popularized the congo line conga, Yeah, I mean, can
you imagine, I mean this guy get my time machine

(32:27):
and go back and do a couple of nights in
the New York City club where Desi Arnaz please please,
this is I really just want a time travel agency,
like time travel destination. And you're just like, okay, we're
going to nineteen seventy four to David Bowie playing in
this tiny ass club and definitely see a dick like

(32:49):
that's your first stop. Then he just like to pull
it out. Okay, it's not all our premiere package is
David Bowie's package. I mean a lot of people would
pay a lot of money for that. I did pay
a lot of money to see that. It's chast Dain
Park a few years back, many years back now, huh yeah,
many years restic So in ninety nine, Desi Arnaz ended

(33:16):
up on the radar of popular musical writers Rogers and Heart,
who cast him in their new Broadway musical Too Many Girls.
You might remember Rogerson Heart from some of their other
hit Broadway shows in the Time, The Girl Friend, She's
My Baby. One damn thing after another, Damn d a

(33:39):
M I mean, is this a musical about the hoover? Damn?
It must have been right or beavers beavers? Maybe it
was a musical, but oh we are the beavers here
to build our Damn. It's just one damn thing after
another when you're a beaver. Really, competition was light back then.

(34:02):
Or how about the hit film that they wrote called
Hallelujah I'm a Bum. All right, I think that's coming
out in Criterion. Well, you know the song so well,
so why don't you sing me a song from Hallelujah
I'm a Bun, Diana. Come on, let's hear it. I
don't work. I'll only drink from hold On, hold On.

(34:26):
That's the song. I remember it well. I don't work.
I'll only drink from Hallelujah I'm a Bum. They were
famous for their one line songs. That's just all right,
there's a whole story in there to that hook. Anyway.

(34:49):
Too Many Girls was a Broadway smash, and Desi as
well as a few other cast members, were signed with
r KAO Pictures to appear in the film version as well,
and they were brought out to Hollywood and they're like,
here's your new gig. You're a film actor now, baby.
We watched the trailer for this movie and you can

(35:11):
watch it too, it's online and it is I mean,
you know, of course the classic old Hollywood trailers, big
words flying across the screen, really awkward cuts. So it's
just like it's just a showcase. They're not trying to
tell you what the movies about or anything. It's just like,
you like movies, Come see this one. Look, there's numbers,
there's people, there's dull dancing, flashing lights, and this one's

(35:33):
got like they show this whole like, uh, you know,
it looks like a Luau scene. There's fires and people
banging on drums and all this stuff. And the narration
introduces Desi Arnez as a torrid tempest from Latin America
who quote introduces the jungle rhythms of this year's most
sensational dance, The conga, and then it goes on to

(35:55):
call the movie a parade of youth and fresh gay
faces that look though they're going places. It's Latin. Did
I mentioned it is not white? Come see this movie
starring It's just like, it's very strange and certainly exploitative,

(36:15):
and considering Rogers and Heart who wrote it, and I'm
quite sure the non Latino director who made it probably
pretty racist. I think that Lush it looked pretty like,
Oh yeah, it was just like a cultural mash up
of anything non white. You know, just look exotic stuff, right,

(36:37):
palm fronds. You'll pay to see that from the safety
of a movie theater. Right, everyone's barefoot? How crazy? So
obviously it is on the set of the movie that
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz meet for the first time,
and we are going to get to that meeting right
after this commercial, Pa, and welcome back to the show, everyone,

(37:05):
and Lucy and Desi are both on the set of
Too Many Girls. It's a little bit of foreshadowing in
that title. Very true. In the Littleton's book, it said
that when they met in the morning, Daisi didn't care
too much for this Hollywood brunette Starlett but by the
end of the day they were best friends. So they

(37:25):
really had some kindred spirits. I guess they found a
lot that instant chemistry, you know. Yeah. Lucy had been
romantically linked to a series of older men leading up
to this point, but Arnez was totally different from them.
He was actually six years younger than her, and he
knew the industry, but he wasn't a fixture in it
like a lot of her exes were, right right, he

(37:47):
didn't have that kind of like old Hollywood attitude. You know,
he's fresh, he's fresh and new, yeah, and young and hot. Yeah. Unfortunately,
he was actually in a serious relationship the time when
they met, and by some accounts, he was actually engaged
at the time. So you know, even though they connected
so well, they really bonded right away. It just looked

(38:10):
like their flirtations wouldn't amount too much of uh nope, nope,
never mind. No, he asked her out that very night,
because you see, to Daisy Arnez, there was no such
thing as too many girls running the will go throughout
his life. Spoiler alert, they fell in love fast these two.

(38:35):
In fact, sparks were flying so quickly. Her friends said
it wouldn't last a year. They thought it would like
burn itself out as quickly as it popped up. You've
seen those couples. Oh yeah, Lucy herself told People magazine
in night. Everybody gave it about a year and a half.
I gave it six weeks. And they even lied about
their ages to the press. She brought hers down by
three years to and he brought his up by three

(38:58):
years to five. And reporters kept asking them, hey, Lucy, Desi,
when a't you gonna get hitched? And they were just like,
are you kidding me? Like no, we are so different,
it'll never work. One thing we know for sures, we're
never getting married. And then on November ninety Lucy and

(39:19):
Desi were married after eloping to Greenwich, Connecticut. So romantic,
and that was after less than a year of dating.
So again, fast and furious, all about family. No happy
birthday to me, and uh Winston Churchill, all right, yeah,

(39:43):
it's a very famous day. So Desi in ninety two
was drafted into the army for World War Two. He
was still technically a Cuban citizen, but foreign nationals with
residency in the US still had to register for the draft.
And this wouldn't automatically grant citizenship, but it did facilitate

(40:03):
the process if someone decided to pursue American citizenship later
it look good. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I would hope. So
we don't care. You know, you you talk about a
lot of the black soldiers, they would come back and
not get ship. I mean, you know, I mean yeah, well, yeah,
the number of times in history that fighting for your
country didn't really get you Jack Squad is not unique

(40:27):
to this country and uh and many times across the world.
But anyway, he had been drafted and before reporting though
he had a serious knee injury, he went ahead and
completed his circuit training and he tried to go for
active service, but they classified him under limited service because
of the injury. So instead of sending him into the battlefield,

(40:48):
they were like, what do we do with this DESI
Arnez guy. He wants to help, he wants to fight
for his country, but he's got that bum knee. Oh
I got an idea, and they assigned him to direct
USO shows in Los Angeles. I mean, the guy knew
how to entertain and more than that, he knew what
people wanted. Nobody knew that about DESI. I mean, he

(41:11):
was had such a connection to the crowds, to the
people he knew what entertainment was. I'm just I'm sorry
because I'm just picturing someone like what I fought for
this conchway by directing U SR shows it didn't right.
It takes all kinds. No, they're very important. There's a
lot of ways to serve your country, and but it

(41:34):
still makes me that, for example, does he noticed that
the first thing wounded soldiers always asked for was a
cold glass of milk. So he rounded up all these
movie starlets that he knew, got them to come to
the hospitals and pour milk for wounded soldiers. And there
was this whole thing like they loved it. And obviously

(41:56):
his superiors were like, damn this our our hospital is
the happiest hospital in the army. So it makes sense,
like a taste of home. I guess you wouldn't have milk,
powdered milk or something. I mean, at the time, a
cold glass of milk was like the thing, I don't.
We don't do that anymore, you know, yeah, milk milk.

(42:18):
I am so look, I'll eat milk on but I'm
not going to drink a glass of milk on its own.
Some people still love it. I never understood that. Yeah,
I don't know. As a kid, I liked it, I guess,
but I definitely agree out of it. And it's just
a weird dietary change from our parents to lifetime to now.

(42:39):
I'm sure it's just how much milk people drink, right,
I'm sure that's entirely due to the marketing of the
dairy industry, you know. I mean we remember that got
milk ship. Every every celebrity had a milk mustache at
some point. But even then, we weren't drinking as much
milk as you know, Like my dad would talk about
having a glass of milk with every meal. He was

(43:00):
like a cheeseburger and a whole glass of milk, like
that was a lunch. And I'm like you and he
was like you, like it sounds awful, But at the time,
it's that seems like a healthy like a healthy thing
to do grown grown bones or whatever. I don't know
milk milk, you know, we don't know about milk. It
We're always learning. Now we're drinking milk from nuts. So anyway,

(43:25):
in three Lucy was cast in the film. Dberry was
a lady opposite Red Skeleton and Gene Kelly. More big names,
two big names, and they were like, you're great, baby,
we love you, but your hair something I ain't working here,
doll face. So they brought in the famous Hollywood Golden

(43:46):
Age hairstylist, Sydney Larf. I feel like I'm doing. So
they brought in famous Hollywood Golden Age hair stylist, Sydney Guilaroff,

(44:10):
and he's basically like, I got it. And suddenly Lucy
ole Ball was a redhead. Side note, Lucy's onset hairstylist
for I Love Lucy was Irma Cousley, who said that
her hair wasn't so much red as it was a
golden apricot color. She said she used regular hair dye

(44:33):
and then this Hannah Rence to achieve this perfect color
whole formula. Yeah, I mean, they didn't just be like,
get her whatever, therst redheage. They really thought about this.
And it's true, it's's kind of almost blonde, but it's
got that to it. It's pretty um and the rent,
the Hennah Rince was very hard to find. But while

(44:56):
she was in Las Vegas, Lucy met a wealthy man
who had some innections and he managed to find a
huge quantity of it. So she's like, bought it in
bulk from this unstop costco. Then she met in Vegas.
He's like, you need some means? Opened this coat upright, coat,

(45:18):
It's like all these different colors. He's like, you want
auburn brown, got red, I got golden red, I got
brick red. I got uh old tooth yellow. Not that one.
Why do you have that one? You'd be surprised anyway.
So he found she went to Yeah, she got her

(45:41):
hook up with this shady wealthy guy and acously ended
up keeping this huge stock of heneans in a safe
in her garage. So funny to be like put it
under lock and key. I mean, yeah, no one, no
one else could have Lucy's hair color. Where's the heist
movie where they deal Lucy's hairclothe? That sounds like something

(46:02):
Carmen San Diego would steal. It does stole all the monkeys,
all the lemurs from India, and Lucy Ball's hair die.
So even while directing the USO shows, Daisy is still touring.
He's spending a long stretches on the road and Lucy
is building her career in Hollywood. So even when they

(46:25):
were home together, they barely saw each other. They were
working these insane show biz hours or spending again weeks
on the road, just separate from each other because you know,
show business is glamorous and everything, but it's a lot
of work. It's a lot of work to create content.
And yeah, like you say, such long. I remember our

(46:47):
first year of marriage was your first time being full
time on a film set. And yeah, seven months went
by and we only saw each other on Sundays and
that was pretty much it. Pretty much. So it was
very easy first marriage. We cannot find a lot but
but also it could be hard, I guess because you're not,

(47:09):
you know, together building a relationship. Yeah, and it's not
even necessarily just creating the content, but you're also you know,
when you're someone like Desi Arnaz or Lucille Ball, you're
also like managing your own uh you know, you're you
are the product, you know, and you have to manage that.
You're selling yourself, you're marketing yourself. You're you're constantly working

(47:31):
even when you're not on set shooting or in front
of the audience playing, And yeah, and you're management going on,
and you have to take opportunities when they come up,
even if they're not conveniently times, you know, stuff like that.
So anyway, because of all this separation, they're spending a
lot of time on the phone. They're constantly on the
phone with each other. Desi once said, we could have
bought a T and t um, but unfortunately when they

(47:55):
were on the phone, they would just scream at each
other and accuse each other of infidelity, not verty loving
phone calls that they were getting in the meantime. And
it's unlikely that Lucy was cheating, there's no evidence that
she had affairs at this time or anything, um. But
in Desise Desise case, he definitely was. He was absolutely

(48:16):
positively cheating. And later in his life he attributed his
difficulties with fidelity to his upbringing because he said his
father and his grandfather both had mistresses, they had children
outside of their marriages, um, And so he was just
kind of like it just monogamy is just not something
I that comes naturally. But unfortunately for Lucy it was

(48:40):
something that was very important to her. Yeah, Lucy really
wanted a more traditional family life, and Desi thought this
was a traditional family life. I think like he just
wasn't instilled with that belief that like, yeah, one husband,
one wife and that's it. And it sounds like a
bullshit excuse to step out on your wife, but that
there is something to be said for that, as we

(49:00):
have come up across in many of our episodes, that
is a that is a way that many cultures have
been set up in the past, and even our own.
I mean, we just did Founding Fathers. They were full
of mistresses, shock full of mistresses everybody. But but you know,
it's okay. If monogamy doesn't come naturally to you, that's
all right. But you do have to find a partner
for whom that's okay. And in this case, they did

(49:23):
not find that partner. They were very much not on
the same page about what a happy marriage was meant
to look like, right right, And it's about, like you said,
I mean, the agreement that you make when you get married,
if that is you know, yeah, you and me forever,
then that's the promise you're supposed to keep, you know,
and and not break without at least bringing it to

(49:45):
the negotiating table. You know, if you're not if you're
not willing to speak to your spouse about your wanting
to sleep with other people, then you shouldn't be doing it.
Then you're not you know, you don't have your ship
together enough. And if you speak to them and they
say that's not something uncomfortable with then that's that's kind

(50:08):
of it if you want to keep that relations right exactly,
and you should have talked about about that before you Yeah,
I don't know. I mean, things can come up. It's
a lifetime, so obviously things come up, people change, But
you know, you hope that you have a strong enough
relationship to withstand having a theoretical conversation about something exactly,

(50:30):
you know, I hope so anyway, right, But that is
something that Desi did not do unfortunately, so it caused
a lot of strife for the two of them over
the years. Although must be said, Desi did not father
any children besides his and Lucy's children, so he wasn't
out here run around with a bunch of babies, a
bunch of women, you know, acting crazy right like his

(50:53):
father and grandfather did, right, causing trouble or whatever. So
that's something at least, but still it was not enough
for Lucy in she had had enough and she filed
for divorce. She cited extreme mental cruelty, and she later
admitted that it pretty much all came down to his
constant cheating and obviously, oh yeah, well, I mean, and

(51:17):
then if all they're ever doing is fighting because of it,
the absolutely and the divorce was ugly, and it was
as contentious as their marriage had been. Lucy moved out
and more or less refused to see or speak to him.
But then the night before the court date, Desi called
her up. She picks up the phone, like, yeah, what
do you want dose. He's like, hey, you know what,

(51:38):
let's just go to dinner, and she agreed. All right,
So our last night being married tomorrow we're finalizing the
thing in court, Yeah, we'll go out to dinner. And
they walked into this nightclub and everybody in there does
a double take because, I mean, they're fighting, they're arguing,
and their actual divorce was all over the papers at
this point, so seeing them out together was like, oh,

(52:02):
murmur murmur murmur. Jennifer went out, good god, you know,
broke the internet. So by the end of the meal,
they are laughing and flirting and having a great time,
and Lucy says, I want to go dancing, and together
they go out after dinner and they dance all night long,

(52:24):
and Desi says, hey, let's go back to my place
for a night pap. Lucy says, yeah, absolutely, let's do it.
They get back to Desi's house, he puts on a record,
he pours her a drink, and they're sitting on the
couch and they're still giggling. They're still high from what
a fun night they've been having. And Desi stares into
Lucy's mischievous eyes and she gives him a koy smile

(52:46):
and the air is just thick with this red hot tension,
and she puts her hand on the side of his
face and she says well, and he says well, and
Lucy stands up and says, I gotta go and does.
He's like, whoa, whoa wa wait, where are you going?
And she says, well, I'm divorcing you in the morning,

(53:06):
and she walks out the door and drives home to
get some rest, and sure enough, the next morning she
went to court and the divorce was finalized. But immediately
after the proceedings, she got in her car and she
went straight back to Desi's place. He's like, what are

(53:27):
you doing here, and she says she explains to him
that there's a California law at the time that nullifies
any divorce if the couple didn't spend a year apart
after their divorce date. So she clearly knew that this
was gonna undo it, and she went back to his place.
And Choirer has an article that says an MGM insider

(53:49):
speculated that she didn't want to waste the two thousand
dollars she spent on legal fees, but didn't she anyway
if they nullified it. Yeah, but she's yeah, but she's like,
I'm not gonna pay for this whole thing and then
not do it. Those papers sides, I think speculation station
that she just wanted to put him through it. I

(54:09):
think she wanted him to feel like, no, no, this
can happen to you. Yeah, that's a good point. That's
also a Leo move. That's a straight Leo move, like
I will make you miss me. Oh yeah, she was not.
She's like, you're going to feel this divorce. You're gonna
know what happened. And then it didn't happen. But right

(54:30):
when you're crying your eyes out. I'll show up at
your door and say this nullifies everything. So that was
their famous twenty four our divorce, only Lucy and DESI
pull that off. I love that. Desi was like, let's
go out. What a guy he was? Like, you know,
you have to admit, he must be pretty smooth, unbelievable.

(54:53):
First of all, he's very handsome, definitely got charm coming
out of his butte, like so, I just I love
the idea of him being like, come on, let's just
how dinner you and me? And that's son of a bit.
Of course, I'm gonna go. He must have been so fun, yeah,

(55:17):
you know, yeah, and I think that's what It's probably
what got him all the ladies to begin with. That,
it's certainly what's made him irresistible to Lucy. And he
was smart, oh yeah, because he was smart. So yeah,
he couldn't be some idiot. No, no, definitely, And it's
time to get into just how smart both these guys were.

(55:39):
As soon as we come back from this commercial break
and we're back with more, Lucille Bald and Desi Arnez. Yeah.
So they were divorced for two but after that whole
debacle divorced debacle. They decided they really were going to

(56:01):
work harder and try and steer their professions in a
way where they could spend more time together because they
were like, clearly, that really pulled us apart the first time.
We don't want that. We're gonna be intentional about our choices.
Get it together. It reminds me, honestly of Robert and
Susan Downey, who made and who made that agreement of like,

(56:22):
we're not gonna we are not allowed to let two
weeks pass that us seeing each other, and then eventually
we're going to have to work together so that we
can see each other more often. And quite frankly, we
have done similar things. I mean here we are working
together now after like you said, when I was working
on set, which I love and miss and we'll probably
do again to some degree. But not seeing each other

(56:43):
for seven eight months is tough. It's not how you
want to live your life. Um, when you've got someone
you want to spend your time with, necessarily, some people
do it and do it amazingly well and it works
so well for them, and that's awesome. So yeah. In
Lucy starred in a hit radio series with Steve Yes
called My Favorite Husband. What was this about? Uh? She

(57:06):
was playing opposite an actor named Richard Denning. Desi was
touring with his new band at the time. He was
doing great. Reportedly, though he wanted to be closer to
home and he was getting interested in having children, so
he was sort of feeling more domestic at this point
in CBS wanted to adapt My Favorite Husband for TV

(57:26):
because it was doing so well in the radio. Why not,
And they wanted Lucy and Richard Denning to both play
their roles on television, but Lucy said, no, this is
a perfect chance for me and Desi to be working
together in the same town with the same schedule. Daisy
is going to play my husband period, end of story.

(57:47):
That's how we're doing it. Of course, CBS was very
resistant at first because they're all worried about an interracial
marriage being agreeable to American audiences. Oh, They're like, oh,
you're talking about two people of slightly different skin tones
being married on a black and white television show. Outrageous.

(58:11):
The American people will not stand for it. Yeah, we
spent all this time telling himbout Latin. He was sure,
did we made a big deal out of this guy
being very exotic. We can't walk it back now, he
can't be married to a white woman. White women everywhere
we want to leave their boring US husbands. That's probably

(58:33):
what they were really worried about. Latin Lavaria with Jungle River. Yeah,
maybe so. My wife loves him, obviously. Lucy and DESI
are like, I can tell you that people definitely won't
have a problem with this because we live this life
every fucking day and it's been fine. So they decide

(58:56):
that they have a plan. They're like, look, Americans, they're
going to be fine with this. You know, executives, stop
putting your own racism onto the American people as a whole. Right.
I hate that, you know, Uh, TV executives or marketing
people or whoever will be like, uh, the American people

(59:16):
don't know what they want. We tell them what they want.
But then when something like this comes up there like, oh,
the American people won't accept it, they won't like it,
Like which is it? And I know which one it is.
You can show them whatever and they will be fine
with it. And if they're not, you'll teach them to
be fine with it. Yeah, come on, y'all, don't make
it a big deal. And no, probably people won't even

(59:38):
fucking notice like half the time. Literally, just your own
racism stopping that from happening, exactly. And then yeah, and
then you're blaming everyone else in the freaking country for it,
and it's your own. It's not me. I'm not racist,
but every other American is. So I can't. I'm sorry,
I can't give you the job. So Lucy and DESI

(59:59):
are like, we just have to prove these shitty old
racists wrong. Uh, And it'll be easy enough. In the
summer of nineteen fifty, they put together a live vaudeville
act and went on tour. At the time, vaudeville was
still the most common way to see comedy in America. TV,
of course, was just limited to certain hours, and of course,

(01:00:21):
many households in the country still didn't have a television,
so touring theatrical shows was the best way to reach
the widest audience. What a time, wow, imagine that. So
they got their friend Pepito Perez to help them put
together this crazy act about a cookie housewife trying to
get into her husband's show. They would tell jokes back

(01:00:42):
and forth, and they'd sing little songs in between them.
The whole gag basically being Lucy undercutting desise jokes or
coming in with an unexpected punchline and people were rolling
in the aisles laughing. These guys were a hit. You
can see some of their vaudeville acts uh on online.
There's some videos. I think they were all retaped later,

(01:01:04):
like it wasn't obviously filmed vaudeville shows. I don't think
they did that too often, but they did redo some
of these bits, you know, act they were famous and
put them on TV and stuff. The show is a
total hit, and obviously you don't take comedy gold like
that and just leave it sitting in a storage chunks somewhere.
A lot of these bits from the vaudeville show were
then incorporated onto the show I Love Lucy, Like they

(01:01:27):
did the famous bit where Lucy acts like a trained
seal honking horns. It's in the show. That was a
bit that was used in an episode called the Audition,
where Lucy busts into Ricky's audition for a TV show
and acts like a damn fool and mimics a trained seal,
and the TV executives end up offering her a TV
contract instead of Ricky Hilarious. Obviously, she turns it down

(01:01:51):
at the end and decides to give up her pursuit
of show business, obviously until next week's episode when she
got into some other zany action activities to do it again.
So CBS looks at the success of this vaudeville act
and they're like like, oh my god, look at that.
Turns out America loves you guys. Man, we're so smart.

(01:02:12):
We had such a great idea of putting you guys
together as doing Daisi is an interracial couple. This, oh,
we really deserve a race. What did a good jobs?
So they said, okay, all right, fine, y'all can do
a show. Um, you could be a couple of actors

(01:02:32):
who play husband and wife on a radio show. And
Lizzie and Daddie are like, hell no, that is not
what we want. What we have proven to you is
that we can just be ourselves. They're like, this is
about us as to real life married people. We're not
going to pretend to be married because we are married.

(01:02:52):
That'd be like I heart being like, why don't you
guys pretend to be a married couple and talk about America.
We're like, uh, can we skip a step? So CBS
is really still just trying to bury the reality of
a white woman being married to a Latino, Like yeah,
they're still just kind of like, well, we're gonna how
many a plot point and how many steps can we
put in between you know, the reality of the situation

(01:03:15):
and what's on TV. You're okay, you're married, but you're
married as actors on a radio show, in a simulation
on a TV show. You know, people think of this
kind of thing happens in real life, right, well, this
is our real life. Yeah yeah, but but but what
if brain explodes? What weell Americans this can happen, then

(01:03:38):
all our wives are gonna leave us for Latino. Then
I guess that's all I can figure is their fear here,
right certainly, well maybe if you weren't such a shitty husband. No, no,
that's not oh no, it's not me. Anyway. Eventually they
finally cave and they're like, fine, my fine, people are
down with interracial married couples. Fine, but they love the

(01:04:01):
wacky show biz comedy. So here's what we'll do. It's
going to be a show about Lucy and Larry Lopez,
a successful showbiz couple trying to maintain a normal marriage
and the chaos of their professional success. I mean, I'm
curious about this show. Okay, okay. So they write a
few scenes and they start taking it to focus groups.

(01:04:23):
They're like, hey, look at these Look at these wacky
rich actors trying to live their lives while they're constant
business and fame keeps getting in the way. How relatable.
So obviously, the market research comes back, and surprise turned out,
nobody wanted to watch a couple of rich people pretending
like being too famous was a problem for them ahead

(01:04:45):
of its time. You could say with me until the
two thousands that we wanted to say that is. So
back the drawing board and they've got all these ideas,
how can we have Lucy and Desi as a ma
married couple on TV? All these ideas come and go
across the desk, and eventually they settle on a show

(01:05:07):
about Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Ricky is a struggling band
leader and Lucy is an aspirational housewife with big dreams
and a knack for trouble. Focus groups, you guys good
with this, and they're like, yeah, all right, I'll give
it a shot. I mean, you gotta remember this is
a time, okay, you and I and I'm sure a

(01:05:31):
lot of our audience remembers a time when there were
twenty four hours of television. A few some of those
hours were prime time. And you know, that's how much
time there was for TV to exist. If you couldn't
fit it on one of the channels in those twenty
four hours, we weren't going to do it. So that's

(01:05:52):
a limitation right there. And already you've got shows competing
for the best time slots or to get made at all.
Flashback to this period and there's even fewer hours of
TV available because TV is not on all the time.
It's pretty much only prime time if I'm not mistaken,
and competing for those narrow a few hours. They had

(01:06:13):
to know a show was going to work if they
were going to make it, because they had a bunch
of ideas, which one are we going to spend money on?
I mean, it's just so crazy to think of now
where now it's the opposite. Now they're just like, yeah,
we'll make whatever you bring us, and we'll see if
people watch it, and if it trends, then we'll make
more what a weird, very very different time to be alive. Yeah, seriously, yea,

(01:06:39):
but yeah, it must have been so insanely competitive. I
mean it's competitive now and there's limitless opportunities for content,
as you say, and back then it must have just
been you did a vaudeville show, maybe did something live,
I guess if you couldn't take it to a picture.
But but even then, yeah, I mean, like now, even

(01:07:00):
if you don't get a studio, make your TV show, Like,
if you've got a couple hundred bucks and some free time,
you can make it, put it on YouTube. Back then,
if you had an idea, have fun. I hope, I
hope you can eat that for dinner, because that's about
the most useful thing you can do with that idea.
There's four hours of television a week. Got time for

(01:07:21):
your show. Yeah, they're taking But Lucy and Desi are
cut above and they made it happen. I Love Lucy
premiered on October one, seven years to the day after
they reconciled their twenty four divorce. I can't let a
pesky thing like a little divorce get in the way

(01:07:42):
of your power couple like them. Yeah, the title was
chosen by producer Jess Oppenheimer. They had dozens of titles
that they had pitched and they had to pick something
pretty quickly. The working title was simply Lucy, but that
was never meant to be final. Eventually, out of all
the options in front of him, Jess Oppenheimer just kept

(01:08:02):
coming back too. I Love Lucy, he said. It conveys
the essential nature of the show, an examination of marriage
between two people who truly love each other. Yeah, it
was like, I love Lucy. He's we love Lucy, but
so does Ricky Ricardo. Well yeah, I remember you saying like, well,
you know, how did they pick that to have? It

(01:08:23):
was so much about the two of them, and how
is it just her name and the title? But I
was thinking about that, like, it's not necessarily though, because
we're the title is the perspective of Ricky, So they're
both kind of there, and so it just sort of
conveys that that loving nature of the show comedy. Yeah, well, look,
I Love Lucy was so much more than a hit.

(01:08:44):
The show itself, almost entirely due to Desis producing skills,
Lucy's comedic talent, and both of their business acumen would
revolutionize television comedy into what we know it as today. Together,
Lucy and Desi formed the company Desilu Productions, and they

(01:09:06):
were as clever in business as they were in comedy.
They weren't just actors, and they weren't willing to settle
for anything less than innovative, creative, high quality content. But
they took it even further than that. At the time,
most TV was shot live in New York and broadcast
to the East Coast, and then the rest of the
country would get a low quality kinescope three hours later.

(01:09:29):
Kinescope is basically like a bootleg copy. There's literally a
special camera that filmed a screen while the show played back. Oh,
I guess literally you got CJ's phone video from the
back of the theater. They're like just tape. It was
rushed it out. They'd send that out to the West Coast,

(01:09:50):
and then they had aired in primetime over there three
hours later. So you couldn't film the show live in
Los Angeles because by the time it's ready to go
an airing at primetime at eight PM, it's already eleven
PM in New York City. And so even if they
got it out there three hours later, now it's two
AM in New York. They're not going to watch it. Then,
that's way outside of prime time. But the Arns is

(01:10:12):
loved living in l A. So Dasi said, well, we
ain't move into New York City and the network is like, okay,
well how do you expect to make the show then?
But Dasi already had an issue with the existing format
because kindescope quality was terrible. As we just said, look
like c j's a little video from the theater. It

(01:10:33):
was blurry, it sounded weird. You just didn't get the
same experience. So Daisi goes to Philip Morris, a sponsor
of There's, and said, hey, we want to shoot the
show on film. And you know, the people of Philip
Morris are like a TV show on film? Are you

(01:10:53):
kidding me? That's insane because the film is very expensive,
you say, And then they don't need to shoot it.
You've got a system there, like you film it live
in New York, broadcast it live, and then they get
a tape in l A later. Fine, whatever, it's been
fine for six years or however long they've been doing this.
At this point, fight fight, it ain't broke, Come on

(01:11:14):
and Daisy says no, no, no, it's fine. We worked
it out. How about this, We'll take a pay cut,
we'll shoot the show on film ourselves, and then you
can send it to both coasts at the same time.
Everybody gets a better quality image. In exchange, we'll just
take the rights to the episodes after they air, and
Philip Morris agrees to provide the film. So CBS is like,

(01:11:39):
CPS is like, oh, you want the rights to the
episodes of TV after the air? Okay? Sure, who would
care about old TV episodes? I mean they've already run.

(01:12:00):
What are you gonna do? Run them again? Like some
some sort of re run sounds of purely idiotic. So okay,
you're crazy kids, Sure you have the rights, have all
the rights. You can have all the rights to the
episodes after they air, So what a waste. We've got
to go sort a big pile of money on fire.

(01:12:24):
Oh man. All in all, reruns would go on to
make desilu untold millions of dollars and the syndication markets.
It's still considered to be one of, if not the
best deal ever made in television history. And I mean again,
you've got to imagine these guys have got only a

(01:12:44):
couple hours a night of TV. They're not thinking about
episodes airing again. No one has ever watched a TV
episode twice before. That's so longheaded though, for them to
go how many times do people come back and come
back to the vaudeville show? They come back and see
a play forty times. They want to see it again?
You want it? Yes, I know We're going to find

(01:13:06):
a way at some point in TV to show it
to him again. And I want to make the money
off that ship. And that is just the beginnings of
the brilliance that Desi specifically and Lucy together with him,
brought into television and just changed the game because of that,
I think, because like we said, they were so connected

(01:13:29):
to people right from their upbringings. Like Lucy wanted people
to adore her. She wanted to show them something. She
wanted them to be dazzled by whatever she gave them,
and she studied that she knew how to do that.
And Desi was right there with everyone in their face,

(01:13:49):
playing the conga drums, you know, while they're cheering and
having a great time, and he he could read the
crowd a bandleader absolutely absolutely. You know, do I slow
it down? Do I s beat it up? Are we?
We all know the difference between a good DJ and
about K and yeah, it's the same with a band leaders.
It was essentially the DJ of his time. He had
to be like, I'm in charge of the whole vibe

(01:14:11):
of this entire room, and I need to be able
to change it from if it's if it's a bummer vibe.
I need to be able to pick that up exactly
like I mean, And he did it. He had the
talent for that. He's incredible. I was so amazed by
by this deal, by by seeing that again, yet, like
you said, in the way that TV executives just could

(01:14:31):
not see it. Yeah, they were like minded. You know,
you're thinking about immediate profit, and sometimes you leave a
lot of money on the table when you think about
immediate profit. Yep, but that, like I said, there's barely
scratching the surface. I mean they are just getting the

(01:14:51):
show started now, and uh, we're going to get into
in part two the production of this show. The many
other brilliant ideas, innovation and innovations that DESI had. That again,
we're literally still watching today. Some of those most popular

(01:15:12):
shows of today wouldn't be what they are if it
weren't for some of the ideas that Desi had in
the production process. And then Lucy's genius and impact on
comedy is I don't even have to tell you how
different things would be. She's incredible. She's one of the

(01:15:32):
funniest people in the world. And and we'll talk about
in part two how she herself did not think she
was that strong of a comedian, but just a very
meticulous and rehearsed performer. But the woman was funny. I
mean even some of her interviews, I'm like, that is
a razor sharp wit. So come on, Lucy, give yourself
a little more credit. She put in the work she did,
She was willing to put in the work to be better.

(01:15:54):
And it comes that you can always tell you know
your iconic it's because you put in the work. Yea.
And and you know, not not to spoil too much,
but just a little tease Lucy herself. Lucille had some
brilliant business decisions as well coming up and ended up
being a very powerful force in the producing side of
television um for a lot of her career. Yeah, so

(01:16:18):
I love this. I wish we could cram it all
into one, but you know your time is valuable, Our
time is valuable, and it's just too much. They're too big.
These are some of the most incredible people ever, and
I think that's really going to come out in part two.
So definitely stay tuned for that episode exciting finale. But

(01:16:42):
in the meantime, please let us know what you think
about this episode and and all the other ones that
we've done. You got any ideas for other episodes we
could do, please send him our way. We love those. Yeah,
we get some great suggestions, so thank you for those.
Um Our email address is romance at I Heart Me
via dot com. That's right, and you can find us
on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at oh great, it's Eli,

(01:17:05):
I'm at Dianamite Boom, and you can find the show
at Ridic Romance on both those platforms as well. We
can't wait to hear from you, and we can't wait
for you to hear from us on our next episode.
Don't forget to tell everyone you know to listen to
the show, share it with them. That's the best way
to help us keep keep this train Merlin speculation, and

(01:17:27):
don't forget. If you haven't heard it yet, then Thursday's
episode of The Daily Zeitgeist, I'll be on and then
next week's next Thursday's episode, you can catch Diana on
their show. I'm excited. Yes, we're very extending to be there.
So cool. Yep, so we will catch you on the
next one. I love you bye, so long, friends, it's

(01:17:49):
time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell
your friend's names, Uncle sandance to listen to our show. Ridiculous.
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