Happy Birthday Desi Arnaz

Next to the cinematic milestone of watching Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra and promptly falling in love with him (at age seven) my other girlhood crush was Desi Arnaz -- cool cat Cuban bandleader extraordinaire and husband to the luckiest redhead in New York City.

Other than The Addams Family, no other TV domestic situation seemed as attractive and as liberating as Desi's Ricky Ricardo and Lucille Ball's Lucy. Already sour on the idea of marriage at a young age, the Ricky-Lucy dynamic seemed not only the real way a marriage could work but tremendously sexy. (I had yet to learn of the real life couple's eventual divorce, and that their fights gave George and Martha a run for their money).

But back to fantasyland. Let's see... living in a cool apartment directly in the city, falling into mischief with best pal and ex-vaudevillian Ethel, adorning various disguises to trick your hot Latin husband, working in a candy factory for a day, and getting into furniture smashing arguments only to cool that mad flow of Spanish with humor and yes, crying, which I realize annoys many contemporary viewers. But so what on Lucy's pouting? I always sensed Ricky was getting something on the side with all those luscious dancing girls and back-up singers so his guilt was a little justified. But then I also figured the couple had some kind of an arrangement -- a don't ask don't tell policy -- which seemed so thrillingly modern. Although I was never certain what sort Lucy might be mixing with, I deduced a few wild encounters with crusty cab drivers, scarred, sweaty dock workers and hopped up jazz musicians a la Margot Tenenbaum. Frankly, I could see no downside to any of this. Still can't.

And then there was the Hollywood phase -- William Holden at the Brown Derby, Rock Hudson, Cornel Wilde's hotel room, shopping with Ethel at the Farmer's Market and goofing around with Harpo Marx?! I don't care how many times Desi yells at you, it's all worth it. If you're gonna be a housewife, this is the one to be. You're coming home to Ricky Ricardo.

Today is the late, great Mr. Arnaz's birthday and I'm wishing him a happy one. The man had quite a life -- leaving Cuba with his father for political exile in Miami (his family's fortune was destroyed and his father banned from Cuba under the Batista regime), teenage Arnaz was discovered by band leader Xavier Cugat, and was soon leading his own band in Miami Beach. From the late 1930's-1940's, he rose in prominence as a spectacularly talented drummer, singer and band leader of Afro-Cuban music. And then he met Lucy -- they then revolutionized television.

So again, Happy Birthday Mr. Arnaz. Thanks for providing my now life-long crush, thanks for your underrated humor and timing and thanks for your music. Also, thanks for nearly ruining all other relationships of my future. (I'll extend thanks to Mr. Bogart as well -- and how Bogie and Desi swirling around my desirous, youthful brain aided and abetted my love for tough guy/dancing womanizer Roy Scheider's Joe Gideon...another beautiful destructor.)

No wonder I've never been married. Babalu indeed.

Read more Kim Morgan at Sunset Gun.

Comments

[christies47]

What a talented man- singing, dancing, bongo-plying, acting- and didn't he have a hand i the 3 camera technique used in I Love Lucy? They were all so good together- my favorite show. Where can I get a cutting of that shrub?!

[SparXter]

I'd like to pipe in too. I Love Lucy, I Love Desi... They have given -- and continue to give me -- hours of rich entertainment. Reruns forever! A friend of mine was living in L.A. in the 1980s, and stole a clipping from a shrub at Lucy's home... I've lost count of how many people have nurtured a clipping from that "Lucy plant." Isn't that funny? To revere a little plant because its parent was in Lucy's YARD???

[speakyourmind]

That was a very sweet homage. I loved him too!!

[jeaton]

Desi came up with the idea of shooting his sitcom with multiple (3) cameras. That basic idea is essentially how these shows are produced to this day.

[Pippilangstrumpf]

I grew up watching I Love Lucy reruns, in college when I came back to by apt. to eat lunch I ate my sandwich while watching it. These days, when my insomnia gets the better of me, I watch it at 3am.
I cannot even count how many times i've seen each episode. They never stop being funny, fresh and original.
One of the best things about staying home sick as a child was watching I Love Lucy in the afternoon while sipping chicken soup. Good times :)

[3fingerbrown]

It's been nice to see in recent years Desi recognized for being a Cuban-American icon at a time when Cuban-Americans really needed one, and for being one of the true behind-the-scenes pioneers of network TV. But I like to think of him as a good actor as well. You can watch every episode of "I Love Lucy" and never see him give a false line reading--he's always natural, always, pardon the cliche, "in the moment." When you consider that he was supervising every aspect of the show's production and learned his lines and blocking on the fly, and that English was his second language, it's amazing how uniformly smooth and assured his performance was.

And, Kim, I'm about to out myself as an even bigger "Lucy" nerd than you by reminding you that the Bob Hope episode wasn't set in Hollywood but at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

[Nutcase]

The video was great. Strangely, it made me think of the Obama supporters, mesmerized and following someone around while he spouts something as meaningless as Babaloo.

Je pense, donc je suis un populiste.

[BarryChamplain]

I listened to Obama's speech last night, and realized something at first startling, then really angering: there is PLENTY of substance to what Obama preaches. Numerous policies he wants to overhaul... and it's all right there in his oratory.

But the negative Hillary campaign (with plenty of help from the GOP!) has been louder and more relentless, in spreading the meme "Obama is all empty rhetoric". The MSM repeats it. Pretty soon, it's an accepted tenet of Conventional Wisdom that Obama is all feel-good Nothingness... it ain't TRUE, but it's ACCEPTED.

You just have to keep on saying what it isn't, more often than the guy in question actually says it. Hmm. Goebbals worked like that, too.

***

This is about Desi Arnaz, isn't it? Happy Birthday, compadre, wherever you are! If Desi had only invented the 3-camera shhot, showbiz would owe him forever. As it is, he was all the things that have been pointed out here. But he knew the value to the team, of being typed as Lucy's second banana.

If you read the biographies of this couple, you realize that it was the CBS suits that first started pushing back against the idea of allowing "the Cuban bandleader", not Lucille Ball, to be put in charge of things. A goodly part of that, I believe, was old-fashioned xenophobia on their part.

But you have to consider that when the Star put her foot down and CBS capitulated, it was because the Star knew what a genius and Renaissance man she had in the "Cuban bandleader"... and of course, when he stepped up to the plate... history and magic were made. Desi had the goods, even if the white guys in suits didn't know their asses from their elbows. And kudos to his ex, for playing her hand, and making it all happen.

[IntrepidReader]

Thanks, Kim, for an entertaining personal take on a true legend of television comedy. I never pictured the Ricardos as being swingers, though--it seems to me that being married to Lucy would not only never be boring, but it would be too exhausting to leave any energy for affairs on the side!

And while it's true that they fought bitterly and eventually divorced, the real life Lucy and Desi never stopped caring deeply for each other. Lucy was by his side when he died, even though she had long since remarried.

I'll happily join you in remembering Desi's birthday, with gratitude for the many laughs he and his gorgeously crazy redhead brought me.

[QueenCeleste]

Happy birthday Desi. He was one of a kind. Did you read his autobiography by chance?