On Saturday evenings, when few humans are listening, NPR does radio theater. When driving at such times, I’ll listen.
They recently covered Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I was blown away by Ball and Arnaz and how determined they were to negotiate shrewdly with CBS (and tobacco company sponsors) to make their show the way they wanted. Desi was able to structure the contract so he and Lucy would own the syndication rights to I Love Lucy episodes. All the money from reruns would go to their company, Desilu Studios. This was absolute blasphemy and the first deal of its’ kind. No one in TV at the time, neither executives nor talent, believed mass audiences would ever want to see an episode more than once. By structuring the contract in this way, network execs thought they had totally fleeced Desilu when it was the other way around.
Score one for BabaLou. Anyone alive in 1960s and 70s America knows how I Love Lucy dominated daytime reruns. All that unforeseen sunshine cash flowed back to Desi, Lucy, and their ashtrays.
Has everyone seen Being the Ricardos? I would say it’s great. Aaron Sorkin made backstage at I Love Lucy seem like The West Wing for chainsmokers. Excellent stuff. Both Lucy and Desi, but especially Lucy, must’ve been showbiz geniuses.
BTR focuses on Lucy for good reason. Desi was a decent bandleader and a determined businessman, but he wasn’t a comic genius. He was a fine foil for Lucy, but she was the transcendent talent, Their story together is compelling, but we only are moved to check out this flick because Lucille Ball stood above her time and profession and crafted an enduring, irresistible comic persona. In The Tonight Show clip below, Desi gives Lucy 90% of the credit for the show’s success.
Desi got equitable billing, even if it wasn’t equal. Born in Santiago, Cuba, in 1917 (when Cuba was part of the United States), he had a pants and sugar cane problem. He couldn’t keep his sugar cane in his pants. Lucy was bringing the funny and the money all day and Desi was out on their yacht by night, playing cards and slurping up all the honey. There’s a touching scene in BTR where Lucy uses a trick she saw in a movie to catch Desi’s infidelity. The delicious rums, distilled from sugar cane on his colonial home island, may have been a problem as well.
Given the success of this movie, and America’s ongoing love affair with classic TV, can it be long before we see a Green Acres biopic, “Being the Douglases” even if it’s only an SNL skit?
