Dreamers and Deceivers (19 page)

So, a few days earlier, he’d hit upon an idea: film. CBS could use the same high-quality film they used for Hollywood movies to tape broadcasts in Los Angeles. Then they could send those films to New York.

“How much is that going to cost us?” a skeptical executive asked when Desi first broached the idea.

“Five thousand an episode,” Desi replied authoritatively. In truth, he had no idea how much it would cost. He’d never done any of this before. He had pulled the number out of thin air.

The show’s sponsor, Philip Morris, agreed to chip in an extra $2,000 to defray some of the added expense. CBS upped their costs by $2,000 as well. As for the remaining $1,000, Desi had offered another out-of-the-ordinary idea: He and Lucy would take a $1,000-per-week pay cut for the first thirty-nine shows. With a draconian 90 percent federal tax rate on their marginal income in place, Desi figured he’d only see $4,000 of that $39,000 anyway. In exchange for the pay cut, he told his agent to get the network to agree that Desilu would own every show they produced, 100 percent.

After days of negotiation, the network finally agreed to Desi’s unorthodox demands. The CBS executives figured Desi would eventually realize that filming a TV show was impractical and he and Lucy would come to their senses . . . and to New York. As for rights to the shows, that seemed like a no-brainer given that it would save them $1,000 an episode.

Besides, no one ever had any use for shows once they aired.

Desilu Studios

Hollywood, California

October 15, 1951

“I’m afraid the show can’t go on tonight,” the man told Desi.

The first episode of
I Love Lucy
had required months of careful planning and frustrating squabbles with CBS back in New York. Everyone
thought the script was funny and the show had potential. Now it was falling prey to the most mundane problem of all: a toilet.

A sanitation worker from the California Health and Safety Department had visited the new soundstage at Desilu Studios and found a violation.

“What’s wrong?” Desi asked. He’d been running around all day, dealing with writers, soundmen, lighting people, engineers, his fellow actors, and now this.

“Well, sir,” the man replied, “California law requires that this building offer two bathrooms on the premises. One for men. One for ladies. You only have one available to the public.” Moreover, the toilets had to be a certain distance away from where the audience was sitting.

“Can’t we find a way around this?” Desi asked. Toilets? Were toilets really going to stop the show?

“Afraid not, sir.”

At his own expense, Desi had found a large studio in California where they could stage the production. He’d accomplished it all by working eighteen hours days, seven days a week. There was absolutely no way that some trouble over a toilet was going to flush his show down the drain.

Desi found refuge in the same place he always had: with Lucy. He told her the whole story and shared the solution that one of the writers had proposed: letting the audience use the bathroom in her dressing room. It was the only other one in the building that met California code.

Lucy didn’t see what all the fuss was about. “They just need a second bathroom?” she asked. “Well, that’s no problem. Tell the ladies to be my guest.”

Soundstages were always filled with adrenaline, but as Desi walked out in front of the studio audience, he found himself more emotional than ever. His mind began flashing back through his life and all that had transpired to bring him to this wonderful, improbable moment.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, as the last notes from the band faded away. “Welcome. I am Desi Arnaz.” The audience cheered.

The television episode they were about to tape would be the first one to ever use multiple cameras with 35mm film and tape before a live
studio audience. Up until that point, TV was almost exclusively taped with a single camera that would be moved around as necessary. By using multiple cameras, a far higher quality of film, and a real live audience, Desilu was completely reinventing how TV was produced.

Desi made it clear to everyone involved with the series that the real star of the show wasn’t him; it was Lucy. He waved one of his arms toward the stage entrance. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, here’s my favorite wife, the mother of my child, the vice president of Desilu Productions—
I
am the president—and my favorite redhead, Lucille Ball!”

As the crowd applauded, Lucy walked onto the stage and wrapped her husband in a warm embrace. “How ya doing, you gorgeous Cuban?” she asked. With a smile that belied how nervous she was, she blew kisses to the audience.

Within minutes, the actors took their marks. Someone yelled, “Action!” And a Hollywood legend was born.

Set of
Toast of the Town

New York City

October 3, 1954

Desi and Lucy had flown to New York to be honored on Ed Sullivan’s hit show,
Toast of the Town
. The couple seemed to be on top of the world. They now had two children, Desi and Lucie, a beautiful home, a hit TV show, and the love of a nation.

Desi, wearing a perfectly tailored tuxedo, stood up and scanned the studio audience in front of him. He glanced at Lucy, sitting to his right, just on the other side of Sullivan, then he turned to face the cameras. The cheering audience likely expected Ricky Ricardo to say something humorous. Instead, Desi’s face was somber, his tone serious.

He nodded in the direction of his wife. “I think if it wouldn’t have been for Lucy,” he said, his voice quivering, “I would’ve stopped trying a long time ago because I was always the guy that didn’t fit.”

The long, circuitous journey from destitution and terror in Cuba flooded through his mind. With his eyes moist, he added, “We came
to this country and we didn’t have a cent in our pockets. From cleaning canary cages to this night here in New York, is a long ways. And I don’t think that any other country in the world can give you that opportunity.” He was choking on tears now. They would not stop. Emotion once again overcame him. “And I just wanna say thank you,” he croaked.

“Thank you, America.”

An applauding Sullivan rose to embrace Desi, who struggled to wipe the tears away. A similarly moved Lucy reached over and patted her husband on the arm. They had come a long way, indeed. But deep down, Desi was still haunted by the truth he’d vowed to remember while fleeing to Havana in the backseat of the car: Nothing good ever lasts.

Six Years Later

County Courthouse

Los Angeles, California

March 4, 1960

Few people in Hollywood were surprised by the breaking news: Lucille Ball was filing for divorce.

Friends had known that their marriage had become a façade for the last few years, breaking down over the same old problems: Desi’s drinking, his womanizing, and the utter conflict between their personalities.

The gossipy tabloid
Confidential
came out with the headline-grabbing story that Desi Arnaz was cheating on Lucy. When an advance copy of the magazine circulated on the set, everyone seemed to freeze. Even though they all knew the story was true, no one knew how to react. One friend watched Lucy grab the magazine and hand it to her husband. “Oh, hell,” she said. “I could tell them worse than that.”

As their marriage crumbled, Desi’s and Lucy’s professional lives became even more successful. Three years earlier Desi had purchased RKO Studios, where he and Lucy had first met. He was now producing a new hit series,
The Untouchables,
starring Robert Stack, and Desilu had become a multimillion-dollar media empire.

As
I Love Lucy
ended its run in 1957—by then it had changed formats and been renamed
The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show
—their marriage was over in everything but name. On the last day of filming, there had been an eerie quiet. Lucy and Desi talked to each other like polite strangers.

Still, many in the cast and crew, like most Americans when they heard the news about the divorce, were heartbroken. They wanted a fairy-tale ending. Some, like
I Love Lucy
’s onetime director Bill Asher, believed right up to the end that things might turn around. “Maybe I’m a romantic,” he said, “but there was a great, great love there.”

Cast members remembered one particular scene from the show years earlier that hinted at what held the couple together. In the scene, Ricky Ricardo sings a song to Lucy after discovering for the first time that she is pregnant. The words Ricky sang to his wife were set to the tune of the show’s iconic theme song.

Even as both Lucy and Desi knew their marriage was crumbling, they seemed to lose sight of their characters during the scene’s first take. Overcome with emotion, they wept openly and held each other tightly. The director of the show had them do another take—this time with less visible emotion. But the studio audience insisted that they stick with the first take, the one that was real. Lucy and Desi agreed.

Unfortunately, the moment was fleeting. This second effort at divorce was going to stick.

Desilu Productions

Office of the President

August 17, 1964

After Desi’s hit series
The Untouchables
was canceled, Lucille Ball was installed as the new president of Desilu Productions.

Desi was on a downward path. He was drinking again, off television screens, and seemingly adrift.

Lucy was now the sole manager of the Desilu empire. The company had sold the rights to
I Love Lucy
to CBS for $5 million, a whopping sum at the time. Lucy had also bought out Desi’s share of the company for more than $2.5 million—thereby making her the most powerful
woman in show business. Desilu Productions, with sixteen soundstages and one thousand employees, was also the busiest studio in Hollywood.

As a boss, Lucille Ball was nothing like Lucy Ricardo. She was serious, demanding, and a proud perfectionist. She had many friends and was a devoted, often overprotective mother. She was as tough in her job as any man. And she knew every detail about every lightbulb, screw, and bolt that made its way onto one of her sets.

The new Desilu Productions president had learned a lot from watching her husband all those years. She commanded her team to produce new and unique shows. Like Desi, she was also willing to go her own way and ignore advice from the so-called film and television experts in Hollywood and New York. One script that caught her attention was a show called
Mission: Impossible
. The production costs were high, but she thought it was worth the risk, so she signed the deal.

A script for another promising show now sat on her desk. This one had a confusing name—at first, she thought it involved sending celebrities abroad on USO tours. The script was filled with strange jargon, and the ideas seemed too highbrow for a general audience. Top officials at Desilu were not enamored with the concept, nor the expense that it would entail. They told her that even if they sold the show to a studio, it would cost Desilu more to produce it than they’d ever make in profit.

But Desi had taught Lucy to trust her instincts. This show seemed to her to be innovative and fresh and she felt like it could be bigger than anything the executives could put into their financial models. She also believed that, if it became a hit, they could monetize it in other ways—like merchandise—to offset the production costs.

After much deliberation, Lucille Ball gave the green light to
Star Trek
.

Twenty Years Later

Home of Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill

Los Angeles, California

May 1984

The California sun was less forgiving on Lucy than it was with Desi. As the two splashed in the pool, the water sparkling with reflected
sunlight, Lucy wore a white hat with a yellow ribbon that shaded her face and complemented her modest yellow bathing suit. Desi was shirtless; his bronzed, sun-starched skin topped off by a mane of silver hair.

Their daughter, Lucie Luckinbill, filmed them as they swam with five-year-old Simon, their first grandson. It would be one more family video to add to the yards of home movie footage Lucy had accumulated over the years. It would also be the last time Desi and Lucy were ever photographed together.

Ever the protective grandparent, Lucy clung to her grandchild tightly while Desi circled them a few feet away. With his mouth, he made gurgling noises in the water, prompting squeals of delight from the boy. Helping Simon to a seat on the edge of the pool, his grandparents sang to him. Clapping her hands rhythmically, Lucy croaked, “Grand-pa-pa! Grand-pa-pa! Grand-pa-pa!”

After bungling a few words to Simon in her ex-husband’s native language, she chided Desi, “All my life I’ve been telling you to speak in Spanish!”

Desi stopped floating and shrugged in mock disgust. “All my life you’ve been telling me I don’t know how to speak English!”

Lucy reached over to Desi and tried to flatten his hair. It was a gesture both familiar and automatic. “I wanted you to speak Spanish to the kids,” she said.

He smirked. “They made fun of me!”

More than three decades earlier, Desi and Lucy had negotiated an ownership interest in their pilot and then made the bold decision to record it on film. In the process, they had invented the television rerun.

Now, together again, they were living a real-life one.

Lucy had remarried and Desi thought her new husband, Gary Morton, was a pleasant man. A stand-up comic with a perfectly adequate act, if modest acclaim. He and Desi got along just fine. Gary never seemed much of a threat. Desi liked to refer to him as “that guy.”

As Desi sang “Babalu” to Simon, and Lucy laughed and clapped along, it was—for just a moment—
I Love Lucy
again.

One last time.

Desi Arnaz Residence

Del Mar, California

November 1986

When she heard that the priests had been alerted, Lucy quickly called a friend who then drove her over one hundred miles from Beverly Hills to Del Mar. Pulling into her ex-husband’s driveway, Lucy hurried into his house. She had been told before leaving that he would refuse to see her. Sixty-nine years old, and quickly dying of lung cancer attributed to a lifetime of cigar and cigarette smoking, Desi was a shell of the man he’d once been. Chemotherapy left him nearly bald. By some estimates, he weighed less than one hundred pounds. No one was allowed to see him in such a state. Any visitors would have to talk to him through closed bedroom doors.