Actors - Desi Arnaz

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Desi Arnaz

	Actors - Desi Arnaz

Desi Arnaz (born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha, III) (March 2, 1917 – December 2, 1986) was a Cuban-American musician, actor, comedian and television producer.

Early life

He was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's second largest city, to a wealthy family. His ancestors had been among the recipients of the original Spanish land grants in the eighteenth century, and his father served in the Cuban House of Representatives and became the youngest mayor that Santiago had ever had. After the 1933 revolution that overthrew the American-backed President Gerardo Machado, Arnaz and his parents fled to Miami, Florida. At that time, Miami had virtually no Cubans, and to support the family Arnaz worked at different odd jobs.

Music career

He began his career as a professional musician in 1936, playing guitar and percussion for a Latin orchestra. He then took a pay cut to work in New York City for Xavier Cugat, his mentor, whom he later described as world-class cheapskate but an excellent teacher. Arnaz returned to Miami six months later to lead his own combo. It was there he introduced American audiences to the Conga Line, which soon became a national rage. He formed his own orchestra and returned to New York.

Arnaz was also a successful recording artist, beginning in 1937, and had a hit with the Santeria-flavored "Babalu" (1946), his signature song, which was recorded at RCA Victor.

Film career

In 1939, he starred on Broadway in the successful musical Too Many Girls. He then went to Hollywood to appear in the 1940 movie version at RKO, which starred actress and comedienne, Lucille Ball.

Arnaz appeared in several movies in the 1940s, most notably Bataan (1943). Shortly after he received his draft notice, but before he was actually inducted, he injured his knee. Although he made it through boot camp, he was eventually classified for limited service, and ended up directing U.S.O. programs at a military hospital in the San Fernando Valley. In his memoirs, he recalled discovering that the first thing soldiers requested was almost invariably a glass of cold milk, so he arranged for beautiful starlets to greet the wounded soldiers as they disembarked and pour milk for them. After leaving the Army, he formed another orchestra, which was successful in live appearances and recordings. After he became engaged in television, he kept the orchestra on his payroll. Throughout the period he remained an active producer.

I Love Lucy

He produced and starred in I Love Lucy, in which he played a fictitious version of himself, Cuban orchestra leader Ricky Ricardo, and starring his real-life wife Lucille Ball as Ricky's wife Lucy. In the original pilot, Ricky and Lucy were successful showbusiness figures (he a band leader, she an actress) whose glamorous careers interfered with their efforts to maintain a normal marriage. Market research indicated, however, that this scenario would not be popular, so Arnaz changed it to make Ricky a struggling young orchestra leader and Lucy a plain housewife with showbiz fantasies but no talent at all. Initially, the idea of having Ball and the distinctly Latino Arnaz portray a married couple encountered resistance, for he was told that his Cuban accent and Latin style would not be agreeable to American viewers; but Arnaz overcame these objections by auditioning the proposed television show before live audiences with great success.

Desilu Productions

With Ball, he founded Desilu Productions. At this time, most television productions were broadcast live, and since the largest markets were in New York, the rest of the country received only kinescope images—the result of placing 35 mm or 16 mm film cameras in front of a television monitor and shipping the prints to other time zones for broadcast at a later date—resulting in extremely poor quality. Arnaz developed the multicamera setup production style using adjacent sets that became the standard for all subsequent situation comedies. The use of film enabled every station around the country to broadcast high-quality images of the show. Initially, Arnaz was told that it would be impossible to allow an audience onto a sound stage, but he worked with the famous cameraman Karl Freund to design a set that would accommodate an audience, allow filming and also adhere to fire and safety codes.

Arnaz also pushed the network to allow them to show Lucille Ball while she was pregnant. According to Arnaz, the CBS network told him, "You cannot show a pregnant woman on television." Arnaz consulted a priest, a rabbi and a minister, all of whom told him that there would be nothing wrong with showing a pregnant Lucy or with using the word "pregnant." The network finally relented and let Arnaz and Ball weave the pregnancy into the story line, but remained adamant about eschewing use of "pregnant," so Arnaz substituted "expecting," pronouncing it "'spectin'" in his Cuban accent.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Desi Arnaz ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Desi Arnaz; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.