Latest news with #DesiArnaz
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lucie Arnaz Says ‘You Can't Talk to Aaron Sorkin,' Reflecting on ‘Being the Ricardos' — ‘It Was So Wrong'
At a screening of the 1993 special 'Lucy & Desi Home Movies' on the Paramount Studios lot on June 5, Lucie Arnaz got candid about her feelings on Aaron Sorkin's 2021 film 'Being the Ricardos.' The movie, which followed Arnaz's parents Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz during the production of the seminal '50s series 'I Love Lucy,' garnered a mixed critical response — though Nicole Kidman earned praise and an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Ball. Lucie Arnaz served as an executive producer on the project. 'I was involved, and I tried to work on it and correct the incorrect parts, especially her relationship with the writers,' Arnaz said in a video from the June 5 event. 'Totally wrong, right? She adored those people. They got along so well, none of that backstabbing, crazy, insulting stuff. That was such a crock of poop. It was so wrong.' More from IndieWire Sarah Michelle Gellar, Allison Hannigan Say 'Buffy' Reboot Will Honor Michelle Trachtenberg: 'We'll Do What's Appropriate' With 'Good Night, and Good Luck' on CNN, George Clooney Trusts the Power of Live TV, One More Time Arnaz also said that the tension depicted between Vivian Vance and William Frawley — known best as their 'Lucy' characters Ethel and Fred — was 'overly done.' 'But, you know, you can't talk to Aaron. He's Aaron Sorkin,' she explained, saying he would listen in what she referred to as 'meaningful consultation… But then he would say, 'Well, what do you know? You were 15 months old.'' Arnaz added that she was concerned about putting her name on something that future generations may look back on and consider to be the truth. The panel discussion also featured actor Keith Thibodeaux, who portrayed the Ricardos' son Little Ricky on 'I Love Lucy,' who also had issues with the Sorkin film. 'It's well done and all that, I just didn't get it,' Thibodeaux said. Arnaz did concede that the fill was 'beautifully made,' and has previously praised Kidman's performance as her mother. 'Nicole did a spectacular job,' she told Paul Springs Life in 2021. 'Boy, what she did was astounding. She's got such poise and class.' Arnaz appears to have had evolving feelings on the movie over the years. After seeing the film initially in 2021, she called it 'freakin' amazing.' Sorkin told IndieWire in 2021 that he built 'Being the Ricardos' around Ball seeing the series as a salve for her marriage to Desi Arnaz. 'Desi wasn't around that much, he was touring with his orchestra,' Sorkin said. 'Lucy had to be in L.A., she wanted her marriage to work, she wanted a family. She wanted Desi to play her husband, which was not a crazy idea. She would go out and meet Desi and the orchestra on weekends; he'd call her up on stage to do bits that the writers had written and audiences loved it. There was reason to believe the idea would work. 'I Love Lucy' exists to save the marriage.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Associated Press
02-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Book Review: Desi Arnaz biography highlights triumphs of Lucy's favorite foil
Once a second banana, always a second banana when in the shadow of a brighter star. For musician and actor Desi Arnaz, that shadow belonged to Lucille Ball, his wife and co-star on the ground-breaking 1950s sitcom 'I Love Lucy.' Etched in television history are the images of Lucy falling on her rear while stomping grapes at a winery, Lucy overwhelmed by a conveyor belt of chocolates, and Lucy acting nonchalant as movie star William Holden lights up her fake nose instead of her cigarette. Desi seems as important as the cone is to the ice cream. Not only was Arnaz his wife's straight man, he endured non-stop mocking of his Cuban heritage on screen and off. In fact, he was a rare Latino on American screens, big and small, and played a successful husband and father, not a gangster or peon. His character achieved some degree of immortality in the catchphrase, 'Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!' 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' Todd S. Purdum's deeply researched, insightful and enjoyable biography, gives Arnaz his due as an entertainer and a savvy businessman. With help, Arnaz envisioned, assembled and led the transformation that provided early television production its bedrock. Arnaz (1917-1986) was the only child of a prominent family in Santiago, his father the mayor and a member of the Cuban national assembly. The 1933 revolution forced the privileged family to flee to the United States — their home set on fire, their cattle herd slaughtered and the father jailed for months. Arnaz spoke little English when he began attending high school in Miami and took any kind of work to earn some money. Show business was an unlikely pursuit given that Arnaz couldn't read music, but the handsome and energetic young man could sing and play guitar and the conga drum. Soon he was working in New York with the popular band leader Xavier Cugat and turning the conga line into a dance craze. He was cast in a 1939 Broadway musical, 'Too Many Girls,' and sent to Hollywood for the film version. At RKO studios, he met his future wife and co-star, then a veteran of dozens of uncredited and supporting roles and struggling to break out. Had either Arnaz or Ball been more successful in films in the 1940s, they would not have turned to the newborn medium of television. Had their marriage not been rife with problems — mainly their separate careers plus his womanizing and drinking — Ball might not have demanded that Arnaz be cast when her radio show, 'My Favorite Husband,' was transferred to TV in 1951. In that sense 'I Love Lucy' was designed to save their marriage. The show turned out to be the innovative outlet Arnaz needed. The industry norm was a show broadcast live in New York sans audience and recorded with a film camera pointed at a TV monitor. Arnaz insisted that 'Lucy' episodes be filmed before an audience in Los Angeles. Film meant higher image quality and that episodes could be shown at any time and later repeated — the idea of a 'rerun' was new — and sold for syndication around the country and the world. Three cameras worked in sync and the show was presented like a play. An audience necessitated a redesigned studio placing seats in bleachers for an unobstructed view. All this became the new standard for a situation comedy and jump-started the move of television production from East Coast to West Coast. Arnaz didn't create the machinery, but he did oversee the operation, hire the right people and lead the charge. With 'I Love Lucy' a hit — it was the first TV show to reach 10 million homes, about two in three TV sets in the U.S. — their company Desilu expanded to produce other programs and rented space to even more. By the end of the 1950s Desilu was the biggest studio in the world in terms of hours of filmed entertainment. With sympathy but open eyes Purdum chronicles Arnaz's descent into alcoholism, which sapped his creative energy and the goodwill he had established over the years. Arnaz also could not control his sexual drive, especially his desire for prostitutes. The combination of booze, adultery and fiery outbursts finished his career and marriage, destroyed his health, and broke him financially. Ball, meanwhile, had career challenges of her own — she couldn't move beyond her Lucy persona — but she was wise enough when it came to handling her money. As the head of Desilu, having bought out her husband in 1962, she gave the greenlight for two television series that resonate today, 'Star Trek' and 'Mission: Impossible.' When she sold the studio in 1967, the on-screen ditzy redhead walked away with what today would be $100 million. America's favorite make-believe couple in the 1950s each married again. Yet they were never out of each other's life completely, due in large part to their two children and extended families, some business interests and a unique professional legacy. Their undying affection for each other needs no 'splainin' at all. ___ Douglass K. Daniel is the author of 'Anne Bancroft: A Life' (University Press of Kentucky) ___ AP book reviews:
New York Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
What Desi Arnaz Could Teach Hollywood Today
Seventy-five years ago, a fading redheaded movie star and her itinerant bandleader husband were searching desperately for a way to save their careers — and their marriage. She was starring in a network radio show in Hollywood and he was a musician on the road all the time, so they rarely saw each other. In their 10 years together, she'd already filed for divorce once, and was nearing her wits' end. The movie star was Lucille Ball and the bandleader, of course, was Desi Arnaz. In 1950, a glimmer of hope appeared for the couple: CBS intended to transfer Ball's radio show, 'My Favorite Husband,' to the untested new medium of television. But there was a problem: Ball wanted to make the move only if Arnaz — who'd helped start the conga dance craze in nightclubs in the 1930s and fueled America's demand for Latin music after World War II — could play that husband on TV. The network and prospective sponsors believed the public would never accept a thick-accented Latino as the spouse of an all-American girl. 'I was always the guy that didn't fit,' Arnaz would later tell Ed Sullivan. Arnaz, a Cuban immigrant and self-taught showman, had an idea: The couple would undertake an old-fashioned vaudeville tour of major cities around the country. He and Ball would demonstrate the real-life chemistry that he knew would click with Americans if they only had a chance to see the act. Racism was a fact of daily life even in Arnaz's adopted hometown, Los Angeles, where some restaurants still refused service to Latinos. The term D.E.I. did not yet exist, but Arnaz's gambit amounted to a bold push for diversity, equity and inclusion in the white-bread monoculture of a dawning mass medium that was sponsor-driven and cautious to a fault. Miracle of miracles, it worked. Critics and audiences from coast to coast raved at the couple's onstage antics, as Lucy clowned with a battered cello while Desi sang and drummed his heart out. A.H. Weiler of The Times pronounced the pair 'a couple who bid fair to become the busiest husband-and- wife team extant.' Soon enough, they were. Based on the success of Ball and Arnaz's tour, CBS executives agreed to film a test episode. The network had trouble finding a sponsor until a leading ad man, Milton Biow (as it happens, the grandfather of the actor Matthew Broderick) persuaded his client Philip Morris cigarettes to take a chance on the new show. 'I Love Lucy' was born, the rest is history, and it was Desi Arnaz who made much of that history possible. At a time when so many universities, cultural and business institutions are retreating from formal efforts to increase inclusion and the federal government is working to discourage and erase diversity efforts in all areas of life, Arnaz's tactics offer an instructive example for performers and institutions alike. Arnaz's differences — the very elements that made network chiefs hesitant to feature him — became his greatest strengths, as his charming portrayal of the solid, bread-winning paterfamilias of an intermarried family broke new ground in television and made Ricky Ricardo a beloved figure to the 30 million people who watched his show each week. He was the one TV star who did not look or sound like any other — he was forever telling Lucy she had some ''splainin' to do' — an immigrant who became the all-American man. The show's sponsor had been so skeptical about Arnaz's appeal that the contract with Desilu stipulated that Ricky could sing only if it was absolutely necessary to the plot. The audience's near-immediate embrace of Arnaz and his music made that a moot point and the clause was eventually dropped. Once the show became a cultural juggernaut, Arnaz rewrote the rules of stardom. When the network suits and advertising honchos balked at the idea of Ball, who was pregnant in real life, appearing that way on the show, it was Arnaz who went over their heads and straight to the top, to the chairman of Philip Morris, who responded with a blunt Anglo-Saxonism: Don't mess around with the Cuban! 'In real life or fiction, neither Desi nor Ricky ever betrayed his Latino identity,' the New York Daily News columnist Miguel Perez wrote on Arnaz's death in 1986, noting that when audiences remember him, 'they will see him as the head of an American family who, in spite of his accent and Cuban quirks, is realizing the Latino-American dream.' Arnaz heard 'no' a lot in his career but he never took it as a final answer. Before 'I Love Lucy,' television was largely a live medium in which programs ran once, then disappeared. Arnaz assembled a team that arranged to film their show in front of a live audience so that it could be preserved pristinely on 35-millimeter film. This production method was more costly, so the network insisted that Ball and Arnaz take a weekly pay cut. They agreed — if they could own the negatives of the show. The eventual multimillion-dollar value of the approximately 180 half-hours they produced provided the capital that made Desilu Productions the largest studio in Los Angeles, and the biggest producer of television content in the world. Arnaz's technical innovations also made it possible for the show to be repeated (thus giving birth to the rerun) and resold (thus creating the syndication market). His refusal to be shut out of television led to the birth of a business model that persisted for seven decades. Behind the scenes, Arnaz rose to become the most prominent Latino entertainment executive of his day and one of the most prominent Latino creative forces in the history of Hollywood. He remains the rarity that proves the necessity — indeed, the essential Americanness — of diversity. The fact that Latino stories are now part of the pop-cultural landscape, from a reimagined 'One Day at a Time' on Netflix to the current success of Broadway shows like 'Buena Vista Social Club,' can be traced directly to Arnaz's creativity, intelligence and courage. He looked and sounded nothing like the preconceived notion that the entertainment business had of a successful star. So he changed the way Hollywood did business, and whom we can imagine as stars. Anyone who can't understand that has some 'splainin' to do.
