Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Volume One (1911-1960) of a Two-Part...

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Darwin Porter Danforth Prince

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

They Weren't Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Volume One (1911-1960) of a Two-Part Biography

Darwin Porter, Danforth Prince

$50.95

Hardback

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English

Woodslane
04 December 2020

Film, TV & Radio; Individual actors & performers; Television; Biography: arts & entertainment

Series: Magnolia House

"From 1951 through 1956, I Love Lucy was the most-watched show in television. Its launch was as rocky as the marriage of the real-life show-biz pros who crafted it.

After their divorce in 1960, Lucille Ball appraised Desi Arnaz, her former husband: ""He's like Jekyll and Hyde. He drinks and gambles, he's awash in broads and booze, and that gay actor, Cesar Romero, is his devoted slave. Love?"" she asked. ""I was always falling in love with the wrong man. Including Desi.""

Arnaz summed up his marriage to Lucille: ""We were anything but Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. They had nothing to do with us. We dreamed of success, fame, and fortune. And guess what? It all led to hell.""

Their early struggles were epic. As a girl, Lucy at times was literally chained to her backyard in Jamestown, New York. As a teenager, she broke away and earned a reputation as ""The Jamestown Hussy,"" riding around with Johnny DaVita, a local hoodlum.

Later, she broke into show business, hustling ""sugar daddies"" and stage-door Johnnies who gave her money and gifts. When she was desperate, she worked as a nude model.

In the 1930s, she migrated to Hollywood and made films for RKO.

Desi, however, was born to wealth and privilege in Cuba. At the age of twelve, as an incentive to helping him lose his virginity, he was escorted to a local bordello by his father.

Having lost most of their assets in the Cuban Revolution, his family fled. In Miami, Desi got a job as a janitor cleaning out canary cages. Later, in Manhattan, he accepted whatever gigs he could get. He became the ""kept boy"" of the gay composer Lorenz Hart, sustaining an affair with superstar Ginger Rogers on the side. That included the task of escorting her into Canada for an abortion. He was eventually hired by bandleader Xavier Cugat to ""beat hell out of those Afro-Cuban drums.""

After drifting to Hollywood, he spotted Lucy on a sound stage ""dressed like a two-dollar whore who had been badly beaten by her pimp.""

[That was, indeed, the character she developed for her role in Dance Girl Dance (1940). During its filming, she ""more or less politely"" resisted the lesbian advances of her director, Dorothy Arzner. Desi succeeded where Arzner failed, marrying Lucy that same year.] Characterized by violent fights and long separations, their stormy marriage staggered along for two traumatic decades.

Desi's obsession with sex became legendary. He seduced every prostitute in Polly Adler's infamous NYC whorehouse. In Hollywood, Lana Turner and Betty Grable came and went from his life, along with countless showgirls and hometown gals attending his on-the-road band shows.

Meanwhile, Lucy waited for his return, occupying her nights with the son (Elliott Roosevelt) of the U.S. president; actor/mobster George (""Black Snake"") Raft; and George Sanders, Zsa Zsa Gabor's suicidal husband. Coming and going from her boudoir were-among many others-William Holden, Milton Berle, Henry Fonda, Orson Welles, and Robert Mitchum.

By the early 1950s, the careers of both Lucy and Desi had run out of gas. TV executives objected to his Cuban accent. But I Love Lucy was launched nevertheless and shot up in the ratings, morphing into the most successful sitcom in TV history.

""With gold arriving in wheelbarrows"" (Desi's words), Lucy and Desi bought RKO Studios and launched Desilu Productions. It became the largest motion picture and television studio in the world.

This first-of-a-kind biography of TV's wackiest and most eccentric couple is generously stuffed with ironic facts and blunt assessments from their frenemies. It radically changes the premises of the American Dream that helped fuel its success."

By: Darwin Porter, Danforth Prince
Imprint: Woodslane
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 762g
ISBN: 9781936003716
ISBN 10: 1936003716
Series: Magnolia House
Pages: 576
Publication Date: 04 December 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Film historian Darwin Porter is the most prolific author of show-biz biographies in the world. A former entertainment columnist for The Miami Herald, he was assisted in the production of this book by Danforth Prince. Formerly employed by the Paris Bureau of The New York Times, Prince is the award-winning innkeeper of a historic and media-centric AirBnb in New York City, MagnoliaHouseSaintGeorge.com

Reviews for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Volume One (1911-1960) of a Two-Part Biography

As reviewed by Diane Donovan, Senior Editor at BOOKWATCH and THE MIDWESTERN BOOK REVIEW Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz Darwin Porter & Danforth Prince Blood Moon Productions Ltd. 9781936003716 $39.95 www.bloodmoonproductions.com Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy & Ricky Ricardo is the first volume in a two-part biography, and covers the marriage and stormy relationship between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz between 1911-1960. The many facts about both individually, as well as together, will engross and entertain as well as educate. Lucille, for example, was a chorus girl in the 1930s before she became involved with Arnaz. She grew from a teen who earned a reputation as a bad girl in Jamestown, New York after she become involved with the local hoodlum to working in show business and as a nude model. Her move to Hollywood expanded her activities as a hooker and show girl. These changed when she met Desi, a Cuban whose family lost most of their wealth in the Cuban Revolution before they fled to Miami for a new life. Desi and Lucy's Hollywood encounter led to a marriage fraught with stormy conflicts and separations...a relationship that lasted two decades, surviving infidelity on both sides. Readers who enjoy Hollywood gossip and stories of stars, starlets, and passion will find all these forces and more in Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz. Black and white images pack the story, embellishing it with photos, vintage ads and movie bills, and on- and off-screen shots that capture the personalities and events of Lucy and Desi. More than just a biography filled with Hollywood stories, however, Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz captures the era which produced Lucy and Desi, from backroom deals and critical successes and failures to the evolution of films, shows, and the two stars as they navigated a changing Hollywood milieu and their relationship. The passion, pathos, and personal and career encounters and choices each faced, both individually and as a famous couple, is captured in vivid descriptions of filming and acting that bring the Hollywood of the 1930s to modern times to life in all of its transformations. Perhaps the greatest strength of this story lies in its contrast between the dreams and realities of a Hollywood couple whose professional lives impacted their personal ambitions and marriage. Filled with insights and moment-by-moment inspections, Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz is a definitive biography highly recommended for anyone interested not just in these two, but in Hollywood filming, famous couples, and the changing milieu of movies and television over the decades. Biography, film, and media collections alike will find this exploration educational, historically accurate, dramatically intriguing, and revealing.