<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is gold in them there books!\u00a0 I stumbled upon a clip of Desi Arnaz on <\/span>The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson<\/span><\/i> while surfing the internet.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t catch the year, but a couple of things stood out.\u00a0 First, Johnny wore a hip white coat with a sparkly embroidered design on either side of the lapels instead of his standard suit and tie.\u00a0 A down-to-his-belt length silk scare loosely knotted just below his neck completed the ensemble.*\u00a0 Johnny\u2019s hair was longer and whiter than I can remember seeing it in the past.\u00a0 The clip came from far enough back in time that Johnny could be seen lighting up a cigarette as they broke for a commercial.\u00a0 Arnaz, who was smoking one of those big Cuban cigars he was known for, was flanked on his right (stage left to the viewing audience) by Carson\u2019s sidekick Ed McMahon, \u2018Mr. Warmth\u2019 – Don Rickles, and \u2018Mr. Everything\u2019 – Bob Hope.\u00a0 During their back and forth banter, Johnny held up a copy of <\/span>A Book<\/span><\/i> written by Arnez and they began discussing some of the anecdotes from the book.\u00a0 Yes, that is the actual title – it was released in 1976 by William Morrow, so perhaps that gives us a little bit of a hint on the date of his appearance on <\/span>The Tonight Sh<\/span><\/i>ow. (*Further investigation explained Carson\u2019s unusual outfit – he had done a parody of the \u2018Rhinestone country stars\u2019 of the day earlier in the show).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I grew up watching Arnaz opposite his wife Lucille Ball on <\/span>I Love Lucy<\/span><\/i> which meant getting large doses of him leading his band while playing his signature conga drum.\u00a0 The short version he told Carson revealing why he began playing the conga drum while fronting his band was priceless.\u00a0 Desi had been performing with the Siboney Septet for $50 a week in Miami Beach when Xavier Cugat saw him and offered him a job as his band\u2019s singer for $25 per week.\u00a0 It was a step down for Arnaz moneywise but the wider exposure he would get in Cugat\u2019s band made him take the plunge.\u00a0 He proved popular enough for Cugat to renegotiate his wage to $35 a week.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The arrangement worked for a while until Desi finally told Cugat he was starving on these lower wages and was going to go back to fronting his own band.\u00a0 Xavier was gracious, telling him he could bill his new act as \u2018Desi Arnaz from the Xavier Cugat Orchestra\u2019.\u00a0 Arnaz had to agree to pay a weekly royalty for the use of the name.\u00a0 Desi offered him $25 per week and when Xavier asked, \u201cWhy only $25?\u201d Desi displayed his head for business.\u00a0 He told Cugat he was giving him the same deal Xavier had given him.\u00a0 \u201cIf we do well, we can renegotiate,\u201d Desi told him (the same line Cugat had used when he hired him).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Arnaz put together a throw together rumba band for an \u2018audition\u2019 at a club in Miami including a sax player, violinist, piano player, and a stand up bass.\u00a0 Two of the musicians were not even Latin.\u00a0 In the 1930s, it was not uncommon for groups to be given a contract for a period of time as a long term \u2018audition\u2019.\u00a0 Desi\u2019s new group was fired after one night.\u00a0 He said he wasn\u2019t surprised because they had no charts, had not rehearsed, and hardly knew each other when they debuted at the club.\u00a0 Even so, Arnaz was surprised when he came off stage and the owner told him, \u201cYou are fired.\u00a0 That was terrible.\u201d\u00a0 Arnaz asked for one more chance.\u00a0 The next night, he assigned each member of the band a piece of Latin percussion.\u00a0 He recalled his younger days (back in Cuba) when people would bang on anything from pots and pans to furniture to create rhythms.\u00a0 He told Johnny, \u201cI gave the violin player, who may have thought he was Jascha Heiftz, a couple of pans and some sticks.\u00a0 He said, \u2018What do I do with these?\u2019 and I said, \u2018Go tinka-tinka-tinka on them.\u2019\u201d Desi opted for the conga drum, reasoning, \u201cIf I stood out front and made a lot of noise, it would cover up the awful sound we were making as a band.\u201d\u00a0 It was also a novel approach as the conga drum wasn\u2019t well known in the United States (yet).\u00a0 It worked well enough to extend the gig, which gave them more time to rehearse an actual act.\u00a0 Quite accidentally, it also supplied Desi Arnez with his signature look.\u00a0 From then on, early all his promotional photos would picture him with his conga drum as word of his popular rumba band spread both on TV and when they toured one side of America to the other..<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hearing Desi tell the Cugat story, I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s not only funny, it is interesting,\u201d so I resolved to see if I could find a copy of <\/span>A Book<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 My wife is always tracking down books via the interlibrary loan service, and sure enough, she found a copy at the McMillan Township Library.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they are not part of the cooperative that shares books with other libraries so my next stop was the Ontonagon Township Library to see if Sarah the librarian could find me a copy.\u00a0 She was the one that informed me that, \u201cYes, I see McMillan has it, but they are not part of the lending library cooperative.\u00a0 Apparently, they are also the only library in Michigan that has a copy!\u201d\u00a0 I thanked her for the information and set out to see if I could score a copy from an online\u00a0 bookstore somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>A Book <\/span><\/i>was originally published in 1976, so I thought finding a used copy would probably be my only path.\u00a0 Lo and behold, several sites popped up offering hardcopy editions\u2026priced between $426 and $1,000!\u00a0 There are audio book editions for as little as $9.99 but I am not much of a book listener.\u00a0 I will keep looking, but if I happen upon a reasonably priced used copy, I may still pick it up.\u00a0 In the meantime, I started searching for more information on Desi Arnaz the cheaper way via the internet.\u00a0 Perhaps I should have encouraged the McMillian library to lock up their now quite valuable copy of <\/span>A Book.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Born on March 2, 1917 in Santiago, Cuba, his full name was Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III.\u00a0 His father was a powerful politician and his mother was known to be a beautiful woman. His grandfather was one of the founders of the Bacardi Rum company.\u00a0 The Arnaz family were wealthy enough to have their son\u2019s career mapped out for him:\u00a0 study law at Notre Dame in Indiana and then return home to open a practice.\u00a0 The plan changed drastically on August 12, 1933 when Fulgencio Batista organized a coup and became el Presidente of Cuba.\u00a0 With Desi Sr. jailed, their money and property confiscated, sixteen-year-old Desi III and his mother fled to Miami where they would spend the next six months negotiating his father\u2019s release.\u00a0 School was tough for a newly arrived immigrant who barely spoke English.\u00a0 Desi also had to work after school to help pay the rent in their shabby boarding house apartment.\u00a0 Arnaz first worked\u00a0 cleaning bird cages, and later found jobs in a railyard, as a bookkeeper, driving a taxi, and as a truck driver to help make ends meet.\u00a0 With law school now out of the picture, he borrowed a suit and auditioned as a singer for the house band at the same tony Roney Plaza Hotel where Cugat would later see him perform.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once Desi\u2019s new post-Cugat band became more widely known, they were hired to headline at the La Conga Cafe in New York pulling in $750 per week.\u00a0 It would not take long for them to begin touring some of the best clubs in America, including\u00a0 NYC\u2019s famous Copacabana.\u00a0 Arnaz was discovered at the La Conga by Richared Rogers and Lorenz Hart who put him in their new Broadway musical, <\/span>Too Many Girls.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 It was at the Copa where he was discovered again, this time by RKO Pictures Studio\u2019s George Abbot.\u00a0 RKO had purchased the film rights to the musical <\/span>Too Many Girls<\/span><\/i> and Abbot invited Arnaz to Hollywood to recreate his character opposite the female lead, RKO contract player Lucille Ball.\u00a0 They became romantically involved soon after they met and everyone from the gossip columnists to the RKO suits thought their relationship was a bad idea.\u00a0 They continued to see each other after the film was finished, even when their careers took them to different parts of the country.\u00a0 Ball met up with Arnaz in New York City on November 14, 1940 when she visited the city on a personal appearance tour.\u00a0 After Desi\u2019s last show at the Roxy Theater, the pair eloped and were married by a justice of the peace at the Byram River Beagle Club in Greenwich, Connecticut.\u00a0 Even their close friends thought it wouldn\u2019t last two weeks while the gossip columnists went into speculation overdrive .<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That their union lasted until 1960 is surprising because, with Lucy being tied to Hollywood and Desi\u2019s continued touring, they were in a loop of constant separation.\u00a0 Desi later estimated they spent the equivalent of three years together during their first eleven years as a married couple.\u00a0 Neither of their film careers took off, but Desi still did notable turns in movies like <\/span>Cuban Pete<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Holiday in Havana <\/span><\/i>(more or less playing himself and performing his music)<\/span>.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>He was able to settle down some when he replaced Stan Kenton as the bandleader and musical director for Bob Hope\u2019s radio show in 1947, but 1948 found him back on the road.\u00a0 Ball, who was doing a successful run on CBS radio with a program called <\/span>My Favorite Husband<\/span><\/i>, saw a way for them to spend even more time together.\u00a0 When CBS approached her about moving the radio show to television in 1949, she agreed on one condition;\u00a0 they cast Arnaz as her husband.\u00a0 CBS rejected the idea believing\u00a0 an American woman married to a Cuban orchestra leader would not be acceptable to their audience.\u00a0 The couple laid this notion to rest by developing a vaudeville revue featuring comic routines about a woman trying to crash her bandleader husband\u2019s show. \u00a0 Vaudeville was on its last legs at the time, but the plan worked.\u00a0 People loved the odd couple concept and word eventually leaked back to the executives at CBS.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Lucy-Desi dynamic was soon on display in CBS\u2019s new hit comedy, <\/span>I Love Lucy.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Many of the early episodes seen were basically rewrites of the comedy sketches they had done in their revue.\u00a0 The combination of Lucy\u2019s antics and Desi\u2019s music performed at the fictional Tropicana nightclub were ratings gold for CBS who, as we noted, nearly killed their golden goose before it laid any eggs.\u00a0 Desi wasn\u2019t idle between his screen shots – he spent time behind the cameras learning the business from the bottom up.\u00a0 Working as the head of their own Desilu Productions, he showed he had a head for the business;\u00a0 as a television executive, he was a natural.\u00a0 Arnaz went on to produce many other hit series including <\/span>December Bride, Our Miss Brooks, The Untouchables, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>The Danny Thomas Show<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Desi also pioneered the \u2018three-camera technique\u2019 used to film situation comedies that is still in use today.\u00a0 Desi Arnaz was an entertainment pioneer on many different fronts.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So what went wrong with Desi and Lucy and DesiLu Productions?\u00a0 The usual power couple difficulties that seem to be par for the course in Hollywood.\u00a0 The problems appeared as early as 1944 when Lucy was convinced Desi was being unfaithful and was coming home drunk on too many occasions.\u00a0 She filed for divorce but they reconciled before the paperwork became final.\u00a0 The turbulence continued throughout their twenty years together and as Desi recounted in his memoir, \u201cThe marriage began to collapse under the strain of my growing\u00a0 problems with alcohol, gambling, and infidelity.\u00a0 The combined pressures of managing the production company and supervising the day-to-day operations greatly worsened as the company grew larger.\u201d\u00a0 Arnaz felt compelled to seek outlets to alleviate the stress which in turn caused further strains on their marriage.\u00a0 When they divorced in 1960, they worked out an agreement that resulted in Lucy\u00a0 buying out his portion of DesiLu.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Arnaz and Ball remained friends even after they both married other spouses.\u00a0 Desi\u2019s second wife, Edith died of cancer in 1985 at age 67 – they had been married for 22 years.\u00a0 It was only after Edith\u2019s death that Desi\u2019s children talked him into seeking treatment for his decades-long alcohol addiction.\u00a0 It was another bad habit, however, that finally did him in.\u00a0 After years of smoking cigarettes on the set of <\/span>I Love Lucy <\/span><\/i>and the cigars (he favored these during appearances and social events until his sixties), Desi was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986.\u00a0 His last conversation with Lucy took place on what would have been their 46th anniversary when they spoke by phone.\u00a0 Their daughter Lucie was at his side constantly during his last days and he died in her arms on December 2, 1986.\u00a0 His death came just two days after his last conversation with Lucy and five days before Ball received her Kennedy Center Honors.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Desi Arnaz was a trailblazer in the TV and film industry though many of his contributions were subtle.\u00a0 Desi retained his Cuban accent even though he lived in the United States for seventy years.\u00a0 The decision was made to not make fun of his accent in the <\/span>I Love Lucy<\/span><\/i> series at a time when comedies often employed racial stereotyping to get laughs.\u00a0 Arnaz said the only exception came when Lucy would mimic Ricky Ricardo\u2019s accent – these jokes only worked when Lucy delivered them.\u00a0 Their efforts to maintain \u2018basic good taste\u2019 included\u00a0 refraining from ethnic jokes or humor based on physical handicaps or mental disabilities.\u00a0 In 1956, Desi won a Golden Globe (Best Television Achievement) for helping shape American comedy from both in front of and behind the camera.\u00a0 He would be granted two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – one for his contributions for motion pictures and one for his work in television.\u00a0 I did see one of these while visiting the WOAS West Coast Bureau in Los Angeles – it had the outline of an old time movie camera on it so you can figure which one it was.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Desi Arnaz has been portrayed by multiple actors in various projects.\u00a0 In <\/span>The Mambo Kings <\/span><\/i>movie of 1992, he was played by his son, Desi Jr..\u00a0 Maurice Benard took on his role in the 1991 TV film <\/span>Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The Desi part in the 2003 film <\/span>Lucy<\/span><\/i> was covered by Danny Pino.\u00a0 A 2018 take called <\/span>I Love Lucy:\u00a0 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sitcom<\/span><\/i> was a comedic take on how they battled to get the show on the air with Sara Drew as Lucy and Oscar Nunez as Arnaz.\u00a0 Google celebrated what would have been Desi\u2019s 102nd birthday with a special Google doodle on March 2, 2019.\u00a0 Javier Bardem made the most recent portrayal opposite Nicole Kidman in the 2021 biographical film <\/span>Being the Ricardos<\/span><\/i> for which Bardem was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Desi Arnaz was certainly no one trick pony.\u00a0 He was an Army veteran who was prevented from serving overseas due to injuries incurred before he joined up and during basic training.\u00a0 He was, however, a valuable USO asset during World War II – Desi was able to use his contacts to sign up major performers to entertain the troops.\u00a0 He and his second wife got involved with Thoroughbred horse racing and breeding during their semi-retirement in Del Mar, CA.\u00a0 Desi spent time teaching production techniques at the university level and contributed generously to charitable and nonprofit organizations including San Diego State University.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A couple of other nuggets about Ball and Arnaz turned up as I was researching this article.\u00a0 A friend who regularly visits Las Vegas told us he saw Lucille Ball later in her life frequenting the casinos there.\u00a0 Apparently Desi wasn\u2019t the only one who enjoyed gambling.\u00a0 Desi is also credited with making the \u2018conga line\u2019 dance popular in America, debuting it at the La Conga club (where else?).\u00a0 Desi and his son Desi, Jr hosted <\/span>Saturday Night Live <\/span><\/i>on February 21, 1976 where they did spoofs of both <\/span>I Love Lucy <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>The Untouchables.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Desi also did a dramatic reading of Lewis Carroll\u2019s poem <\/span>Jabberwocky<\/span><\/i> which, in his heavy Cuban accent was rendered as \u2018<\/span>Habberwocky\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The younger Desi played the drums with the <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>house band and Desi the elder performed two of his signature rumba tunes, <\/span>Babalu <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Cuban Pete.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Fittingly, the broadcast ended with him leading the entire cast in a conga line that snaked through the <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>studio.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Desi Arnaz Sr. performing Babalu<\/em> in true Rumba style!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is gold in them there books!\u00a0 I stumbled upon a clip of Desi Arnaz on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson while surfing the internet.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t catch the year, but a couple of things stood out.\u00a0 First, Johnny wore a hip white coat with a sparkly embroidered design on either side of 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