Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television

by Todd Purdum

An illuminating biography of Desi Arnaz, the visionary, trailblazing Cuban American who revolutionized television and brought laughter to millions as Lucille Ball’s beloved husband on I Love Lucy, leaving a remarkable legacy that continues to influence American culture today.

Desi Arnaz is a name that resonates with fans of classic television, but few understand the depth of his contributions to the entertainment industry. In Desi Arnaz, Todd S. Purdum offers a captivating biography that dives into the groundbreaking Latino artist and businessman known to millions as Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy. Beyond his iconic role, Arnaz was a pioneering entrepreneur who fundamentally transformed the television landscape.

His journey from Cuban aristocracy to world-class entertainer is remarkable. After losing everything during the 1933 Cuban revolution, Arnaz reinvented himself in pre-World War II Miami, tapping into the rising demand for Latin music. By twenty, he had formed his own band and sparked the conga dance craze in America. Behind the scenes, he revolutionized television production by filming I Love Lucy before a live studio audience with synchronized cameras, a model that remains a sitcom gold standard today.

Despite being underestimated due to his accent and origins, Arnaz’s legacy is monumental. Purdum’s biography, enriched with unpublished materials and interviews, reveals the man behind the legend and highlights his enduring contributions to pop culture and television. This book is a must-read biography about innovation, resilience and the relentless drive of a man who changed TV forever.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Tv, Book Club

368 pages, Hardcover

First published June 3, 2025

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars!

My favorite Sitcoms:

1. The Dick Van Dyke Show
2. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
3.Martin
4.The Office
5. Friends
6.Parks and Recreation
7. Always Sunny in Philadelphia
8. Happy Endings
9. The Mindy Project
10. The Game( only the first 3 seasons)

"I Love Lucy was never just a title"

Desi Arnaz is probably best remembered by the name Ricky Ricardo or as simply Lucille Ball's husband. But he was so much more. Even over 70 years after I Love Lucy first premiered Arnaz is the most prominent Latino experience in Hollywood history. That is both very impressive and it's an indictment of the racism of Hollywood.

I grew up watching I Love Lucy reruns and so did my parents. I Love Lucy is older than both of my parents and it's still a hilarious show. While Lucille Ball gets 90% of the credit for the show, it's not an overstatement to say that there would be no I Love Lucy without Desi. On the show he played the most difficult part, the straight man. Lucy got to camp it up, while Desi had to set up all those zany jokes.

There's a saying about Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger's that Ginger was the more talented of the partnership because she did everything Astaire did but backwards and in heels. Well i would say the same is true of Desi, he built a Hollywood career just like Lucy but he did it with brown skin and in his second language. I don't think we talk enough about the fact that in 1953 in the middle of Jim Crow there was an interracial couple kissing on TV. Desi was the first Latino television star and first Latino television executive. He revolutionized tv.

I'm going to list just a few things that Desi is either directly or indirectly responsible for:
1. Figuring out how to light a studio for a live TV audience
2. Preserve episodes on crystalline 35 millimeter film stock
3. Rerunning episodes
4. Syndication of tv shows
5. Filming a show and banking episodes instead of shooting and airing each episode live
6. Moving tv shows from New York to Los Angeles
7. Product Placement in episodes
8. Process shots
9. Made for tv movies

Some of the tv shows that won't have existed without Desi:
1. The Untouchables
2. The Twilight Zone
3. The Danny Thomas Show
4.The Dick Van Dyke Show
5. Star Trek
6. Mission Impossible

Desi Arnaz was a brilliant but troubled man. He was an alcoholic and he battled drug addiction...and probably what would today be considered sex addiction. He and Lucy had a very stormy marriage but they still loved each other until their dying day.

This was a short but very entertaining biography. I never disliked Desi while reading this book, even if I hated his behavior. I highly recommend this book and the show I Love Lucy.

[Joanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so well done!!! I am thrilled that Desi - finally - has a biography all his own that is extensive and ACCURATE. And one that is outside of his own memoir. Most Lucy bio books focus on Lucy! With Desi being a bit in the background. It was wonderful to read something so extensive, honest, compassionate and beautifully written about the man who truly did invent perhaps not all of Television, but certainly and definitely, from a whole cloth—situation comedy (sitcom TV)

Desi was a genius. I personally didn’t learn anything too new - but I’m a rare case - being very well versed in Lucy-Desi history. Still loved this though and it is yet another rare accurate book for anyone who wants to learn the truth.

[Jay Daire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a GREAT BIOGRAPHY for those of us who loved "I Love Lucy" and so much of what got television started! Yes, Lucy & Desi fought & divorced each other. I don't think that is a spoiler. But underneath it all, they truly loved each other. I loved this story, and in my heart I believe they each needed each other, even when they were apart. Lucy died two years after Desi passed away on April 26th, 1989. That was my 21st birthday. 36 years later, their story still brings love to my heart and tears to my eyes. Many Hollywood Marriages don't survive because you're always in the spotlight, so don't judge Desi or Lucy for their divorce.

[Hannah Balkovec · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this was such an honest biography. It wasn’t trying to make me like Desi Arnaz or sell him to me. But it did still point out the inequity and erasure of his influence on the film industry and how, because he was of Latino descent, when people speak about I Love Lucy and tv camera work they often leave him out. And this was how I read it as someone that had read Lucille Ball’s autobiography and already wasn’t fond of how he seemingly treated her throughout their marriage.
I also could not find it within me to loosen my suspicion that his father had a little more to do with the corrupt politics of Cuba than they would ever admit.
But even so, you could tell he was a dynamic and brilliant man, that could sometimes be thrown of course by his addictions and extremes.

[David L. Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished reading DESI ARNAZ: THE MAN WHO INVENTED TELEVISION by Todd S. Purdum. I found it quite interesting and that may have been helped by the fact that I was just finishing up a rewatch of ‘I Love Lucy,’ this time on Blu-ray (which I highly recommend).

I would’ve given the book five stars but then I got to the Epilogue and this insulting line from page 302 Paragraph 2 Line 12: “In the 1960s, bland, middle-of-the-road shows like ‘My Three Sons’ and ‘Bewitched’ were filmed with a single camera and a tacked on laugh track…”

😑😑🤬

PARDON ME, MR. PURDUM!! Your assessment of ‘Bewitched’ is not only odious but couldn’t be further from the truth! ‘Bewitched’ was the #1 comedy on TV (#2 in all shows, just below ‘Bonanza’) and employed the greatest of all writers, producers, actors, and directors! One of which was William Asher who directed some of the most memorable ‘I Love Lucy’ episodes (and who was quoted in the Desi book.

Anyway, for that inane comment you get two demerits! Making my overall rating of what, to that point, had been a great book, three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, Desi Arnaz gets the credit that he deserves! Beautifully written .

[David Sprouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye Opening

Desi Arnaz never received his due in life. Now, this fascinating, often painful book sheds light on his genius as well as his demons. Desi helped pioneer filming methods used to this day. As a Hispanic man in the 50s, he ran a successful TV studio. If only he didn't drink. Or fraternize prostitutes. Or gamble. All of which he did to excess. Oh, well. Flaws and all, Arnaz deserves his flowers. Thanks to this book he's finally getting them.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars only because I think the many many plot and movie synopses were unnecessary; other than that, this was a fascinating study, amazingly researched, about Desi and Lucy's careers, relationship, and contributions to the television industry. I was always a fan, and after reading this, my admiration is even deeper.

[MM Suarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"He was capable of self-reflection, and of sorrow at what he had made of his life, and—at the end—of confronting some of his demons. But as with most people—and certainly so many high-achieving people—his strengths were bound up with his weaknesses."

A beautiful biography that while compassionately written, does not shy away from the very dark side a brilliant but as are we all, very flawed man. Given my Cuban heritage, watching the I Love Lucy show was almost a required family ritual when I was a child, but I must admit that I was totally unaware of the impact Desi had on the nascent television industry, but sadly I am not surprised he was never given the credit and respect he deserved in Hollywood, even today the list of Hispanics with an Oscar is very short.

I really enjoyed the book and the great pictures at the end. I will end with a great quote from Cecil Smith, the emeritus television critic of the Los Angeles Times, “It’s also well to be reminded that every evening you spend watching television, you are exposed to Desi Arnaz.”

[WM D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I just finished reading was extremely well done biography of the life and career of Desi Arnaz. It takes the reader into how he started his career and how he met and married Lucille Ball. Together they created Deslliu productions and went from famous bandleader into a corporate executive. In the end they still loved each other very much.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I Love Lucy was never just a title.”

Ahhh my heart at the end of this book! 😭

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television by @toddpurdum tells the biography of Desi Arnaz’s life starting from his youth in Santiago, Cuba. The history of what was going on in Cuba during that time and how Desi ended up fleeing to American and basically going from riches to rags and back again a few times was fascinating.

Of course we know that Desi didn’t actually invent television. The title is from a name he was called in a publicity article and it more refers to the major changes he made that have affected the way we view television today. Just to name a few, Desi was the first Latino star on a prime time show and the first tv exec, the first interracial couple on tv with Lucille Ball. He invented the rerun and helped to invent a new three camera film system. Together with his wife Lucy, at one point their production company Desilu, was the biggest tv production studio in the country and produced huge hits including Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, Mission Impossible, Star Trek, The Untouchables and many many more! Did I mention Lucy was the first pregnant woman to ever appear on television?

I could go on and on with my fascination of this man, his wife and their incredible success on my favorite TV show of all time. My heart was so full reading this book and a little bit broken here and there as well.

I have to admit I was worried it would be a boring biography full of technical stuff but I loved it just as much as I’ve loved all of my Lucy books too. It was also nice to give Desi the recognition he deserves when the spotlight is usually on Lucy. Highly recommend for any Hollywood fans, TV fans or history buffs.

#desiarnaz #themanwhoinventedtelevision #bookreview #ilovelucy #lucilleball #foreverdarling #myheart #iloveyoutruly #cubanpete

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todd Purdum’s Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television is a compelling, deeply researched portrait of one of television’s most influential yet often underappreciated pioneers. More than just Lucille Ball’s charismatic co-star on I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz emerges in this biography as a visionary producer, technical innovator, and shrewd businessman who helped shape the very foundation of modern television.

Respectfully, Purdum doesn’t shy away from Arnaz’s personal demons—his struggles with alcoholism, infidelity, and a self-destructive streak that ultimately cost him his marriage and much of his professional momentum. The biography paints a poignant picture of a man whose brilliance in business and entertainment was matched by deep personal flaws.

What makes this book especially moving is its exploration of Arnaz’s enduring love for Lucille Ball. Even after their divorce, his admiration for her talent and their shared legacy remained profound. One of the most touching moments in the book recounts a letter Arnaz wrote to be read at the Kennedy Center Honors, just days before his death, in which he credited Lucy with 90% of the show’s success and reminded the world that I Love Lucy “was never just a title”.

Purdum’s biography is both a celebration and a cautionary tale—a richly layered account of a man who helped invent the television industry as we know it, but who couldn’t always master his own life. For fans of classic TV, lovers of Hollywood history, or anyone curious about the man behind the laughter, this is a must-read.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan of I Love Lucy, and the later Lucy shows since I was a kid. I would record them on VHS. 😊 I've watched documentaries about them, but steered clear of the docudramas because they seemed to sensationalize on the truth and not stick to the real history.

I knew a lot about Desi's history and knew what he did to revolutionize the tv industry. This book goes so much further with the details of Desi's life from beginning to sad end and I was so excited to learn all of it.

The documentaries shortened the timeline and glossed over the steps to creating I Love Lucy, making it seem almost instant. The book describes how hard it really was to get the show on the air.

Then the details of how the Lucy Desi Comedy Hour came to be, which I watched too, was cool, though sad since it was the end of their marriage.

The respect and attention to detail to share the truth but not make anyone a villian was refreshing. Lucy and Desi had a hard marriage, with terrible lows, but loving highs.

When I watch the show again, I will remember this book and think of fhe behind the scenes magic.

Great Great narration. I love fue voice ad approach. Highly recommend the audio.

4 stars frthe book. The ending felt kin of rushed.
5 stars for narration.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bio of Desi Arnaz. He was truly a trailblazing and unique individual. Talk about the odds stacked against him--a Cuban American superstar in the 1950s. Hard to imagine how scandalous it might've been in those days, with him married to a white woman and being on TV. And not only that, being in arguably the biggest TV show of all time. I Love Lucy defined sitcoms and the television landscape for decades to come. Desi's story is interesting, especially in how he climbed his way up into the powerful position in entertainment that he achieved (and becoming a powerful producer as well). He was also a savvy businessman in terms of using his production company to profit in new and innovative ways.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up watching I Love Lucy as a kid and then ended up marrying a Cubana. I joked that we were Ricky Ricardo and Lucy in reverse. But seriously I never knew of Desi's innovative ideas in Hollywood nor the scope of his unrelenting drive and ambition. Nor did I know of his sexual addiction and alcoholism. Pretty amazing how such a driven man could be so undisciplined. He had it all and threw it away. A complex guy who was beloved but also pitied. Just a sad story.

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t really learn anything new about Desi Arnaz from Todd S. Purdum’s new biography, but I did enjoy it. I certainly agree that Arnaz doesn’t get enough credit for some of the amazing innovations he either appropriated from elsewhere (the three-camera method of filming TV shows) or outright invented (what we quaintly called in the days before streaming, the “rerun”). More than just a pretty face, competent musician, and foil to Lucille Ball, Arnaz was a savy business man, who cut some remarkable deals with CBS and eventually bought a whole Hollywood studio (RKO). He unfortunately, had it all fall apart due to his personal demons, alcohol and women. This book tells the whole story, with the cooperation of his children, Lucie and Desi Jr., and it’s sad at times. I watched Lucy religiously as a kid; it was on CBS every morning at when I was still of pre-school age, in an era before annoying talk shows and garish game shows. I’ve always loved Lucy, but Desi deserves some love, too.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much about the history of television from this book, and how Desi Arnaz basically pioneered TV as we know it today-- multiple camera angles, filming in front of a live audience, recording shows so they could be rebroadcast (and purchased) in the future. Desi really did create modern sitcom television.

This book also touches on how he became a refugee (not an immigrant) to the U.S, having to flee Cuba as a teenager when his father (the mayor) was imprisoned, his personal struggles with alcohol and infidelity, and his undying love for Lucy and everything they created together. So many books have been written about Lucille Ball, and if you've read any of those, this is a great addition to Desilu history.

After this, I watched Lucy and Desi, the documentary by Amy Poehler, with commentary from their daughter Lucie, and it was a great way to stay in that world for a bit longer.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book! It was fun reading about old Hollywood back when they worked on 35 mm film! Desi Arnaz was an innovator in television, creating new ways on how to run the cameras! He knew how to do business!!

The book also touched on Desi and Lucy's relationship over the years!

I recommend this read!

[Ryal Mcmurry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I have read several books about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz over the years, including his autobiography. However, this was really in depth and a really good dive into not only Desi Arnaz’s life, but his contributions to television. Thorough and informative, but also very entertaining!

[Caroline (romereads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a FACINATING look at the man who invented the multi-camera sitcom, in an era before videotape.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful Biography

This biography gives a great portrait of Desi and one that is compassionate and kind. Desi was a great artist that expanded Television into new heights. He unfortunately lapsed in alcohol and women which ruined his stable relationships.

[Marie Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book for those interested in the history of TV and for those who love the show "I love Lucy." Well written, readable, sad.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like so many millions of others, I grew up laughing at the antics of the "Ricky Ricardo" family on"I Love Lucy." By contrast, this well-written biography of Desi Arnaz focuses on the real, and often deeply disturbing, story of what was actually going on behind the scenes.

[Michele Owrutzky Endick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually 4 1/2 stars!
Excellent biography, reads easily and not unnecessarily overly detailed as some bios are…but the book often concentrates on Lucy. Indeed they acted as a team … but narrative about Lucy took up a good chunk of the book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

“ ‘P.S. I Love Lucy was never just a title.’ ”

Rating: 5/5

It was Arnaz (and I Love Lucy’s head writer and producer, Jess Oppenheimer) who assembled the world-class team of Hollywood technicians who figured out how to light and film the show in front of a live studio audience, with three cameras in sync at once—a then-pathbreaking method that soon became an industry standard for situation comedies that endures to this day. It was his ability to preserve those episodes on crystalline black-and-white 35-millimeter film stock that led to the invention of the rerun and later to the syndication of long-running series to secondary markets. This innovation also made it possible for the center of network television production to move from New York to Los Angeles and created the business model that lasted unchallenged for the better part of seven decades, until the streaming era established a competing paradigm.

How he did so is as good a story as any he ever produced. But it takes some ’splainin’.

“Music was something we both ate, drank, and bathed in from birth,” Rizo recalled.

That night, Desi’s father took him into his study and let him have it. “Have you ever seen me insult your mother?” Mayor Arnaz demanded. “Have you ever seen me embarrass her or make her ashamed of me?… You listen to me, young fellow, and listen good. Don’t you ever insult your mother that way again or embarrass her as you did. Now get the hell out of here.”

What the hell? What is this with you?’ you know. ‘You’re like a slave to this guy. You treat him like he’s a goddamn king or something.’ My mother said something that I’ll never forget. She said, ‘Yeah, that’s true, I treat him like a king.’ I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘That’s the only way I can be a queen.’ ”

For Desi Arnaz, the collapse of the only social, emotional, and family universe he had ever known—at the formative age of sixteen—created psychic scars that would last a lifetime. But this youthful trauma would also be forever linked with a willingness to take bold risks—and a burning, consuming drive to succeed.

Desi, not yet twenty-two, did not even realize he had been spotted. But that chance encounter would change his life.

A few hours later the company reconvened for a musical rehearsal. Desi was at the piano, running through “She Could Shake the Maracas,” when a striking woman he did not recognize walked into the room in a snug pair of beige slacks and yellow sweater, with blond hair and huge, luminous blue eyes. “Man, that is a hunk of a woman,” Desi told the accompanist. “You met her today,” the piano player replied. “I’ve never seen her before,” Desi answered. “That’s Lucille Ball.”

The role of Connie Casey, the female lead, went to a twenty-nine-year-old contract player at RKO who had already made sixty movies. Her name was Lucille Ball.

Lucille auditioned for more acting parts, but it was a modeling job in the spring of 1933 that provided her big break. She posed as a “poster girl” in an advertisement for Chesterfield cigarettes, in a blue chiffon dress with a pair of Russian wolfhounds, and the broadside was plastered all over Manhattan. In mid-July, outside the Palace Theater on Broadway, she ran into an agent named Gloria Hahlo, who recognized her from the glamorous ad, and told her that the comedian Eddie Cantor needed another chorus girl for Samuel Goldwyn’s musical film Roman Scandals. And though she could really neither sing nor dance, Lucille was soon on the train to Hollywood.

“I think that he was a very important source of security to her,” Marcella Rabwin said of Al Hall. But Lucille didn’t love him. “He came into her life at a very opportune time. She needed the father figure.” Ball and Hall were discreetly living together when she walked into that RKO music rehearsal and Desi Arnaz’s eyes opened wide.

“When you fall in love immediately, and violently, as we did,” Lucille told an interviewer years later, “you fall in love with your senses—sense of sight and sound and touch and smell. Seems a funny thing to say and I don’t quite know how to say it except that, well, heck—the way Desi smells, like soap, like a baby, that clean hair smell or something, was a factor in my falling in love with him, and a factor in my staying in love with him.”

Lucille’s favorite flowers were actually lilacs, but carnations would become Desi’s signature gift bloom for the rest of their lives. When he sat quietly strumming his guitar and humming to himself, Lucille worried that he might already be bored until he emerged from his reverie with a love song he’d composed just for her:

There’s a brand-new baby at our house She’s twice as sweet as honey from the comb. She’s the image of my spouse, She’s the tricky Mickey Mouse, Who has changed our happy house to a home.

Producers, advertisers, and audiences all came to accept the new reality as mutually beneficial (even if reruns eventually became the source of occasional boredom), and to one degree or another, the practice persists to this day on television of all kinds.

There was a small party onstage after filming ended. Desi felt good. “How smoothly everything went that night, mechanically and performance-wise, was hard to believe,” he would recall many years later. “It all seemed effortless, which only goes to prove that it takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless.”

The opening credits are a charming cartoon—produced by the animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbara, creators of Tom and Jerry, in which stick figures of Lucy and Desi scamper atop a giant cigarette pack. (The now-familiar satiny heart logo would appear only years later, in reruns.)

Arden wanted to produce her show the way I Love Lucy was done and asked Desi to help. He quickly realized that Desilu’s cameras and equipment were being used only two days a week and thus had excess capacity. In late January, I Love Lucy shot one of its episodes a day early so its usual crew could film the Our Miss Brooks pilot. When Desilu negotiated its second-season contract with CBS, the network agreed to buy a 25 percent stake in Desilu Productions for $1 million, and Desilu acquired equipment—including the lights CBS had advanced it for the first shows. Desi then created a separate production entity—Zanra, “Arnaz” spelled backward—and sold the new shell company the equipment Desilu had been using, including the three-headed monster and Freund’s lights. Zanra then turned around and rented the equipment back to Desilu, which passed the cost along to Our Miss Brooks, which was owned by CBS. It was a profitable bit of vertical integration, and CBS business executives initially objected.

Within a week or so, opposition to the pregnancy plot suddenly faded. Desi would claim he only learned why a couple of years later, on a visit to Lyon’s office in New York, when the chairman’s secretary surreptitiously showed him the memo the chairman had sent to his staff at the time. “Don’t fuck around with the Cuban!” it read.

For Lucy, the experience was scarring. For the rest of her life, she never so much as cast a ballot. For Desi, it was a bittersweet victory. With discipline, calmness, good humor, and courage under fire, he had defused a potential disaster. But as he faced mounting business burdens and creative pressures, personal demons emerged that would make it hard for him ever again to rise to the occasion with quite such grace and skill.

The couple exhibited real wedded bliss Desi turned to Lucy and said with a kiss, “These thirteen years my love’s grown stronger.” “The way you say it,” she said, “it sounds longer.”

The sequence is a tour de force and a testament to Ball’s fearlessness as a performer. The putty nose was not really on fire (though a small wick at the end of it was). Jack Benny was so impressed with the episode that he made his writing staff watch it as a master class in comedy writing.

My mother would get personally offended by childhood behavior or what you said, because you should have known not to say that somehow, even though no one’s taught you what to say. And she would emotionally separate from you for however long she wanted to. And it would be sometimes days, sometimes weeks.” Marcella Rabwin, the close family friend, would remember of Lucy: “I thought she was a loving parent, but very, very despotic.”

And being apart, little quarrels take on importance and one thing leads to another until two people who really belong together are separate for good. And for the rest of their lives, they wonder how it happened, how anything so vague and mixed up could have culminated in a separation so definite…. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. Some people don’t notice the clock on the wall till it stops ticking.”

CBS eventually assented to the Arnazes’ insistence on making I Love Lucy an occasional hour-long show—for what would end up being five episodes in the 1957–58 season—interspersed with a variety of other Monday night programming of the network’s choice. The Ford Motor Company agreed to sponsor the new version for two hundred thousand dollars an episode, to introduce its new 1958 models, including the company’s heavily promoted new centerpiece line: the Edsel. That would turn out to have been an ominous sign.

What is worse, after Desi bought the television rights to Bernadette of Lourdes, a 1939 book about the French saint written by Blanton’s wife, Margaret, Lucy would accuse him “of buying Blanton’s support.”

Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse aspired to be a class act and would ultimately feature a raft of famous guest stars—Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, Jane Russell, Red Skelton, Ed Wynn, and others. Its cadre of directors included Arthur Hiller, who would go on to make Love Story, and Ralph Nelson, who would direct Sidney Poitier’s Oscar-winning performance in Lilies of the Field. One guest star, the Broadway and Hollywood veteran Eddie Albert, was impressed to find fresh flowers in his dressing room every day. “That’s what happens,” he said, “when actors own studios.”

Einstein was finally pronounced dead at 1:10 a.m., an hour and a quarter after being stricken. As the doctors struggled backstage, Lucy could not bring herself to say even a few words, and Desi could barely speak. “This was an evening that comes to you once in a lifetime,” he choked in a trembling voice. “It meant so much, then all at once, it doesn’t mean a damn thing.” The cursed evening was a metaphor for the Arnazes’ marriage. Even the biggest, happiest professional milestones and honors that came their way could not compensate for the personal sadness that seemed increasingly to haunt them.

Desi had fought hard to persuade CBS to allow the new hour-long format. In the spring of 1957 the network had offered Desilu eighty thousand dollars per new episode, and thirty thousand dollars per rerun, if he and Lucy would maintain the half-hour show—this at a time when the average cost of a top-quality sitcom was around forty-eight thousand dollars per episode. “When I turned that down,” Desi remembered, “they finally realized I wasn’t kidding.” But he also realized the stakes at play with the new venture. “They not only have to be good,” he said of the hour-long shows, “they have to be great.”

Dear Mr. Arnaz: I had some very constructive talks with Miss Lucy and the deepest impression that remains with me is that she is devoted to you…. It has been my experience in fifty years of counselling that many people, when they reach the age of forty, feel a sense of dissatisfaction with things and, strangely enough, the more successful the person, the more he has achieved, the deeper the feeling of dissatisfaction. This is because there is some inner goal or idea that he has failed to achieve, or thinks he has failed to achieve. Through talking it out with someone who is experienced and whom one likes and trusts, a great deal can be done in changing these feelings and thoughts.

Desilu decided to adapt the book into the most expensive television program made to date, a two-part offering budgeted at two hundred thousand dollars per part. In the process—and without fanfare or naming or promoting it as such—Desi effectively spawned a new entertainment genre, the made-for-television movie. It was yet another Desilu first.

“Weather perfect, food divine—too divine, eating ourselves out of shape,” she wrote. Though she said she was unsure she could still fit into her new chiffons, Lucy added, “Everyone loves our kids—that makes us happy.”

“There’s almost nobody like him around. He’s a driver, a perfectionist, and he usually knows ninety-five percent of what he wants. I think he can do more serious stuff as well. I have great respect for his ability to handle people and for his knowledge of what plays and what doesn’t.” He added: “Look what he did for Lucy. She’s the greatest comedienne in the world because she’s one of the greatest actresses. He saw that in her and helped bring it out.”

If there was any silver lining to the divorce, it was the beginning of a much-improved relationship between Lucy and Desi, a gradually renewed warmth that would only deepen and soften for the rest of their lives. Their financial settlement was not rancorous; at first they even asked the Desilu lawyer Art Manella why he could not represent them both. In the end, he recommended an old friend of his, Milton Rudin, who would go on to represent Lucy for years to come while Manella represented Desi. And Desi and Lucy protected their business legacy by remaining very much tied together as president and vice president—and the largest stockholders—of Desilu.

He appeared in a 1974 episode of the popular Ironside crime drama as Juan Domingo, a Cuban refugee physician and amateur detective. The role was envisioned for a possible spinoff, but Desi was often simply too drunk to function. “I don’t think Desi wanted to leave the industry,” the former Desilu executive Bernie Weitzman said. “I think the industry left him.”

In her last year running the company, Desilu was offered two pilots for dramatic series that would be so expensive in the short term—and demand such cash flow—that the company’s top executives told Lucy she would have to sell Desilu if she green-lit them. The executives told her that any profits from these series would be far in the future, but Lucy believed in both projects and approved them. The series were Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, both of which would eventually reap billions of dollars in earnings for Paramount.

When Desi Jr. turned sixteen, Desi wrote him a letter echoing almost word for word the advice his own father had given him at the same age. He warned his son that he would surely face a tight spot someday, and when he did, he should do nothing until thinking the situation through. Then, when he set course, he should let nothing stop him. That’s certainly how Desi himself had lived. “Remember, good things do not come easy, and you will have your share of woe,” he wrote. “The road is lined with pitfalls. But, you will make it, if when you fail, you try and try again.” He urged him not to forget that “the Man upstairs” is always there to offer help—and not to be afraid to ask for it.

Most of the film was shot on location in Cleveland, but interiors were filmed on the old General Service lot. That was like old home week for Desi. Lucy Fisher, then the studio’s young head of production and later herself a successful film and television producer, cherished Desi’s ritual at the end of each day’s shooting: He would drop by her office bungalow—it might once have been his—and call out, “Luu-ucy! I’m home!”

“Once it was, ‘Your life is my life—anything you want to do is what I want to do.’ Now it is, ‘I have my own life to live.’ You were either wrong then or you are wrong now. Whichever it is, it is more than I can handle. Many things have happened in the last few years. I have gone from the Penthouse at the Chateau Marmont to the cellar of your sister’s house—from a guy who never thought about the cost of anything to one who has to count pennies—from the plushest office in my business to a closet at Universal. The change has not been easy for me and probably it was not easy for you either.

“He absolutely amazed me last September, but he was tired after four or five hours of taping,” he wrote. “Thinking about his life reminded him of all kinds of things that troubled him. He had been on the wagon for a long while and he needed to get drunk. When he did, however, he came damn near blowing the whole deal on two different occasions. Not even Rex Harrison has talked to me the way he did.” He added: “I am very fond of Desi and I have no intention of taking any crap from him.”

“What a joy it was to work with somebody with your enthusiasm, your showmanship, and your instinctive feeling for what was good. We were so young and green that we took this kind of thing for granted. When we got out in the real world, we realized how lucky we were to work with you, with your great gift for bringing out the best in us.”

When Lucy finally got up to return to Beverly Hills, Desi asked, “Where are you going?” “I’m going home,” she said. “You are home,” he replied. The two spoke one last time, by phone, each simply repeating, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Only later did Lucie realize that the date was November 30, the forty-sixth anniversary of their wedding. Two days later, with Lucie holding him close, Desi died. He was sixty-nine years old.

“It’s also well to be reminded that every evening you spend watching television, you are exposed to Desi Arnaz.” Smith added: “He was a strong man, a powerful man, an oak. He took a long time dying. His timing, so precise on stage, wasn’t so good off. He’d outlived his fame. Yet I think the passing of Desi Arnaz should be marked by more than silence.”

“I will never, ever forget his tremendous help to me,” Thomas told the congregation, “and I speak not only about what he did for me but what he has done for the entire industry. Television owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude and no one, but no one, has ever come close to the kind of TV Desi brought with Lucy to this industry.”

‘I Love Lucy had just one mission: To make people laugh. Lucy gave it a rare quality. She can perform the wildest, even the messiest physical comedy, without losing her feminine appeal. The New York Times asked me to divide the credit for its success between the writers, directors, and the cast. I told them give Lucy ninety percent of the credit, and divide the other ten percent among the rest of us.’ ” Blending the real and fictional names of their costars, Desi’s message continued, “ ‘Lucy was the show. Viv, Fred and I were just props—damn good props, but props nevertheless.

Though these tributes were gratifying in their way, they were no substitute for the only activity that had ever brought her real satisfaction: plain, hard work.

The longtime Desilu executive Martin Leeds may have explained it best. “You believed inside of you, and you still do,” he once said, “that there wasn’t anything that she could do he wouldn’t love her.” So we loved her, too, and it seems we always will.

In unpublished notes for his memoir, Desi wrote, “Whatever my indiscretions—my mistakes—they were never evil. They might have shown a weakness in certain areas—a not-too-stable character, but never evil. I was always frank, simple, sensitive and warm. To be evil you must have a much more complex makeup.”

“With all his genius,” his friend Rod Rodriguez once said, “he possessed an honest heart, honest manners, good sense, and good humor. Yet, as a romanticist, he was one of the most incorrigible human beings that ever lived. If I reminded him of his follies, intending to induce a useful lesson, he would light up at the recollection, retrieving the experience with a fondness that showed he would want nothing better than to do it again.”

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful re-telling of the life and career of Desi Arnaz, who was an actor, musician and a producer and the man who loved Lucy!

[Carol Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannot believe I forgot that Desi Arnaz once hosted SNL.
Purdum's account of the final months of Arnaz's life had me weeping

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Not just for the memories of one of the best comedies ever, but learning so much about Desi, the man who engineered it and so much more. Purdum did a ton of research, and it shows! Best biography I’ve read in a long time. What a story!

[Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television (Amazon US) (try (Kindle Unlimited)

Thanks to Edelweiss and Simon & Schuster for the digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

My mother loved Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's I Love Lucy. Like any good parent, she made sure I watched it, too. What many people don't know these days is that the show not only was funny, but it was also groundbreaking and revolutionary, too.

Lucy was a B-actor who was pushing 40, and her husband was a bandleader who toured all the time. And when Desi was on the road, he fooled around a lot. Lucy desperately wanted to save their marriage, but something had to change. She was on a radio program that was successful enough that someone came up with the great idea of putting that sort of show on television, which was in its infancy. Lucy was interested, but only if Desi could play her husband. Executives were like, "Who would believe that your character would be married to a Cuban American?" She was like, "Well, the public will believe it because I am married to a Cuban American." The execs weren't convinced. So, Desi and Lucy created a routine, and she went out on tour with Desi. They were a smash hit, and the powers that be said Desi could play her husband.

What happened next could not have been foretold. During negotiations. Desi brought up the problems with kinescope, which was used at the time to record and air programs, but it was inferior to film in quality and longevity. Desi wanted to film the episodes, but it cost a lot more to do that. He offered to pay the extra costs out of his and Lucy's own money, but the executives would have to let Lucy and Desi own the copies of the show. CBS agreed, and that action was the beginning of reruns.

It turns out that Desi Arnaz was not only a dynamic performer, but he was also a savvy businessman. He really took advantage of CBS to his and Lucy's benefit. He and Lucy started Desilu Studios, which went on to create a lot of successful shows. But he couldn't keep his you-know-what in his pants. So, Lucy and Desi ended their popular show, and they divorced but stayed connected professionally.

In just over a decade, Desilu Studios made so much money, they bought the Hollywood studio, RKO, where Lucy had worked for years as a bit player. Lucy went on to star in two more Lucy Shows, and Desi continued to play around and drink like a fish. He sold his shares of the company back to Lucy and continued to fight his demons, women and alcohol, until his death.

I really appreciated the fact that someone wrote a book about the straight man; usually biographies tend to focus on the comic. Desi Arnaz was a very accomplished man, and I'm glad to see he is finally getting his due.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75, rounded up.