Hollywood folks are reading each other’s mail again.
Just a few months after the release of writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s captivating Being the Ricardos, we now have the documentary Lucy and Desi.
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| Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz weren't merely co-stars of television's most popular show in the 1950s; they were equal business partners in all manner of other activities taking place under the banner of their production company, Desilu. |
Lucie Arnaz has been down this road before, having produced and hosted 1993’s Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, just four years after her mother died … which was just three years after Desi Arnaz passed. Sweet as it is, grief and loss palpably hovered over that earlier project; this new film, chaperoned by director Amy Poehler and veteran documentarian Mark Monroe, is more measured and methodical.
Ball and Arnaz were a beloved Hollywood family, frequently in the public eye, and constantly the subjects of studio photographs; they also had access to personal film cameras that few people owned in the 1940s and ’50s. We benefit from the impressive abundance of home movie footage — 8mm and even 16mm — and extensive media interviews given by both Ball and Arnaz throughout their lives.
Most notably, Ball spent weeks and months with journalist Betty Hannah Hoffman in the mid-’60s, recounting what turned into a detailed oral history preserved on a couple dozen audio tapes.
This essentially allows Ball and Arnaz to narrate their own stories, as this documentary proceeds. Poehler wisely keeps contemporary talking heads to a minimum, cutting only occasionally to commentary from Lucie Arnaz, Carol Burnett and Bette Midler. The latter two are an apt choice, as both were mentored by Ball; their warmhearted gratitude is obvious.
Ball was a slowly rising film star when she and Arnaz met in Hollywood, during 1940’s big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Too Many Girls. It was love at first sight, and they eloped not quite two months after the film debuted.
Ironically, as Ball explains via voice-over, they saw very little of each other during the next decade.
She became the “Queen of the B’s,” appearing constantly in a string of lesser-budget dramas, musicals, tear-jerkers and even film noir thrillers. She starred or co-starred in 20 (!) films between 1941 and ’49 … not one of which allowed her to display the comic talent for which she’d later become famous.
Even so, the hard work paid off. The pleasure is evident in Ball’s voice when she remembers how, one day, she overheard a studio head telling somebody to find him “a Lucille Ball type.”
Arnaz wasn’t nearly as successful in Hollywood; after a few unremarkable supporting roles, he was drafted and spent his WWII years directing USO programs. Post-service, he formed what became an enormously popular band, and spent several years touring.
These years are covered via a captivating collection of publicity photos, studio stills, movie posters and archival film clips; it’ll likely be an eye-opening surprise to learn that Arnaz is credited with introducing conga line dancing to the States.
Finally tiring of so many narrowly defined film roles, Ball jumped at the chance to star (with Richard Denning) in the comedic radio show My Favorite Husband, which aired from July 1948 through March 1951. CBS loved the concept and wanted a TV adaptation; Ball insisted that her character’s husband be played by Arnaz, in great part so they could spend more time together.
CBS was reluctant, fearing that Arnaz — who never tried to conceal his Cuban accent — was “too dark” to be accepted by American viewers, as Ball’s husband … never mind the fact that he was her husband. (One can but sigh and gaze heavenward.) Ball and Arnaz cleverly out-maneuvered that hiccup during the summer of 1950, in a cheeky manner captured by extensive archival media coverage.
As revealed by dozens of clips from I Love Lucy, Ball found her calling as an impish and utterly fearless clown willing to do anything for a laugh. Arnaz, in turn, surprised everybody by becoming an extremely savvy producer and businessman. He and Ball formed their own company, Desilu Productions … little realizing the impact that would have, before the decade concluded.
At a time when most TV shows were broadcast live or filmed via unappealing kinescope, Arnaz insisted on 35mm motion picture-quality camerawork. (This is why we’re still able to enjoy every single episode of I Love Lucy all these decades later, when most early 1950s TV shows are lost forever.)
Arnaz also assembled a top-notch team behind the scenes: veteran movie cinematographer Karl Freund and — most crucially — writers Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Pugh and Jess Oppenheimer, who had helped shape My Favorite Husband into a hit show.
Poehler and Monroe make a point of ensuring that we understand the importance of these and other key supporting players.
Recognizing that Ball worked best when playing to an audience — which she had discovered while making the radio series — Arnaz made the equally ground-breaking decision to have the show filmed on a stage, before a live studio audience. And because everything was preserved on film, when the 35-episode first season concluded in June 1952, Arnaz essentially invented the concept of “summer reruns.”
Poehler and Monroe briefly cover the same events that dominate Sorkin’s film: the laughable, headline-generating accusation that Ball was “a commie”; and the insistence that the pending arrival of Ball and Arnaz’s second child be acknowledged by their TV counterparts, leading to a famous TV Guide cover.
The sixth season of I Love Lucy concluded in May 1957; a few months later, Desilu bought what had been the entire RKO Pictures production facilities (which, at that time, made Ball and Arnaz’s enterprise bigger than MGM and 20th Century-Fox). By this point, Desilu was producing seven weekly shows, in addition to I Love Lucy.
Poehler, Monroe and Lucie Arnaz strongly suggest that her father’s work load was primarily responsible for the fracturing of her parents’ relationship; we know this is, at best, a half-truth. There’s virtually no mention of Arnaz’s infidelity (a prominent detail in Sorkin’s film), and only brief, late-in-the-game acknowledgment of his alcoholism (which actually had been an issue since the early 1940s).
Ergo, this film is a valentine: carefully sanitized, but certainly not to a degree that viewers will find distracting. Complaining about that would be petty, when Poehler and Monroe give us so much to enjoy.
Arnaz left Desilu in 1962; Ball became president and CEO. Under her leadership, the studio later green-lit Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and Mannix: all enormously popular to this day.
Third-act footage includes Ball’s subsequent TV shows; appearances with Burnett and Midler; and the adulation she received as a recipient of the 1986 Kennedy Center Honors (during a ceremony held only five days after Arnaz died).
It’s clear that Ball and Arnaz were superb business partners, and that they loved each other deeply; Lucie Arnaz’s recollection of her mother’s final visit with her father is a heart-tugging moment. They simply weren’t very good at being married.
Nothing wrong with that. More crucially, as this enchanting documentary makes clear, both had a massive impact on American culture, which resonates to this day.
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