The Rub? They Pushed the Boundaries

Lucy and Desi proved to be pioneers in dozens of ways, most of which are unprecedented in the history of television.

As a kid he was happy, living in relative wealth on a ranch in Cuba. His US educated father was the youngest elected Mayor of Santiago de Cuba, and also served in the Cuban House of Representatives under President Gerardo Machado. His mother's father was an executive with Bacardi Rum company which was founded in their hometown. When the Cuban Revolution created political instability, his father was arrested and their property confiscated. Luckily, his father's political connections gained his release after six months in prison. His father decided it was time to leave Cuba. Arriving in Miami in 1934, the sixteen year-old boy came to America speaking no English. His first job was cleaning bird cages. As soon as he graduated from High School, he took a $39 a week job playing guitar at the Roney Plaza Hotel, where Mambo King Xavier Cugat discovered him. Just three years later he had his own band and later auditioned for the leading man part in the Broadway musical Too Many Girls.

The 23 year-old Desi Arnaz was on his way to Hollywood and a place in history.

At three years old, she had a really bad day. A bird became frantic when it was inadvertently locked in the house she had recently moved to in Montana. She was traumatized by the bird's desperate attempts to escape, crashing into walls and windows, and nearly killing itself.

Later that same day, her father died after a battle with typhoid fever. She would be haunted by that experience for life, suffering from ornithophobia, an irrational fear of birds.

Soon thereafter she and her mom and brother moved back to New York to rejoin her grandparents in the resort town of Celoron. It was there that the little girl got her first exposure to vaudeville and live outdoor performances at the community park.

When her mother remarried, her stepfather encouraged the 12 year-old to try out for the Shriner chorus line. She quickly discovered she got an emotional boost from the attention. She excelled and began to seek broader opportunities.

Like the plot in a Broadway play, her mom tried to break up a relationship with an older boy by enrolling her in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts. When her instructors said she was not cut out for a career in show business, she dumped the boyfriend and returned to New York City to try to prove them wrong.

She never graduated from high school. After a brief foray into fashion modeling, she was set back with a two year bout with rheumatic fever. At 21 Lucille Ball was starting all over again, and she was willing to take almost any gig. Her first real break came when she got a minor role as a dancer with the Goldwyn Girls in a musical film called Roman Scandals.

That film gave her just enough confidence and money to move to Hollywood to pursue her dreams. In 1937 she landed her breakout role in a Katherine Hepburn-Ginger Rogers film called Stage Door that told the story of two aspiring actresses rooming together in New York City. She had a minor role but it got her experience with major players and she attracted attention for her simple beauty.

She later auditioned for the Scarlett O'Hara role in Gone With The Wind, and though she did not get the part, she did win the lead part in Too Many Girls.

The Rub? It was on that set that Lucy met Desi and formed a team that would revolutionize Hollywood and the world of television as we know it today…

When producers drafted Lucille Ball to do a TV series based on her successful radio show My Favorite Husband, her husband, bandleader Desi Arnaz, was cast as her comedic straight man husband, Ricky Ricardo. Little did anyone know at the time what a Dynamic Duo they would become, not just as TV stars, but as pioneers and major influencers in the burgeoning television industry. Together they made history, and changed the television medium, in many amazing ways!

First, the idea that a couple of mixed heritage was highly controversial, but to have a woman as the star was simply unheard of. Giving her the lead and the name on the title was inherently risky and groundbreaking. Plus, at 40 years old Ball was six years older than Desi, which was another cultural anomaly. But producers were smart enough to deduce that much of their TV audience would be women, so they had a profit motive.

Second, to cast a Cuban-American, who spoke with a rich accent, was also risky. Many thought it was crazy, but in her brilliance, Lucy knew Desi would be a key to their success. He had charisma, excellent comedic timing, and she understood the value of "Oh, Ricky!" playing the object of her affection and the straight man for her clumsy physical humor.

He represented the "Every Man" who found it difficult to meet their wives expectations, but never quit trying. Plus, he was a true musical talent, and that in itself would distinguish the show from the many joke-oriented TV comedy shows.

Early on, the couple directed writers to maintain high standards by avoiding ethnic jokes unless they were aimed at Ricky's Cuban accent. And even then, the only ones allowed to make fun of his awkward mispronunciations was Lucy and her mother character. His hilarious Cuban colloquialisms were a steady stream of laughs and I Love Lucy continuously explored the humor in social stereotypes.They pushed the barriers before television cultural barriers had even been established.

More importantly were the innovations Lucy and Desi brought to the process of making television programs. They proved to be pioneers in dozens of ways, most of which are, to this day, unprecedented in the history of television.

Most television at that time was produced in studios in New York. Comedy programs were performed in front of a single portable 16mm camera, sometimes in front of a small audience. This was a hangover from the radio era. The stage play would be shot on 35mm film directly from the live action 16mm camera monitor so it could be edited, and rebroadcast to the rest of the nation at a later time. That process is called Kinescope, and it resulted in diminished clarity, but videotaping was not available at that point, so this technique was used to capture and replay show segments as broadcasts over the airwaves. A program recorded in New York on 35mm film would be sent by carrier to distributors on the West Coast and not seen until several days later. Since the audiences were substantially bigger in metropolitan areas on the East Coast, most programming was produced in New York and broadcast for immediate viewing.

When executives discussed using Lucille Ball in a TV sitcom, who by then was a successful radio actress and emerging film regular, they were confronted with a series of challenges: First, Lucy was anxious to have children, and she was also being sought for movie roles. So she insisted that the new program originate in Hollywood. In order to produce the show in front of a large studio audience, which they all agreed was necessary to generate the kind of synergism Lucy required, they would need to do two things: record the show directly on 35mm film, and build a custom studio to house the audience. So I Love Lucy became the first TV show to be filmed live on 35mm film.

Second, because Hollywood studio union rules about filming required it, Lucy and Desi became the first TV stars to produce their own show. Both of these things forced Lucy and Desi to form a new production company they called Desilu Productions.

And their revolutionary contributions didn't stop there.

Desi decided to use three cameras on dollies to film the action. He brought in many specialists to perfect a new way of lighting the set, of moving the cameras and of recording the sound. Desilu Productions was reinventing the concept of live series television, and revolutionizing the entire industry at the same time.

To accommodate all of the space required for the staging, the movement and the cameras, not to mention a live audience, Arnaz had to essentially build his own studio, which also became a TV first of its kind. Because it was so much more expensive to produce, Lucy and Desi took salary cuts in exchange for owning the film. That led to the rebroadcasting of shows, which in turn began an entirely new form of revenue, the syndicated rerun industry.

Their show was also the first to feature an ensemble cast, which is now common.

Chronicling the progress of Lucy's pregnancy and eventual birth of the character Little Ricky in real time and actually showing Lucy's pregnant bump were both 'firsts' in television.

The episode of "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" was yet another first for television, drawing 71% of viewers. The overall rating of 67.3% audience share for the entire 1952 season of I Love Lucy is to this day the highest average rating for any single season of a TV series.

When the I Love Lucy franchise came to an end their marriage was also at its end. Desi was in real life the stereotypical Latin womanizer; he chased skirts and drank too much. In 1960 Lucy filed for divorce and eventually bought out his shares of Desilu Productions to become the first woman majority owner of a major studio. Under her direction, the company went on to produce many major hit shows including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mission Impossible, My Three Sons, I Spy, The Untouchables, and That Girl.

It was Lucy that made the groundbreaking Star Trek series happen. When CBS passed on the pitch by Desilu Productions, she ordered a pilot made anyway. NBC rejected that too, so she demanded a second episode shot with William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The rest is television history.

She sold the business to Gulf+Western in 1968 for $17 million (about $128 million in today's dollars). As per their pattern, Lucy and Desi sold their library of shows separately to CBS Television Studios/Lorimar.

In 1989 President George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Lucille Ball the Presidential Freedom Award.

I was too young to watch most of the original I Love Lucy broadcast shows in the early fifties, so I saw them in syndication. And though many of the TV programs of that decade will always be considered originals, or groundbreakers, simply because they were the first of many to follow, I have chosen to focus on the Dynamic Duo because they had so much impact on an industry that itself has had more impact on my life than perhaps any other medium in the second half of the 20th century.

The techniques they innovated, the frontiers they explored, the cultural bias they confronted, the power of the syndication of programs and the economic and social ramifications of what Lucy and Desi did are almost beyond calculation. Both of them were giants in their own lane, but together they were collectively perfect representatives of people who rose to positions of enormous consequence from rather pedestrian backgrounds.

Did they happen to come along at the perfect time, or did they make the time they came along perfect for them? Did they become stars because they were great actors, musicians, stage directors, writers or comedians, or did they simply understand the medium better than their contemporaries?

Though Lucille Ball was the onscreen superstar, and Desi Arnaz was a visionary businessman, it took the synergy of them working together as a team to leave enduring memories with millions of viewers and transform the medium of television forever.

Here's The Rub: Most of us never paid any attention to what was going on behind the scenes, so two titans in the TV industry went mostly unrecognized for their monumental contributions to the television medium.