{"product_id":"lucille-ball-desi-arnaz-they-weren-t-lucy-ricky-ricardo-magnolia-house","title":"Lucille Ball \u0026 Desi Arnaz: They Weren’t Lucy \u0026 Ricky Ricardo (Magnolia House)","description":"“Marriage is okay, but adultery is more fun. Just ask Lucy.”\n―Desi Arnaz\n\nFrom 1951 through 1956, I Love Lucy was the most-watched show in television. Its episodes are currently being colorized in an attempt to lure new generations of 21st Century consumers.\n\nIts launch was as rocky as the marriage of the real-life show-biz pros who crafted it.\n\nAfter their divorce in 1960, Lucy 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.\"\n\nArnaz 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.”\n\nTheir early struggles were epic. As a girl, Lucy at times was literally chained to her backyard in Jamestown, New York. As a teenager, she earned a reputation as “The Jamestown Hussy,” riding around with Johnny De Vito, a local hoodlum.\n\nLater, 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.\n\nIn the 1930s, she migrated to Hollywood and made films for RKO. Offscreen, its executives used her as a gussied-up hooker to “entertain” exhibitors and clients from out of town.\n\nDesi, however, was born to wealth and privilege in Cuba. At the age of twelve, as an incentive to help him lose his virginity, he was escorted to a local bordello by his father.\n\nHaving 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.”\n\nAfter drifting to Hollywood, he spotted Lucy on a sound stage “dressed like a two-dollar whore who had been badly beaten by her pimp.”\n\n[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.]\n\nCharacterized by violent fights and long separations, their stormy marriage staggered along for two traumatic decades.\nDesi's obsession with sex became legendary. He seduced every prostitute in Polly Adler's infamous NYC whorehouse. In Hollywood, Lana Turner and Judy Garland came and went from his life, along with countless showgirls and hometown gals attending his on-the-road band shows.\n\nMeanwhile, 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. Broderick Crawford, who desperately wanted to marry her, beat her up when she refused. Coming and going from her boudoir were―among many others―William Holden, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Henry Fonda, Orson Welles, and Robert Mitchum.\n\nBy the early 1950s, the careers of both Lucy and Desi had run out of gas. There was a lot of resistance among TV executives who objected to his Cuban accent. Nevertheless, I Love Lucy was launched and shot up in the ratings like a rocket, morphing into the most successful sitcom in TV history.\n\n“With gold arriving in wheelbarrows” (Desi's words), Lucy and Desi bought the four-block sprawl of RKO Studios and launched Desilu Productions. It became the largest motion picture and television studio in the world.\n\nThis 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. A proud addition to Blood Moon's HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS, it radically changes the premises of the American Dream that helped fuel its success.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 1936003716\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: DBV.1936003716.A\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Acceptable\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Porter, Darwin|Prince, Danforth\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: This copy has clearly been enjoyed—expect noticeable shelf wear and some minor creases to the cover. Binding is strong, and all pages are legible. May contain previous library markings or stamps.  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Dream Books Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41449411248186,"sku":"DBV.1936003716.A","price":20.9,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/6011\/0138\/files\/1936003716-0.jpg?v=1780888470","url":"https:\/\/shop.dreambooksco.com\/products\/lucille-ball-desi-arnaz-they-weren-t-lucy-ricky-ricardo-magnolia-house","provider":"Dream Books Co.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}