I Love Lucy: The Untold Story (15 page)

HARRY.
I’m afraid we’ve hit a snag, Mr. Paley. Sharpe won’t even
discuss
a TV deal for Lucy unless her husband, Desi Arnaz, is her costar.

PALEY.
Desi Arnaz? The Conga Player? Why the hell would I want to star
Desi Arnaz
in a
television series?
Listen, Harry, I know Sharpe represents both Lucy
and
her husband, but it’s
his
job to find work for both of them—not mine. ...What did you tell him?

HARRY.
I told him we’ve got nothing against Desi
—
just that with a successful series the wisest thing is to transfer it to television intact, including the cast.

PALEY.
Exactly. And?

HARRY.
And he told me that if we want to move the show to TV, we’ve got just
two
casting choices
—
change the male lead to Desi, or change the female lead to someone other than Lucy.

PALEY.
I can’t believe it.

HARRY.
Believe it, Mr. Paley. He was dead serious.

PALEY.
What do
you
think, Hubbell?

HUBBELL.
It makes no sense! Why would they blow a television deal over
this?

HARRY.
According to Don, Lucy’s worried sick about Desi spending all his time on the road with his band. She wants him here in Hollywood, close to home, where she can keep an eye on him. But I told him “My Favorite Husband” is the wrong vehicle for Desi. We obviously can’t cast him as a
banker.

PALEY.
So what did he say?

HARRY.
He made it clear that if Lucy’s gonna do a television series,
Desi’s
gonna be her costar. If we can’t put Desi in “My Favorite Husband,” he says we’ll just have to find her a show that we
can
put him in.

PALEY.
How did you leave it?

HARRY.
I told him we’d get back to him.

PALEY.
Hubbell, I believe I asked you for your opinion. I’m still waiting to hear it.

HUBBELL.
Mr. Paley, we
can’t
cast Desi as Lucy’s husband. I mean, have you heard the fellow talk? Half the time I can’t even understand what he’s saying!

PALEY.
(
Pauses for a second to think this over.
) Yeah, I know what you mean.

HUBBELL.
And what has she got against Dick Denning, anyway? He’s tall, blonde, handsome
—
just the type of
All-American
leading man a girl like Lucille should have on her television show.

PALEY.
Good point.
...
All right.
Harry,
you tell Sharpe that I’ve got no problem having Desi Arnaz appear on the network as a bandleader or singer. But not as Lucille’s husband. Nobody would believe it. It’s simply out of the question.

HARRY.
I’ll tell him, Mr. Paley.

MUSIC.
(
Bridge.
)

SOUND.
(
Phone rings—continuing under.
)

DON.
(
On first ring.
) That’ll be Harry Ackerman, Lucy. Why don’t you let me get it.

LUCY.
No, I’ll get it, Don. I’ve got a thing or two I’d like to tell him.

SOUND.
(
Lucy picks up the phone.
)

LUCY.
Hello? (
Pause.
) Hello, Harry. He’s here, but whatever you have to say you can say to me. (
Pause.
) Yeah, I know all about that. Did you talk to Bill Paley? (
Pause.
) Well what did he say? (
Pause.
) (
Incredulous.
) What do you mean nobody’ll believe Desi as my husband? He
is
my husband! (
Pause.
) Of
course
audiences will accept us together. Why
wouldn’t
they? (
Pause.
) Well that’s just a load of bull. (
Pause.
) (
Pleading a bit.
) Now
look,
Harry, this is
important
to me. Desi’s on the road
all the time
with his band. (
Heartfelt.
) If I can’t find a way to keep him at
home,
I’m afraid I’m gonna
lose
him. (
Pause.
) Well, you tell Bill Paley that if I can’t work with Desi at CBS, I’ll just have to go on the
road
with him, that’s all. (
Pause.
) I’ve never
been
more serious. (
Pause.
) Yes, I
realize
that. If I have to give up motion pictures, that’s what I’ll do. (
Pause.
) Yes, it’s that important to me. You tell him that. (
Pause.
) All right then. Goodbye, Harry.

SOUND.
(
Lucy hangs up the phone.
)

DON.
Well, I think you made your position pretty clear.

LUCY.
A lot of
good
that’ll do me if the answer is still “No.”

DON.
(
Comforting.
) Now, we don’t know that. (
Pause.
) Hey, speaking of CBS, Harlan Thompson called today. He wants you to do a guest spot on
The Ed Wynn Show.

LUCY.
Have they got something for Desi to do?

DON.
Not that they mentioned, but I’m sure they’ll come up with something if that’s your condition for doing the show.

LUCY.
You
bet
it is. From now on, if anyone wants me for television, they get Desi, too.
That
oughtta convince Bill Paley that the public will accept us as a team!

WINCHELL.
Lucy and Desi appeared together on The Ed Wynn Show, but CBS still wasn’t convinced. So Lucy made good on her threat to go on the road with Desi. Using $5,000 of their own money, they launched their own vaudeville act, touring the country during her radio show’s summer hiatus. The vaudeville tour was a popular and critical success. But even
that
didn’t bring CBS to the table. That is, not until they got wind of a certain TV offer from a rival network. (
Pause.
) It is December of 1950, as Paley meets once again with senior executives Hubbell Robinson and Harry Ackerman.

PALEY.
Gentlemen, just how serious is this offer from NBC? Harry?

HARRY.
It’s real, Mr. Paley. I believe they’re ready to sign Lucy
and
Desi to a TV deal.

PALEY.
Then we’ve got to nip it in the bud. We’ll make a TV deal with Lucille first.

HUBBELL.
With Desi Arnaz as her costar?

PALEY.
Of
course
. Do you think she’s gonna give up on that
now?
Now that she’s got an offer from NBC in her pocket? No, we’ll just have to make the best of it.

HUBBELL.
With all respect, Mr. Paley, don’t you think someone like Arnaz is going to be a tougher sell on
national
TV than on the vaudeville
stage
? I mean, how is he gonna play in
Peoria
?

PALEY.
I don’t
know
, Hubbell. But I
do
know
this—
I’m not about to let NBC steal one of my biggest stars. Make the deal.

HUBBELL.
Yes, Mr. Paley.

HARRY.
I’ll call Don and tell him we’re ready to talk turkey. But it may be tough sledding now that
NBC
is in the game. We need to
do
something for Lucy
—
something to remind her that she’s part of the CBS
family
.

PALEY.
What do you have in mind?

HARRY.
Well, you know how anxious she is to keep Desi close to home?

HUBBELL.
I thought that’s what the
TV show
was supposed to do.

HARRY.
Yeah, but the show won’t start production till next fall.

HUBBELL.
So what’s your idea?

HARRY.
Give Desi his own radio program. It’ll keep him in town until fall, and keep his band employed to boot.

PALEY.
That’s very clever. Except for one problem
—
Desi Arnaz isn’t enough of a
name
to
have
his own musical variety show.

HARRY.
I agree, Mr. Paley. But I’m not talking about musical variety here. I’m talking about a
game
show. You know the one: “Earn Your Vacation.” It’s goes on the air in a few weeks. I’m suggesting we put Desi in as host.

HUBBELL.
Desi Arnaz? A game show host? That’s an even bigger stretch than playing Lucille’s husband!

HARRY.
(
Pause.
) Now hear me through on this, Hub. The show’s unsponsored, so we can make any changes we want. What if we made all the prizes trips to the Caribbean? And we can change the name of the show. Call it something like ...
Your Tropical Trip.

HUBBELL.
Hey, that’s not half bad.

PALEY.
All right, you may have something there, Harry. But haven’t we already
hired
a host for that show?

HARRY.
Well, yes. But it’s just a staff announcer at Channel 2 in L.A. What’s he gonna do
—
boycott the Columbia Broadcasting System?

PALEY.
If it’ll help us hold on to Lucille Ball, he can be my guest. What do I care if I lose one crummy announcer to NBC? (
Pause.
) Oh by the way, who is the poor schmuck?

HARRY.
His name’s Carson. Johnny Carson.

(
Pause.
)

MUSIC.
(
My Favorite Husband Theme plus applause—fade for...
)

LEMOND.
You have been listening to
My Favorite Husband
starring
Lucille Ball
with
Richard Denning.
Be sure to watch for
Lucille Ball
as a would-be
cosmetics
dealer, in her latest picture,
The Fuller Brush Girl–

LUCY.
(
Interrupting.
) Pardon me Bob—and be
sure
folks, to listen to CBS
tomorrow,
January
21st,
3:30 Eastern Standard Time, (
Proudly.
) when
Desi Arnaz
starts his
swell
new radio program.
Watch
for the
Desi Arnaz show.

(
Pause.
)

WINCHELL.
Yes, Desi got his radio show, and Lucy and Desi made a TV pilot deal with CBS. And with NBC waiting in the wings, accepting Desi wasn’t the only concession CBS had to make. Lucy and Desi got a 50% stake in the show, which would air
live
from
Hollywood
only
every other week,
so that Lucy could continue to make movies. (
Slight pause.
) At that time, most TV shows were broadcast live from New York, and with good reason. Most TV viewers lived in the east, and nationwide broadcasts were not yet possible. The West Coast had to watch a “kinescope”
—
a low-quality 16mm film made by pointing a camera at a TV monitor in New York during the live broadcast. But to accommodate Lucy and Desi, CBS agreed to produce the series
live
in
Hollywood.
They were set to go before the CBS cameras on March 2, 1951, to make a kinescope film for potential sponsors. (
Slight pause.
) There was just one problem: Nobody knew what the show should be
about.
The brainstorming sessions at CBS went on for weeks. Everyone wondered, what do you do with a
zany redhead
and a Cuban
orchestra
leader?

(
Pause.
) Finally, Jess Oppenheimer thought he just might have the answer:

SOUND.
(
Typewriter—continuing under.
)

JESS.
“...He is a Latin-American orchestra leader and singer. ...She is his wife. They are happily married and very much in love. The only bone of contention between them is her desire to get into show business, and his equally strong desire to keep her out of it. To Lucy, who was brought up in the humdrum sphere of a moderate, well-to-do, middle-western mercantile family, show business is the most glamorous field in the world. But Ricky, who was
raised
in show business, sees none of its glamour, only its deficiencies, and yearns to be an ordinary citizen, keeping regular hours and living a normal life. As show business is the only way he knows to make a living, and he makes a very good one, the closest he can get to this dream is having a wife who’s
out
of show business and devotes herself to keeping as nearly a normal life as possible for
him
...”

SOUND.
(
Typing stops, paper pulled from typewriter.
)

WINCHELL.
CBS
loved
the idea. So did Lucy and Desi. Oppenheimer immediately wired co-writers Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr., who cut short their vacation to collaborate with him on a script. By the end of February, the script was in good shape, but Oppenheimer still had an important issue to resolve
—
with
Desi.

(
Pause.
)

DESI.
Jess, I still don’t see why we can’t put
my
name first. Lucy and I are
both
starrin’ in the show.

JESS.
We’ve been through this already, Desi. Lucy’s just a bigger name, that’s all.

DESI.
Wait just a second, Amigo. Lucy may be bigger in the
picture
business, but in the
music
business,
Desi Arnaz
is a bigger name.

JESS.
But this
isn’t
the music business.

DESI.
I
know.
But it’s not the
picture
business, either. This is TV. And on TV, neither
one
of us is a big name.

JESS.
Look, Desi, whether you’re talking movies or television, it’s still
acting.
And as an
actress
, Lucy just has a
bigger
reputation than you.