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theherothechampiontheinquisitor · 18 days

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I love how in love Lucy and Desi were, but I have to wonder... if Desi was as mad about Lucy as she was him, why was he unfaithful? Are there any theories, reasons or excuses (fame went to his head, troubles between them, ect)? Reading the letters between them and seeing them so affectionate with one another, I can't help but wonder what went wrong?

Lucy and Desi were definitely in love with each other til the end of their lives, really. Desi’s mistakes - which he deeply regretted it after the divorce and until he died. He told Lucy that he really had wished that he could take it all back and had done it differently so he could have a happy life with her. Sadly, it was too late. :(

The mistakes had started when he was just a child. Let’s go all the way back in Cuba, when he was 15 years old. His father and his grandfather had their own lifestyle or had “upbringing rules kind of way” by bringing their child (yes, a child who is less than 18 years old!) to a whorehouse so they could learn about sex and having many mistresses even though they had a wife beside them. I was shocked at first and felt a bit sickened when Desi cited this in his autobiography. But, it was the way it was in Cuba’s culture at the time. So, he assumed that it was okay to do womanizing and love someone deeply on the other hand but in reality with our views, it isn’t. But, you do have to understand that he did really love Lucy with all his heart and soul, and he never ever meant to hurt her intentionally and emotionally. Also, the issue of womanizing happened while they were separated in 1940′s while he was doing his nightclubs across the country, most of the time. But it went away for moment after they got back together in 1944.

As the studio grew so enormously humongous, he took a wrong path – a path that would lead to dangerous environment: drinking, gambling, and womanizing. “Drinking intensifies all your pressures and your needs,” Desi states in his book. It was a very bad habit that kept coming back to him for years, which was extremely hard for him to break. Even Lucy knew about it throughout their marriage but she kept it to herself; “It was like living on top of a volcano; you never knew when it would erupt or why. I was able to accept the situation for many years because it was our secret" (Love, Lucy). When it became publicized in the papers during those later years of marriage, Lucy couldn’t handle it anymore and was very embarrassed of his actions. They needed to separate – it was hurting her and their children.

I think another part of the drinking also had to do with jealously because everyone was so focused on Lucy who was the star of the show. He was literally shoved to the side, while people were clamoring for her autograph or a picture. And they didn’t seem to recognize his acting/singing talents on screen and off screen. Most people don’t know that he was actually the one who brought up the whole idea of having three cameras instead of one, filming front of live audience, and inventing a re-run (which it is still used today, nearly all over the world!!). But Desi never ever actually complained it to anyone – not even once. On the other hand, he wanted Lucy to have all the limelight for her work. He just kept the jealously and the anger to himself. I guess, at first he probably thought the fame and the stardom would share them equally when the show developed. Sadly, he never got all the credit until many years after his death.

When the idea of television series ‘I Love Lucy’ came about, Lucy actually wanted him and campaigned very deliberately to every television executives to have him work with her because she was the ONLY one who saw how funny and incredibly smart he was, and the talents that he had within him. Several tv executives turned them down because he was Cuban or a “bongo/drum player”, but apparently one accepted them and gave a green light to do a memorable tv series that still continues today. Close friends of Lucy and Desi say that the drinking might have had to do with his mother. Desi literally took care of her until his death in 1986. He gave a lot of things to her make her very happy but she never gave her love back to her son. So, I imagine that it was hard because he probably felt or thought he had no love from either ladies in his life during those rough years. He felt so lonely and had to turn to womanizing and drinking to relieve the hurt. Alcohol is a dangerous and difficult disease that you can’t escape from unless you fight it viciously to beat it. He did stop the drinking and the womanizing for a while before Lucy was pregnant with the kids. But apparently, the bad habit came right back when the studio became so enormous and the amount of pressure of work – behind the scenes (contracts, cameras, lights, set pieces, costumes, and etc) was put on his shoulders.

Now, this is a very important piece of the mistake both Lucy and Desi made which many people missed: “A couple of months before moving to 1000 North Roxbury, Beverly Hills, Lucy and I had a long talk about our future. I told her, ‘We have two alternatives. We can sell four years of the I Love Lucy shows we have done for Philip Morris for at least three million dollars, I’m sure, After we give Uncle Sam his cut, we’ll invest the rest safely and conservatively, which should bring us at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in income, without touching the capital. After we finish Forever Darling, and you’d want to do a special or another picture once in a while, you could. If you didn’t feel like it, you wouldn’t have to do anything. I would still have to run Desilu, produce our own shows and supervise the ones we’d film for others, but without having to also spend fifty hours a week just on ‘I Love Lucy’. It would be a breeze. And now that we have two wonderful children, after waiting all these years, it’d be a shame not to be able to spend more time with them, enjoy watching them grow. Desi will be two and a half and Lucie four this summer. We could teach them to fish, ride a horse, and I could take all of you to Cuba to meet your thousands of relatives. What do you think?“

“You said we had two alternatives. What is the other one?” she asked. “I hate to even consider it. We must get to be as big as MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia or any of the other big studios. That means hiring a lot more people, top creative people, if I can get them, to help carry the load, rent or buy a bigger studio. Motion Picture Center doesn’t even have a back lot or the facilities we would need to compete, on an equal footing, with the big giants. They are all coming into television now and I’m beginning to feel the pressure when I go to Madison Avenue to try to sell a show.” Lucy asked me, “If we quit after we sell our shows, what happens to the people who have been working with us?” “Well, let me tell you a story, during our first three years, I stole a few people from CBS. Paley did not like that at all and made me give him my word that I would not raid CBS for any more of their personnel. I kept my word to Mr. Paley, but not long after that some of his people started flirting with some of our personnel. So when we signed the contract to do at least two more years of I Love Lucy for Philip Morris, I inserted a clause which forbade CBS from stealing any Desilu personnel. So, don’t worry about them. Our people are the top people in the business. Before we lock up the place, they’ll have as good or better jobs, either at CBS or someplace else.” (A Book)

“I don’t want to quit,” she said. “Okay, then we’ll just have to get bigger or lose the whole ball of wax.” Now, I don’t blame Lucy for this, but just for a second – let’s put you in Lucy’s shoes for a moment. How would you feel if you suddenly decided to quit the most popular show that was ranked at the top for several years at this very second? The most loved television show by the American people, or even across the world. You would feel a complete failure to the fans. Again, Lucy had a rough childhood. Her father died of Typhoid fever when she was 4. Her mother had disappeared only first half of her childhood by going to work and eventually re-married someone. She and her little brother didn’t enjoy life as much like little kids would have, because they worked extremely hard - (meaning like when she was maybe she was 6 years old and her little brother was about 4 ½ years old at the time). They had chores and jobs to keep their lifestyle stable. She had to move into another home by her step-father’s parents because her step-father apparently didn’t want them to be around. So in that household, the environment wasn’t too good for her because she felt completely isolated and changed her personality psychologically in way. Then, after her mother divorced her second husband, her family was located to live with her grandfather. Her beloved grandfather wasn’t liked by the people in her town because he was a communist. He was “accused” of hurting a young child even though it was truly an accident. The only way for her to survive was to get out of Jamestown to do modeling and then acting. It was her only safety net. It was what made her happy and a successful worker. But during at this time, if Lucy had quit and decided to spent time with the family and do some films alongside – I’m not quite sure if they would accept her because earlier on before ‘I Love Lucy’ started – she had a hard time, getting her foot in the door to be in the films because directors and casting members wouldn’t accept Lucy because how she looked or the way she acted. “After struggling for survival and success for 40 years, I just couldn’t believe that I deserve to enjoy the success of I Love Lucy. I kept worrying about the next day, if everything would be taken away from me.“

The same way for Desi. When he and his family escaped to Miami from the revolutionists in Cuba in the mid-late 1930′s, they literally had nothing in their hands. He and his father worked, cleaning out canary cages or doing some tile work in several homes to keep themselves above the ground to survive. During that time, he went to high school to get some education and graduated. Desi found an instrument to play and auditioned to join a band, he knew it was another better way to help him and his family. When he was picked out by Xavier Cugat - the most well known Latin bandleader in the country to work with him. It went on for a several years. Desi had to work very hard, day and night to achieve his goals to the point where he decided to break amends with Cugat so he can form his own orchestra and go touring across the country. Then suddenly, the writer and producer of Too Many Girls saw Desi at the nightclub, they liked him and went up to him to ask him to do a role in the Broadway show, which he accepted. From on there, fate would lead him to meet Lucy when doing the film version of the show. Shortly after they were married, he made some films and then decided to go back to working in nightclubs because he found that singing and playing the drums was more suitable for him.

So, when they did I Love Lucy, he wanted to keep working with Lucy because he didn’t want to lose that success and the hard work that he achieved so much after being dirt broke until to this point in his life and career when the series came about. “Since I was very young I have always worked hard at whatever I have had to do.” He didn’t want to fail himself, Lucy and his family plus the people that he worked with.“Failure is the most terrible thing in our business. When we fail, the whole world knows about it. But not only that, when we fail, hundreds of people can lose their work,” Desi said. Unfortunately, the large amount of work with the studio which led him to lose that priority goal that he wanted to achieve for so long.

But, several years later and even after their divorce - they both had regretted about their decision about retiring. “As we began the 1956 -1957 season, the ‘I Love Lucy’ show still on the top of the heap, we were faced with a headachey decision: to retire or not to retire. Originally, we had planned a five-year stint with television and all our contracts had been written with this deadline in mind. Then we had planned to quit, take the kids, and sail leisurely around the world,” Lucy said. “Perhaps if we had just done ‘I Love Lucy’ and we had stayed at Chatsworth and I hadn’t gotten involved in so many projects, this wouldn’t have happened.” Desi said.

At one point, Desi and Lucy did try to go for help at psychologist in New York to see if it could help with their marriage. It did worked once; they left his office – wrapped arm in arm, smiling happily and feeling like old times at Chatsworth (their first home). But apparently, Desi couldn’t catch on with the upcoming appointments – his alcohol and the stress of the studio was reeling him back in. But you’ve got to think, back then during that time - doctors or psychologists really didn’t have many things to help others like we do today. In our generation, doctors have a lot more knowledge and have more studies that are being played in hospitals or clinics to figure out on what’s the right way to make them better.

When Lucy and Desi bought their Roxbury home in middle of 1956, as Desi carried Lucy over the threshold like the good old times but it suddenly turned sour. The inside of their home had been damaged to the old pipes being broken. Desi really had flipped like Lucy had never ever seen before in her life. She clearly states in her book, “I realized for the first time, how the strain of our snowballing empire was eating away at him.” She was never going to get him back to where he was like when she had first met him on the set of Too Many Girls in 1940. As the marriage became more destructive, Lucy realized that they didn’t like each other because they were definitely polar opposites – Lucy was more of a hard worker, working all the time and making sure everything was perfect by getting together with the cast and doing rehearsals with them several times. Desi was more of laid-back person, living in his own luxury. The same kind idea of luxury, when Desi and his family were back in Cuba having with all the money in the world and having a big house to live in before the revolutionary took over and burned his home – leaving him and his family, nothing but shoes to wear.

But Lucy did say, she and Desi once loved each other very passionately when they were first together as a couple. The pressures and the tension between them grew and grew as Desilu Studios became bigger and the better. Now, people don’t understand or even realize what was it like having the studio running against CBS, NBC, Paramount, and etc. I could imagine it would be so terrifying and stressful. They were trying to make it to #1 as possible they can or what will it happen if the studio went down – they would try find another way to achieve that goal to make it popular.

I hate when people say or blame Desi for their divorce for his wrongdoings during his marriage to Lucy. NO, it was not just that. Most of their interviews of Lucy and Desi say that the pressures and the extreme hard work with the studio basically tore them apart. The both of them say that they were together too much, (ironically - they wanted to work together so they could stay together as husband and wife back in 1951 when they first started all this) and it was very hard for them to separate between the business side and their personal side, especially when they were at home after they worked 12 -16 hours a day in the studio. “We didn’t think Desilu Productions would grow so big. We merely wanted to be together and have two children,” Lucy said.

During television interviews or press many years later after they divorced, they would still give each other enormous amount of credit for their work after they had retired at Desilu. They would call each other several times a week, sent each other a gift on their birthday, their kids’ birthdays, and anniversaries (on June 19th and November 30th). Perhaps, they would visit each other every once in a while or see each other at some kind of social events.“Lucy and I already had that once in a lifetime kind of love. It is time for us to become friends. We were both damaged from this big romance that lasted two decades, but we cannot just erase each other away. I think of her everyday, even her voice echoes in my conscience. You can’t just erase your soulmate away,” Desi said.

There’s that scene in Lucy and Desi: A Home Video that always brings a tear in my eye every time where Lucy and Desi are in the pool with their grandson Simon, who is a year old at the time. Lucy sort of scolds him in a teasing tone to Desi about how he should have taught Spanish with the kids when they were younger. She giggles as she brushes his hair away from his eyes like any other wife would do to pamper her husband. “They make fun of me!” Desi answers. She laughs out loud and then looks over to her shoulder, “Now, he tells me!” It was like seeing their chemistry all over again; just them together like old times. Short time later, you see Simon who gleefully splashes along with Grandpa Desi who sings his infamous tune ‘Babalu’ and Lucy stands besides Desi, clapping along in a encouragement. It’s like Grandpa and Grandma had never separated.

I believe that the divorce really helped them to look past the anger and the mistakes they both made. At first, they gained trust, respect, friendship, and then most of all - love which remained deeply many years until they took their last breaths. On another note, if this whole situation with mistakes that they made from the start didn’t happen in between them, I honestly do believe they would stay together for an eternity. And I hope they are, right at this moment.

#desilu

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