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People Magazine
People Magazine
People Magazine
Vol. 35
No. 6
Onscreen They Were the Irrepressible Ricardos; OffCamera, Their Stormy Love Outlasted a 20-Year Marriage
That Foundered on Celebrity and Success
he'd be catting around all the time. She wanted him at home, where she felt the marriage would
have a better chance of lasting, which of course it did.
Charles Pomerantz, Lucy's longtime publicist:
Before they did the series, he was a bandleader coming home at 3 or 4 in the morning. And by
then she was up and on her way to makeup at RKO. She used to say, "We just can't keep meeting
in the Sepulveda tunnel." And her strategy must've worked, because she got pregnant right away.
She said she finally had him where she wanted him... for a couple of days.
Lillian Briggs Winograd, one of Lucy's closest friends:
Lucy had two or three miscarriages before she gave birth to little Lucie |on July 17, 1951. three
months before the show's debut). She thought that having a baby would hold them together.
Bart Andrews, author of three books on the couple and their work:
Some of Desi's womanizing was alleviated from the moment little Lucie was born. I think he felt
more sensitive about those things and stopped some of that. For a while, at least.
William Asher: When they were having the baby and we did the show about the birth of Little
Ricky [which coincided with the birth of their second child, Desi Jr., on Jan. 19, 1953], Desi was
terribly emotional about her. He really was crazy about her. You could feel how they felt.
Madelyn Pugh Davis, who along with Bob Carroll made up Lucy's longest-running comedywriting team:
Desi was a charmer. We used to call him the Cuban Arm because he'd put his arm around you
and say, "Listen, amigo..." And you were done for.
Phyllis McGuire, the singer, who met Lucy in the early 1950s:
I could see what she saw in him. He was flashy, lovable, absolutely charming. And that accent...
June Allyson, who with her husband, Dick Powell, was a friend of the couple's:
Lucy was very bright, but Desi was the brains. He was the staunch one. He ran the whole thing.
Lucy just deferred to him.
William Luce, coscreenwriter for Lucy & Desi:
Before the Laughter: When they were beginning I Love Lucy, Desi bargained for ownership of
those 179 episodes, so they could show them to their children. There was no concept of reruns in
those days. A few years later Desi sold them all back to CBS for millions.
Madelyn Pugh Davis: One time [in 1957] he was off the set doing something, and Lucy says, "I
Jim Bacon, veteran Hollywood reporter for the Associated Press: The big problem with their
marriage was that when Desi would get drunk, he was wild. If he was out carousing, he wouldn't
call in one whore, he'd call in 18. One night when I was with him in Palm Springs, he didn't do
anything but sit on the floor naked and sing "Babaloo" with all these whores around.
Bob Weiskopf: Basically, Desi's attitude was, "What the hell's the matter? I love her. When I go
out with women, they're usually hookers. Those don't count."
Shelley Winters, a longtime friend: They had a house in Palm Springs where he used to go and
just stay and drink. I think he just wanted Lucy to think he was off being unfaithful, just to make
her miserable. He just couldn't take that she was so much more important than he was. Nobody
ever called her Mrs. Arnaz.
Jim Bacon: Lucy put up with it quite a bit, but then it just became too embarrassing. Especially
when he got arrested on Hollywood Boulevard. That was sometime in the '50s. The cops picked
him up, drunk, standing in front of this whorehouse, singing Cuban songs.
Bart Andrews: She told me that by 1956 it wasn't even a marriage anymore. They were just going
through a routine for the children. She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was
"just booze and broads." That was in her divorce papers, as a matter of fact.
Lillian Briggs Winograd: Desi was the love of Lucy's life. It was romantic, passionate,
everything you could imagine in a love affair, and she was deeply hurt by what happened. They
had tried like three times to get a divorce, but Lucy had always stopped it. Finally she planned to
move to Switzerland, take her kids and get out of Hollywood. At the time, in 1960, she had one
final commitment to do Wildcat on Broadway.
Shelley Winters: I saw her [postdivorce] in Wildcat when she met Gary Morton [the nightclub
comic she married in 1961]. She realized she needed someone who wouldn't be clobbered too
much by her success and who would take care of her.
Jack Carter, the comedian who introduced Ball to Gary Morton: When Jimmy Durante died I in
1980], his widow, Margie, asked Desi to help with the funeral. They were old friends from the
Del Mar racetrack days. Desi was so out of it that he kept inviting people, who were dead. He
kept calling up that old racetrack crowd, and they were all gone. He was thinking of people from
30 years ago when they were kids. At the funeral Desi stood in the back, stammering. He didn't
know where he was. He was even bombed that day.
William Asher: I think she always loved him. And there's no question that he loved her always.
Later, he married her double. Edie [Mack Hirsch] was a marvelous girl in her own right, but she
sure as hell looked like Lucy.
Lillian Briggs Winograd: People in Hollywood knew of Desi's philandering and drinking, but she
always wanted to keep it private and never hurt him, even in the later years when she was so big
and he was really down and out. She always hated what was written about them, so I would say,
"Lucy, why don't vow write a book?" She'd say, "No, it's nobody's business."
Jim Bacon: Even after she'd married Gary, whenever she'd see me, she would always take me
over to a corner and say, "Have you heard from Desi lately?" She wanted to know how he was
getting along. There was always that great, great love there.
Jack Carter: Desi and Gary got along fine. Desi wasn't really that concerned with him. It was like
he didn't exist. He'd ask Lucy, "How's that guy?"
Lillian Briggs Winograd: I don't want to take anything away from her relationship with Gary. He
made her extremely happy during the last 25 years of her life. But it was a different kind of
happiness.
Jack Carter: Lucy loved Desi till the day she died [following heart surgery on April 26, 1989]. He
was the father of her kids. Even after she married Gary, she'd still run these lovely home movies
of her and Desi and the kids when they were little. Everybody was in them, smiling by the pool,
running up real fast, waving hello, Lucy walking knock-kneed and doing her Lucy faces. She'd
sit there giving commentaries. She loved watching those movies.
Lillian Briggs Winograd: At the end, we drove down to Del Mar, where she went to see Desi a
few days before he died [of lung cancer on Dec. 2, 1986]. She was very, very shook-up. She left
that place and broke down and said, "That was the one love..."
William Asher: Maybe I'm the romantic, but there was a great, great love there, there really was.
Desi was very unhappy about the breakup, and I think she was too. I don't think either one of
them ever got over it.
Things happen. It was very sad. But they're together now.
Susan Schindehette, Andrew Abrahams, Leah Feldon-Mitchell and Marie Moneysmith in Los
Angeles