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- 20 chaPTeR one I Love Ricky AfeW monThs befoRe his deaTh in 1986, desi Arnaz remarked that he wanted to be remembered as the “I” in I Love Lucy, a wish that was both self-assertive and self-effacing, since that “I” is fraught with ambiguity. For one thing, it refers both to Desi and to his fictional counterpart, Ricky Ricardo. Given that the program deliberately exploited the resemblances between the actors and their Tv characters, it is not always easy to tell Desi and Ricky apart. For another , almost from the beginning of the show’s phenomenal run, Desi’s “I” was appropriated by the millions of Lucy fans, whose feelings it expressed . Indeed, the genius of the title is that it pithily describes both the subject of the show and the audience’s reaction to its protagonist. The story behind the title is well known: cbs wanted Lucille Ball to do a television version of her popular radio show My Favorite Husband, where her husband was played by Richard Denning. Ball agreed, but only if Desi Arnaz played Denning’s part. Since the radio program was about a typical American housewife and her husband, the network balked, feeling that Arnaz would not be believable as the husband. In the radio show Lucy’s husband had been a waspish banker from Minneapolis, hardly a suitable part for a conga player from Cuba. After the program’s concept was modified to fit Desi’s background and personality, the network finally agreed, but without much enthusiasm. Ball and Arnaz would play a showbiz couple: the husband was a struggling bandleader whose zany wife would try anything to get into his act. The show’s title remained a problem, however. Mindful of Desi’s Cuban ego, Ball’s first impulse was to call the show The Desi Arnaz–Lucille Ball Show, but again the network balked, since she and not Desi was the drawing card for the series. In 1951 Desi Arnaz was known basically as - 21- I Love Ricky the leader of a Latin orchestra; by contrast, Lucille Ball was “Queen of the B’s,” an established actress whose successful Hollywood career gave the new medium the kind of legitimacy that it needed. After much discussion , someone—it’s not clear who—came up with the clever compromise, I Love Lucy. This title had the advantage of giving Desi top billing without actually naming him, thus leaving the spotlight on his more famous wife.1 The presence of Desi’s “I” in the title is as evasive as it is revelatory. It does take a moment’s reflection to realize to whom the pronoun actually refers. Desi’s wish to be remembered as the “I” in the show reveals a desire to unmask the anonymity of that oddly impersonal pronoun. This anonymity was enhanced by the projection of the viewer’s identity into the title. Jack Gould, the Tv critic for the New York Times during the 1950s, put it this way: “I Love Lucy is probably the most misleading title imaginable. For once, all available statistics are in agreement: Millions love Lucy.”2 Given Lucy’s popularity, this leap from show to audience was easy to make. For Gould as for many others, the title was essentially a declaration of the audience’s affection for the show’s star. Back in the fifties, the Chicago department store Marshall Field’s decided to close early on Monday nights because most of its customers were staying home to watch the program. The sign in the store said, “We love Lucy too, so we’re closing on Monday nights.” Who loves Lucy? I love Lucy, you love Lucy, we all love Lucy. Lucy’s fan club is called, not unexpectedly, the We Love Lucy Fan Club. Moreover, the series was broadcast on cbs, the network whose famous corporate logo is a giant eye, an image that was first used in September of 1951, only a month before the series went on the air for the first time. In this context the title refers not to Ricky or Desi but rather to the “eye” of the beholder, whose iconographic rendering is the cbs eye.3 But if we are the “I,” what happens to the “I” in the title? It becomes a scrambled ego. Scrambled first by the split between Ricky and Desi, and scrambled again by their absorption into the viewer’s “eye.” The “I” in I Love Lucy is less a personal...

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