Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way

2. The Man Who Loved Lucy

- 44 chaPTeR TWo The Man Who Loved Lucy One more chorus of “Babalú,” and out you go. bob hoPe To desi aRnaz When The nine-yeaR Run of i love lucy ended in April of 1961, one of its stars went on to other successful Tv series, remaining in the public (and the cbs) eye for the rest of her life. Her costar, by contrast, retired to Palm Springs, bought a ranch, and devoted much of his time to breeding racehorses. Aside from sporadic guest spots on talk shows and a couple of one-time roles on television series, he all but disappeared from view. Desi Arnaz’s one return to the spotlight took place in 1976 upon the publication of his memoirs, which he called simply, A Book.1 Timed to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of I Love Lucy, A Book was greeted with mixed reviews, but it sold well, thanks in large part to Desi’s willingness to promote it on talk shows. Today, however, A Book is out of print and difficult to find. The front and back covers of A Book are a study in contrasts. The front cover (fig. 3) shows Desi as he looked in the mid-seventies: jowls, creases on his neck, thinning grey hair, a weathered complexion unretouched by makeup or photography. He is wearing street clothes—a sport jacket over a rumpled light-colored shirt, no tie. Standing on a dimly lit stage, he is holding a long, thin microphone and a half-smoked cigar that the stark shadows have reduced to a sliver of light. As he talks to the audience, Desi looks away from the camera. His expression is serious, even somber. This Desi is certainly different from his show business image. Although he is on a stage, instead of singing or dancing he is talking, perhaps explaining something. Since the photograph is taken from an angle, the mes- - 45- The Man Who Loved Lucy sage is not only that this is a “candid” shot, and perhaps revelatory of facets of his life or personality that we may not have seen before, but that the individual in the pages of this book is someone other than the funny, upbeat , somewhat bumbling bandleader of the Tv series. Whoever this man may be, it is not Ricky Ricardo or Mr. Babalú. The back cover is nearly identical to the front. Instead of endorsements or information about the book or its author, again we find the title, the name of the author, and the same brief blurb. Because the layout is the same, when one picks up A Book it’s impossible to tell which is the front of the book. What is different, and strikingly so, is the photograph. On the back it’s Desi again, but now forty years younger; the photograph is a typical publicity photo from the 1940s (fig. 4). This time it’s a brightly lit, frontal shot. His complexion is perfect, the teeth are white and glistening, the abundant shiny black hair is attractively tousled, he has a glint in his eye and a big cheesy smile on his face. A white rumba shirt opens in the middle to reveal a medal hanging from his neck. A conga drum is slung around his right shoulder, and the photographer has caught his subject as he is about to strike the drum skin. Considered together, the two photographs compose an allegory on the transience of youth and beauty. But the theme of the diptych is not only figuRe 3. Desi Arnaz, A Book (front cover). Photo courtesy of Desilu, Too llc. figuRe 4. Desi Arnaz, A Book (back cover). Photo courtesy of Desilu, Too llc. - 46 - Life on the Hyphen the ravages of time; the contrast between the two portraits also suggests the ambiguous relations between life and art, living and performing, an ambiguity that I Love Lucy exploited with abandon.2 More to the point, the diptych suggests the difficulty of sustaining this distinction in an autobiography , which is always performance parading as life. At first blush, it would seem that whereas the back cover exhibits Desi’s performing self, the front cover gives us a glimpse of the man behind the mask. Yet the “real” Desi is also on a stage. He’s in street clothes, there’s not a drum skin in sight, but still he’s there with a microphone...