And the Rest Is History (19 page)

Much to Lucille's unhappiness, holy matrimony did nothing to curtail Desi's amorous flings. The Arnazes had lived together for four years when Lucy, convinced of his serial infidelity, filed for divorce. However, they reconciled and returned to Desilu, their five-acre ranchito in California. In 1949 the couple renewed their vows, this time in a Catholic church to compensate for their earlier civil ceremony. They hoped this would help bring the children they both desperately wanted. However, an ongoing impediment was Desi's constant absences as he toured with his band. Lucy lamented about this situation, “You can't have a baby on the phone.”

Eager to find a project that would keep her husband home, and faithful, Lucy became interested in CBS's offer of a television version of the radio show she was performing in,
My Favorite Husband
. However, the network vetoed her idea of Desi as her co-star. They thought of him as “just that bongo player.” Moreover, executive Hub-bell Robinson felt that American audiences would not be receptive to a show involving an interracial couple. The studio executives were concerned that an audience would not believe she was married to the man who, in actuality, she was married to. Once more, the word
no
would be Lucille's response to their rejection. Later Ball would remark, “How
I Love Lucy
was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we'd profit from them.”

The year 1951 was a golden one for the Arnazes. In July, one month before Lucy's fortieth birthday, after several miscarriages, Ball gave birth to Lucie Désirée Arnaz, and on October 15
I Love Lucy
debuted. For his wife's twenty-ninth birthday Desi had given her a diamond-encrusted heart-shaped watch, which became the show's logo. Lucy's role of the zany housewife led to Desi's oft-repeated remark, “Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!” Often, in frustration, he would revert to Spanish, as if it took him two languages to deal with his wife. However, at the close of every episode, no matter what, Ricky still loved Lucy.

A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, and his arrival was written into the script. This was groundbreaking news, as CBS had never before permitted a pregnant woman to even appear on TV. The event made the first cover of
TV Guide
in January 1953, and more people viewed the birth of “Little Ricky” than tuned in to the inauguration of President Eisenhower.

In 1953 Lucille found herself in a far more serious scrape than her fictitious counterpart ever did: She was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Immediately before the filming of episode 68 of
I Love Lucy
, Desi informed the audience about the situation. He ended with a quip: “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that's not legitimate.” When he presented his wife, the audience gave her a standing ovation. The Arnazes weathered the McCarthy storm; however, another one was brewing.

Desi's womanizing had not ended with marriage or parenthood. Tension between the two escalated when Desi's private indiscretions became public in the tabloid
Confidential
. Its headline blared, “Does Desi Really Love Lucy?” The article stated that Arnaz “proved himself an artist at philandering as well as acting.” It also quoted an inebriated Desi stating, “A real man should have as many girls as he has hair on his head.” The movie where they had first met,
Too Many Girls
, had taken on a symbolic overtone. After this scandal, it was Desi who had some “'splainin' to do.”

Desi tried to fend off rumors of marital discord by remarking that when a redhead and a Cuban got together they were bound to argue, but eventually it got to the point where the couple could no longer deny their crumbling marriage. Just as the Ricardos said good-bye to television, Ball and Arnaz said good-bye to each other with a divorce. Lucy said, “I hate failure and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes. It was the worst period of my life. Neither Desi nor I have been the same since, physically or mentally.”

Ball bought her ex-husband's share of their company Desilu for $3 million, which made her the first woman to single-handedly run a TV studio. Desi's comment on this was one of no regrets: “It ceased to be fun. I was happier chasing rats.” As head of the world's largest production company, Lucille proved that she was not as ditzy as her character Lucy; she arranged the purchase of RKO Studios for $6.15 million and eventually sold it for $17 million.

Desi, pursued by his addictions to alcohol, gambling, and womanizing, retreated to a Del Mar, California, oceanfront estate, where he spent his days visiting the racetrack and smoking cigars. He also married his second wife, Edith Mack Hirsch, in 1963. As they prepared for their Palm Springs honeymoon, Lucy sent the couple roses in the shape of a horseshoe. The card read: “You Both Picked a Winner.” In 1976, when Desi published his autobiography, its epilogue confirmed that his second wife had not supplanted his first: “I loved Lucy very much and, in my own and perhaps peculiar way, I will always love her.”

After the divorce, Lucille Ball Arnaz was professionally secure, but she was emotionally distraught and lamented that she was in the horrific position of approaching fifty and being “lonely and loaded.” She ended up marrying Gary Morton, who was referred to as “Mr. Ball,” because she was the powerhouse; it was also because he was attempting to fill Desi's unfillable shoes.

In November 1986, on what would have been the Arnazes' forty-sixth wedding anniversary, Lucille called Desi, who was dying of lung cancer. When the phone rang, their daughter, Lucie, put the phone to her father's ear with the words, “It's the redhead.” Lucie could hear her mother's pain-laden voice repeating over and over, “I love you. I love you, Desi, I love you.” His last words to her were, “I love you, too, honey. Good luck with your show.” Lucie said of her parents, “They had one of those historical marriages, like Napoleon and Josephine, Richard and Liz—destined to be trouble but destined for them to never find anyone as passionate or fabulous.”

Five days later Lucille Ball was honored at the Kennedy Center. Robert Stack read a written statement that Desi had prepared just days before for the occasion. Desi's last words to his first love: “
I Love Lucy
was never just a title.”

22

1943

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he word
whistle
carries different connotations for different people: To Disney aficionados, it is what seven dwarves do while they work; to those of an artistic bent, it is reminiscent of a painter's tribute to his mother; to those with wanderlust, it brings to mind the mournful sound of a train. However, to a legendary pair, the word symbolized their love.

The man who began his Hollywood career in the role of the noble thug, Humphrey DeForest Bogart, was born in New York, a child of wealth and private schools. He disappointed his parents when he followed the lure of the sea and enrolled in the navy instead of Yale. He later recalled, “At eighteen, war was great stuff. Paris! French girls! Hot damn!” He drifted into movies and became a star in
High Sierra
, in which he played a gangster with a soul; he got the audience to root for the bad guy. Bogart had his first romantic role in
Casablanca
, of which he was characteristically humble. Of his performance he stated, “When the camera moves in on that Bergman's face, and she's saying she loves you, it would make anybody look romantic.” Although his role as the nightclub owner made him immortal, it was in an Ernest Hemingway adaptation where he first saw his Ilsa.

Humphrey's destiny, Betty Joan Perske, was a New York-born Jewish seventeen-year-old. To help support herself and her single mother, she began working as a model. Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor of
Harper's Bazaar
, saw something in the unknown girl and placed her on a 1943 cover. When director Howard Hawks's wife saw her seductive beauty, she urged her husband to bring the teenager to Hollywood for a screen test. The erstwhile model would later remark of the
Harper's Bazaar
cover that it was “the twist of fate that changed my life forever.”

Betty was chosen to star in the film
To Have and Have Not
, and Howard Hawk, in Svengali fashion, changed her name to Lauren Bacall.

The first time Bogart met Bacall was when Hawks introduced them on the set of the film
Passage to Marseilles
. A couple of weeks before
To Have and Have Not
began filming, as Lauren was walking out of the director's office her future co-star was about to walk in. When he encountered his leading lady, he said, “I just saw your test. We'll have a lot of fun together.”

Just as life imitates art, so reel love often transforms to real love, as was the case with Bogie and Bacall. When the siren uttered, “You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow,” Bogie was bewitched. A short time into the filming of the picture, Humphrey came into Lauren's dressing room to say good night and suddenly leaned over, put his hand under her chin, and kissed her. He took a matchbook from his pocket and asked her to put her phone number on its back. She did so, though there were impediments to their romance: He was forty-five and she was nineteen, he was Christian and she was Jewish; and furthermore, he was married.

Humphrey's third wife, actress Mayo Methot, was an affable woman when sober, a virago when drunk. Bogart didn't believe in adultery, but Methot nevertheless was serially suspicious and threw objects, mostly plates, at what she assumed was her cheating spouse. In one rage, she stabbed him. Dorothy Parker said of their marriage that “their neighbors were lulled to sleep by the sounds of breaking china and crashing glass.” The “Battling Bogarts” (as the press had dubbed them) kept a carpenter on call to repair the damage from their drunken fights. However, the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall was so magnetic that they eventually embarked on a clandestine affair, which soon became public.

Though Bogart's nickname for Bacall was “Baby,” to the other people on the set she was nicknamed “the Cast”; this was because every time Bogie spent an evening with his girlfriend, he told his wife he was going out with the cast. News of the affair became public fodder when the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper came on the set; in an advance warning of her article she cautioned Lauren, “Better be careful. You might have a lamp dropped on you one day.” Then Hedda followed her quip with a line in her paper: “You can have your B&B at lunch any day at Lakeside.”

Howard Hawk warned Bacall to end the affair; he cautioned that she meant nothing to Bogart, and if she prolonged the scandal he would wash his hands of her and send her to Monogram (the studio that made the lowest pictures). Under his concern lay jealousy; although married, he too was smitten with Bacall. To distract his star, he fixed her up with Clark Gable; although the romantic icon kissed her under the moonlight, there were no sparks. Her mother, with whom she lived, was also aghast that her daughter consented every time Bogart called with his customary phone greeting, “Hello, Baby,” to arrange for a tryst. However, Lauren was willing to bet her heart on her belief that Humphrey's love for her would triumph.