Desi Arnaz

From the Ashes of Santiago to the Beat of Cugat

Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Alberni III arrived in Miami with little more than the clothes he was wearing and a pair of purebred horses that his family managed to save from the Cuban revolution in 1933. He was not the typical profile of a refugee. His father had been the mayor of Santiago de Cuba, but the fall of Machado's regime changed everything overnight.

He cleaned canary cages and worked in a tile factory before his talent for guitar and singing lifted him out of the gutter. In 1937, Xavier Cugat signed him to his orchestra, and soon after, Desi formed his own band in Miami. It was there that he introduced the conga line to American nightclubs.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1939, he landed a role in the Broadway musical Too Many Girls, and that production was the direct bridge to Hollywood. There he met a fiery redheaded actress with boundless energy named Lucille Ball. They married just six months after meeting for the first time on a film set. Nobody in the industry bet on a marriage that spent more time arguing than celebrating.

The Man Who Invented Reruns

In 1950, CBS executives were convinced that American audiences would not accept a Cuban with a thick accent as the husband of TV's golden girl of comedy. But Lucille Ball stood her ground. She wanted her real-life husband on screen, so to win over the top brass they put together a vaudeville act that toured half the country. The tour's success forced the network to give the green light to I Love Lucy.

Desi was more than just the funny husband who played the conga. He understood before anyone else that the future of television did not lie in live broadcasts from New York that were lost forever. He insisted on shooting the series on 35mm film and using a three-camera system with a studio audience. It was a technical decision that changed the financial rules of the game forever.

That stubbornness is what gave birth to reruns.

Filming on film meant the quality was good enough to rerun the episodes years later. Desi and Lucy accepted a lower salary in exchange for full ownership of the series' negatives. In 1951, they founded Desilu Productions and became masters of their own destiny, free from the whims of tobacco and soap sponsors.

The Business Behind the Heartbreak

Under his leadership, Desilu went from a small family business to a giant that rented studios to other productions. In 1957, they bought the former RKO studios, and Desi oversaw every detail, from budgets to final editing. But the pace of work and his personal problems with alcohol and infidelity wrecked the marriage.

They divorced in 1960, right after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. Despite the breakup, they maintained a strangely close professional and personal relationship for decades. Desi continued producing shows such as The Untouchables and proved he had a special instinct for spotting which stories hooked the male audience of the era.

He was a relentless negotiator.

In 1962, Desi Arnaz sold his stake in Desilu Productions to Lucille Ball for $2.5 million and partially stepped back from the front lines to spend more time at his ranch in California. His last television production was the sitcom The Mothers-in-Law, which aired between 1967 and 1969. He died of lung cancer in December 1986 at his home in Del Mar.