Arnaz, Desi (1917-1986)
A famed Afro-Cuban music band leader and minor movie star, Desi Arnaz rose from nightclub performer to television magnate during the golden years of black-and-white television. Born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III on March 2, 1917, in Santiago, Cuba, to awealthy family. Arnaz accompanied his father into political exile in Miami when the family's fortune was destroyed and his father became persona non grata under the Fulgencia Batista regime. At the age of seventeen, Arnaz's musical talent was discovered by renowned band leader Xavier Cugat, and by 1937 he was leading his own band in Miami Beach. Arnaz began to make a name for himself as a band leader, drummer, and singer in New York City and Miami Beach nightclubs when Afro-Cuban music was making its first and largest impact on American popular music of the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.It was in 1940 that he married the love of his life, Lucille Ball, who would later be cast as his on-screen wife in I Love Lucy. Ball had served as his co-star in the movie Too Many Girls, which was Arnaz's screen debut; the movie was the screen version of the Lorenz Hart and Richard Rogers Broadway hit of the same name, in which Arnaz had made his stage acting debut. His skyrocketing career was temporarily delayed by service in the Army during World War II. When he returned to Hollywood after his discharge from the service, Arnaz found that his heavy accent and Hispanic looks not only limited his opportunities but kept him type cast.
It was Arnaz's particular genius that converted the typecasting into an asset, and he was able to construct a television persona based not only on a comic version of the Latin Lover, but also on his success as a singer and rumba band leader. Mass popularity was finally achieved when, in 1952, Arnaz became the first Hispanic star on television with his pioneering what became the longest running sitcom in history: I Love Lucy. Eventually lasting nine years, Arnaz and Lucille Ball modified the Latin Lover and Dumb Blonde stereotypes to capture the attention of television audiences, who were also engaged by the slightly titillating undercurrent of a mixed marriage between an Anglo and an Hispanic who played and sang Afro-Cuban music, while banging on an African-derived conga drum and backed up by musicians of mixed racial features. The formula of pairing a Wasp and a minority or outcast has since been duplicated repeatedly on television to this date through such programs as Chico and the Man, Who's the Boss?, and The Nanny, and others.
His business acumen had already been revealed when in 1948 he and Ball founded Desilu Productions to consolidate their various stage, screen, and radio activities. Under Arnaz's direction DesiluProductions grew into a major television studio. In 1960, Arnaz and Ball divorced; their son and daughter followed in their parents' acting footsteps, but never achieved the success of their parents. Included among Desi Arnaz's films are Too Many Girls (1940), Father Takes a Wife (1941), The Navy Comes Through (1942), Bataan (1943), Cuban Pete (1946), Holiday in Havana (1949), The Long Trailer (1954), and Forever Darling (1956). I Love Lucy can still be seen in black-and-white re-runs in many parts of the United States. In 1976, Arnaz published his own rather picaresque and acerbic autobiography, A Book, detailing his rise to fame and riches and proclaiming his undying love for Lucille Ball. Arnaz died on December 2, 1986.
Further Reading:
Kanellos, Nicolás. The Hispanic American Almanac. Detroit, Gale Research, 1997.
Pérez-Firmat, Gustavo. Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban American Way. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1993.
Tardiff, Joseph T., and L. Mpho Mabunda, editors. Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Detroit, Gale Research, 1996.
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