Arnaz also played guitar for Xavier Cugat.

Arnaz was told that it would be impossible to allow an audience onto a sound stage, but he worked with Freund to design a set that would accommodate an audience, allow filming, and also adhere to fire and safety codes.

Arnaz and Ball's marriage ( 1940 ) was turbulent, and convinced that Arnaz was being unfaithful to her, and also because Desi came home drunk several times, Ball filed for divorce in September 1944, but returned to him before the interlocutory decree became final.

Arnaz was also suffering from diverticulitis.

Arnaz also headlined a Kraft Music Hall special on NBC that featured his two children, with a brief appearance by Vance.

To promote his autobiography, A Book, on February 21, 1976, Arnaz served as a guest host on Saturday Night Live, with his son, Desi, Jr., also appearing.

Minnelli also had relationships with Desi Arnaz, Jr. ( the son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz ), Peter Sellers, and Martin Scorsese.

There is a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in nearby Jamestown ; for further information on the Center, see also the SaveLucyDesiCenter. org website.

They renamed the show The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, also known as The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

Frawley is memorialized in the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York, which also contains his " Hop-Along the Frog " costume from an episode of I Love Lucy.

Arnaz also tried to create a law drama called Without Consent, with Spencer Tracy as a defense attorney, but after several attempts at developing a suitable script failed, the project was abandoned.

Desilu Too also partners with MPI Home Video and Lucille Ball Productions ( formed by Ball and second husband Gary Morton ) on the video releases of Here's Lucy and other material Ball and Arnaz made independently of each other.

The company also purchased Desilu Productions from Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in 1967, which included most of Ball's television product, as well as such properties as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible ( it and its successor companies would make millions on both series over the following decades with such projects as Star Treks various hit follow-up TV projects and films, beginning in the late 1970s ).

Oppenheimer was also an inventor, holding 18 patents covering a variety of devices, including the in-the-lens teleprompter used by everyone from news anchors to presidents ( first used on television by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, for a filmed Philip Morris cigarette commercial which aired on " I Love Lucy " on December 14, 1953 ).

Desi Arnaz also played a role in the popularization of conga drums.

At that time, CBS executives were somewhat dubious as to whether Ball could not only carry a show without Arnaz, but also follow such a landmark series as I Love Lucy.

Perhaps the most notable alumni of Saint Leo University are Anastasio Somoza Debayle the former President of Nicaragua, his brother Luis ( also a Nicaraguan President ), Charles Henri Baker a Haitian industrialist and presidential candidate, musicians Stephen Stills and Desi Arnaz, the former General Manager of the Toronto Blue Jays J. P. Ricciardi, the Academy Award-Winning actor Lee Marvin, and Major League Baseball player Bob Tewksbury.

Jamestown is also home to the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Museum.

In addition to guest spots on several television series during the early 1990s, Benard also appeared in television movies including the 1991 CBS television movie Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter, in which he portrayed Desi Arnaz.

The pair also wrote episodes for The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show ( aka The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour ) and Ball's final series, the unsuccessful Life With Lucy ( 1986 ).

Gavin also toured the country in Seesaw with Lucie Arnaz.

Eddie also makes a parody of Desi Arnaz ( Ricky Ricardo ) from the show, ' I Love Lucy ' about his famous laugh.

According to Arnaz, the CBS network told him, " You cannot show a pregnant woman on television ".

The network finally relented and let Arnaz and Ball weave the pregnancy into the story line, but remained adamant about eschewing use of pregnant, so Arnaz substituted expecting, pronouncing it ' spectin ' in his Cuban accent.

In addition, Arnaz took the unprecedented step of buying the episodes of I Love Lucy for an astoundingly low cost from CBS, realizing, as the network did not, the potential of the rerun.

Arnaz convinced them to allow Desilu to cover all additional costs associated with the filming process, under the stipulation that Desilu owned and controlled all rights to the film.

Nevertheless, they found instant appeal with teenagers and young adults who were engrossed in the swing and jazz idioms, especially when they performed with nearly all of the major big bands, including those led by Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Joe Venuti, Freddie Slack, Eddie Heywood, Bob Crosby ( Bing's brother ), Desi Arnaz, Guy Lombardo, Les Brown, Bunny Berigan, Xavier Cugat, Paul Whiteman, Ted Lewis, Nelson Riddle and mood-master Gordon Jenkins, whose orchestra and chorus accompanied them on such successful soft and melancholy renditions as " I Can Dream, Can't I?

For example, lacking formal business training, Arnaz knew nothing of amortization, and often included all the costs incurred by the production into the first episode of a season, rather than spreading them across the projected number of episodes in the year.

A number of entities, among them Desilu, Too ( successor to Arnaz Productions ), Eve Arden's estate, MGM ( which is a majority owner of UA, which syndicated the series to local stations after its cancellation ), and CBS Television Distribution ( successor to the original Desilu company ), have been believed to have some involvement in the rights, and many different companies ( including The Samuel Goldwyn Company, whose holdings are, in part, also owned by MGM ) have re-issued the series in syndication, mostly in scratchy 16mm prints.

When he moved to the United States, Desi Arnaz turned to show business to support himself.

Arnaz and Ball decided that the show would maintain what Arnaz termed " basic good taste ", and were therefore determined to avoid ethnic jokes as well as humor based on handicaps, mental disabilities, and so on.

Arnaz married his second wife, Edith Mack Hirsch, on March 2, 1963, and greatly reduced his show business activities.

Desilu Productions, jointly owned by Desi Arnaz and Ball during their marriage, was the production company for the Our Miss Brooks television show, which filmed during the same years as I Love Lucy.

Instead, CBS used the science fiction script for a new show produced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, in 1958.

In 1940, Lucy met Desi Arnaz, a Cuban bandleader who had just come off a successful run in the 1939 – 40 Broadway show Too Many Girls.

CBS relented only after Arnaz contractually bound Frawley to complete sobriety during the production of the show, and reportedly told the veteran actor that if he ever appeared on-set more than once in an intoxicated state he would be fired.

In 1957, I Love Lucy was re-tailored into an hour-long show originally titled The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show that was to be part of an anthology series called the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.

Just before filming the show, Lucy and Desi learned that Lucy was once again pregnant ( after multiple miscarriages earlier in their marriage ) with their first child, Lucie Arnaz.

The main cast, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley and Keith Thibodeaux were all in the show.

In 1951, the stars and producers of the Hollywood-based television series I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, decided to shoot their show directly onto 35 mm film using the three-camera system, instead of broadcasting it live.

His last name is Cajun French and was changed by Desi Arnaz for the show since " Thibodeaux " was thought to be somewhat difficult to pronounce for the average American viewer.

Arnaz immediately told Frawley about the network's concerns, telling him that if he was late to work, arrived drunk, or was unable to perform because of something other than legitimate illness more than once, he would be written out of the show.

When I Love Lucy was reformatted into the hour-long Lucy-Desi shows in 1957, Desi Arnaz proposed to Vance and Frawley the opportunity to star in their own " Fred and Ethel " spin-off show.

Arnaz would later retool the show with model and actress Joanne Dru taking the lead role, selling the series to ABC where it was subsequently cancelled after one season.

In 1962, two years after Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz divorced and their final show aired ( using the I Love Lucy format ), Desilu Studios was struggling.

When Ball and husband Desi Arnaz decided to develop this program for television in a series called I Love Lucy, Benaderet was first choice to fill the role of Ethel Mertz, but was ultimately unavailable to accept it since she had already been cast for the fledgeling Burns and Allen television show.

Desi Arnaz, who produced and directed the show, appeared in three episodes, using his Ricky Ricardo accent and trademark mispronunciation of words to full effect.