A TV version of Lucy’s radio show became one of the most popular staples of 1950s TV schedules and made her an icon of popular entertainment – and a very wealthy woman into the bargain. She and her husband became household names. In the years before cable and multi-channel options the I Love Lucy show was phenomenally popular and remained so, in one form or another, for 20 years. It seemed that in the US, and scores of other countries, everyone loved Lucy! Not only did the format influence what came later (from the Mary Tyler Moore Show to Roseanne to Friends) but husband Desi was a smooth operator who struck deals between the TV network and the fi lm studio. He realized that, properly managed and produced, TV programmes could have a long and lucrative afterlife. In many countries I Love Lucy can still be seen in re-run heaven 50 years after the originals were first shown.

Desi also produced a slew of other TV shows and introduced The Desilu Playhouse, a drama series in the late 1950s that featured top stars of the day. The young director Robert Altman was also given his big break directing some episodes. In I Love Lucy Desi was as much a part of the weekly show as Lucy. Their marriage was a real love match and it sometimes seemed that they worked so well together because they couldn’t bear to be apart. Desi starred as the suave straight man Ricky Ricardo to Lucy’s clowning, accidentprone housewife. Even their children became part of the show’s history when Lucy’s pregnancy was written into the show’s storyline. Pioneering for the day, Lucy and Desi had to persuade the TV network that a pregnant woman on TV was perfectly acceptable. Desi junior and his sister Lucie Arnaz even acted as the fi ctional Ricardo children in the Emmy Award-winning series. Desi junior went on to play his father in the 1989 movie The Mambo Kings which in turn was based on the Pulitzer-prize-winning novel by Oscar Hijuelos who, like Desi, had Cuban parents who emigrated to the States to make a new life.