Memories of Lucy and Desi for posterity

From the day “I Love Lucy” debuted on CBS-TV in October 1951, families took the show and the characters to their hearts. For the next six years, they gathered around black and white sets, doubled over in laughter, while Lucy and Desi Ricardo and their neighbors, the Mertz, clowned and frolicked in crazy situations backed by the Latin beat of the Desi band.

The winner of four Emmy Awards and multiple nominations for the show and its stars was followed by The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show from 1957-1960. Today the most beloved couple on television continues to bring joy to the world in syndication. Best of all, the Library of Congress preserves their legacy in a display of their lives and accomplishments. It will be on display to the public until January 2012.

Throughout this year, the 60th anniversary of “I Love Lucy” and the 100th anniversary of Lucille Ball have been honored by BABALU !, a celebration of their lives and gifts of music. Presented by Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr., BABALU! was first performed at New York’s 92nd Street Y in January as a tribute to his father. His bright and lively orchestrations were performed by the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. Desi, Jr. wanted to use his father’s original graphics, some of them ten to twelve pages long, but they were too fragile, so the Library of Congress copied them for free. The New York concert was followed by one in Miami last summer and a third in Washington at the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in October. The Washington concert was recorded for a future performance.

Actress and singer Lucie Arnaz had kept 20 boxes of her father’s music, including 300 from his lists, in her garage for years without knowing whether to give them away to the family, donate them or throw them away. He had no idea if they were valuable or not, but he remembers his father’s advice: “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.”

She brought up her storage problem while chatting with Michael Feinstein. He advised her to file them in the Library of Congress, as she had done with her collection of Gershwin materials. Along with music, he had 110 family scrapbooks from the 1930s to the 1970s.

On Feinstein’s advice, he contacted the Library of Congress. They were delighted and arranged to collect the boxes at their home in New York. Once the materials reached Washington, the scrapbook items that were glued to the paper, a sometimes fatal mistake, were located and preserved.

Although Lucie is not a historian, she considers everything she has done for her parents’ legacy to be a necessity. She was so unhappy with the show CBS ran in her memory, calling it a “lazy tabloid piece,” that she got to work figuring out why all its success didn’t make them happy.

He began by interviewing people who knew them well, such as Van Johnson, Ann Miller, and their makeup artists. It was a stormy marriage, but she wanted to know what went wrong, why she drank, and why she played backgammon towards the end of life. As he watched home movies dating back many years, he saw amazing images that brought him clarity. Excited, she reached out to NBC-TV with her findings. The result, a documentary that was as cathartic to her as it was a joy to her fans, won an Emmy Award.

“I was trying to tell the truth and be as objective and journalistic as possible,” he said. “Part of the story wasn’t pretty, but it was balanced with love.”