Desi Arnaz

Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in Santiago, Cuba on March 2, 1917. He came from a very wealthy and powerful family. His father was the mayor of Santiago and his uncle was the chief of police, according to Desi his family "had that town pretty well runned."

One day, Desi was playing a game with one of his friends when he had the urge to leave and go back to his home. He was suprised to find that Cuba was in turmoil. Homes and buildings were being burned to the ground, pianos were being thrown off of buildings onto the ground and the city was quickly becoming a ruin. This was the start of the revolution.

Since Desi's father, Desiderio II, was for the other govenrnment that was being overthrown by the revolution, he was jailed. Desi and his mother Delores, or Lolita as she was commonly called, had no choic but to flee their home and seek refuge with a cousin in Havana. When the riots started to die down the Arnaz family discovered that their home was ransacked and burned. With nothing left, Desi and his father fled for Miami.

In Miami, Desi tried to hold down many different jobs including a job as a bird cage cleaner. His father was soon back to business, however slow. He started exporting bananas, but that didn't work very well, but then he got into the tile business. That business was working well until the shipments of tiles were coming in broken. Desi II thought that he was ruined, but Desi III had an idea and they sold the broked tiles for mosaic pieces.

While in Miami, Desi befriended Xavier Cugat. He gave Desi a job as a musician. Desi and his band began touring nightclubs and puttion on shows here and there and eventually Desi landed a plumb part in the play "Too Many Girls." Eventually R.K.O. Studios bought the film rights to the play and many of the actors involved in the play were also involved in the movie. The one major exception to that was the role of Connie Casey. The actress who played the role on Broadway got replaced by none other than...the one...the only...Lucille Ball.

When shooting for the movie began, there was an instant spark between Lucille and Desi. Within a year of being in that movie, Lucille and Desi married in Conneticut on November 30, 1940. The young couple moved into the "Desilu" ranch in Chatsworth CA. They were separated often with Desi being in the army and touring with his band, and Lucy making movies, but a solution to that problem came i 1951 when lucy finally persueded CBS to make a TV show starring a crazy readhead and her Cuban bandleader husband, and the rest is history.

Lucy and Desi divorced in 1960 after a very sucessful run of "I Love Lucy." In the later years of his life, Desi led a quiet life. Having sold his share of Desilu Studios (the studio where  "I Love Lucy", "Our Miss Brooks" , "The Andy Griffith Show" etc. were filmed) to Lucy in the early 1960's, Desi married Edith Hirsch in 1963. In 1976 Desi published his memoirs entitled 'A Book.' In 1986 Desi Arnaz died of lung cancer.