Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter
Amongst the first in a wave of '90s made-for-TV bio-flicks, "Lucy & Desi: Before the Laughter" delves into the personal relationship of Lucille Ball (Frances Fisher, "Titanic") and Desi Arnaz (Maurice Benard, "General Hospital") leading up to the taping of the first episode of "I Love Lucy." The film costarred Robin Pearson Rose as Vivian Vance and John Wheeler as William Frawley and includes recreations of scenes from the unaired pilot and "Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her," which was the first episode filmed.
The genesis of the movie is an interesting one. After Desi Arnaz's death in 1986, Lucie Arnaz and the family's manager Raymond Katz worked out a deal with CBS to produce The Desi Arnaz Story, but after the script was written -- then rewritten by Lucie's husband Larry Luckinbill -- the network turned it down. Luckinbill then teamed with producer Larry Thompson and the pair re-pitched the script but CBS wanted to do a movie about Desi AND Lucy. After Lucille Ball's death in 1989, Thompson and Luckinbill returned to pitch the Lucy and Desi story. When it became clear that she'd have no script approval, Lucie Arnaz backed out, figuring the film would cease to be made. Instead the production soldiered on without her. "I felt raped, to say the least," Arnaz told TV Guide. Coming so soon after Lucy's death, the network decided to cash in and garner some publicity for the film by holding open casting calls (aka ''The Great Lucy & Desi Search'') in L.A., Miami and New York... and all of the major American media outlets were on hand to witness the Lucy lunacy.
Momentarily backtracking to 1982, during a photo session the photographer told actress Frances Fisher that she bore an uncanny resemblance to Lucille Ball, thus setting the wheels in motion. After hearing that a bio-pic was in the works, Fisher returned to the same photographer and had photos of herself taken as The "I Love Lucy" character. She submitted the photos to Thompson and auditioned for the film early, but because of the huge media circus surrounding the auditions, it was three months before she was offered the role. "I feel very protective about Lucille Ball," she told TV Guide's Elaine Warren. "I want it to be done right and as a tribute to her, because she was such an amazing woman." For the recreations of scenes from the show, Fisher obtained tapes of the episodes, studied them and choreographed her movements to mimic Ball's. "All I can say is I did it with the best intentions and a lot of love."
Meanwhile actor Maurice Benard managed to land the role of Desi Arnaz, though it's a bit of a mystery why. Benard bears only a slight resemblance to Arnaz and his fake accent and generally campy performance were singled out in many of the film's (many) negative reviews. With a sense of humor, the bipolar Benard later began denouncing the film at every opportunity, claiming both that it ruined his career and that he didn't realize at the time that he didn't know how to act (he began taking acting lessons soon after the movie was made). " My wife and I watched it on TV a few years after it came out," he told We Love Soaps on 2010. "There was a scene and my wife looked over at me and I said, 'What did you think?' She got quiet and I said, 'I know, pretty bad.'"
As the film came closer to completion, the junior Arnaz's (though mostly Lucie) began running to the press. "Everybody thinks I didn't want my parents' flaws shown," Lucie told TV Guide, "but that's not true. What I found distressing was that this is a very surface piece. This is not their lives... This is as much a cartoon of their lives as any unauthorized fiction." Arnaz went on to call the script "extraordinarily biased, making one person the hero [Lucy] and the other the villain [Desi]." Despite her very vocal complaints, Arnaz was careful not to step on toes at CBS, as she was starring in the dramedy "Sons and Daughters" on the network at the time (a series that lasted 7 weeks). She regarded then-CBS President Jeff Sagansky blameless, as the project was initiated under his predecessor, Kim LeMasters. Arnaz planned to use the buzz surrounding the film to create a Broadway musical based on her parents' marriage, but ultimately she opted to put together the 1993 documentary "Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie." Ironically it was rival network NBC, not CBS, which debuted that acclaimed documentary.
The film was issued on VHS and laserdisc but has never had a DVD release -- seems to be another movie that's gotten lost as a result of studios absolving each other, which sucks because (judging by the sales of ioffer dupes) there's still a big interest. It might not be the real Lucy and Desi, and some of the events may have never happened, but Francis Fisher gives a captivating performance (Fisher is to Ball as Dunaway is to Crawford), it's cool to see recreations of the famous "I Love Lucy" sets/scenes, and there's just enough heavy camp injected to make the movie a true cult oddity. Here's hoping the schmaltzy film will someday get the 1080 transfer (with plentiful extras) that it deserves.
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LINKS
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Maurice Benard - Official Site
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