43 Lovely with some rare photos Arnaz family

Here are lovely photos from Lucy, Desi with their beautiful children Lucie and Desi jr. with quotes. I really love to watch those photo's... 

"The first time Lucy and Lucie played in the pool I built, I cried. It was an emotional moment, especially since Lucy and I have waited 10 years to have a child." -Desi

“Increasingly frustrated by her own childlessness, Lucille doted on the offspring of others. By this time, Barbara Bell, daughter of Harriet’s [the maid] friend Dot, had children of her own. Lucille met them in San Francisco, and as Barbara recalled, “She wanted to hurry up and have kids so bad. When she met my son she loved him so much she kept stuffing money in his pockets. He was five or six and she thought it a great game.” Her desire for motherhood was such that even DeDe suggested they adopt a child if they wanted one so badly, but Lucille would sob, “I want Desi’s baby.” 

- The Life of Lucille Ball by Kathleen Brady

What they were doing onstage, brought us I Love Lucy. What they were doing off the stage brought us… Lucie Arnaz.

“We had it all. Desi and I, we had it all…”

"It was an emotional moment to see Desi with the kids, all grown up, on television. I still remember the first time I held the babies in my arms, and how happy we all were." —Lucy

Keith Thibodeaux (Little Ricky) and Desi Jr were great friends, they played drums and grew up together. Desi and Lucy said: "It was like having 3 children instead of 2," 

You see much more of your children once they leave home.” (Lucy)

Lucille was so crazy about her children. Whenever she had time, she would just stare at the sleeping babies, and start weeping with motherly happiness. I think she felt terrible that she couldn't spend more time with them due to the demands of I Love Lucy. It broke her heart. —Cleo, Lucille's cousin  

Lucy often brought her children (Lucie and Desi Jr.) to the I Love Lucy set.

Lucie, Lucy and Desi jr, on the set of Here's Lucy

"I began feeling tired again. No energy. All tuckered out. I told Desi about it, and he grinned. ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘maybe we’re going to have another baby’. Well, it was true. After waiting for so long for one, there were going to be two. A lot had been asked of us, but not nearly so much as was now being given." (Lucy)

Desi always enjoyed taking pictures of Lucille and their children.

vacation in Sun Valley

Winter holiday

(...) She would also force Gary to run home videos of her, Desi and the children. (...) - her brother, Fred ball

 source: golucilleball

"I promised (Desi’s mother, Dolores) to bring up any children we might have as Catholics." (Lucy)

Forever part 2

"Even after she'd married Gary, whenever she'd see me, she would always take me over to a corner and say, 'Have you heard from Desi lately?' She wanted to know how he was getting along. There was always that great, great love there."Jim Bacon, family friend

"Maybe I'm the romantic, but there was a great, great love there, there really was. Desi was very unhappy about the breakup, and I know she was too. I don't think either one of them ever got over it."William Asher, Lucy director

Forever

"After the short ceremony, we ate our wedding breakfast in front of a bright fire in the club's lounge. Outside, a fresh mantle of snow hung on the pine trees. After all the indecision we'd been through, Desi and I were dazed with happiness. We kissed each other and the marriage certificate again and again. It still has my lipstick marks on it.

'I'm going to keep this forever and ever,' I told Desi, clutching it to my black-wool covered bosom. This marriage had to work. I would do anything, sacrifice anything, to make Desi happy."

Lucy written this in: Love, Lucy - her book

 On the set ( wedding- long, long trailer) (1954)

Queen of the B movies

Before she became "Lucy" and 'the queen of comedy', Lucille Ball was the queen of the B movies.

Lucy made more than 60 movies. 
Not every rising starlet would agree to play second fiddle to the Marx Brothers, but Ball didn`t mind. Along with Ann Miller, she supported Groucho, Harpo and Chico in ``Room Service.``

"No wonder she knew so much about this business, she did everything in it." says Steve Allen.

After some success working as a model in New York, Lucy moved to Los Angeles in 1933 to do what she really wanted to do: make movies. "She was a (extreme) beautiful" blond girl and appeared in more than a dozen films, usually in walk- on roles. 

She even appeared in "Three Little Pigskins" alongside the Three Stooges. She bounced from being a Goldwyn Girl to the Columbia studio and finally to RKO in 1935, landing a part alongside Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in "Top Hat"

Later that same year, she made ``I Dream Too Much,`` which starred Henry Fonda. Ball may have had only a small role, but she was making big friends.

Lucy said in a interview from 1986: "I watched, listened and learned. I would do absolutely anything asked of me, and I never said `Why?` like actors do today. I just did it. Hank (Fonda) was so natural. Ginger (Rogers) and I would double-date in those days. She went with Jimmy Stewart, and I went with Hank. You know, Hank used to say, "Lucy, imagine, if it had worked out with us, it would have been Henrylu instead of Desilu.""

She got her biggest break up to then in 1937, at age 26, when director Gregory LaCava cast a brown-haired Ball to play Rogers` dancing partner in

"Stage Door," which starred Katharine Hepburn and relative newcomers Ann Miller and Eve Arden. The movie was RKO`s big effort of the year, and it was a hit at the box office.

"Eve Arden and I had the same parts for years, the best friend or the lady executive," recalls Lucy: " We`d walk into a room, drop a smart remark and exit. We were the drop-gag girls."

Dick Cavett recalled in a recent interview that Groucho once said:

"Lucille`s always been a great actress. She can do comedy with the best, but she could also do Chekhov or anything else."

By 1986, Ball`s most vivid memory of making "Room Service" was meeting Harpo. The two struck up a lifelong friendship. "He was an adorable, sweet man. I loved working with him and knowing him," she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

Certainly, most actresses only dreamed of the success Lucy had managed by 1938. However, Lucy wanted to do more than play the girl next door or the lead in a fluffy, second-rate picture. Along with at least a dozen Hollywood stars, including Bette Davis and Paulette Goddard, she auditioned for the role of Scarlett O`Hara in ``Gone with the Wind.``

Though still working, she was bitterly disappointed about being miscast by RKO and not getting the part of Scarlett, which went to Vivien Leigh. Ball felt her film career was stalled.

In 1940, RKO signed a young Cuban band leader to costar with Lucy in "Too Many Girls." Lucy was working on the set of another film, ``Dance, Girl, Dance`` the first time she met Desi. When Desi had meet Lucy, he was impressed. "I thought, `My God, that girl will do anything," Desi said in a TV interview years later.

Quotes

Hey guys, I will post more very soon. But here are some quotes for now. 

"Whenever they got to spend time together, he would have her pose and take pictures of her. Sometimes, they would bring home costumes from the studio, dress themselves, and just fool around in front of the video camera." —Fred Ball

 "I Love Lucy was like a fantasy come true. Lucy and I would borrow outfits from movie studios and create our little stage productions at home. Sometimes we threw costumes parties and had a ball.- Desi 

 

 Lucille was so crazy about her children. Whenever she had time, she would just stare at the sleeping babies, and start weeping with motherly happiness. I think she felt terrible that she couldn't spend more time with them due to the demands of I Love Lucy. It broke her heart. —Cleo, Lucille's cousin  

   

I Love Lucy and Vivian - Best Friends

This is from Vivian’s manuscript:

"Lucille Ball and I were just like sisters. We adored each other’s company. She and I had so many laughs on “I Love Lucy” that we could hardly get through filming without cracking up. Then I began hearing that Lucille and I were too close. My first husband disapproved of my closeness with Lucille. “People are talking about you two,” he’d say. “You ought to be careful about the hugging and kissing you do on the show.”

Overall, my years on “I Love Lucy” were great fun. Lucille and I used to watch our own shows and rock with laughter at what we’d done on camera. We thought we were knock-outs in some routines. Before shooting, Lucille and I would do advance planning. We’d plot together: “What if I step on your head when I climb down from the upper berth…Suppose we both get so busy crawling around on the floor that we back into each other under the table?” Sometimes it took no more than talking about it to send us into stitches.

Yet when the role of Ethel Mertz was first offered to me, I actually tried to turn it down! When Lucille and her husband Desi Arnaz began turning their radio show into a TV series in 1951, Bea Benadaret – not I – was the original choice to play Ethel Mertz, Lucy’s next-door neighbor. But Bea signed up for “The Burns and Allen Show.” So Desi came to my dressing room after a performance of a play I was appearing in, and he offered me the role of Ethel. I told him: “I really don’t care to have anything to do with it.”

I meant every word. In 1951 television was a silly new medium that didn’t amount to anything and attracted little attention. But, Desi kept calling. Finally, against my real desire and best judgment, I got pushed into playing Ethel Mertz for 13 weeks at $450 a week. Then Lucille’s agent advised her to fire me from the show! He told Lucille: “Her eyes are bigger than yours. You’ll have to let her go”.

Lucille ignored his advice. Later she told me about it, and I said: “If I had your looks and talent, I’d fire that agent – not me!” Shooting began in a rented studio filled with cobwebs and dust, and no heat or hot water. The windows were so grimy you couldn’t see out of th…and the toilets were unspeakable. We walked in – and Lucille handed me a can of Bon Ami cleanser. “Clean out the john”, she said.

It was hard, but I got a scrub brush and went to work. I consoled myself by thinking, “Maybe you’re a girl who’s due to go down in history. Nobody’s tried doing a television show like this before.” I was right. “I love Lucy” was a success. At our peak we had 70 million viewers every week. There’d never been an audience that big before – and there hasn’t been one since on a regular week-to-week basis. But throughout the “Lucy” years I was in analysis, trying to sort out crossed wires in my life.

Working with Lucille Ball, seeing all the strength she had, was good and healthy for me. After 18 years of marriage, we filed for divorce and I went ton to find happiness with my second husband, John Dodds."

- Vivian Vance

Lucille Ball

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world." - (that is soo true...)
 

Lucie Arnaz about her mother, Lucille Ball

“I learned so much from my mother,” says Arnaz on the phone from her home in New York. “Not just about show business and how to survive in it, but about what really matters in the way you live your life.”

"My mother was a clown, and she could turn funny, brilliantly funny written things into magic...But she didn't think funny," Lucie Arnaz said.

The Ball centennial has suddenly brought out all kinds of long-hidden biographical material on the comedian, who died April 26, 1989, and Arnaz finds it fascinating.

“I just finished reading a bunch of letters from Marian van Black, her best girlfriend in Jamestown, N.Y. They were school chums and later modeling chums. She sent her over a hundred letters and Marian saved all of them.

“My mother was way more metaphysical than I ever thought she was. She kept saying, ‘I stop all day long to say I am so grateful for my life and my career.’ She seemed so happy in those letters. I didn’t see that woman. Too many years of the business.”

But don’t think Arnaz is one of these celebrity children who wallow in angst and point fingers at their parents for what went wrong.

Even though the Lucy-Desi marriage ended very publicly and painfully at the height of their fame, Arnaz won’t paint the past in shades of grey.

“It was a fabulous romance and a fabulous marriage that was destroyed by many things. The stress of success. My father’s wayward eye.” She laughs. “My father was Latin and had a lot of ladies on the side. They can be so charming these Latin men. Dad would come home and say, ‘Lucy, what’s the problem? They mean nothing. You know I love you the best.’

“And so my mother learned to live with it. That is, until it got into the papers too often.”

Another problem was her father’s drinking, but Arnaz says that only became an issue later on in the marriage.

“All Cubans drink and they can hold their liquor like crazy, until they suddenly cross a line when it’s too late to do anything about it.

“A lot of people thought my father drank because of trouble with my mother, or career pressures, but I think it was because of his own mother. He took very good care of her and she didn’t give anything back to him. It made him very unhappy.”

Arnaz appeared on one of Ball’s later TV series, Here’s Lucy, but during her summer hiatuses, took the advice of her mother’s former sidekick, Vivian Vance, and began a theatre career that she’s succeeded in all her life, most notably opposite Robert Klein in the original production of Neil Simon’s They’re Playing Our Song.

“You get your own career together and then you get your own life together and before you know it, you’re raising your own children. Was I as close to Lucy as I am to my own daughter? No. The times were different then. You’ve got to start early and get in the habit of opening up to each other. I have and I’m happy I did.”

But finally, why does Arnaz think the memory of her mother and I Love Lucy have such an enduring legacy?

“She left behind laughter. Why is a funny show something that people remember 60 years later and want to talk about? Because it was also about unconditional love.

“You can get into all the trouble you want but at the end of the day, someone is going to give you a hug and say, ‘That’s alright, I love you anyway.’”

I Love Lucy

It’s a long time ago I’ve write on this Blog. I’m sorry, I have been very busy and this message will not be very long. I will not write very much this week, because I’ve lost a very good friend. 

‘I love Lucy’ still brings us joy and make us laugh today. We all like to laugh and when we have sadness it will make us happy again. I forget al my sadness and worries when I watch the show.  

“I love Lucy was never just a title” that’s what you see, the love between them. That’s one reason ‘I love Lucy’ is so special. 

 

"My wife can do anything. If you tell her she can't, she'll surprise you the next week. She'll not only be good, she'll be Lucy."- Desi

"After struggling for survival and success for 40 years, I just couldn't believe that I deserve to enjoy the success of I Love Lucy. I kept worrying about the next day, if everything would be taken away from me." - Lucille 

"I Love Lucy was like a fantasy come true. Lucy and I would borrow outfits from movie studios and create our little stage productions at home. Sometimes we threw costumes parties and had a ball. She has a childlike quality that makes I Love Lucy successful." 

I really love the Anniversary Waltz, most of all the kiss on the and.

A friend of Desi and Lucy said:

"Lucy and Desi create magic when they were on the dance floor. They automatically shut the world out. Anyone could tell that they belonged together."