Desi Arnaz Quotes

Americans can handle one person from anywhere. They had Desi Arnaz from Cuba. And Tin Tan from México. And Rita Moreno from Puerto Rico. But as soon as there are too many of us, they throw up their hands. No, no, no! We were only just curious. We are not actually interested in you people.

If you don't know what to do, don't do anything.

A single prop that does not look real to an audience can louse you up. The same is true of the smallest flaw in setting up the motivation in a story line.

Good things do not come easy. The road is lined with pitfalls.

The cast in 1938–39: Bob Hope, madcap Jerry Colonna, announcer Bill Goodwin, and bandleader Skinnay Ennis. Blanche Stewart and Elvia Allman as high-society crazies Brenda and Cobina. Judy Garland, resident songstress, 1939; Frances Langford for many years thereafter. Barbara Jo Allen as Vera Vague by 1943. Stan Kenton as maestro, 1943, when Skinnay Ennis went into the Army; Desi Arnaz Orchestra, 1946; Les Brown beginning in 1947. Singers of the late 1940s: Gloria Jean, Doris Day. Trudy Erwin as the Pepsodent Girl, whose weekly lament, “Dear Miriam, poor Miriam, neglected using Irium,” warned women what might happen to teeth without Pepsodent and its super ingredient, Irium.

Ahwahnee has hosted dozens of celebrities, including Queen Elizabeth, Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (who arrived via helicopter). Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and Judy Garland stayed here while filming The Long, Long Trailer, as did William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy while filming Star Trek IV. Robert Redford worked at the Ahwahnee before launching his film career, and Steve Jobs was married on the back lawn in a Buddhist ceremony.

LUCY and Desi. Lucy and Ricky. As far as the public knew, the private life of the Arnazes closely resembled that of the Ricardos on the TV screen; a camera crew just dropped by once a week to film a half hour of slapstick and tender kisses.

A great number of Americans have made the same startling discovery that Francis Dane did: They are related to witches. American presidents descend from George Jacobs, Susannah Martin, and John Procter. Nathan Hale was John Hale’s grandson. Israel “Don’t Fire Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes” Putnam was the cousin of Ann Putnam. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louisa May Alcott descended from Samuel Sewall; Clara Barton from the Townes; Walt Disney from Burroughs. (In a nice twist, the colonial printer who founded the American Antiquarian Society, where Cotton Mather’s papers reside today, was also a Burroughs descendant.) The Nurse family includes Lucille Ball, who testified before an investigator from the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Yes, she had registered with the Communist Party. No, she was not a Communist. In 1953, a husband leaped to a wife’s defense: “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair,” Desi Arnaz explained,

I never knew what racial prejudice was until I got to Florida. Instead of being prejudiced, we were proud of our black population….[José] Martí, our Simon Bolivar, and perhaps the most brilliant Cuban ever, wrote: “Man has no special rights because he belongs to a particular race. The soul emanates equal and eternal from bodies different in shape and color. It is sufficient to say ‘Man’ to comprehend therein all rights.” ~ from A Book by Desi Arnaz