The incandescent Lucille Ball was one of early,network television's first true luminaries. You didn't need a rating book to know that America loved Lucy.
While Lucille Ball was a meticulous comic actress who made the most stringently rehearsed physical comedy look spontaneous, her husband on screen and in life, Desi Arnaz , was also a true televisionary.
Arnaz,who came to the United States from Cuba as a child and ,later,became a bandleader before embarking on his acting and producing career , adapted the notion of shooting a situation comedy with multiple film cameras , in front of a studio audience, after having seen the technique used for the video version of Ralph Edward's kinetic NBC-TV game show, TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES.
A born entrepreneur , Arnaz saw the value in replaying the filmed episodes he created for CBS-TV, on local stations and helped to create the lucrative, if annoying notion of reruns.
He leased and renovated a sound stage at Hollywood's General Service Studios, to serve as home base for I LOVE LUCY,the hit CBS-TV sitcom that launched DESILU Productions. The company in which Lucy served as vice president to Desi as president. Stage One became THE DESILU PLAYHOUSE.
Here posted below, thanks to the DESIARNAZFAN1951 YOUTUBE site, is a rare, backstage look at Desi doing the audience warm-up, which is designed to get the people in the bleachers at ease, to serve as a living laugh track and to enjoy the show. Enjoy!!!!!:)
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