The Newlywed Gives an Interview!

[Brock]

In March 1941, Screen Romances, armed with ridiculous assumptions, wangled an interview with the newlywed Mrs. Desi Arnaz. Here's what they gathered:

 

Hear those saxes sobbing soft and low. They’re in solid and they’re coming on home! Hear that stick man beating soft and heavy on the skins! Dig that cat on the slush pump with those eight beats sliding out smooth and easy! Hear that gutbucket crawling from the doghouse – they’re off he paper now, mighty miff but not too strong...

 

Gone daft? Not at all. That, dear readers is the jitterbug jargon we expected to need in talking about the romance of Lucille Ball, dancing siren of the marvellous movies, and Desi Arnaz, the kingpin of the Cuban Conga line. We never even dreamed that we’d come back from an afternoon with Lucille and dust off old-fashioned phrases from their Valentine wrappings of lavender and old lace. For we must report that heart-throbs in springtime are precisely the same as when Grandpa courted Grandma back in the good hold hose-and-buggy days.

 

We might never have discovered such profound truth at the party RKO-Radio gave at Hampshire House to celebrate the not-too-surprising surprise wedding of Lucille and Desi. For there wasn’t much chance for private conversation at that gay and grand gathering. But we were lucky. When we heard about the elopement, we mentioned to Irving Shiffrin, who gets around on behalf of RKO’s publicity department, that we’d like to ask the Happy Pair a few questions. And Irving promptly made a date for us to see them at their Hotel Pierre suite.

 

Well, Desi was doing a five-a-day p.a. at the Roxy Theatre and couldn’t be with us, but Mrs. Desi knew all the answers – and that’s how we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that love behind the scenes of footlights and Kleig lights is exactly the same as under moonlight in a country garden.

 

 

... tune in tomorrow for the next installment of Screen Romances audience with the newly-minted Mrs. Desi Arnaz!

[C L A U D E]

In March 1941, Screen Romances, armed with ridiculous assumptions, wangled an interview with the newlywed Mrs. Desi Arnaz. Here's what they gathered:

 

Hear those saxes sobbing soft and low. They’re in solid and they’re coming on home! Hear that stick man beating soft and heavy on the skins! Dig that cat on the slush pump with those eight beats sliding out smooth and easy! Hear that gutbucket crawling from the doghouse – they’re off he paper now, mighty miff but not too strong...

 

Gone daft? Not at all. That, dear readers is the jitterbug jargon we expected to need in talking about the romance of Lucille Ball, dancing siren of the marvellous movies, and Desi Arnaz, the kingpin of the Cuban Conga line. We never even dreamed that we’d come back from an afternoon with Lucille and dust off old-fashioned phrases from their Valentine wrappings of lavender and old lace. For we must report that heart-throbs in springtime are precisely the same as when Grandpa courted Grandma back in the good hold hose-and-buggy days.

 

We might never have discovered such profound truth at the party RKO-Radio gave at Hampshire House to celebrate the not-too-surprising surprise wedding of Lucille and Desi. For there wasn’t much chance for private conversation at that gay and grand gathering. But we were lucky. When we heard about the elopement, we mentioned to Irving Shiffrin, who gets around on behalf of RKO’s publicity department, that we’d like to ask the Happy Pair a few questions. And Irving promptly made a date for us to see them at their Hotel Pierre suite.

 

Well, Desi was doing a five-a-day p.a. at the Roxy Theatre and couldn’t be with us, but Mrs. Desi knew all the answers – and that’s how we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that love behind the scenes of footlights and Kleig lights is exactly the same as under moonlight in a country garden.

 

 

... tune in tomorrow for the next installment of Screen Romances audience with the newly-minted Mrs. Desi Arnaz!

Does the line GAY and GRAND GATHERING have anything to do with Cesar Romero being there?

[Brock]

Welcome to the exciting next installment of The Newlywed Gives an Interview, courtesy of Screen Romances, March, 1941. As Mrs. Arnaz reminices about her nuptuals...

 

 

"We already knew about the wild dash to Greenwich, Connecticut. How Desi had taken Lucille home to her hotel from a night club at three a.m. And how, at seven-thirty, he telephoned her and announced they were getting married – and no nonsense about waiting to cut any red tape. He would call for her, said the masterful Latin, at eight o’clock sharp.

 

"Lucille, you see, had been in New York for a week, and, with those personal appearances at the Roxy, Desi had practically nothing but hail-and-farewell glimpses of her. And when you’re head-over-heels in love, what kind of percentage is that? So – with Duke Magazine, Desi’s Manager, and Dr. Milton Bender, a friend, they headed for Connecticut, stopping only to buy a wedding ring at a five-and-dime store on the way. Seeing it, we never would have known it wasn’t pure platinum. And we’ll bet that the real McCoy can be encircled with diamonds and she’ll never cherish it as she does that precious ten cent symbol of their marriage vows.

 

"We were cirious to know if it was true, as had been rumoured, that the romance was studio inspired. It wasn’t. The celluloid moguls had nothing to do with it. In fact, when Lucille came to New York to see the stage version of Too Many Girls, she was supposed to go backstage and meet the young man who, as Manuelito, had captured the feminine hearts of Manhattan. She saw the show twice, since she was also to appear in the screen play. But she didn’t go backstage. Her own heart was supposed to belong to another man in Hollywood and she didn’t quite like the way it did nip-ups, just looking at Desi across footlights. So back she went to the coast, to play the Lorelei of Dance, Girl, Dance."

 

Tune in tomorrow for part three!

[Brock]

She’d almost persuaded herself that she’d never given thought to a stranger on a Broadway stage, but when she went to lunch in the studio commissary one day – and there he was. In one scene of the film she was making, Lucille gets a whopper of a black eye – and that was the make-up she was wearing when she was introduced to Desi Arnaz. But did that shiner disguise her in Desi’s piercing dark eyes? It did not. And before you could say love-at-first-sight, he was asking her for a date. From that date on, Lucille Desiree and Desiderio Alberto were inseparable. Until professional duties parted them – for a whole month. An unbearable, bleak four weeks of innumerable telegrams and frantic long-distance calls, Telegraph and telephone operators, Lucille said wryly, must have thought she and Desi were completely crazy. They were. Crazy in love.

 

So – reunited, they drove to Greenwich at eight o’clock in the morning and were married. And the stacks of telegrams and war m affection in which a host of friends hold the pair. Mrs. Arnaz sat on the floor looking more than somewhat like a dryad in her green velvet hostess gown with golden sandals on her slim dancing feet and showed us the messages with a running comment on senders and their contents. So blissfully in love that happiness was an aura around her blonde (!) head. Clear to be seen why all the world loves a lover...

 

And still clear to be seen on the evening of the RKO party in the Hampshire House Cottage Suite, appropriately re-named Honeymoon Cottage for the occasion. For the Town’s magazine editors and newspaper columnists rallied around with more verve than we’ve seen in many a moon. The bride wore, besides her enchanting smile, a light-blue wool dress with shoulder embroidery of tiny gold beads, a brown velvet halo hat and coat trimmed with sable. The groom wore, besides the constantly adoring look in his eyes, a conventional grey business suit with a maroon tie. The guests basked in reflected glory and the agreement that love, after all, is the loveliest thing in this otherwise difficult world. As for us – well, there’s one Hollywood marriage we hope will last forever and ever!

 

End.