Desi Arnaz is best known for his role as Ricky Ricardo in the early television situation comedy I Love Lucy. The series, which starred his wife, Lucille Ball, as his fictional wife, Lucy Ricardo, appeared weekly on CBS. The show originally ran from the fall of 1951 through the 1957 season, and during this time it ranked consistently among the top three national programs. In addition to being a perfect comic straight man for Ball’s genius, Arnaz was one of Hollywood’s most perceptive and powerful producers in television’s early years. His shrewd business skills and his realization of particular combinations of the television’s technological and cultural connections enabled him to develop aspects of the medium that remain central to its economic and cultural force.

Arnaz began his show business career in 1935. After singing and playing guitar with the Xavier Cugat orchestra, Desi toured with his own rumba band, but his big break was being cast in the Broadway show Too Many Girls in 1939. He met Lucille Ball in Hollywood the next year, when both had roles in the movie version of the play. They were married in 1940 and continued their careers, Ball in motion pictures and radio, and Arnaz in music.

Ball had gained success with her CBS radio program, My Favorite Husband, in which she starred as the wife of a banker, played by Richard Denning. CBS was interested in creating a television version of the show, but when Ball insisted that Arnaz play her husband, the network felt that viewers would not be attracted to a show not easily related to their own lives. Executives at CBS were skeptical about whether Arnaz, a Cuban bandleader, would be believable and readily accepted by viewers as Ball’s husband. In order to prove the network wrong, the couple set out on a nationwide stage tour designed to gauge public reaction to their working together in a comedy act. CBS was impressed with the positive public response to the couple as well as with a sample script for a TV series developed by the writers from My Favorite Husband.

The basics were there, including Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo, a struggling bandleader, and Ball as Lucy, a housewife with little talent but a giant yearning to break into show business. This homey battle-of-the-sexes premise for the show convinced the network that viewers could relate, and a pilot version of the program impressed the Philip Morris Company, which agreed to sponsor 39 episodes for the 1951–52 season on the CBS network Monday nights at 9:00 p.m. Arnaz and Ball insisted on producing the show in California so they could work together and live at home; such an arrangement had been impossible with Ball acting in films and on radio while Arnaz toured with his band, and the separation had strained their marriage. The idea of recording I Love Lucy on film was directly related to the couple’s desire to work together in show business as a family and to live in their home in California.

In 1951, before the perfection of videotape, nearly all television shows were live productions, fed from the East Coast because of time-zone differences. Philip Morris approved the idea of filming I Love Lucy, but the sponsor wanted a live audience, which had been effective on radio. Arnaz and cinematographer Karl Freund, a veteran of pre–World War II German expressionist cinema working in Hollywood, devised a plan for staging the show as a play, performing each act before an audience and simultaneously filming with three or four cameras stationed in different locations. Because this technique increased network production costs, CBS asked that Arnaz and Ball take a cut in salary to compensate for the expense. In negotiation Arnaz agreed, providing Desilu, a company he and Ball had created, would then own the shows after the broadcasts. A few years later the couple sold the films back to CBS for more than $4 million, a sum that provided the economic base for building what became the Desilu empire. The practice of filming television episodes also paved the way to TV reruns and syndication. After I Love Lucy was established as a hit, Desilu applied its multicamera film technique to the production of other shows, such as Our Miss Brooks, December Bride, and The Lineup. By 1957 Desilu was so successful that additional facilities were needed and it bought RKO Studios from the General Tire and Rubber Company.

Desilu had become the world’s largest studio. But as the business grew ever larger, Arnaz and Ball drifted apart, ending their 20-year marriage in 1960 and splitting their interests in Desilu. In 1962 Ball bought Arnaz’s share in the company, and he retired for a short time to his horse-breeding farm. Both later married others, and Arnaz returned to television, forming an independent production company and making occasional guest appearances. Desilu was purchased by Gulf Western Industries in 1967. Arnaz died in 1986 and Lucille Ball in 1989. I Love Lucy is still popular with television audiences today, thanks to the pioneering production techniques of Desilu.