From Cuba with love on ‘Lucy’

We loved Lucy. But we really liked Ricky.

We speak, of course, of the legendary sitcom “I Love Lucy” (CBS, 1951-1957) and its character Ricky Ricardo, the loving but often exasperated, Cuban-born husband of the former Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy - as Scots a name as “Mary, Queen of.” Fewer than 10 years after the Mexican-American “Zoot Suit Riots” in L.A., and during a decade in which restaurateurs hung signs reading “No dogs or Puerto Ricans allowed” and Puerto Rican nationalists tried to storm the House of Representatives, TV viewers by the gazillions weekly welcomed TV’s first Anglo-Latino couple.

Much of the reason why is Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball’s husband and co-star - as sharp a comic straight man as anyone, a visionary producer who could deftly counter obstacles, and, it’d be remiss not to note, a light-skinned Latino. His land-grant ancestors had emigrated from Spain to Cuba in the 18th century, and until the 1933 revolution remained among the island’s monied and political elite. As Alex Abella, a Cuban-American creative consultant on CBS’ “I Love Lucy 50th Anniversary Special,” said in 2001, “If Desi were black or had black blood, he wouldn’t have had any success or been allowed on the air.”"*

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