Name: Desi Arnaz, Sr. (& Jack Paar) on Letterman, May 23, 1983
Uploaded: 2016-05-01T01:13:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Desi Arnaz, Sr. (& Jack Paar) on Letterman, May 23, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-05-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Desi Arnaz, Sr. (& Jack Paar) on Letterman, May 23, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-05-01. Transcript available.

My first guest tonight is an actor, a musician, a producer, a director and
author, and to millions of television viewers, however, he will always be known
as Ricky Ricardo.
More than a pleasure now to welcome Mr. Desi Arnaz.
Very nice to see you.
Thank you.
Cuban Pete.
Thank you, David.
Thanks for being on the show.
Now, this reaction, you must get this wherever you go.
People like you, they love you, they've seen you on television for a long, long
time.
It must be very gratifying.
We love them, too.
Did you, at any point in the project, realize what you were getting into, that
this thing was going to be?
No, that's kind of one of those things, you know, that if you're lucky enough,
maybe it's a once in a lifetime deal, you know.
Now, we wanted to work together, and Lucy was doing a radio show called My
Favorite Husband, and then CBS wanted her to...
Was the radio show version as popular as the TV show turned out to be?
It was a very popular radio show, yeah.
Well, she was on for about three years, and then they wanted her to transfer to
television, and we, you know, we wanted to work together.
So she says, I want Desi to play the husband.
Well, the husband in the radio show was Richard Denning, the guy that played
the governor in Hawaii Five-0, you know.
Well, there's a tall, blonde, blue-eyed vice president of a bank, or sometimes,
and I'll never be able to get away with that part, you know.
So the same writers that were doing My Favorite Husband, Jess Oppenheimer and
Bob Carroll Jr. and Madeline Davis, they're now doing Alice, Bob and Madeline.
They, you know, kind of came up, and me with the music and the orchestra leader,
and then nobody wanted me to play recce.
By nobody, you mean the heads of the network, I would guess?
The network, these fans, nobody.
You know, they said, who the hell is going to believe this Babalu fellow is
going to be married to this typical American girl, you know.
Yeah.
Funniest part of it is that we had been married for ten years right then, you
know.
So how was this thing finally resolved?
How did you bump Mr. Denning out of the picture?
Well, you know, George M. Cohan always said that those people out there, the
audience, they tell you what's good and what isn't.
So I told Lucy, he said, maybe they're right.
Maybe nobody will believe you and I work together, you know.
So in those days, I had the big band, you know, and we used to do Waterville,
play the Paramount Theater, and the Roxy, that's not there anymore.
So I said, well, the next time that I go on tour, why don't you come with me,
you know.
We'll do a couple of numbers together and see what the audience thinks of us
working together.
So we worked the Roxy here in New York when we're still there, and Radio City,
Minneapolis, that's not there anymore.
Chicago Theater.
We picked about five or six, you know, cross-country places.
And the audience were wonderful.
And Mr. Paley, which is the head of CBS at the time, chairman of the board, he
saw us on the stage and said, well, the audience seems to like them together.
They have been married for ten years, or maybe they'll believe that they aren't.
At the time.
They don't give you enough credit, ever.
At the time, though, I guess a more exotic coupling you couldn't come up with.
It seemed a guy from Cuba and then the all-American.
I mean, the people that work with us, you know, Fred and I felt that we're just
in such, you know.
In the television program, you and Lucy slept in separate beds.
Now, there were some other things that they wouldn't let you do.
And when we come back after the commercial, I want to talk about other things
that you couldn't do on television.
We'll be right back with Betsy right now.
Thank you very much, Paul.
I mean, Desi Arnaz is here.
We talked about you couldn't sleep in the same bed.
What other kinds of things, compromises, did you have to make for the show?
Well, you know, when she was going to have the baby, I told the head writer at
the time, it was Jess Oppenheimer, and I said, Lucy's going to have a baby.
She says, what are we going to do?
I said, what do you mean, what are we going to do?
She's going to have a baby.
That's what we're going to do.
She already had my daughter, Lucy.
And they wouldn't let us do the thing, you know.
You couldn't even say the word pregnant in those days.
Right.
They said, I had to say, specton.
It was better for me to use specton anyway.
Yeah, it still is.
You could never get a lot with pregnant.
Yeah, yeah.
Finally, the head of Philip Morris is a wonderful old guy called Alfred Lyons.
He wrote him a note saying, don't fool around with the Cuban.
I cleaned it up a little.
Yeah.
And that was one of the most successful shows of the whole run, wasn't it?
Do you believe they won't let us do it?
They said, well, can you hide her, you know, behind high chairs or sitting down
on the table?
I said, not Lucy.
When she gets pregnant, brother, there's no question about it.
She walks around like a big elephant.
There's no way.
No way to hide her for six months, you know.
Yeah.
So now he's making a picture.
My daughter is doing a show for HBO, and she's going on the road with her
husband, Larry Lockenbill.
And I do, I do.
I'm the only bomb in the family.
I'm the only one that's not working.
Now, in addition to being on the television program, which is just legendary,
you, responsible for other firsts,
you developed the first way to syndicate off-network television shows, which,
this one?
Well, the only one that did it in front of an audience.
In front of an audience?
With three, multiple cameras.
Sometimes you use four cameras, like you use three here.
They had been doing them live, hadn't they?
You were doing it on film?
We always did it on film.
But in front of an audience.
Right.
We never used kind of laughter.
Yeah.
That's why I did it.
Some of our laughter I hear in some other shows.
Now, is that true?
I've heard that rumor before that the audience sounds from your program is
still used.
Well, you know, you worked in front of an audience most of your life.
And, you know, sometimes you get the regulars and you can detect the same
laughter.
Right.
But Lucille's mother, you couldn't miss her laugh, Didi.
My assistant director, Jim Paisley, and, you know, he was close, like, around
here.
You know, so not only did they, the audience microphone picked up his laugh,
but you, our dialogue mic, picked up his laugh.
So we had the dialogue, the laughter, the music, the applause, everything on
the same track, with all full cameras coordinating one soundtrack.
You know, the first time anybody done that.
And that's what made Desi Lou a big, big success.
But you now have heard those laughs from many, many years back on new shows?
On other shows, yeah.
They lift them up.
You're going to sing for us tonight, I hope.
Yeah.
Is that right?
All right.
We're going to come back after safe and identification with Desi right now.
Thank you, boys.
Thank you, boys.
We have, uh, Mr. Desi Arnaz here.
Uh, wow.
Irving Hall and his trained baboon.
Have you ever worked with a baboon?
No, not yet.
Oh, boy.
I'm a little...
Uh, uh, Sandra Bernhardt is here tonight.
And tomorrow night, by the way...
Sandra Bernhardt?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, that's...
No, Sandra Bernhardt is here.
Oh, oh, oh.
Uh, tomorrow night, camping...
Camping with Barry White night tomorrow, right here on this program, ladies and
gentlemen.
Also, uh, comedian Bob Goldthwaite and actress Jacqueline Bissett.
And I know she's going to enjoy camping with Barry White.
She's a lovely woman.
Uh, what is, as a musician, what was your first instrument?
What was your instrument of, uh, preference?
I'd drive with guitar.
Guitar?
All Cubans play the guitar and sing.
You need that.
You need that to romance.
Uh-huh.
When we serenade.
I'll just say, I've been on your show.
Oh.
Serenade, Jack!
I was just telling Danny that I saw him across the way there in the dressing
rooms.
I met, I, I, uh, I've never met Jack Parr before, and I met him earlier tonight,
and I said,
why don't you, uh, be a guest on our show?
And he said, uh, something to the effect, it sounded like fat chance.
I don't know what he said.
Um, and, and he, he, uh, he said that, okay, he would consider it, and, uh, so
there he was.
Well, he did it.
Now, do we, do we have to pay him for that?
The strangest thing?
I thought that.
Not as much as you pay me, and that's not a hell of a lot.
No.
Uh, what, uh, there's nobody getting rich on this deal, let me tell you.
Uh, anyway, but you.
I do it for the love.
That's it.
Uh, you, you also, uh, played the drums, the conga drums.
One big conga thing, yeah.
And you're gonna do something tonight.
Introduce, uh, the gentleman playing the piano for you tonight.
Well, Marco Rizzo, he's, uh, he's been with me since the old Copacabana days.
1947.
And he was all through Isle of Lucy.
I'll tell you what we're doing tonight, you know, this, this song was written
by the greatest
American composer, and everybody knows him for God Bless America, White
Christmas, Easter
Parade, Annie Get Your Gun, and a million others.
But very few people know that he wrote a song about my country many, many years
ago, before
they stopped shaving down there.
If you know what I mean.
Yes, I do know what you mean.
Barbers are very bad shaves.
Anyway, this is a song about, uh.
A song about Cuba.
About my country.
All right, uh, we'll look forward to that.
Shall I go ahead and do it?
Please do.
Mr. Desi Arnaz.
Okay, Mark, give me a little bump in there.
Not so far from here, there's a very lively atmosphere.
Everybody's going there this year, so come along.
I'm on my way to Cuba.
That's where I'm going.
Cuba.
And that's where I'll stay.
Cuba, where wine is flowing, and where dark eyes tell us, lie there, fellas,
panatella's.
Cuba, where all is happy.
Cuba, where all is cay, why don't you plan a wonderful trip to Havana, hop on a
ship, and I'll see you in CUBA.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Here you go.
Here you go.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
I want to thank Paul and Marco and David for letting me sing the song, and I
want to thank Irvin Berlin for writing that song on my country.
And even though we're a little late, we wish him from every heart of every
Cuban a very happy birthday, and we hope that soon again we can all shout with
joy, Marco.
Why don't you plan a wonderful trip to Havana, hop on a ship, and I'll see you
in CUBA.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dennis.
Pleased to meet you.
Very nice.
Desi Arnaz, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dennis.
Pleased to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.
Pleased to meet you.
Very nice.
Desi Arnaz, ladies and gentlemen.