On BEING THE RICARDOS

 This post will be about two women with whom I had the privilege to be up close to and engage in conversation -- Nicole Kidman and Lucille Ball. Earlier this month, I posted a short piece I wrote titled "They Loved Nicole as Lucy." BEING THE RICARDOS, starring Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz, had screened in Los Angeles for Motion Picture Academy members and entertainment press reporters. There was a Question & Answer session with cast members right after the film. When Kidman was introduced, she entered to a standing ovation.

Before the production had been completed and screened, there was a lot of Twitter chat about the casting. Many were outdone that Kidman had been cast -- mainly because she doesn't resemble Lucille Ball or Lucy Ricardo. Director/screenwriter Aaron Sorkin punched back by telling upset people that Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr., Lucy and Desi's children, are executive producers of the project and that the project is more about the power couple dealing with a major crisis while making the classic I LOVE LUCY sitcom. It's not about Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo.

If you've followed my blogposts for some time, you know that I spent one hour with Lucille Ball during my VH1 years as a veejay and prime time celebrity talk show host/interviewer. While in L.A. doing some work for VH1 and CBS, Lucille Ball invited me to her home for cocktails on the evening of St. Patrick's Day in 1989. Of course, I went. She was most gracious. We both had vodka tonics. What hit me was that I could tell she was definitely a businesswoman, a direct no-bullshit businesswoman. After I'd read Desi Arnaz's excellent autobiography -- A BOOK by DESI ARNAZ -- I realized that he was the one with the spontaneous, engaging, mischievous, joyful spirit like Lucy Ricardo's. Lucille Ball was the disciplined entertainer who took care of business matters like Ricky Ricardo did.

I saw BEING THE RICARDOS over the weekend. Had I attended the screening in Los Angeles, I would have enthusiastically joined in giving Nicole Kidman a standing ovation. Maybe she doesn't resemble Ball as much as Frances Fisher did in the 1991 CBS biopic presentation, LUCY & DESI: BEFORE THE LAUGHTER or Debra Messing dressed as Lucy Ricardo in an episode of the WILL & GRACE reboot, but she fully gets the guts and steeliness of the off-screen Lucille Ball from her years at RKO, where she met Desi around 1939 or '40, to her successful 1950s period on I LOVE LUCY. Ball was a tough dame who worked hard and knew what she wanted. But, for a long time in show business, she really didn't get what she wanted. BEING THE RICARDOS shows Lucy and Desi as what they became in the 1950s -- a top Hollywood power couple. They had network TV power together and individually.

I did a TV pilot with TV producer. He was a producer of the original THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES. He worked with Lucille Ball once and I asked him what she was like. He answered that she was smart as a whip and tough as nails. That's what we see in Kidman's performance. We see the lusty and often turbulent relationship the two married stars had. They could have explosive marital arguments yet go onstage and play The Ricardos to a large and loving audience. That's how focused they were as actors. 

During the 1950s, when the show was an enormous hit, Desi's extra-marital affairs caused friction in the marriage. But the even bigger crisis was press reports that Lucille Bill was a Communist. In those years, the accusation of being  Communist could kill a performer's career stone cold dead in a heartbeat.

Comedy is hard work and Lucy took it very seriously. We see that the I LOVE LUCY production team of writers, directors and actors was not exactly a happy one while it made classic sitcom episodes. Vivian Vance and William Frawley, who played the Mertzes, couldn't stand each other. Nina Arianda and J.K. Simmons slam across two terrific performances as Vance and Frawley. Their non-stop bickering and insults are funnier than some of the dialogue given to Fred and Ethel Mertz. Sorkin shows how Ball was a comedy visionary. She could see in her mind how a scene should be played and staged. But, on the set, she had an iron fist in production to see her vision realized.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz started their romance while making the 1940 RKO musical comedy release, TOO MANY GIRLS, Desi was in the original cast of the Broadway musical and repised his role for the film adaptation. She had done bit parts and B-movie roles at RKO through the 1930s. She had the female lead role in TOO MANY GIRLS. He felt she had the talent to be a star and should've been. Hollywood didn't see her as a star, but she kept working. On a date, he asks her how she wound up in Hollywood. Lucy replies "I got kicked out in New York." She asks him the same. Cuban immigrant Desi replies "The Bolsheviks burned my house down." His father had been a mayor in Cuba.

There is one huge mistake in the screenplay that, for a veteran writer like Sorkin, just comes down to laziness and no one checking him on it. My favorite Lucille Ball movie is the 1942 RKO release, THE BIG STREET, co-starring Henry Fonda. It's a drama. Her character is crippled for half the film. Lucy is remarkable in it. In BEING THE RICAROS, Lucy excitedly tells Desi that she got the part in THE BIG STREET after Rita Hayworth and Judy Holliday proved to be unavailable. At that time, Ginger Rogers, (Lucy's buddy in 1936's FOLLOW THE FLEET and 1937's STAGE DOOR) was queen of the RKO lot. Hayworth may have been considered after her dramatic work in 1940's ANGELS OVER BROADWAY. However, Carole Lombard was Lucy's friend and idol. Lombard had proven to be a top screen beauty and Oscar-nominated screwball comedy star of the 1930s and early 40s. Plus, she'd displayed her solid dramatic skills in RKO's 1940 hospital drama, VIGIL IN THE NIGHT and as the lonely waitress in RKO's other 1940 drama, THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED.

Even though Judy Holliday's name keeps coming up in BEING THE RICARDOS as an early 1940s Hollywood star, that just was not the case. Proof is in the 1944 Fox musical comedy, SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS. You see Judy Holliday in that as an extra, a background actor standing behind Carmen Miranda during a musical number in a defense plant. Holliday's name wasn't even listed in the credits. Hollywood didn't start talking about Judy Holliday until her comedy supporting role in 1949's ADAM'S RIB starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Holliday became a big Broadway star in BORN YESTERDAY. She repeated her role in the film version and won the Oscar for Best Actress of 1950. I LOVE LUCY premiered in October 1951.

After Lucille Ball's excellence in 1942's BIG STREET, RKO canceled her contract. In the 1950s, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz became such a wealthy Hollywood power couple that they purchased the RKO studio backlot and made it the home of their Desilu Productions. Javier Bardem is very good, showing what a creative, imaginative and influential force he was in TV. Lucy was driven to keep the show a hit and to use it to repair her marriage. She was a high-powered working wife and mother whose Hollywood career didn't really take off until she became a big star on the small screen when she was 40. Then she had to combat accusations of being a Communist. Here's a trailer.

See BEING THE RICARDOS if you can. I interviewed Nicole Kidman a couple of times. She was delightfully warm, down-to-earth and funny. We seem to associate her with deep-dish dramas like THE HOURS, the film that netted her a Best Actress Oscar, but she can get laughs. Look at her opening scene in the unfortunate 2004 remake of THE STEPFORD WIVES. It's like a stand-up comedy routine. There are moments in the black-and-white I LOVE LUCY portions when she does call up the Lucy Ricardo comedy spirit.

I was really gripped and impressed by Nicole Kidman's emotional intensity playing the legendary TV star for whom comedy was serious business.