Deep Dive: Desilu Flashcards
Desilu
Company created/owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball
Very successful
Becomes largest tv studio
Buy RKO studio (who Lucille used to work for)
Owned 33 sound stages (bigger than other companies)
Sold libraries to CBS
Lucille bought out Desi after the divorce (couldn’t work with him), she becomes first studio head
Long Long Trailer
1954, Movie
High-grossing comedy of that time
Worried about the transition from the known characters on TV to the movie screen
In color, very popular
With Lucille and Desi
Lucille Ball
Starts a modeling career
Then does Broadway, goes to LA, then becomes a contract player (actors had year-long contracts) for RKO, they basically own you, so if you work with another studio, then you have to be lent out. ultimately, people will protest
Divorced in 1960 from Desi
Contract System
Studios will give actors year-long contracts that basically owned the actors
They would lend them out to other studios, but they were paid for it
Highest value actors were able to choose to work for another studio for one movie
Desi Arnaz
Comes from a prosperous Cuban family
The Cuban Revolution of 1933, lost money, fled to Miami
Worked for Xavier Cugat, hated to work for him
Created Desi Arnaz band
Gets a big break in Too Many Girls on Broadway
Then made it into a movie in Too Many Girls
Too Many Girls
Desi Meets Lucille Ball in the movie
And gets married
My Favorite Husband
Lucille does this show on CBS Radio
They were turning it into a TV Show but will only do it if they make Desi her husband on the show, so that he is not always traveling
The studio told her no and refuses to do it without him
They go on the Voguel circuit and it was very successful, of their couple dynamic
Convince that a show with them will be successful
I Love Lucy
Created by them, produced by their company Desilu
Ricky, who is the band leader, and Lucy stay a home wife
Big moment: when Lucy gives birth to Lil Ricky, had a huge audience tune in for this moment
51-57, 180 episodes
Studio audience- unusual for its time
Shot in film, no editing
Had to get it right every time
Paid by them for the filming, but they owned the negatives (film)
So they earned the money through reruns
Shocking about the Cuban man on TV, Lucy wanting to be part of the show, but doesn’t end up being part of the show
When they go to Cuba, they escapes reruns due to it being
Mannix
produced by their company Desilu
The Untouchables
produced by their company Desilu
Mission Impossible
produced by their company Desilu
Revue
Before Desilu was the biggest studio
Talent agency then
The government breaks them apart due to them being a trust
Karl Freund
Hire this cinematographer, very famous in Germany before Nazi Germany
Escapes to the US, Worked on Metropolis, Dracula
Hired by Universal Studios, for horror films
Pioneers the three-camera set for television
Almost like a play
Kinescope
Point the Camera through the TV and then they film it
Looks distorted
Multicamera
Three cameras when filming
HUAC
Called Lucille Ball
When she was younger was going to vote in the communist party
But HUAC did not want to bring someone who was as popular as Lucille due to the impact it can have on their image
People who were called in had to say they were not communist, name other people that were communist
The question of what to do with Lucille, they arranged to interview her off-camera, she told her history honestly and did not have her say names
Before the show Ricky, says she is not communist, the only thing that is red of her is her hair but that comes from the bottle
So the press is more worried about her dying her hair than the possibility of being a redhead
Star Trek
1969, Desilu
Science fiction on the rise due to the space race
A lot of controversy could be talked about less evident through science fiction
Tackle big political issues
Science fiction it not about the future, but about defamiliarizing the present
Science fiction about the workplace and interaction
SF also often about colonization
Alien of week, each episode confronts a philosophical problem
Confront problems in a abstract way
Had one of the most diverse casts for the time - had a russian crewmate hoping for an end of the Cold War, african american woman
First interracial kiss on TV
Wanted to be cancelled but the fans did not let it happen, by writing letters
Led to conventions
Rise of fan culture started with star trek
Nichelle Nichols
Part of the Star Trek cast
Wanted to quit in the first season, but at dinner with Martin Luther King, showed her the importance of her representation on national television during the time
First interracial kiss on TV
Cold War
Space race
Gulf+Western
Buys Desilu for 17 million
Becomes Paramount TV
