Founders - #230 Lucille Ball (TV's biggest star)

Starting point is 00:00:00 There in a dusty box, he uncovered what turned out to be a never-before-published autobiographical work of our mothers. The package, postmarked 1966, simply said, Lucy. The manuscript was written in the first person and seemed to span Mom's entire life up to 1964. I was stunned. When I read it, I cried. When my brother, Desi, read the manuscript, he was overcome with emotions. He said, I loved it. I loved reading it. There's a wonderful energy that comes through. A fire in her belly. As a young kid, a sense of adventure. Like, I want to make some noise. Her connections from the past to the present. I salute her for her ability to think in terms of what did I learn from the past. And there's

Starting point is 00:00:53 some great straight from the heart advice. I love the way she wrote about her feelings for dad. It was very powerful for me to hear about when she first met him. Some people prolong their unhappiness by dramatizing it, like expecting applause for having a headache. Mom does not do this. Instead of over-dramatizing what happened in her life, she seems to be trying to understand what her life is all about. That's what I found most endearing about this autobiography, the way she looked at life,

Starting point is 00:01:25 especially regarding her earlier memories and what happened during her most formative years that contributed to the kind of woman, actress, and mother she became. This book gave a much deeper understanding of the pain that she had to assimilate as a child and the depth of her struggle to achieve the kind of success she eventually did. Now, along with our father's autobiography, a fascinating, fact-filled remnants of his life, my brother and I and our children, along with the whole Ball-Arnaz clan, have one of the most remarkable, comprehensive family histories ever documented. That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the autobiography of Lucille Ball.

Starting point is 00:02:08 It's called Love, Lucy, and it was written by Lucille Ball. That is her daughter. And her daughter and son were put in charge of her estate. She passed away in 1989. And this book was originally written in the mid-60s. It was finished in 1966 but never published. Her kids did not even know it existed. So they were going through and answering some complicated problems

Starting point is 00:02:30 and issues with her mother's vast estate. She's one of the most successful actresses and entrepreneurs who've ever lived. And so there's a lot of things that her daughter and her son had to take care of. And so they contacted an old attorney of Lucy's and were asking a question and he discovered in some of his old paperwork this unprinted manuscript. And so that excerpt was her daughter discovering the manuscript, reading it, and then talking about the impact that it was having when they read it internally and decided to publish it for the world. And so I want to go back into the introduction because it's her daughter writing the the introduction. And I think I want to pull out a couple ideas, because I think

Starting point is 00:03:08 it's really important to think about how we how the lives that we're living right now will impact the people that we live behind, or leave behind rather, before I go there, I want to tell you why, like why I chose to read this book. So all the way back on founders number 141, I read the fantastic autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is the second autobiography. He wrote a short one when he was like 30, and then this one, I think he was close to 70 years old when he read it. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. It's just he had an unbelievable life story.

Starting point is 00:03:37 But he talked about Lucille Ball in that book. And there's two things. One, that she gave him his first shot in Hollywood, and he just says she's a fantastic woman. She gave him a shot in, this is 1974, so Arnold's in his early 30s. Lucille, this is after I Love Lucy. So I Love Lucy was arguably, some people say it's the most successful television show of all time. Some episodes had 60 million people watch it. And so Arnold meets her like a decade, decade and a half after her. She's had wild success with her show. She's unbelievably well known. She's very wealthy. And she saw him give an interview. She thought he was funny. So she calls him out of the blue, says, hey, I want to give you this part. And she gives him advice. And the advice that she says when he's in his early 30s is something that he would then in turn repeat for multiple decades I've heard him give speeches 30 30 years after receiving this advice from loose from Lucy and now he gives that advice to young people trying to do something difficult and this is what he said

Starting point is 00:04:38 in his autobiography he said Lucille Ball gave me advice about Hollywood she said just remember when they say no you hear yes and act accordingly. Someone says to you, we can't do this movie, you hug him and say, thank you for believing in me. And so the context of when he gives us advice, he says, listen, you don't listen to naysayers. Everything I did, I was told it was impossible. When someone said to me, it can't be done, I heard it could be done. When someone told me no, I heard yes. When they said it was impossible, I heard it was possible. And he talks about anybody doing something difficult, whether you're trying to be a bodybuilder, an actor, an entrepreneur, whatever it is that you're doing, you're going to run into people on the outside that are going to doubt you, tell you you can't do this.

Starting point is 00:05:21 And he says that's normal. It's to be expected. You overcome that using this little trick. But the reason he said that was fascinating to me. He says, because it's normal for other people to doubt you. But when you start doubting yourself, that's very dangerous. And that advice was so impactful that he's repeating it three or four decades after he learned that advice. He also talked about what a just remarkable woman she was. He said, you know, she's, I was a tiny, I was very unknown in Hollywood. Years later, every single movie, every interview, anything I'd ever do, she watched it, would send me flowers, would send me a note

Starting point is 00:05:54 saying, hey, you're doing such a good job, just constantly encouraging him to not give up and to keep pursuing his dream. And what's crazy is I never made the connection to her. I read this book and I'll get to it in a little bit. But there was somebody like that in her life that played that role for her. Somebody who's a couple decades older that taught her. Her name's Lila Rogers. She's in this book. I'll get to that part eventually. And then the second reason I wanted to read her autobiography is because I like reading about people that do things that quote unquote they're not supposed to do. After many decades of being taken advantage of by other people, she bet on herself. She started her own company. She owned her show. She decided to control

Starting point is 00:06:35 her own destiny. Not only was that extremely rare for an actor to do that, it was unheard of for a woman to do that at this period of time. If you study the early history of Hollywood, they just looked at actresses as like a pretty young do that to do that this period of time if you study the early history of hollywood they just looked at as actresses as like a pretty young face that are that were disposable that should just do what they're told lucy is not the kind of person that's ever going to do what she's told and as a result and as a result her and in partnership with her husband wind up innovating they're credited this think about how crazy this is because we've seen all these people build like generational wealth through uh owning like owning a syndicated sitcom rerun. So think about Jerry Seinfeld, the billions of dollars he's going to make over his life just from reselling his show over and over again.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Lucy and Desi are credited as the innovators, the people that invented the idea that the syndicated rerun. And they pioneered that through the show they created the I Love Lucy show and they start the company before they start the show to start the show becomes wildly successful and as a result Lucy becomes the first women president of a major television studio ever so I'm going to go into the introduction of this book the book was published I think in the early I think 1993 and the copy I have in my hand smells like it's from 1993. Like stiff pages, some interesting aromas that are filling, that are in front of me right now. So I want to go to, she's talking about what it was like.

Starting point is 00:07:56 Like how the hell do you adjust? You're growing up and your parents are two of the most famous people in the world. And she says these were not ordinary parents. And then she talks about the bizarre, like, how she can hear her mom, she can watch her mom, but she can't talk to her anymore. And she says, oddly, in some ways, after all these years, life goes on as if they are still here. She's talking about her parents.

Starting point is 00:08:21 They're simply off somewhere, on location, perhaps, and unable to get to a phone. And then there's just good writing because she goes on for a little bit about that. And then she goes, and then so many times you wish that they were still here, even if it was just for a few moments. But you quickly realize that the voices that once could both calm your fears and drive you so crazy are truly silent forever and so in addition to the manuscript there's also she she did this she's working with an author that she would basically talk into a recorder so that's why it sounds like from the first person and you had the manuscript and you had now her daughter has these hours she says I had the chance to listen to some 20 hours of the original interviews.

Starting point is 00:09:06 She has these tapes of her mom's voice recalling her life story. And so if you go back to the introduction, I think this is really important. This is something I'm trying to work on with my dad because we didn't do this with my mom, unfortunately. You document. You ask them questions. You interview them. You write it down. Record it on video. Whatever you have to do because it talks about, you know, now my parents are both gone from the daughter's perspective here.

Starting point is 00:09:32 And yet she's – I have one of the most remarkable comprehensive family histories ever documented. We just happen to get – you and I are able to read and to learn about their family histories. But for most people, it's not going to be the case. But I think this idea is really, really important. Create a comprehensive family history. Do it through writing, do it through audio, do it through video, I think is the idea here. And she puts into words why this is so important, because they discovered this after her mom died. So she's with her mom a few weeks before she passes.

Starting point is 00:10:01 And she says, unfortunately, no one else had a chance to help her remember either. She died less than three weeks later i remember thinking then how sadly ironic it was that my father should have gotten the chance to tell his story during his lifetime because he wrote and published an autobiography while he was alive i'm probably going to read it too because his life story is insane as well but then we'd never get to hear moms just and this is the important part these two sentences right here is why i think it's so important for you and i to learn from this and to document the the life stories of the loved ones that are still alive to see her life as she saw it it was sad for the family and it was sad for the world and then luckily this discovery rectifies that problem and so i would say 80% of this book is her life story before her wild success with I Love Lucy.

Starting point is 00:10:48 She was 40, I think 40 years old when that show started. And her life starts with tragedy. And her dad dies extremely young. He dies of typhoid fever. It says, my father's condition never improved. He died not long after the storm. He was only 28 years old. And my mother's 23 i was not yet

Starting point is 00:11:06 four but i remember vividly the moment she told me daddy was gone i could tell you where the tables were where the windows were and what they looked out out on and she says i think she my mother was stunned by her unhappy circumstances i can remember her shaking her head saying softly married before i was 18 a mother before I was 19 and widowed before I was 23 so she has this very disjointed childhood her mom has to find work she's sent sometimes to live with grandmothers or our family members in this case in the story she's sent to live with her now new stepdad strict parents while her mom looks for a job and she hates it and so says I don't support and they

Starting point is 00:11:45 were like a very strict like disciplined family she says i don't suppose that hard work discipline and a perfectionist attitude towards my work did me any harm this is something she actually learned from them and that's another thing that's surprising to you is just how committed she was to being the very best comedic actress she could ever be she was a flat-out workaholic. In addition to reading this book, I also watched, there's a new movie about her that just came out recently. Nicole Kidman plays Lucy Javier Bardem, who's this fantastic actor. He plays Desi, but something that that movie highlights is her perfectionist nature. She'd work till two in the morning, three in the morning, going over lines, making sure every single thing is perfect. The reason I bring that to your attention now is

Starting point is 00:12:28 because she's talking about early life experiences that made the impression on her how important it was to be essentially a perfectionist in your work and not being afraid of hard work and understanding the discipline. She was almost the opposite of her husband. Her husband would like to drink. He was crazy. He would take risks. Lucy was completely focused. These traits are a big part of my makeup today, as any of my co-workers will tell you. And when life seemed unbearable, I learned to live in my imagination and to step inside other people's skins. These are indispensable abilities for an actress.

Starting point is 00:12:59 On the other hand, I have my grandmother Peterson to thank for the gnawing sense of unworthiness and insecurity that has haunted me for years. The Puritan idea that everything pleasurable is somehow bad almost ruined for me the first joys of our big I Love Lucy success. The hardest thing for me was getting used to the idea that I deserved it. Throughout the book, she calls her mother Dee Dee and her grandfather Daddy. So I don't want to confuse you there, but Didi's a big character. She's essentially Lucy's best friend and talks about looking back. She had to leave to make money. She had really no choice, and she felt really guilty about it.

Starting point is 00:13:38 Didi still feels guilty about the time we were apart, but I understand that circumstances forced our separation. When we speak of the slights, this is really important, and I found what Lucy's about to tell us to be true in my own life. When we speak of the slights of our childhood, it is hard to remember that often people were struggling to do their level best. This knowledge comes to you later in life once you have children of your own. And so later on in this chapter, she talks about learning from those mistakes and doing

Starting point is 00:14:06 something different. At this point in her life, her dad is dead. Her grandmother is dead. Her grandmother dies of, so her dad dies of typhoid fever at 28. Her grandmother dies at 51 years old of cancer. So her dad is dead. Her grandmother's dead. Her mom is gone all the time and she's 11 years old. And she says, I miss not having her around all the time. It winds up being like her best friend, that day-to-day closeness that I try to give my own children. And so she's writing these words when she's now older than her grandmother was when she died. So her grandmother dies at 51. She's around 53, 54 when she's writing these words.

Starting point is 00:14:38 And then she picks up on something at the very end of the chapter about her childhood that, yeah, it's a negative to go through. But if you can survive these environments, it makes you extremely strong. The way I would summarize what she's about to tell us is this investor, Josh Wolf, has this great saying. It's a great maxim I think of all the time. Chips on shoulders puts chips in pockets. People with happy childhoods never overdo. They don't strive to exert themselves. They're moderate, pleasant, well-liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field, not only show business, often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. And so Josh's point is if you go through a tumultuous childhood, you have a disturbed childhood, it's going to put a chip on your

Starting point is 00:15:21 shoulder and you're going to want to have that tremendous drive to show people that they were wrong for for discounting you and so chips on shoulders puts chips in pockets and then lucy goes into more of being just this like runaway teenager being very unhappy about her life circumstances and we see this that you usually there's somebody in these life stories where you have an older person that actually takes time and demonstrates hey i actually care about you like you have worth as an individual. Estee Lauder's uncle, her uncle John, played the role that this principal is going to play for Lucy. So she says, I ran away a lot. I'd leave the classroom for a drink of water and I would just never come back. I think my main need was for somebody to talk to, to confide in, some wise and sympathetic

Starting point is 00:16:05 older person. My school principal, Bernard Drake, became such a person. And so she comes back and visits him many, many years later after she's world famous. Mr. Drake was the first person to label my exuberant feelings as talent and to urge me to get on the stage. And so from Estee Lauder's autobiography, she says, Uncle John had worlds to teach me. We constructed a laboratory of sorts. He was a skin specialist, so he was in the beauty industry, and that's obviously where she built her empire. Uncle John had worlds to teach me.

Starting point is 00:16:35 We constructed a laboratory of sorts in the tiny stable behind the house. Do you know what it means for a young girl to suddenly have someone take her dreams quite seriously, to teach her secrets. And so that is something she's writing many decades after it happens. In her case, the foundation of what the empire, the cornerstone of the empire that she's going to build. And she's saying, this is extremely important. We have the ability to encourage young people. And so this idea, it's like, well, no, you're not a runaway. You're not a screw up. Who cares if you're not good at school? You're funny. You're an entertainer. People will pay for those skills. Why don't you get on the

Starting point is 00:17:08 stage? And then her mother, she starts to become worried for her mother because her mom remarried and that marriage was not a good marriage. So it's another, you know, tumultuous relationship that she's seeing play out. Wait till we get to her marriage with Desi. It is wild. That summer that I was 14, and you can, if you want an illustration of that, watch that movie, Being the Ricardos. Because it's in that movie as well as in this book. That summer that I was 14, an immense restlessness swept over me. Things weren't going too well at home. My mom and Ed got divorced five or six years later.

Starting point is 00:17:43 But the first real fights and arguments started around this time. I worried about her and the hard life that she led. And even though her mom's going through a difficult time, she's an extremely supportive mother. And then Lucy hits on something here. She's like, I don't know what I want to be. I just know this ain't it. This is not, life has to be better than this. I had no thought of being an actress at that time.

Starting point is 00:18:04 I just wanted to be better than this i had no thought of being an actress at that time i just wanted to be somebody and so she gets encouraged to try out at like a school play and her mom is supportive from day one uh didi never tried to hem me in be an actress sure why not she would sit up until midnight many nights sewing us costumes such as a reminder to support our kids goals and then she this continues at the end of high school she's like okay i want to do this this is how lucy gets into acting school and again it's because of the love and support of her mother i itch to go places and do things didi was beside herself with worry about me she finally decided that if i was bound to run away it would be better if she helped and guided me she said to me one Lucille, how would you like to go to dramatic school?

Starting point is 00:18:47 My eyes popped. Could we afford it? I've already been to the bank. And remember, they do not have, I don't know if, I should say remember, I haven't told you this. They don't have a lot of money at all. So the fact that this is what her mom does is just really, really amazing. My eyes popped. Could we afford it?

Starting point is 00:18:59 I've already been to the bank and they'll lend me the money, she said to me. My mother was always willing to go into debt for a good cause so she goes to acting school in new york and it does not go well in short order they discovered that i couldn't sing i couldn't dance and i couldn't control my body or my voice properly both students and teachers ignored me with which almost seemed fitting to me everyone was head and shoulders above me in every way at the end of the term the school wrote my mother and said that they were sorry, but I didn't have what it takes to be an actress. Remember, this is a school that teaches acting.

Starting point is 00:19:30 It's telling what is going to wind up being one of the most successful actresses that ever lives. That she can't do it. Sorry, you're not cut out for this. Remember what the advice that she gave Arnold? When they tell you no, you hear yes, and you act accordingly. Someone says no, we can't do this movie, you hug him, and you say thank you for believing in me. There's so many examples in this book that she's giving that advice because that was her lived experience.

Starting point is 00:19:55 Because these idiots right here are diminishing a young person's dream. And then what happens is many, many years years later people from the school her former teachers asked to meet her backstage like we always knew you could do it and she's like no you didn't she said the very opposite you kicked me out of the school at the end of the term the school wrote my mother and said they're sorry but i didn't have what it takes to be an actress she would just be wasting her money if i continued and so she gives a takeaway from this she said she gets kicked out and she just goes to New York and just tries to take any job possible. And this is the lesson here. I soon learned that to survive

Starting point is 00:20:30 in theater, you have to be very strong, very healthy, and damned resilient. Rarely does anyone give you an encouraging word. Same advice for entrepreneurs right there, right? You have to be very strong, very healthy, very damn resilient. Rarely does anyone give you an encouraging word. And then we get into this excessive work ethic that she has her entire life. I'd show up early for rehearsals and stay until they had to sweep me off the stage. I didn't give up. I wore out the soles of my shoes, trudging up and down the street to casting offices. So there's years of this experience.

Starting point is 00:21:06 I want to get to the punchline. I can't say that I was discouraged. For some incomprehensible reason, I knew that someday I would make it. She says, hit performance came 10, 15, sometimes 20 years in the salt mines, sweating it out. So she winds up taking any job she can get. She's trying to do theater. She works in a bunch of shops. In this case, she's working in a very famous dress shop as a model. So like somebody comes in, they want to try on a dress. She'd put on the dress and walk out so they could look at it. And a lot of famous actresses,

Starting point is 00:21:45 this is in New York City, are coming in and essentially what she's doing, what you and I are doing, except she's studying actresses, we're studying entrepreneurs, and I want to hit her punchline. So she says, Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, all these other people also came into the shop. I tried to analyze their styles, how they walked and moved, their hands, their eyes, what they wore and how they talked. This is the main takeaway here. I didn't know it at the time, but I was storing up a lot of useful knowledge. So she has a lucky break. She winds up sitting for an artist that would draw like portraits and stuff.

Starting point is 00:22:16 Remember, she'd do anything for money at this point. He winds up painting her portrait and adding like some, I think, dogs or wolves. I can't remember exactly right now, but, and then selling that painting to an, to a company, the company then uses in their ads, the ads are placed everywhere. So then people start recognizing her from these ads, even though she didn't know she was sitting down for an ad that then there was a, so that that's the first lucky break at the same time. M has this thing called the goldwyn girls and one of the girls gets sick or injured and they need a last minute replacement so somebody that had recognized her from the ad say hey you'd be perfect can you go to california right now and

Starting point is 00:22:54 so she has a jump on this opportunity with almost no uh with with almost no notice and she never this is the very start she didn't expect this but this is the very start of her time in Hollywood, and she obviously never leaves. So it says, in those days, there was no definitive working hours. She's talking about early Hollywood. We slaved all day and sometimes until 3 in the morning. So she's on, she's like a, I don't even think she has words. I think, I'm pretty sure she's just seen in the movie.

Starting point is 00:23:20 It's called Roman Scandals. She says, Roman Scandals was supposed to be filmed in six weeks, but it stretched into six months. i loved everything about movie making the money meeting so many different kinds of people the high excitement of each day and then so on this movie she's winds up being because this was supposed to be a contract and then once the contract the movie's over like your contract's up she says there was another remarkable stroke of good luck and so a young man was on the set he said hi lucy he introduced himself as as Russell Markert and reminded me that we had already met one time in New York. He was going to be a choreographer for a big film that was going to be filmed called Moulin Rouge.

Starting point is 00:23:53 He was visiting the set to see if he could pick up some showgirls for the film. He wanted to know if I wanted if I wanted to be in a film. The Goldwyn Girls, which she was a part of, was then loaned out in mass to 20th century fox and so these think about this is like something that she also didn't like too is like you're on contract work so she has a contract for a month and then sometimes she has a contract for six months and then then she has she goes to different studios and the studio will renew a contract on a yearly basis but the she didn't like that because then you could just end your contract you could try to go somewhere else but she she wanted control of her career. So this is like 20 years before, let's say 15 years, 15 to 20 years of doing stuff like this.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Before she's like, I want to run my own show. I want to own the show. I want to be in complete control. I don't want to just be a contract person. But before I get there, she does have some good advice that she gets from this guy that recruited her, this Russell guy. He says, life was hectic, but the money was good. I thought I was doing great. And so she's probably making maybe $50 a week, $75 a week is what she's talking about here.

Starting point is 00:24:52 She's going to sell her company for the equivalent of like $150 million today. So keep that in mind. So it says, I thought I was doing good, but Russell impressed upon me on the necessity of saving. You don't have to start a savings account with $1,000, he used to tell me. You can start with $1. On his advice, I put $25 into the bank every payday. Otherwise, he'd said, I would never survive the parched periods in between pictures. And so she says, by this time, I was determined to stay in Hollywood.

Starting point is 00:25:19 I would do what I had to to make sure I could survive for the long haul. That's that long-term perspective again. I worked long, hard hours without complaint. I would work 16 hours a day. So there's a lot in her career that I'm obviously skipping over. She gets contracts. She's essentially like a B-list actor for a very, very long time. You could consider her a B-list actor until she starts she starts i love lucy and so she gets all these

Starting point is 00:25:46 different contracts she's making a little bit of money and so she's like okay i need my best friend out here i need my mom the next day i phoned my mom and told didi uh to come uh to come out to hollywood when didi saw the little white bungalow in hollywood she burst into tears this was one of the few times i ever saw her give away to her give away to her feelings she came prepared to find work as a sales lady but i put my foot down her working days were over I told her so her and her brother she's a younger brother that's also working in Hollywood she came out first and her brother comes out and then they start moving out the entire family they move out her mom they move out her grandfather which she calls daddy and so this is what she says about that keeping the

Starting point is 00:26:22 household afloat was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I cherished every minute of it. It was tough going financially at times. I was earning only $50 a week and Freddie was making about the same, but it gave me a real purpose in life. I felt wanted and needed and I was grateful to have the family together again. Each morning I'd get up at 6 so I could be at the studio by 7 o'clock. And the crazy thing is she's working for RKO Studios, right? And so she's still in her early life.

Starting point is 00:26:50 She's saying I had to get up at 6, I had to get up at 7. But now she's writing this. She worked at RKO. Now when she's writing it, she owned the studio. And she says something here that's a great flex. The same guard greets me at the front gate today. So I mentioned earlier the role she played for Arnold. She mentored him. She tried to take care of him. She tried to do whatever she could.

Starting point is 00:27:15 She winds up doing live theater and being mentored by a master. And so this is Ginger Rogers' mother. Ginger Rogers was a famous actress at the time. And her name's Lila. So it says, the wonderful thing about Lila was that she was a mom, quote unquote, to a bevy of young stars, young struggling stars. She directed RKO's Little Theater remember this for later remember this part for later this is wild I just remember this now rereading it she directed RKO's Little Theater where promising young people from other studios came to be tutored by this wise warm woman and then she realizes that Lucy has talent she has a conversation with her what would you give to be a star in two years lila asked me gee what do you mean i responded would

Starting point is 00:27:51 you give me every breath you draw for two years will you work seven days a week will you sacrifice all of your social life i certainly will i promised okay she said let's start lila was the first person to see me as a clown with with glamour it was such a busy happy time for me Let's start. to improve our English and expand our understanding of the character. Lila taught us to dedicate ourselves to our work and to ignore the nerve-wracking rumors of calamity issuing from the front office. I never played politics at RKO, and it wouldn't have helped if I had. RKO had 11 presidents in 14 years. Lila advised us to work on ourselves and pay no attention to corporate machinations. Lila taught us never to see anyone as bigger or more important than ourselves.

Starting point is 00:28:50 And then she takes this mindset and runs with it. I'm going to tell you something else that's smart that Lucy said. There's all these inserts with pictures and a quick caption. I do want to read one to you because this was also surprising to me and it's something that's also in the movie if you happen to watch it. The fact that radio gave Lucy the audience recognition and acclaim that had so far eluded her in movies. So, again, she's a B-list actress in movies. She does this radio show that's a 30-minute weekly radio show that is so successful.

Starting point is 00:29:18 CBS television is like, hey, we want to adapt this, like an idea, a show very similar to the radio you're doing, can we adapt this to TV? I'm not being clear at all there. Take the radio show, put it on TV that's when she's like, okay, I'll do it but I'm going to do it with my husband and I want to own the show. That radio show becomes the cornerstone of her empire.

Starting point is 00:29:40 This is something smart that Lucy's realizing even when she's young. Really, the importance of having a positive mental attitude, the importance of learning from other people's experience, and just don't complain. There's something that Charming Munger said that popped in my mind when I was reading this, and I'll tell you that in a minute. So Lucy says, I believe that we're as happy in life as we make our minds to be. All actors and actresses, no matter how talented or famous, have ups and downs in their careers. It's just the nature of business.

Starting point is 00:30:06 One of her other mentors, I'll skip over the name, used to tell me about dozens of Hollywood people who ran into trouble. This was comforting, like reading an autobiography and thinking, well, that happened to them too. I'm not the only one. At RKO was known for being the starlet who never complained. And so something that I think about all the time is what Charlie said. I mean, I think about a lot of things that Charlie says,

Starting point is 00:30:29 but Charlie drummed in the notion that a person should always do the best that you can do, never tell a lie, and if you're going to say you're going to do it, get it done. Nobody gives a shit about an excuse. Leave for the meeting early. Don't be late. But if you are late don't bother people giving people excuses just apologize they're due the apology but they're not interested in the excuse so one of the i think saddest things is that by far the she's she winds up having a second marriage she gets married uh to her second husband she's married to him until she dies they

Starting point is 00:31:01 they're actually married longer like for 31 years She was only married to Desi for 20. But Desi, you could see in the book. In this book, she's already remarried, and it's about she was completely obsessed with Desi. But they had a very tumultuous relationship. It's in the book, but it's also in the movie. They're either fighting or having sex. And it's the extremes of like they had an intensely passionate love affair. And unfortunately, it didn't end the way she wanted because she talks a lot in this book about the kind of marriage that she wanted.

Starting point is 00:31:34 She starts saying like what her grandparents had. And she just talks about having a home. And what she meant is like not having a house to live in but like a home with like a husband and kids and like a loving environment. But essentially, think about it like what she didn't have growing up she had a very fractured family she moved around a lot lived in different places ran away and she's like i want home i want home and so she talks about her her grandparents uh relationship i knew no force on heaven or earth would be strong enough to pull those two apart that's the kind of marriage i wanted i respected this producer's talent so she talks about in hollywood like a lot of these these stars are sleeping their way to the top and so they're constantly getting approached and so

Starting point is 00:32:16 she gets approached by a married man he's very powerful and but she's like i can't like i'm not going to break up her he's got young kids i'm not going to break up her. He's got young kids. I'm not going to break up their marriage. And so she ends up getting blackballed because of this. So she says, that's the kind of marriage I wanted. I respected this producer's talent. He was attractive, young, and vital. But I couldn't allow myself to fall in love with him because of his wife and children.

Starting point is 00:32:37 And so his wife winds up finding out. He's trying to leave her for Lucy. And Lucy's like, no, I don't want to be with you. And all of her friends are saying, you know, you, you messed up. You don't understand how this business works. All of my friends said, you dope. If you had married that guy, you would be on top. Now you'll never, now you'll never make it. And the wife will get all the other, other Hollywood wives to blackball you. So this winds up being, she stuck to her convictions. It winds up at the time. She didn't realize it winds up being a good thing because she's, she has a lull in the

Starting point is 00:33:04 role she's getting. And so she has to look around. So winds up being a good thing because she has a lull in the roles she's getting. And so she has to look around. So she says, I had to give Hollywood a rest and look around for other showcases for my talent. I wound up trying radio. This turned out to be one of the smartest things I ever did. And so that's what I was tying together earlier. How the fact is this weird circumstance causes her to not get roles for a little bit. And then she's like, okay, I'll do radio.

Starting point is 00:33:22 The fact that she was so good at radio winds up getting her notice by CBS television. And then that's going to launch to her. She goes from orders of magnitude, higher levels of fame than when she was just on the radio or whether she was playing minor roles in these B-list movies. So then she gets into one of the most important relationships, the most important relationship she ever has in her life. And that's the one with Desi Arnaz. And so she's dating an older director. He's like 20 years older than her. And she's like, listen, we're dating, but we know we're not in love.

Starting point is 00:33:54 And she's like, but it was a stable relationship, so I stayed. It was very stable. We didn't fight. It's going to be the opposite of what she has with Desi. She says, this was an easy, relaxed relationship that continued until a Cuban skyrocket burst over my horizon and so she sees him uh performing and she says i couldn't take my eyes off desi arnaz i recognize this kind of electrifying charm that can never be faked he had star quality at the end of the day shooting i was in slack i was in slacks and a sweater my my face was washed and my long hair pulled neatly back in a row desi didn't recognize me as the wild

Starting point is 00:34:25 woman he had met at lunch so they had met on set but she was dressed up and like she had like a black eye as if her partner in the movie had beat her she looked like crap and so at the end of the day she changes and then she runs into him again that's what she's describing here he does he didn't recognize me as the wild woman he had met at lunch and had to be introduced all over again he invited me to dinner and i accepted we went went to a nightclub, but instead of joining the conga line, we sat at a small table talking and talking and talking. I might as well admit that here, now, and there, I fell in love with Desi in five minutes. There was only one thing better than looking at Desi and that was talking to him. So now she's going to give us a background. This

Starting point is 00:35:00 also makes it interesting to read his autobiography. he grew up in cuba his family owned cattle ranches and townhouses desi's father was the mayor of santiago his mother was a famous beauty and one of the heirs to the bacardi rum fortune then came one of those revolutions that frequently erupted in cuba desi and his mother were alone at one of their family ranches when they woke to shouts of of gunfire and rebels are burning down their house desi's father was locked up. All the family property was confiscated. They lost everything. He's 17 years old.

Starting point is 00:35:30 Desi was 17 when he arrived penniless in Miami. When Desi and his father had escaped as well, he says, when Desi saw his father, the former mayor of Santiago, one of Cuba's biggest cities, chasing rats with a stick so he could eat, he put his head in his hands and cried. And so he was obsessed with music and he tries to make it working at nightclubs in Miami. He soon learned, and then she gives us advice that he followed, that she followed, and I say almost every entrepreneur does. He soon learned that in striking out on your own, you have to throw out your chest and sell

Starting point is 00:35:58 yourself. And then she brings us back into present day when she's telling the story. Everyone at the studio knew I was starry-eyed over Desi, and most of them warned me against him. But I had flipped. I had never been so sold on any man before. And so she talks about the problems in her relationship. It winds up later on, he's an alcoholic. He's really smart, and he makes a lot of good business decisions, too. But he drinks every night. He's working in. He's really smart, and he makes a lot of good business decisions too. But he drinks every night. He's working in nightclubs.

Starting point is 00:36:29 He's an actor and producer and everything else, but he also built this extremely successful band, and they wind up playing. They're on the road or they're playing every night, so he's out until 4 in the morning. Whatever the case is, he cheats on her all the time. That's in the book. That's in the book. That's in the movie.

Starting point is 00:36:46 There was just no changing him. So she says, our outlooks on life were very different. I wanted a masterful husband, God knows. And part of me wanted to be cherished and cared for. But all my life I'd been taught to be strong and self-reliant and independent. And I wondered if I could change. Desi was a romantic. She's talking about the different way that they approach life.

Starting point is 00:37:04 Desi was a romantic. He lived talking about the different way that they approach life. Desi was a romantic. He lived to enjoy life and never thought of tomorrow. I was a level-headed realist who never lived beyond my means or went overboard drinking or gambling. So he loved to drink. He loved to gamble. Obviously, he loved to be with different women all the time. We were both head over heels in love, and we both longed with all of our hearts for a home of our own and children, but everything else in the picture seemed hopelessly negative.

Starting point is 00:37:30 We agreed that night we could never marry. So they went out and we married. I think it's like within the first few months of meeting. So they're having this discussion. They're having this long talk. She's about to leave to go to a show, and they're just saying, you know, we're too leave to go to a show. And they're just saying, you know, we're too different. We have different religions. We have different everything. Like,

Starting point is 00:37:49 we love each other. We're addicted to each other. But, you know, we can't get married. This is a bad idea. So she leaves the next day. I thought everything was over, but Desi couldn't say goodbye. He phoned me almost every hour. Then I took a train to Milwaukee more depressed than I'd ever been in my whole life. And so Desi, she just said that he doesn't think about tomorrow. Desi's phoning her. He's sending her telegrams. He told me that he was so upset about me staying in Milwaukee, he had been arranging an elopement.

Starting point is 00:38:13 He had postponed it five times. But I thought we decided we couldn't get married, I said. That's right, he agreed, but we are. I went to bed deliriously happy. And so what she did, she has a contract to be on a show in Milwaukee. She dips out on the contract. She goes back to New York and they wind up getting married. Inwardly, I was terrified at what I was doing.

Starting point is 00:38:34 I knew how, this is funny, I knew how Latins can be, how jealous and possessive. In many ways, marrying Desi was one of the boldest things I ever did. I wanted him and only him as the father of my children and so this goes on these these quotes I'm reading you are hopping over many many pages this gives you an insight into just how they were you've probably I don't know if even if you have an experienced relationship with like this you probably have seen friends that do this like they're not compatible they fight but they are completely addicted and obsessed with each other that's the way i would think about their relationship this marriage had to work i would do anything sacrifice anything to make desi happy it was

Starting point is 00:39:12 november 30th 1940 the most momentous day of my life and so now i'm a few chapters later this is in the movie as well one night soon after we married so this is a relationship of extremes this is the note i left myself here one night soon after we married. So this is a relationship of extremes. This is the note I left myself here. One night soon after we were married, Desi and I had a loud, loud fight. The next morning, I got out of bed at dawn and walked outside. We had a brand new station where I can park there.

Starting point is 00:39:32 I took a hammer and walked around the new car smashing every window. What satisfaction that was. Then I telephoned Andy Hickox, that's her business manager, and told him to get it fixed at my expense. In those early years, our fights were a kind of lovemaking. Desi and I enjoyed them, but they exhausted our friends and family.

Starting point is 00:39:53 I don't believe he ever really intended to settle down and become a good, steady, faithful husband, but we remained very deeply and passionately in love. And she talks about that later on. She's like, I'm one of the most famous people in the world, and my husband is out there embarrassing me, getting photographed and caught with other women. Like, how much of this can I possibly take? And it seems like that was one-sided.

Starting point is 00:40:16 It seems like she was completely faithful to him. She talks about this is still, she's relatively young. I think she's around 30. She's 30 years old around this time. She says, my biggest disappointment in life then was not having children my scrapbooks of my early days in hollywood even before i was married are filled with magazine illustrations of adorable pink cheek children when i'd write next to each picture when and when and when so she's looking back on her diary her notebook of that time and so this is something you and i talk about all the time like

Starting point is 00:40:43 what is the main motivation for entrepreneurs like why the hell are we doing this insane thing that we're doing why don't we just go get a job many people think oh it's because it's because the money i think if you were to ask them it's it's because control you want control over your your work your working life it's gonna be a third of your life maybe half of the time that you're actually conscious you want control over it that's way more important than the money she's experiencing the same thing because there's all this these she's essentially just like and i went into detail a little bit um and there's still a bunch of books i'm going to learn not learn i'm going to read about the early days of uh of hollywood because i think it's fascinating like with the founders of the the movie industry you

Starting point is 00:41:24 know movies one of my favorite things to do is watch a movie. Just last night, I re-watched Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's one of my favorite things to do, but so I'm surprised I haven't done this yet. I've only read, I think, one or two books on the movie industry, but if you go back and listen to Founders No. 173, The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer, you realize, like, there's there's like a lot of like harvey weinstein vibes of the early days where it's just like they're controlled by powerful men the actresses are seen as like sex objects are kind of disposable like they can just interchange

Starting point is 00:41:56 and throw them away because it's just a million other people uh arriving every day they want to be stars and she just wants control of her own work she goes once again i learned the bitter lesson that directors and producers can make or break an actress i was a star but i thought i couldn't afford to turn down parts for fear of infuriating these bigwigs if i did turn down a script which i never did i would be part i would be put on suspension without salary i couldn't accept an offer from another studio no matter how good yet i could be fired at any time without the boss's showing cause so again this is why this is going to turn her in from an actress to an entrepreneur. All the glittering stars were at the mercy of the whims of the top people.

Starting point is 00:42:30 So she's doing theater. She does vaudeville acts. She's like a funny, she has like a traveling comedian show, kind of like a gag. I don't even know how to describe it, I guess. But she's also appearing in a bunch of movies like these b-list movies we go back to the fact that she almost got divorced she gets divorced so they get married 1940 divorced in 1960 the day after the show ends and uh but they almost get divorced here and we get a good indication of these two very unique people uh during the summer of 1944 desi had

Starting point is 00:43:01 stopped coming home one night i tossed uh sleeplessly until dawn wondering where our marriage had gone awry and what i had done wrong. Finally, I hit upon a desperate measure. I still loved Desi, but I decided to divorce him. The night before I was scheduled to make my appearance in court, Desi showed up at our house. He was contrite and his most charming self. So they wind up spending the night together. And then this is a surprise. The next morning, I climb out of bed and I started to put on a suit where are you going desi wanted to know i'm going to court to divorce you i told him i told the judge that desi had caused me grievous mental suffering and that's the sad part because she's just so love like she's lovable like you read this book and you're like i love her you can see why so

Starting point is 00:43:38 many you know 60 million people would watch her show so i said i told it and it's just sad like it just it reminds me and this is probably like some kind of something subconscious going on it's just like this i just feel bad like she loved him and she wanted it to work and just they i don't know it kind of reminds me of like the suffering i feel like my mom had to go through in her in her life and her marriage as well and it's just you don't you don't want you don't want to experience that as a person, right, an individual, but you sure as hell don't want to see people you love and are very important to you have to go through this. And yet, it just occurs over and over again.

Starting point is 00:44:14 So reading this, these things come back to you and it's just terrible. So it says, I told the judge that Desi had caused me grievous mental suffering. I didn't expect Desi to be around when I got back, but he was. He looked white and stricken. Lucy, he said, the next time I marry, I'm going to be a better husband. And the next time I marry, I'm going to be a better wife. I answered truthfully. Desi's face brightened. Then why don't we both try it out on each other? He suggested. I didn't believe Desi could change, but he did for a time. I paid two thousand dollars in fees for the divorce I never got, but it was worth it.

Starting point is 00:44:47 For a long time, Desi came home every night, and we both tried very hard to make things work. I closed my eyes, put my blinders on, and ignored what was too painful to think about. So she mentioned earlier how helpful it was to have mentors to explain stories of people in Hollywood and their ups and downs in their careers. She says it was like reading an autobiography. You realize, hey, this this happened to me too her her career is full of that until she gets to lucy and then from there once she's in control like it never relents so she says i had a driving consuming ambition to succeed in show business but here's the problem my movie career had seemed

Starting point is 00:45:18 to be stalled i wasn't getting anywhere the years were speeding by i was still childless and my dream of co-starring with desi and working side by side as a team side by side as a team seemed hopeless and so she's being manipulated taken advantage of and she talks about hey hey they do this they only do this to you because you're weak so make yourself strong but of course i'm in a different position now the only they only pick on you when you can be picked on after you reach a certain level they wouldn't dare treat you so rudely so there's this huge like economic recession in the uh in the movie industry it was just like two decades of straight up growth and um or maybe i guess there was a slowdown to it during the depression but there was many years like this bull market you can think about this so in the 40s there's mgm which is the largest studio at the time, winds up losing a bunch of money.

Starting point is 00:46:08 So it says in 1948, the movie industry was in panic. The year before, MGM had lost $6.5 million. Now budgets were being slashed. Like many of my colleagues, I had began to cast a speculative eye towards radio. So this is the radio before I Love Lucy. We're in 1948. I think the show starts in 1951 so she's doing a radio show she says i did a series called my favorite husband it was a half

Starting point is 00:46:30 hour weekly show uh the writers on my favorite husband she starts naming them they wind up being writers on lucy the their names aren't important but the fact is she found a good team early and she kept that team together uh they would become particularly for this this relationship this connection would become a would become particularly fruitful in the years to come. In 1949, Desi and I instituted a stay-at-home policy. I was still childless, which caused me great heartache. Desi and I talked far into the night. We finally decided that Desi would give up his cross-country tours and only take local engagements. We would also talk to the doctors to see why we could not get pregnant. So she had had, I think, two miscarriages up until this point. I told Desi that I would try to be a

Starting point is 00:47:10 better wife, more loving and more understanding. So they're just talking about, she's like, I'm doing okay in my career, but my relationship is still up and down. And so they want to do better in their career. They want to do better as a marriage and they want to have kids. And this, the note I left myself on this page is just, she got founder mentality in 1950 desi and i decided to take that since nobody else seemed to have faith in us as a team she they'd went around trying to shop them having a show based on them like almost like an early version of i love lucy and everybody said no remember they're saying no to what eventually turns into the one of the most successful TV shows of all time, man. Just keep going. In 1950, Desi and I decided that since nobody else seemed to have faith in us as a team,

Starting point is 00:47:49 we'd form our own company to promote ourselves. Desilu Productions was launched. We put together a Mr. and Mrs. vaudeville act. So she would do a stand-up prop routine. He would play music. They'd wind up touring it around. It says, we broke the act around San Diego and San Francisco at various army camps. This is a precursor to I Love Lucy.

Starting point is 00:48:10 When word got around that we were liked, six months worth of theater contracts materialized throughout the USA. So they start doing it locally. People like it. Then they start taking it on the road. At the same time, her radio show is being successful. She gets approached by CBS so that she has the idea, hey, let's combine these two. We'll make an amalgamation or a combination of the radio show, like a variation of what I'm doing on My Favorite Husband, with this chemistry, this on-stream chemistry and talent that me and my husband have, and we'll own the show. And so there's many innovations that they actually make. They're the first people to do a lot of things, like I said earlier. They're the innovators of the syndicated rerun which is pretty wild but they're also talking

Starting point is 00:48:48 about like they embraced radio or excuse me they embraced tv even though people said you can't do tv because you'll never act again this is going to remind me something that bill gates and walt disney both learned so it says at the time television was regarded as the enemy by hollywood so terrified was hollywood of this medium movie people were afraid to even make guest appearances meaning while she's embracing it so Walt Disney he uh he backed out of a deal I think it was with the United Artists because at the time there's only like 2,000 television um sets in the entire world and I want to say it's United Artists whatever the company is they're like hey we want to do this deal we'll give you the money that you need to find for the financing that you're looking for but we have a uh we we want television rights

Starting point is 00:49:30 to all the characters that you had made previously and disney was like uh no and if you remember from walt disney's career like he was obsessed with having control he lost control of his first company and he said right before he died he said he was proud most proud of two things one starting his company and being able to keep control of it which he failed to do for his first company so now not starting he's like keeping control my own company and the second thing was disneyland and so walt walt disney's like remember he's doing movies at the time he's like no i was like this medium is growing like i'm going to always keep control and ownership and obviously being really really smart doing that because that launched the second thing he was most proud of was Disneyland.

Starting point is 00:50:11 Remember he had that show on ABC. ABC not only helped finance Disneyland, but he did a weekly show as they were constructing Disneyland. And, you know, he's hosting the show. And that builds up and he's letting – it's almost like his version of working in public, which is very popular to do to this day. So by that time, the show was so popular. Of course, he's talking about Disney all the time. They opened Disneyland and it winds up being the greatest, the largest traffic jam in Orange County history, the opening of Disneyland. And so he knew you embrace new mediums. You know, I love myself is that you go with the new phenomenon, not against it. Why did I mention Bill Gates?

Starting point is 00:50:47 Because Bill Gates ignored, in the first book I did on him, Hard Drive, he's ignoring the Internet. In Overdrive, the sequel to that book, which is also in the archive, he bets his entire company on it. And he realizes, like, the Internet is growing so fast, it's a phenomenon. When you have phenomenons like this, like television wind up becoming, you know, you have a couple thousand, however many people have it. Now people have multiple TVs or whatever the case is moving forward or in present day rather. It's like it's foolish. Like you're going upstream. Like you've got to go with these phenomenons.

Starting point is 00:51:19 And so Lucy was quick to that realization. So it's like, well, I'm going to try TV. They say I'll never get a movie role again well i'll just do tv then um and then some other uh some other uh innovations says desi suggested that we film the show live in front of an audience this wasn't common at the time the network people screamed a film show cost twice as much as a live one and what's crazy is so they would used to do all um they would broadcast live right um instead of filming it and so therefore after it ran they wouldn't have copies of the show anymore and so they do another smart thing here um where they're like okay they're like cbs is like no we don't want to do this because a film show costs twice as much

Starting point is 00:52:00 so the uh it says the sponsor wouldn't put up any more money and neither would cbs so desi made an offer in return for a thousand dollar weekly salary cut for us we were given complete ownership of the show so cbs owns it when it is broadcast once that broadcast ends desi and lucy own it this is crazy that the cbs gave it up for so cheap, for $1,000 a week, right? Because what's crazy, remember this for later, they're going to, I think like eight years or into the future, somewhere from here, Desi and Lucy are going to sell it back to CBS for millions and millions of dollars, then use that money to buy their own studio.

Starting point is 00:52:40 Okay, so we're not there yet. And she's talking about like what were their expectations at the very beginning. Just thought, oh, maybe it'll survive, maybe maybe it won't desi and i were excited and happy planning our first big venture together i thought that i love lucy was a pleasant little situation comedy that might even survive its first season 60 million people are going to watch the show to my delight i discovered that i love lucy show drew from oh this is so important because we talk about all the how all the experiences everything that you're learning now can open up potential opportunities that you can't possibly predict in the future. So you never waste a day.

Starting point is 00:53:11 You're constantly learning, constantly learning from the experience you have at work, doing professional research, reading, doing all this other stuff. And she talks about this here. To my delight, I discovered that I Love Lucy show drew from everything that I had learned in movies, radio, theater, and vaudeville. I wanted everything about the venture to be top flight. We argued a good deal at first because we all cared so passionately. Sometimes we discuss phrasing a word or emphasis in a line of dialogue until past midnight. And then it gets into just how crazy this experience was. I Love Lucy has been called the most popular television show of all time. shows change the monday night habits of america remember there isn't i was trying to explain this to my my daughter the other day she's like she doesn't even understand commercials but

Starting point is 00:53:52 then she's just like wait so you had to because she's also reading a biography of lucy lucille ball at the same time i am like a kid's version and she's like she talked about what i'm about to tell you how like water usage would go down. And she's like, well, you couldn't. So what happens if you have to go to the bathroom during the show? Like, can you just like pause it or rewind it or just watch it later? I'm like, no, you would just miss it. Completely blows our minds. I don't understand.

Starting point is 00:54:16 Everything's on demand in my life. What are you guys talking about? So says, I Love Lucy has been called the most popular television show of all time. Our show changed the Monday night habits of America. Between 9 and 9.30, taxis disappeared from the streets of New York. Marshall Fields Department Store in Chicago hung up a sign, We Love Lucy Too, so from now on we'll be open Thursday nights instead of Monday. Telephone calls across the nation dropped sharply during that half hour,

Starting point is 00:54:42 as well as the water flush rate as whole families sat glued to their seats. That's insane. So it takes off like a rocket. It becomes the number one TV show I think within like the first year or two, maybe definitely by year three. But she points out something here. It's like you have to be careful what you wish for. You might think, oh, I want to be the number one show.

Starting point is 00:55:01 I want to be the best. I want to be the biggest. And she makes the point like, no i i would have taken how i would if you have half the success you have more money you you ever need right but you have way less stress you might get 50 of the money and have 90 less stress you want to take that that transaction if you can having the love and adoration of millions was wonderful and thrilling but i could have done with half of our of our success for it came with a lot of new stress and she talks about in the book like you know i'm loved by everybody but she found her level of fame disorienting outsiders who don't understand think we have a chip on our shoulder

Starting point is 00:55:36 but it's not that at all we're just so used to failure to being hurt and to being rebuffed that we can easily come unhinged by success so she's she's got a couple breakdown emotional breakdowns in here she winds up getting help seeking uh like having somebody to talk to remember she's wildly successful but the apex of her success is the worst time in her relationship and then she also has to reconcile with like imposter syndrome and just all this self-doubt while we're at the the peak of our popularity, I continue to feel guilt-ridden and anxious. I don't deserve all this love and adulation, I would tell myself. So she's under an unbelievable amount of stress.

Starting point is 00:56:12 Not only do they, they're running Lucy, but they have a bunch of other shows. They do like Star Trek, Mission Impossible. There's a bunch of shows that they own through their production company, their studio. That is starting to weigh heavy on both Desi and Lucy. So it says, I've never seen Desi in such a state. I was terrified he was going to seriously hurt himself. I realized for the first time how the strain of our snowballing empire was eating away at him. As we began, they thought they were going to leave, right?

Starting point is 00:56:37 Check this out. This is wild. As we began the 1956 season, I Love Lucy show was still on top of the heap, and we faced with a hard decision. Should we retire or not? Originally, we had planned a five-year stint with television and all of our contracts had been written with this deadline in mind then we had planned to quit take the kids and sail leisurely around the world what would have happened because four years later they keep going they wind up getting divorced and their family breaks up but but like most idyllic dreams this one didn't seem too practical on closer inspection it was tremendous and here's the

Starting point is 00:57:09 problem it was true and it's a good problem and a bad problem to have it was tremendously exciting building a new company from seven employees we had grown to 1 000 and not one of them had resigned and desilu that's their production company uh desilu's five years of existence. Besides, I love Lucy, we own six other shows on television. And how do you quit a number one show? I wasn't ready to sit gazing at this mountain. So essentially, they talked about this earlier. When they were less busy, they would just sit in their backyard and look at the mountains. So she's saying, how do you quit it when you're on top?

Starting point is 00:57:48 That's extremely difficult. I wasn't ready to sit and relax and essentially just have leisure she does find another activity she winds up teaching acting she really likes teaching and helping young people and so this is when she decides hey i want to give back just like leela gave to me remember i said she had this little rko theater right well now in this point in the story, Lucy owns RKO. That's when I remembered how much I enjoyed my teaching experience and decided to reactivate Lila Rogers' theater workshop on the RKO lot. Her original theater was still standing, although it cost $90,000 to put it back into shape. My idea was to give some talented youngsters a boost in show business.

Starting point is 00:58:22 So she comes full circle. Unfortunately, she's at the peak of her professional success but she is personally miserable so says desi desi was the studio's top salesman chief executive officer officer and programming director we had just concluded our company's most successful year with 24 million dollars of gross business and net profits over 800 000 things had never been better for desilu. We wish we could say the same for Desi and Lucy. The following spring, I made my last effort towards a reconciliation with Desi. Desi was restless, uncommunicative, and bored. I was completely disenchanted, bitter,

Starting point is 00:58:56 and unforgiving, and the kids saw and heard way too much. I realized that we never really liked each other. We had a great attraction going for each other in the beginning, but we didn't approve of each other. I was disapproved of, he disapproved, excuse me. He disapproved of my moderation and my conservatism. I was a square, he said. I disapproved of the way he worked too hard, played too hard, and was never moderate in anything. It was like living on top of a volcano.

Starting point is 00:59:23 You never knew when it would erupt or why i want to pause here what she just said i realized we never really liked each other she's like we fell in love we were in love before we were in like her next marriage is completely opposite she's like we liked each other and then we learned to love each other she was just looking for some kind of stability but this fiery passionate love affair she had for two decades it's just she said it's like living on top of a volcano i'm a strong independent woman but making myself weaker didn't help dizzy i had to realize that deep down he wanted to make all the mistakes in the book and wanted to suffer the consequences he's also now a full-blown alcoholic at this point

Starting point is 00:59:57 he needed to punish himself towards the end of our marriage he was practically jumping out of windows i was at fault too i had lost my good humor and sense of proportion. When you're too mad and too rattled to see straight, you're bound to make mistakes. You can't go on and on for years being miserable about a situation and not have it change you. You get so you can't stand yourself. And I just wrote, damn. By the spring of 1960, Desi and I were totally estranged, although we still had to be both actor and director on the show.

Starting point is 01:00:25 How crazy is this? The fun was gone. It saddened our entire crew to watch the painful disintegration of what had been our Camelot. In one of our last shows, I played a geisha girl. My eyes were red from hours of weeping. Whenever I looked at Desi, I could feel my expression hardening. Cold, implacable hate oozed through every pore, for desi and for myself too i loathed my new self but i couldn't bring myself i loathed my new self but i couldn't bring myself to ask desi for a divorce he had to

Starting point is 01:00:51 be the one to make the break soon after this episode was shot desi asked me for a divorce i had a lawyer in his office in 20 minutes i planned to do i planned and then she talked about just completely changing her life i plan to do a movie with bob hope that summer then a broadway musical after that summer, then a Broadway musical. After that, the children and I would live in Switzerland. I wanted to get as far away from Hollywood and Desi as humanly possible. He could run Desilu, and I would remove myself permanently. It didn't work out that way, but that was my original idea.

Starting point is 01:01:19 And so the stress is too much for him as well, so he winds up leaving. In 1957, RKO Studios became Desilu Studios. In 1962, Lucille bought out Desi's controlling interest in the company, thus becoming the first woman president of any major television studio ever. So they get divorced in 1960. She gets remarried in 1961. She's writing this book in 1964. And fortunately, she still lives another 25 years after this, but there's a happy

Starting point is 01:01:45 ending. Desi seems to be much happier and healthier now in retirement. I'm glad for our children's sake that they now have two happy homes rather than one miserable, unhappy home. Desi and I keep in close touch about the children in a way we never could when we were married. I'm grateful for the amicable feeling now between Desi and me and Gary, her new husband and the children. Desi phones me often to discuss the children on the show, and he plays golf with Gary. Since our lives have been straightened out, the children have improved in their schoolwork, and they laugh more.

Starting point is 01:02:13 Children internalize their parents' unhappiness. Fortunately, they absorb our contentment just as readily. I'm happiest when I'm working, rising to challenges. I've become a woman with a capacity for happiness again. And that is where I'll leave it. This was a fun little book. It's 200 pages. If you want to pick it up, you can read it really quickly. If you want to buy it, if you buy it using the link that's in the show notes on the podcast, on your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to see every single book in reverse chronological

Starting point is 01:02:44 order, you can go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast. If you buy a book, any of the books, the podcast, that'd be supporting podcast at the same time. If you want to buy a gift subscription for a friend, family, coworker, that link is in the show notes as well. That is 230 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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