The Art of Desi Arnaz
The Actors Temple, New York City
by Live Music Head
Back in 1917,
two Jewish Orthodox shopkeepers from Hell’s Kitchen
founded the Actor’s Temple on
West 47th St in NYC.
Standing outside on the Saturday afternoon sidewalk of 2008,
I looked up to admire the old stained glass windows
and the oversized bulletins tacked to wooden doors,
detailing the temple’s history.
The Actors Temple is a synagogue,
but it’s also a place where “spirituality meets creativity”.
I entered through the wooden doors,
and after buying a ticket from an old-timer in an old box office,
a set of creaky stairs led me to the washrooms
and a rehearsal space.
Sun streamed through the stained glass to fall upon
the framed black and white legends gracing the stairwell walls...
Milton Berle, Morey Amsterdam, Shelley Winters, Ed Sullivan.
And inside the performance space,
the stage is modern with many lights hanging above.
Beside my seat in the last row, a curtain hangs over mirrors
and the band is warming up behind yellow.
Today’s performance is a musical telling of the life of Desi Arnaz,
with a 6-piece Latin band, the program says...
consisting of percussion, drums, sax, slide trombone,
upright bass, and piano.
A small round table sits off to the left of the stage
and propped atop is a single bottle of Bacardi’s Rum.
And a single glass.
In front of a small capacity crowd,
the band appeared and opened with a medley.
And the theme from I Love Lucy ran through it.
I felt warmed like
being wrapped in an old grandmother’s quilt.
Desi Arnaz (Greg Purnhagen)
appeared in white suit jacket and shirt,
black pants, black bow-tie, fat black belt and shiny black shoes.
With a single drum slung over his shoulder, he’s a conga player.
"Desi" sways his hips across the stage singing Babalu
while behind him, the horn section rose to their feet.
Buenos días, senors and senoritas!
Cuban Pete wears Panama straw for the second hat,
fronting Havana with projected palm trees on the rear wall.
Just then,
Lucille Ball (Emily Anne Smith) appeared
wearing a black poodle skirt and white blouse.
Beneath her fiery head were lips of rosy red.
Desi does a rhumba with a single bass pluck.
Apparently these two had great chemistry in real life;
a hot animal magnetism.
Something I never thought about when I was young,
watching them on tv re-runs.
Hot animal magnetism, that is.
But I do now,
listening to "Desi"
tell of growing up in Santiago de Cuba
as he poured rum into a tumbler.
Coincidentally, like the founding date of the Actors Temple,
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was also born in 1917.
But I have to be honest,
the show lacked a certain energy.
Perhaps it was the laugh track from the television show
that was missing,
but my mind began to wander through a Rainy Night in Rio.
I wanted more passion from Greg Purnhagen.
I wanted to be transported back to those sassy days of
gum-snapping cigarette girls as they sauntered
through smoky jazz clubs.
But Cielito Lindo was lovely,
muchas gracias!
With no station identification
the next song was brought to us by...
Brylcream, a grooming product for men’s hair.
With stars in the eyes of a bored American housewife,
the physical comedy of Lucy is witnessed
as she butts into Ricky’s act with hand-held maracas,
trying to steal the show.
Her earrings sparkle with a clever lighting backdrop
and the big red heart on the black curtain says,
“I Love Lucy and Lucy loves me!”
But where is that Ricky Ricardo laugh?
Another number included in the act was
Man Smart, Woman Smarter.
When I saw the song title in the program
I thought, “could it be the same song?”
And it was!
I know the song from Grateful Dead shows,
but apparently this Harry Belafonte number was also included
in an episode of the I Love Lucy series.
The play didn’t go deep into any personal stuff really,
except for the divorce argument.
But like a really bad soap opera scene,
it wasn’t believable.
But come to think of it,
the marriage of Desi and Lucy
wasn’t believable either, really.
I remember hearing how studio executives had a tough time
wrapping their heads around
Arnaz playing Lucy’s husband on the show.
After all,
it was 1951.
Even though they did indeed tie the real life knot in 1940,
the studio heads argued that
American audiences simply wouldn’t accept
a Latin leading man as the husband of Lucille Ball.
The dynamic duo proved them wrong however,
when “I Love Lucy became the single most popular
and most influential
TV phenomenon in the history of the medium”.
Desi-lu Productions also proved staggeringly successful.
According to Wikipedia,
Arnaz amazed network executives with
“one of the shrewdest deals in television history,
reaping the profits from all re-runs of I Love Lucy
and producing shows such as The Twilight Zone,
The Untouchables, The Danny Thomas Show,
The Andy Griffith Show and the original Star Trek series.
Arnaz’s foresight in filming and retaining post-broadcast
ownership of shows had huge impact
on the future of television syndication”.
Arnaz and Ball, in their day,
were the cream of the television crop.
Emily Anne Smith’s attempt at duplicating the voice of Lucy
caught my attention slightly,
but perhaps the subject matter really is dated.
Because the slapstick humour in this stage play
just wasn’t very funny.
No one seemed to care about the rude ring of
an audience member’s cell phone,
but after the tap of a cowbell
the band rose to its feet again,
suddenly bringing the show to its end.
I didn’t see it coming.
I was still waiting for something to truly move me.
Despite the play ending on divorce,
the bandleader and his wife left the stage together,
signaling the audience to follow
in a Conquistador Conga line.
And they did.
All around the edges of the off-Broadway theatre temple,
we brought the show to a drum banging finale.
Up close,
Emily Anne Smith really did look the classic 50s beauty.
And I really did enjoy being in the Actors Temple as well,
learning the Temple’s history.
I guess the play wasn’t so bad either,
but I really wanted to be moved.
I wanted to be swept away.
But on this note it fell,
flat.
 |
| Actors Temple, NYC |
The Actor's Temple
http://www.theactorstemple.org/history.html
For a glimpse of the real Desi Arnaz
and the excitement he was capable of…
this youtube clip shows some awesome badass bongo!
