New film looks at how Lucy and Desi Arnaz reinvented Hollywood
“Being the Ricardos,” Aaron Sorkin’s absorbing look at a week in the life of 1950s groundbreaking Hollywood comedy couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, makes plain something that fans have long known: Their lives were no laughing matter.
While Ball would go down in history for the outrageous physical comedy of her TV alter ego, Lucy Ricardo, and Arnaz for his character’s big-band Latin jazz (“Babalu”) and a heavy Cuban accent that middle America could mock (the oft-quoted though perhaps apocryphal, “Lucy, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do”), their genius was in their ability to rise above the era’s sexism and racism to create something that would smash barriers and pave the way for the 70 years of sitcoms that came in their wake.
Writer/director Sorkin funnels all of this into one week of an episode’s production on “I Love Lucy,” from the initial table read of the script to the actual performance, and spices it up with flashbacks. Though the events he crams into these few days did take place — Ball accused of being a Communist Party member; a newspaper saying that Ricky’s having an affair; Ball learning she’s pregnant; Ball’s on-show best friend, Ethel, rebelling against the matronly image Ball has imposed on her — they didn’t happen within a few days of each other. This deviation from the facts may not make for great history — especially since the film begins with reenactments of three key figures behind the show talking to the camera as if in a documentary — but it does crank up the drama.
Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem (casting choices that riled up Twitter and nearly burned down the internet) are Ball and Arnaz, a couple whose showbiz future didn’t seem all that bright at first. Ball was stuck in a studio system playing forgettable roles. It’s not until she starts performing in a radio comedy called “My Favorite Husband” that a few suits at CBS think she might be ideal for a new version of the show for their burgeoning TV network.
But Ball wasn’t so dazzled by the lure of a major payday to not make some demands, according to Sorkin. Faster than you can say “Vitameatavegamin,” she wanted to take the bare outline of “My Favorite Husband” and turn it into what would become “I Love Lucy,” a show featuring her actual husband, a Cuban jazz musician, in which Ball and Arnaz would have total control. CBS said, though not in these words, “What are you? High?” But they ultimately relented.
This tenacity fuels both Ball and Arnaz and it sustains the performances of Kidman and Bardem. Much of the online backlash had to do with a preference by many fans for Debra
Messing to play Ball, and that indeed might have been a better choice if Sorkin had wanted to string together re-creations of Ball’s best comedic moments on the show. Messing has a similar screwball energy. But Sorkin has said that he’s more interested in what was going on when the cameras weren’t rolling and, for that, Kidman is up to the task.
The supporting cast is equally strong. J.K. Simmons is abrasively funny as ornery William Frawley, the actor who played Fred Mertz, Ethel’s husband, on the series. And Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda), the actress who portrayed Ethel — a woman stuck forever playing second fiddle and trapped by fame in a body image she loathed — is someone worthy of a film of her own.
Throw in the likes of Tony Hale, Ronny Cox, Linda Lavin, Jake Lacy and Alia Shawkat and “Being the Ricardos” crackles with an understated sense of humor and nervous energy. The film may be a disappointment for anyone looking for a definitive Lucille Ball biopic, but for those who want to take a peek at two pioneering figures at a particular moment in entertainment history — when old Hollywood was in the very early stages of a major technological and cultural shift — “Being the Ricardos” is a fascinating time machine.