Posted on 07/31/2025 9:00:34 PM PDT by ransomnote
WE NEED A BIG BEAUTIFUL RALLY SOON!!!🇺🇸🥳🥳🥳
https://truthsocial.com/@ilpresidento/114973593337839144
Aug 04, 2025, 6:36 PM
Came across this and interesting from a historical viewpoint:
Tales of a Cuban Television Revolutionary
REVIEW: ‘Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television’ by Todd S. Purdum
https://freebeacon.com/culture/tales-of-a-cuban-television-revolutionary/
Excerpt:
.....The second thing I learned was that I owed my paycheck—and my subsequent career—to the man who played Ricky Ricardo on a previous long-running hit sitcom, I Love Lucy. Desi Arnaz, the Cuban-born bandleader, singer, husband to Lucille Ball, was also (I learned that day) the entrepreneurial inventor of the multibillion-dollar business of American sitcoms. It was Desi who figured out that old episodes had big rerun value—he discovered residuals, in other words—and it was Desi who figured if you put three cameras on dollies you could film an episode in one night in front of a live audience, like a short stage play. Desi took a business that was slow and expensive and made it fast and cheap, and the result was 189 episodes of I Love Lucy and subsequent downstream variations like The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy, but also a rock-solid business model that allowed studios to invest in young and clueless comedy writers (ahem) and wait for them to figure it out. Desi Arnaz, in other words, who died in 1986, helped me buy my first house in 1997.
There’s a lot more to the story, of course, and in his absorbing and well-paced biography of Desi Arnaz, Todd Purdum manages to keep it detailed but moving along. He describes the way Arnaz outwitted CBS network executives when it came to things like fees and creative control. There’s a riveting section where he explains how Arnaz maneuvered his way to the purchase of the old RKO studio lot on Gower Street in Hollywood, a move that allowed Desilu Studios, the enterprise he shared with his then-wife, Lucille Ball, to expand their creative output. Under Desi’s stewardship, Desilu produced Star Trek, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, and every one of Lucy’s sitcoms.
Desilu was eventually purchased by Paramount Studios, which owned the production lot next door, and the two physical studios were combined. ......
Paramount also purchased the creative properties of Desilu, which is why the 1987 blockbuster feature film, The Untouchables, was a Paramount production, as well as the multizillion-dollar properties Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. There are 8 Mission: Impossible movies, 6 Star Trek original movies, 4 Star Trek: The Next Generation movies, 3 Star Trek reboots, and about 12 Star Trek television properties. (I mean, I think. I gave up counting after a while…) So let’s just agree that we’re talking about tens, maybe hundreds, of billions of dollars here, all because a Cuban immigrant who fled persecution came to America with ambition, talent, and a comically thick accent, and went very, very big. It’s not just me who owes Desi Arnaz his house and his career. Nearly everyone in Hollywood should light a candle to St. Desi.
Well done.
You must mean Richard Dawson of Hogan’s Heroes fame.. He was the host until 1995 :)
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Yes, that’s him! I didn’t know there was a new version.
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Yes, a syndicated program. Curiously, I recently saw online an episode that is produced for South African television. Who knew?
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