Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Desilu Productions

Desilu Productions was a television and film production studio cofounded in 1950 by husband-and-wife team Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. The studio is best known for hit television productions like I Love Lucy, The Untouchables, Star Trek, and Mission Impossible. Arnaz's business acumen, vision, and innovation built the couple's Desilu empire. They owned Desilu until their divorce in 1960 when Arnaz sold his shares to Ball, who became the first female president of a major studio. Ball sold Desilu in 1967, which still operates today as CBS Television.

Desilu Productions is closely connected to and reflective of the careers, marriage, and divorce of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. The couple met while filming Too Many Girls in 1940 and were married on November 30, 1940. Ball was an established movie actor in Hollywood known as the “queen of B-movies,” while Arnaz was an established musician, band leader, and actor, whose acting career was hindered by his Cuban accent. During the first year of their marriage, they were apart with busy careers, which led them to form Desilu Productions to handle their business affairs and appearances on stage, screen, and radio.

I Love Lucy

It is impossible to separate Desilu Productions from the success of I Love Lucy. Desilu and I Love Lucy finally gave the Arnazes the opportunity to work together, which they longed to do. I Love Lucy debuted on October 15, 1951. American audiences and the new genre of television embraced the comedy of I Love Lucy—her hijinks and how they played off her on-camera Cuban husband, Ricky Ricardo, and their neighbors Fred and Ethel Mertz. Arnaz's exaggerated Cuban accent, which had been a detriment in his earlier acting career, delighted audiences in his role as Lucy's long-suffering foil.

The production performed like a play, filmed once and capturing live audience reaction. Other innovations included mirroring the changing American middle-class landscape, such as depicting a Cuban husband with an accent, the baby boom, post-World War II consumerism, and the great suburban migration. In particular, the show depicted Lucy's real-life pregnancy on-camera, which was previously considered a television taboo. With more Americans owning television sets, audiences identified with and shared in the on-camera lives of the Ricardos, which mirrored to a great extent the Arnazes’ real-life personas.

Desilu Productions created several key technical innovations during the I Love Lucy production that are still used today. They include using a three-camera technique (with wide, middle, and close-up shots), filming before a live studio audience, creating lighting for multiple cameras, and usually completing a scene in one take.

Tapping Into the American Dream

Off screen, Arnaz proved to be a savvy businessman and negotiated with CBS for the rights of the show and its films in exchange for a $1,000 weekly salary to pay for production costs and ensure high-quality tapings of the show. CBS agreed, believing it was a bargain. However, the rights to the films proved wildly lucrative, and as a result, Arnaz is credited to giving birth to television reruns and syndication. Arnaz sold 179 I Love Lucy episodes to CBS for $4.5 million. CBS also paid Arnaz and Ball $1 million for exclusivity as CBS performers for 10 years following the sale.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution