Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Archa III was born in 1917 to a family of wealthy Cuban landowners. His Father was the mayor of Santiago. That changed when Batista took over in 1933, and Desi and his mother fled from their burning home, to Miami. Desi and his mother were very poor. Desi took up a job driving a banana truck. In high school he found he had a real knack for music. Soon Desi started working with the Xavier Cugat band in 1937 and later put together a ;atin band of his own. In 1940, he appeared in both the stage and movie versions of "Too Many Girls." On the movie set, he and Lucille Ball hit it off, and they were married in November 1940in Greenwich, CT. The couple wanted desperatly to work together again. After being shunned by every movie producer. When they came up with the idea for a TV series, they fought to do it together to save their marriage. Network executives didn't think the biracial couple would work, so in 1950 Lucy and Desi went on tour, performing for live audiences to prove that Desi was believable as Lucy's husband. The show was picked up. Desi and Lucy ran into trouble when Lucy got pregnant. Desi had to convinced Philip Morris, that Lucy having a baby on the air would be a publicity bonanza, and he was right: the filmed birth of Little Ricky in 1953 drew 44 million viewers, and the story made headlines from coast to coast even beating the president to the front page. After Desi and Lucy divorced in 1960, Desi sold his shares of Desilu Productions to Lucy and became an independent producer. He died in 1986 of cancer.
