LatinaLista — One of the first Latinos in the country who broke down a barrier to show that people with accents and who come from other countries are not a threat, and can even be quite funny was the better half of the Lucy and Desi team — Desi Arnaz.
At a time in our country’s history when discrimination was unabashedly rampant, the Cuban-born Desi didn’t compromise his values, nor his name, to go mainstream. Rather he showed that Latinos do belong in American society and can make great contributions.
We know, that as a team, Lucy and Desi transformed the history of television. And Desi played a very important part of the evolution of the industry by “working with the legendary Karl Freund and pioneering the three-camera technique that became the standard for TV sitcoms.”
So why the post about Desi and Lucy?
Well, this Memorial Day weekend, in Lucy’s hometown of Jamestown, New York, the annual Lucy-Desi Days Festival will take place.
From May 23-25, over 50 activities commemorating the success of the First Couple of Comedy will be featured during the festival.
Among the highlights are:
The Lucy-Desi Museum recently installed a new exhibit. Among the items on display this season include a 1950’s Desi Arnaz portrait (on loan from Lucie Arnaz).
For Collectors: a weekend long Lucy-Desi Collectors’ Show will be offered as well as a memorabilia auction featuring vintage Lucille Ball movie posters, hard-to-find “I Love Lucy†dolls, and much more.
The festival weekend will include an opportunity to enjoy a cruise on Lake Chautauqua with someone who has been a part of CBS daytime TV for more than 20 years!
And for those who want to follow in Desi and Lucy’s footsteps, there will be workshops on the “artistry of clowning.”
But if you can’t make it to upper state New York for the festival next weekend, the next best thing is to tune into the cable channel TVland to catch an old rerun or click over to TVLand.com to watch snippets of some of the all-time favorite episodes.
Either way, the contributions of this famous bicultural husband-wife team deserve to be celebrated and remembered.
