Short Takes : Ball-Arnaz: Stormy and Loving

Was the marriage of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball really as strained as the TV movie made it out to be? Friends and colleagues say it was far stormier.

The observations by people who knew the actors appeared in the Feb. 18 issue of People magazine.

They said the couple’s relationship was torn by alcoholism, infidelities and bitter arguments, but Arnaz and Ball loved each other, even after their divorce in 1960.

Sunday night’s CBS movie “Lucy and Desi: Before the Laughter” offered some contrast between the happy-go-lucky Ricardos of “I Love Lucy” and the real-life couple. People who knew them say the contrast was far greater.

“He was on the road; she was a working professional. That’s the kind of marriage that has failure written all over it,” said William Asher, director of “I Love Lucy.”

Arnaz, a Cuban-born bandleader, and Ball met on a Hollywood set in 1940 and married six months later.

Lucille Ball wanted her husband on the show “because she knew that if he went on the road with the band, he’d be catting around all the time,” said Bob Weiskopf, a longtime writer for the couple.

“The big problem with their marriage was that when Desi would get drunk, he was wild,” Jim Bacon, a former Hollywood reporter, told the magazine.