But Thomas used an American-sounding name, was born in the US, and did not speak with an accent. No one even thought of him as Arab, even when he talked about his Lebanese descent.
But Cubans were not generally considered Black. For instance, in Action Comics #1, one of the supporting feature portrayed a boxer who was billed as Cuban. The hero denigrates him by saying he heard he was really a mulatto. The latter was an insult; “Cuban” was an ethnicity, and darker skin was acceptable (though not if the skin were too dark).
Any prejudice against Arnaz would have stemmed from prejudice against people of Southern European descent in general. Said prejudice did exist back then, but not nearly to the degree that anti-black attitudes did.
At the time “I Love Lucy” was on, Fernando Lamas (born in Argentina) and Ricardo Montalban (born in Mexico) romanced Esther Williams in movies without causing any uproar. Likewise, in an earlier era several performers of Latin American descent had successful film careers (including playing opposite non-Latin American actors) without controversy: Ramon Novarro, Gilbert Roland, Dolores del Rio, Lupe Velez.
Lucy and Desi had been cast as a romantic couple in movies as early as 1940. When CBS wanted Lucy to be on television, the network was concerned viewers wouldn’t accept them as a couple, so the two of them put together a club act and toured the country with it. Audiences loved them and CBS gave in.
At the same time as Lucy and Desi, Ricardo Montalban was married IRL to the extremely white-bread Georgiana Young.
She was around until 1989, so she knew about the movies and the success of the brand and was proud of Desilu starting it on the road to success. She thought selling to Paramount was a good idea for her. I think she wanted to be a performer more than a movie producer.
I thought most hyphenated Americans were born in America. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I always assumed terms like Irish-American/Italian-American etc. primarily related to children or further descendents of people from other countries.
And back then, when Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East, the Lebanese weren’t really considered Arab, especially the Christians. There seems some carryover today, when there is no uproar that Transportation Secretary and former Republican congressman Ray LaHood and former Lebanese President Emile Lahoud are cousins.
ETA: And remember that Desi was a very handsome man. Good looks can buy a lot of good will.
I am aware though that people born in bred in one country and moving to another is often described as x origin country - y current country- ican. I have several friends who would consider themselves American-Irish for example.
The whole premise of the show was “hausfrau wife of Cuban bandleader wants to break into show business”. And when Ricky would get exasperated with Lucy, he’d start ranting in Spanish. And their last name was Ricardo.
I never thought much about this before. Except for the more term African-American I think of it as an older thing in immigrant communities, like an Italian-American Working Men’s club. I just associate it more with people who carry a culture from somewhere else with them. In context I might call someone Russian or Irish based on their parents heritage, I just never caught on to the hyphen. Since anyone born in this country that would be referred to as a something-American is obviously already American it seems pretty redundant unless you have to distinquish them from a foreign citizen for some reason. Perhaps if I had any ties to the European countries my grandparents came from I might think of it differently.
I concur that, for racists, the worst thing you would think of regarding Ricky Ricardo was that he was too Southern European, IOW, Spanish. White-skinned Latinos such as Ricky or Montalban would have been lumped with the Spanish, who get lumped in with Italians.
As a child of racists, I can tell you that it was being dark skinned that was ‘problematic’ for them. If you were a light-skinned Italian with a heavy accent… no problem. But a dark-skinned Italian with perfect English? Then the n-word was bandied about.
Also, anti-Catholic prejudice was in sharp decline in the 50s with the WASPs reluctantly accepting Catholics as nominally Christian, so, it didn’t hurt for the Latinos or Danny Thomas to be Catholic and not some non-Christian religion. (And with Catholics ascending to the Middle Class, they propelled the careers of non-WASP Whites.)
So, basically, for 50s bigots, ‘strange’ national origins were OK as long as you were also basically White. Although, you still had your Archie Bunker types for whom there was no amount of deviation from WASPery that wasn’t viewed with prejudice.
Desi cheated on Lucy a lot and she was aware of that. One reason she wanted to do the show was to keep him at home , not on tour where he had his affairs.
Also she was very smart because they owned the show, which was very rare back then. Most actors did not own their shows.
Their decision to save their show on film, the extra expenses for which the network made them pay for themselves (though the network let them retain ownership of the film because what possible use would it be?) also made them super rich. They were already earning millions from reruns before the show went off the air. (After the divorce Lucy was one of the richest women in Hollywood; Desi was very comfortable but nowhere near as wealthy due to his love of fast women and slow horses [lost fortunes gambling].)
In interviews their children barely even attempt to pretend to have loved their parents equally: they were both much closer to Desi. He was a terrible husband but apparently a very loving father, while Lucy was just plain cold.
