Word: desilu
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Battered old movie posters still flapped in the Hollywood breezes on the high walls of the old RKO lot last week. But towering above the lot, in huge black letters on the freshly painted silver water tower, loomed a new hallmark: Desilu Studios. Below it, cameramen were already shooting TV films on five of the lot's 14 stages, while an army of wreckers, carpenters, painters and plasterers exorcised the past for the arrival of the new owners: onetime Bongo Drummer Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y De Acha III, 41, and his round-eyed, henna-crested wife, Comedienne Lucille Ball...
...Desi's dropped option. Since then, babyfaced. Cuban-born Desi has become not only half of TV's most popular comedy team, but the self-made boss of a company that produces, or takes a hand in producing, 27 TV shows.* This year on three different lots Desilu will grind out 270 hours of filmed television entertainment-more than twice the footage of any movie studio-rivaling TV's Revue Productions as the biggest film producer in the new Hollywood...
Since he and Lucy are sole owners, there is no lag at Desilu when he decides to make a deal. He beat two major bidders for the RKO studios when he strolled off a Lucy set one day last fall and made a phone call nailing down the purchase from General Tire & Rubber Co., RKO's owner since 1955, for a bargain $6,150,000. Desi usually spends ten hours a day at work, chauffeurs himself in his black Thunderbird from the Beverly Hills mansion where he and Lucy live with their two children, Lucie Desir...
Desi will plow $7,500,000 into his 1958-59 production schedule so confidently that "this time we're going to do the shows first and then go looking for a sponsor." The main project: Desilu Playhouse, which, with Desi as host, will offer weekly hour-long dramatic and musical productions, plus a dozen 90-minute spectaculars, including Don Quixote and six Desi-Lucy comedies. All the shows will be tailored to this Arnaz pattern: "No violence, no psychopaths, no dirtiness. There will never be any need to send the kids to bed when we come...
Will the results please the critics-or confirm a rival's description of Desilu as "a sausage factory"? Snort Producer Arnaz, embracing the code of Hollywood tycoons old and new: "I've never yet made a show for the 21 Club or the Romanoff's crowd, and I'm not going to start now. The viewers have to be able to identify themselves with the characters or you're going to lose them. I've always got the guy in Omaha in mind...