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Miami Herald
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Desi Arnaz found life in Miami before he hit the big time. Here are 5 takeaways
Desi Arnaz's connection to Miami is celebrated in a new book by Todd S. Purdum, including the city's role in shaping his early career. The book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' explores how Arnaz's Miami roots influenced his rise to stardom and his lasting impact on television. FULL STORY: It all began in Miami for TV genius Desi Arnaz. Then he made it big with Lucy Here are the highlights: Miami's influence: Desi Arnaz honed his musical talents in Miami, where he became a sensation with the conga, a pivotal step in his journey to stardom. Television innovations: Arnaz's vision for television, particularly through 'I Love Lucy,' revolutionized the industry by introducing techniques like multi-camera filming and live audience recordings, paving the way for reruns and impact: Arnaz's introduction of the conga line to the U.S. from Miami Beach in 1937 left a lasting cultural mark, celebrated decades later with a permanent marker in Miami Beach honoring his journey: Arriving in Miami from Cuba as a teenager, Arnaz initially worked odd jobs before reinventing himself as a musician, leading to a successful career that included collaborations with notable band leaders and performances in New York and Miami event: Todd S. Purdum will discuss his book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' at Books & Books in Coral Gables at 7 p.m. Saturday, June 21. The event is free, with the option to purchase the book. The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists in the Miami Herald newsroom. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by Miami Herald journalists.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
It all began in Miami for TV genius Desi Arnaz. Then he made it big with Lucy
Desi Arnaz is returning to Miami as the focal point of a new book. Long before he loved Lucy, Arnaz loved Miami. The city and the budding celebrity fueled one another. 'Desi's time in Miami is where he became a professional musician, honing his skills with audiences and creating a sensation with the conga,' author Todd S. Purdum said in an email to the Miami Herald while traveling on his book tour. 'It was a crucial stop on his journey to stardom in the days when Miami Beach featured the top stars of show business, who were impressed by Desi's charisma and appeal. He and his parents were grateful for the foothold that Miami gave them to pursue the American dream.' Purdum will read selections from his new book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' Saturday evening, June 21, at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The book is a tribute to a man who started his entertainment life in Miami. He died in 1986. Arnaz's TV vision The book's title isn't hyperbole. Sure, television existed before 'I Love Lucy,' the sitcom Arnaz starred in with his wife, Lucille Ball and which debuted on CBS on Oct. 15, 1951. But Arnaz's vision shaped the way we watch TV today. Do you enjoy streaming syndicated reruns of 'I Love Lucy' as well as 'Law and Order,' 'Friends' and 'Star Trek?' Thank Arnaz. Arnaz and Ball's production company, Desilu, formed during their 20-year marriage and 'I Love Lucy' partnership, was behind that 1960s 'Star Trek' TV show, too, a sci-fi staple that turned into a television and film franchise. Just another of the duo's behind-the-scenes achievements. 'He was a proud yet simple man with chispa, spark. He never forgot where he came from even as he built a studio empire in Hollywood and changed forever the way television sitcoms are created,' former Miami Herald Editorial Board leader Myriam Marquez wrote in a column in 2010. Arnaz's band life in the 1930s, '40s and '50s was the basis for the musical 'Babalu' that was playing at downtown Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts at the time. 'To this day, most sitcoms are shot with three cameras and before a live audience using video. He started with film until video was developed. Arnaz's technique opened the way for TV reruns and syndication,' Marquez wrote. Leading conga lines 'Babalu' took its title from Arnaz's signature tune, a joyous Afro-Cuban song he performed as host and music guest of the Feb. 21, 1976, episode of 'Saturday Night Live' during its first season. Arnaz, at 58 and starting the last decade of his life, closed that show by leading the 'SNL' cast on a conga line through the NBC studio in New York. This exuberant televised live showcase of the conga line with the late night 'SNL' Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast came a decade before Gloria Estefan's 'Conga' English-language breakthrough. Nearly 50 years ago, that 'SNL' performance was a reprise of the way Arnaz, in his struggling musician days, introduced the conga line to the U.S. direct from Miami Beach in 1937. He had done so from the stage of the Park Avenue Restaurant on the corner of Collins Avenue and 23rd Street, once a main artery of Miami Beach's entertainment scene. He initially dubbed his conga line his 'Dance of Desperation.' In October 2024, city of Miami Beach officials installed a permanent marker honoring Arnaz at Collins Park near where the Park Avenue stood. Today, the site of that former restaurant-entertainment venue at 2200 Liberty Ave. is the Miami City Ballet's headquarters. You can stream that 'SNL' episode featuring Arnaz on Peacock because of his original vision to film 'I Love Lucy' with multiple cameras, giving studios the opportunity to share classic TV moments for generations to come. Miami's blueprint Even that inspired vision could be traced to the actor-musician's earliest days in Miami and Miami Beach. Arnaz simply had an eye for a room and how to maximize the space for aesthetic as well as monetary purposes. From the 'Desi Arnaz' book: '[H]is father had joined some other Cuban exiles in starting a business to import Mexican tile — roof tiles, bath tiles, kitchen tiles. The Pan American Importing and Exporting Company was capitalized with all of $500 and was operating in a small building on Third Street southwest in Miami. Desi suggested to his father that they close off a portion of the warehouse as living quarters and save the $5 a week they had been paying the boardinghouse. Purdum's 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Changed Television' recounts Arnaz's career, starting with his arrival in Miami from Cuba in 1933 with his father, Desiderio Sr. The elder Arnaz had been Santiago's youngest mayor and a member of the Cuban House of Representatives before Fulgencio Batista's first coup. Arnaz's maternal grandfather, Alberto de Acha, was an executive at rum producer Bacardi & Co. The man born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III in Santiago de Cuba on March 2, 1917, arrived penniless in Miami before his 17th birthday. He initially made a living in the U.S. cleaning canary cages. In the fall of 1936, he enrolled at Miami Beach's St. Patrick Parish School on Garden Avenue and completed his formal education at Miami Senior High School. In Cuba, Arnaz once envisioned a law career. After school at Miami High, Arnaz reinvented himself as a self-taught musician in Miami Beach. Without that South Florida start, it's likely there would have been no Lucy to love. Arnaz's father remained in Miami until his death in 1973. After 'I Love Lucy' ended in 1960, Arnaz continued his career in production and performing from a base in California. But he helped support relatives who lived in Miami. 'He did make a number of emotional return visits — to perform or celebrate the first Carnaval — and he always retained a warm affection for Miami and the friendships and formative experiences he had there,' Purdum said. Arnaz was the first king of Carnaval Miami in 1982. He played his music with his children Lucie and Desi Jr. at that inaugural event before a crowd of 35,000 on Southwest Eighth Street. Miami in the 1930s 'It's easy to forget that when Desi and his father arrived in Miami, it was 25 years before the mass exodus of Cubans after Fidel Castro's revolution,' said Mindy Marqués Gonzalez, editor of 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television' and a vice president at publisher Simon & Schuster. 'The main Cuban emigre community was in Tampa and Miami was still a sleepy southern town. They would have been one of the few Cubans here. In some ways, Desi and his father were trailblazers for the thousands of Cubans who would follow and transform the city into a multicultural mecca,' said Marqués, a former Miami Herald executive editor. This earlier era of Miami was where Arnaz and a school chum, Sonny Capone (son of the gangster, Al, who had lived on Miami Beach's Palm Island), would get together after class to sing and play the bongo drums. Arnaz parlayed his talents to a spot in a rumba group called the Siboney Septet, named for the seaside Cuban town just outside Santiago, that was playing at Miami Beach's original Roney Plaza on Collins Avenue. For $39 a week. Arnaz's Latin rhythm skills on the conga drums and infectious stage mannerisms came to the attention of popular band leader Xavier Cugat. 'Miami was the formative stage of Desi's new life in America after Cuba,' Marqués said. 'It's here that he picked up a $5 guitar at a pawn shop and started playing again, like he did in Cuba. And that led to his being 'discovered' by Xavier Cugat, which led to everything else.' That introduction to Cugat, and joining his orchestra for six months, led to Arnaz's musical career at New York clubs and his winter return engagements with his own band at Miami Beach entertainment venues like La Conga on 23rd Street. Thanks in part to Arnaz's musical chops and other musicians he played alongside, the area came to be known by locals and music fans as a 'corner of Havana in Miami Beach,' Purdum reported in his book. 'Desi left his mark, without ever denying who he was,' Myriam Marquez, the Herald's former opinion editor, wrote in her 2010 column. 'How hard must it have been 75 years ago in a country that still had segregated public facilities and often looked at 'foreigners' with suspicion. I recall his writing about his days on the tour bus heading from one gig to another, how he would hang out with his Black musician friends, even when promoters weren't too thrilled about that.' Marrying Lucy Arnaz met Lucille Ball on the set of a 1940 film, 'Too Many Girls,' in which they both had roles. The New York-born redhead and the Cuban Miami music maverick wed that year. 'Today, this kind of marriage in Miami is commonplace. It was such a precursor of what was to come in this community,' Miami filmmaker Joe Cardona said in a 2001 interview with the Herald on the 50th anniversary of 'I Love Lucy.' 'To Cubans in South Florida, this was kind of like looking into a crystal ball,' Cardona said. 'Here was a show that actually featured somebody who sounded like my father. Somebody who looked like my uncle. Somebody my brother could grow up to be,' wrote former Herald columnist Ana Veciana Suarez in 2001. Within a decade of their marriage, the world would come to consider the Ball-Arnaz couple family, a relationship that outlasted their marriage, their professional union, Arnaz's post 'Lucy' career, and their lives. Arnaz died of lung cancer at age 69 in 1986. Smoking Purdum recounts in his book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television,' how, upon arrival from Cuba by ferryboat to Key West in the early 1930s, father and teenage son were driven to their first home in Miami. 'On the bus ride to Miami, the mayor made a gesture that implied recognition of how fast Desi had grown up since they'd last met: He offered his son a cigarette,' Purdum wrote. Arnaz, like so many actors of the time, smoked on camera. His habit formed the basis for a sketch on the 1976 'Saturday Night Live' episode he hosted. Arnaz played an acupuncturist treating an ailing patient portrayed by John Belushi. But not 'Chinese acupuncture with needles' Arnaz warns the wary Belushi. 'Cuban acupuncture, with cigars.' When Arnaz died at his California home, after visits from his family, including ex-wife Ball, and with their daughter Lucie at his bedside, the Miami Herald's obituary quoted the musician-actor's doctor. 'He died of lung cancer. It was from smoking those Cuban cigars — that's the truth.' Remembering 'Ricky' Actress and singer Lucie Arnaz said of her father's lifelong work ethic in a 2006 interview: 'He had a lot of moxie and integrity because he had to keep on going. He had to start over, and he had to build everything again. He was fearless.' Ball, in a 1983 interview with Ladies Home Journal six years before she died in 1989 at 77 after heart surgery, said of her ex-husband: Desi 'was much smarter than anyone thought. He was a great showman, a great businessman, a fantastic entrepreneur, and I loved watching the executives finding that out.' In his 1976 autobiography, 'A Book,' that he plugged on 'SNL,' Arnaz recalled his 'great days in Miami Beach.' Basketball. Hot dogs. Beach picnics. On one of his last visits to Miami in 1982, to take his crown as king of the first Carnaval Miami, he told Herald reporters, 'I am returning to my first place — Miami. I started here.' If you go What: An Evening with Todd S. Purdum and moderator Carlos Frias discussing Purdum's book, 'Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.' When: 7 p.m. Saturday, June 21. Where: Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. Cost: Free. You can buy the book at the event. Or buy tickets in advance and get one copy of the book for $29.99 plus tax.
Miami Herald
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
What's inside this naughty book? Let these two women show you in Coral Gables
Besties Lea Black, of 'Real Housewives' and skin care fame, and Liz Flynt, chairwoman of Hustler and widow of Larry Flynt, the founder and publisher of Hustler magazine, dished politics, sex, friendship and famous names before an engaged audience at Flynt's recent book signing at Coral Gables' Books & Books. 'Larry passed away over four years ago and Lea was actually one of the first people to call me,' Flynt said at the start of their chat, an unwrapped copy of 'Hustler: 50 Years of Freedom' set on a table between them. 'I had just gotten home from Cedars Sinai and I just walked into my bedroom and my phone rang and I looked at it and it said 'Lea Black.' And I said I have to answer it.' Philanthropist Black, a friend of the couple for years who listed the Star Island home she shared with lawyer husband Roy Black and their son RJ for more than $34 million a few years ago, moderated a conversation with Flynt on the first Saturday in June at the bookstore. They were promoting Flynt's new coffee table tribute to the legacy her husband built with his raunchy magazine, Hustler. Florida politics The freewheeling duo delved as much into local Florida and national politics as it did into pushing 'Hustler 50.' The coffee table tome, its black cover embossed with gold lettering and shrouded in shrink wrap, includes reproductions of dozens of covers and pictorials and Flynt's crusading columns against censorship that tackled issues including gay, transgender and women's rights decades ago. Not surprisingly, Flynt and Black both are no fans of politicians pushing current censorship efforts on books and on higher education curriculum. Black, a philanthropist also famed for her social gatherings, said she aims to stage one of her fundraiser soirees to promote David Jolly, the former Tampa-area congressman who left the Republican Party seven years ago and who hopes to be the Democratic governor elect for Florida in 2026. Famous faces 'Hustler: 50 Years of Freedom' celebrates the magazine Larry Flynt launched in 1974 that made Playboy and Penthouse fans blush. Bold face names abound in its 204 glossy pages including John F. Kennedy Jr. whose mother, the late Jackie Onassis, was the subject of a 1975 pictorial when a paparazzo with a long lens and a publisher with a fat wallet, shared images of her undressed. JFK Jr. supposedly forgave Flynt for running the pictures, Liz Flynt said. Actor Woody Harrelson wrote the foreword. He portrayed Flynt in Milos Forman's 1996 film, 'The People vs. Larry Flynt.' Harrelson's closing line particularly pleased the author, she shared with the Books & Books audience. 'I am glad Liz is steering the ship now,' he wrote. 'Long may she sail.' There's even a photo inside 'Hustler 50' of President Jimmy Carter and Liz and Larry Flynt all grinning at a Beverly Hills fundraiser in 2006. 'Larry rubbed elbows with some all-American luminaries who, sadly, never sat down for Hustler interviews. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during these encounters,' the caption reads. The fly might have buzzed about Carter's Playboy interview in the November 1977 issue of rival Hugh Hefner's magazine. Supreme Court victories But Flynt's magazine won its colorful publisher lasting fame, and infamy, too, as his obscenity trials became landmark victory cases for the First Amendment. 'Larry always wanted to be remembered for expanding the parameters of free speech [by] going to the US Supreme Court and making satire protected speech,' Flynt said. 'One of Larry's concerns was censorship. Because back in the day when Hitler took over, he didn't start with the classics. He started with the pornography and went up to the classics. And Larry said, 'We can't take anything for granted.' And he always held that near and dear to his heart.' She has expanded his empire since his death at 78 in February 2021 by growing Hustler's gaming operations and retail stores, including one in Fort Lauderdale. (And, yes, keeping the magazine's print edition alive somehow despite the free, easy access to online X-rated content.) Larry Flynt's hated hypocrisy and his regret was never attending college, said his widow. But Flynt was the subject of plenty of mass media law classes at universities nationwide, including a long-ago Florida International University graduate level journalism class. (Yep, the offensive Jerry Falwell Campari mock ad parody that gave Flynt a landmark victory in 1988 for protected free speech for satire in the Hustler v. Falwell case appears in the book.) Books & Books is familiar territory for Flynt. Her late husband spoke there in August 2004 to promote his book, 'Sex, Lies & Politics: The Naked Truth,' which broadsided the Bush administration and bashed Florida's botched election in 2000. Blasted by his political enemies as little more than 'a bottom-feeder,' Flynt responded. 'True,' he chuckled, 'but look what I found when I got down there.'
New York Post
24-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Dem Rep. Eugene Vindman's campaign dropped nearly $39K at Florida bookstore where his bro held signing events for his bestseller
Rep. Eugene Vindman's campaign shelled out $38,783 in what it labeled a 'fundraising expense' last month at a Florida bookstore where his brother held signing events for his best-selling book criticizing Western policy toward Russia, financial disclosures reveal. Vindman's twin brother, Alexander — a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a key figure in President Trump's first impeachment — bragged about signing hundreds of copies of his tome 'The Folly of Realism' at Books & Books around the time of his brother's mysterious campaign outlays. Books & Books has multiple stores around the Miami area, but an employee at the Coral Gables store confirmed to The Post Wednesday that Alexander Vindman had book signings at that location, which is where the campaign payments were directed. That individual also said that Eugene Vindman's team had asked earlier in the day what the store would do if a reporter came around asking questions. Freshman Rep. Eugene Vindman just won former Rep. Abigail Spanberger's old seat last November. Getty Images Federal Election Commission records do not specify what the purported 'fundraising expense' entailed, or whether those funds went to bulk purchases of Alexander Vindman's book, which briefly cracked the New York Times 'hardcover nonfiction' bestseller list for the week ending March 16. 'The Folly of Realism' was released Feb. 25 from Hachette Book Group at an initial cost of $30. Ten days later, on March 7, the Eugene Vindman campaign made a $7,809.55 payment to Books & Books. A second payment, for $30,972.97, was processed March 20. Over the past 15 years, there has been no FEC record of major political fundraisers at Books & Books, with only a few expenses for meals totaling no more than $54 listed by groups such as Emily's List and former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferré's unsuccessful 2010 campaign for the US Senate. Alexander Vindman provided key testimony in the first impeachment over President Trump's pressure campaign against Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens. Patsy Lynch/REX FEC records show that Books & Books was the only Florida-based company that received payments from Vindman's campaign during the first quarter of 2025. On March 9, two days after the $7,810 payment to Books & Books, Alexander Vindman posted a photo of himself signing scores of copies of 'The Folly of Realism.' On March 21, a day after the second payment of $30,973 was made, Eugene Vindman posted photos on social media showing him at a Chili cookoff in Caroline County, Va. the prior day. On April 12, Alexander Vindman announced he had signed 800 more copies of his book at the Florida store. The Post reached out to reps for both Vindman brothers for comment. The Post also contacted Books & Books management to inquire about whether a political fundraiser took place at the store. Eugene Vindman narrowly won the race to represent Virginia's 7th District on a message of fighting against corruption, touting his efforts to aid his twin brother against Trump. 'Eugene Vindman's hypocrisy is rich,' National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Maureen O'Toole told The Post. 'Vindman is in Congress to advance his own out of touch agenda and, apparently, bail out his family's abysmal literary endeavors,' she added. 'Virginians will kick this lying loser to the curb next November.' The Post previously reported that the now-congressman declined to answer questions last year about whether his taxpayer-funded trips to Ukraine played a role in his business ventures of trying to sell weapons to Kyiv. Eugene Vindman had bragged to the Prince William Times in late 2023 about making 14 trips to the war-torn country, funded by the 'Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group' State Department program. During that timeframe, his company, Trident Support LLC worked to sell the Ukrainian government a weapons system. That company also used the same PO box as Vindman's congressional campaign. Vindman took in $125,000 from Trident in early 2024 despite reports that he did not earn a salary from the company, financial disclosures show.
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Miami Herald
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Haitian author Laferrière celebrates French language in Miami appearances this weekend
Before he became an offiicial guardian of the French language, the exiled Haitian journalist-turned novelist Dany Laferrière called Miami home. From the colorful vibes and vibrancy of the community, so close to his childhood home in Haiti, Laferrière wrote 10 novels. In fact of his 16 books on Haiti, a dozen were written in Miami, where he encountered people from his childhood in Petit-Goâve and Port-au-Prince. Among them was his mother's seamstress, an encounter he recalled in a piece last year as he reflected on the gang horror in his homeland. It was a rare insight for an author who admits to not taking the expected path and prefers to combat horror by opposing it 'with beauty and tenderness.' Laferrière, 71, is back in Miami this week, celebrating the French language with two public events as part of Francophonie month. Now a celebrated author and one of the so-called 'immortals' with his historic 2013 election into the French Academy — the main authority on the French language — Laferrière is claimed by both Haiti and Canada. Laferrière will mark International Day of La Francophone with a visit at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, 212 NE 59th Terrace, in Miami at 5 p.m. Saturday. While free, registration at eventbrite is required. If you miss him in Little Haiti, where he will be discussing some of his 38 books and celebrating French, which is spoken by more than 300 million people worldwide, you can catch him at 7 p.m. Monday at Books & Books in Coral Gables. An Evening with Dany Laferrière is free and open to the public. The tour is part of an effort to promote intercultural dialogue and is sponsored by the consulate generals of Canada, Haiti and France in Miami, the Office of the Government of Quebec in Miami and the Alliance Francaise. In a piece he wrote last year reflecting on the tragedy of Haiti, Laferrière, whose father was also forced to live in exile, recalled his mother's determination for him to receive an education and how she carried herself with grace despite the problems around her. 'Here we are once again on the edge of the precipice, and it seems that all we can think about is forms of power,' he wrote. He recalled meeting his mother's seamstress in Miami and how she informed him about how his mother, Marie, had made it 'a point of honor to ensure that the inside of her dress was as delicately made as the outside, even if it meant paying double the price.' 'And yet, she was a poor woman whose husband had lived in exile for decades, and who had to raise two children alone. Situations like this are common in this country,' he said. 'For all those who see no connection between this art of living I'm publishing today and who find me casual and carefree in the face of tragedy, I am a couturier trying to make a garment whose inside is as neat as the outside, to fulfill my mother's injunction about dignity,' Laferrière wrote. Laferrière has developed a large following of his works, which blend humor, reflection and poetry and keeps Haitian culture and French literature alive. He received the 2006 Governor General Literary Award winner for his book Je suis fou de Vava. His debut 1985 novel, 'How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired,' a satirical exploration of race and politics, was made into a film. Born in 1953 in Haiti, Laferrière grew up in coastal Petit-Goâve, south of Port-au-Prince. As a young journalist, he fled Haiti in 1978 for Montreal after a colleague was killed. He went on to become a leading voice in Francophone literature, winning numerous accolades. One of his biggest was his election on the first round into the elite Académie Française. He became only the second Black person and the youngest person to join the academy. Founded in 1635, the elite club is charged with safeguarding the French language, which includes updating a dictionary and advising on usage. Its members serve for life.
