In the Mip Africa Issue, VideoAge‘s readers will find a book review about a subject that holds special meaning for this TV trade publication. The review is of the new book Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television by Todd Purdum. Arnaz was the co-founder of Desilu Studios with his then-wife Lucille Ball. Both Arnaz and Ball starred in the popular TV series I Love Lucy, which ran on the U.S. TV network CBS from 1951 to 1957.
VideoAge first became connected with Desilu in 1981 through Bruce Gordon, who then served as the president of Paramount International TV Distribution. Gordon started his career in television in 1962 with Desilu Studios in Sydney, Australia. Desilu was acquired by Paramount in 1967, with Gordon attached. While at Paramount, Gordon became one of VideoAge‘s major advertiser supporters.
About 10 years after Paramount’s acquisition of Desilu, in 1978, another major future supporter of VideoAge came onto the scene. Michael J. Solomon co-founded Telepictures, which was basically started by internationally syndicating episodes of The Lucy Show.
In VideoAge‘s January 2022 issue, Solomon recalled how he managed to be able to license those episodes for international sale, and noted that they were so popular with TV buyers that The Lucy Show essentially put Telepictures on the international TV map. “The 144 episodes definitely contributed to our success and made us a lot of money. The Lucy Show was her second series,” explained Solomon. Telepictures eventually became part of Warner Bros., with Solomon serving as head of its International Distribution division.
VideoAge reached out to Arnaz’s daughter, Lucie, to see if she’d be interested in reviewing the book about her dad, which will be featured in VideoAge‘s August 2025 edition, but she declined because it might have seemed too biased. However, she did send a brief comment: “I have read Todd Purdum’s bio on my father. I have been helping him with his research on it for a couple years now. He sent me the first finished version to make sure he didn’t get anything wrong. And I got one of the first copies as soon as he received them.” She continued: “I have also read the recent Wall Street Journal review and, except for the opening lines about ‘loving’ other women (which he never did), I felt it was pretty fair to the tone of the book, if not an extremely detailed accounting.”
Lucie concluded: “I will let others decide if Todd did a worthy job. I know he did and I say so in small blurbs. But that’s all I really want to do about that. I’ll keep any other comments for my own book someday, should I ever decide to write one.”
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