In the witty and swift-moving biopic Being the Ricardos , Sorkin puts some of this insider knowledge to work in exploring the politics—global, sexual, and professional—behind the scenes of the smash 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy.
Most of the events touched on in Being the Ricardos really happened, though not on the compressed one-week timeline Sorkin imagines, moving from I Love Lucy’s Monday morning table read through its Friday afternoon taping before a live studio audience.
As a Cuban refugee whose family’s house was burned down by Communist rebels, Arnaz is not thrilled at his wife’s professed sympathy for the working man, but he stands by her as nervous executives at CBS wait to see how the papers treat the news of Ball’s testimony.
After the royal couple of the small screen threatened to walk out on their contract, the story arc was allowed to be written in, on the grounds that the filthy word pregnant never be spoken.
In a performance that’s full of dry humor—many of the script’s sharpest barbs are given to Ball—she captures the comedy legend’s slightly hoarse voice, her combination of doll-like beauty and earthy physicality, and the imperious manner for which she was sometimes known offstage.
Vivian Vance , objects to the way her male counterparts try to infantilize or dumb down the character of Lucy, though as long as she keeps getting laughs, Ball herself doesn’t generally mind.
An interwoven storyline cuts back to the time a few years earlier when Ball and Arnaz met on the set of a middling RKO musical called Too Many Girls, embarked on a passionate affair, and eloped soon after.
I can’t speak to the issues raised by casting a Spaniard to play a Cuban, but the warmth and sensuality Bardem radiates at the mic captures a part of the reason that, as Ball wrote in her posthumously published memoir Love, Lucy, “I might as well admit here and now I fell in love with Desi wham, bang! in five minutes.
Among the film’s best-written scenes are the ones where we see Ball driving her cast and crew members nuts with her relentless perfectionism, in an apparent play to make up for her manifestly imperfect life at home.
But on the heels of a Sorkin movie, The Trial of the Chicago 7, whose women were essentially hippie-styled set dressing, it’s a pleasure to see him putting some of his signature quips in the mouths of female characters, especially one as spiky, complicated, and powerful as Lucille Ball.