Desi Arnaz (1917-1986) is best known for the popular 1950s television show I Love Lucy, a situation comedy that he helped create along with his wife Lucille Ball, to whom he was married from 1940 to 1960. Arnaz played "Ricky Ricardo," a struggling Cuban-born bandleader whose high-spirited wife Lucy (played by Ball) was forever engaged in some sort of comedic mischief. Behind the scenes, Arnaz was known as a savvy businessman and producer and a trailblazer in the early years of television.

Although network executives were at first reluctant to cast the heavily accented Arnaz alongside an all-American redhead like Lucy, Arnaz and Ball agreed to contribute $39,000 from their salaries toward production costs of I Love Lucy to ensure that the series would be launched. The comedy quickly emerged as one of the most popular shows of the decade. As Scholastic Update noted in 1988, Arnaz's role on the show helped...