By Cheryl Lavin.
Published: Thursday. December 26,1991
Section: TEMPO
Chicago gets a chance to love Lucie-that's L-U-C-I-E, not L-U-C-Y-when Ms. Arnaz brings her nightclub act to the Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook Terrace for a holiday appearance Friday through Tuesday.
Although the show got excellent reviews in New York-the press there said she was "a fabulous saloon singer" (New York Post) with "a delicious sense of humor" (New York Daily News) and a "talent for show-stopping comedy songs" (New York Times)-Arnaz calls her act "a very expensive hobby."
"I'm constantly adding new songs and making changes," says Arnaz from her home in Westchester County, in upstate New York. "The old-timers tell me, 'You get your act and you work it for years and years. ' But I care to leave it alone. I know this isn't the best way to make a killing in the industry, but it's the most freedom I've ever felt. The curtain goes up and it's up to you to fly on your own wings. It's incredibly exhilarating and terrifying.
"I don't write my patter-that's the word you learn after you learn gig; they mean talk and job-so it's never the same. I know when I'll talk kind of about this and kind of about that. But different things strike me. Sometimes nothing strikes me and you get this horrible flop sweat. Some nights are better than others, but I'm not a stand-up comedian. I don t try to be. I don't tell jokes."
Arnaz, the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, has performed in nearly every aspect of what she calls "the family business." She's done TV, six seasons on "Here's Lucy," several TV movies, and even had her own sit- com, 'The Lucie Arnaz Show', for a season. She co-starred with Neil Diamond and Laurence Olivier in a remake of The Jazz Singer and appeared on Broadway in Neil Simon's "They're Playing Our Song." She put her nightclub act together three years ago as a tribute to Irving Berlin for his l00th birthday.
"It started out with a lot of tap-dancing, songs like 'Puttin' on the Ritz' and "I Love a Piano," but little by little, I started adding to it. First a Billy Joel tune. Now if I had to name the show, I'd call it 'Latin Roots." It's the music I grew up with."
The act consists of Arnaz and two backup singers.
"When I lost my lead dancer to AIDS, I was so thrown, I did an entire about-face until I could reprogram my head. Now the show is a lot more about music than about dancing."
Working parents
One of the changes Arnaz recently made comes at the end of the show. At her request, Marvin Hamlisch wrote a new arrangement of " I Still Believe in Love " from "They re Playing Our Song."
"I wanted it to suit a woman who's been married for 10 years," says Arnaz who met her husband, actor Laurence Luckinbill, when they were both starring on Broadway in Neil Simon plays. Their oldest son is named Simon. A seven-minute home movie plays during the song.
"It's full of love, children and commitment and marriage and getting through and coming out the other end."
When Arnaz isn't working, she says she's home, taking care of Simon,1l, and their other two children, Joseph, 8, and Katy, 6.
"To me I'm never working enough, but my kids think I work way too much. They don't want me to work at all."
The decision to live away from Hollywood and New York was made for family reasons. "We wanted to raise the kids in the country. The public schools here are the best in the nation practically."
Arnaz, born in July 1951, three months before the TV show 'I Love Lucy' debuted, grew up with two working parents. But they kept comfortable hours.
"My parents were around a lot," she says. "They didn't have to be at the studio till 10, and they were home at 6. They took Friday, Saturday and Sunday off, and that was always family time. Then every three weeks, there would be a one-week hiatus and we'd go to some place like Palm Springs or Del Mar. So, physically, they were around a lot. But they weren't always emotionally available. Sometimes I'm better at that."
"Like every daughter, I thought I could do things better than my mother, and then midway through parenting, you realize you re doing things exactly the same. I think my values are the same as were given to me. I try to have my kids respect one another, but kids all fight.
"My mother used to have a joke when my brother and I would fight. She would say, "The first one that gets hurt, I'm going to hit." It would confuse us so much we'd stop fighting."
"The only thing I really do differently from her is, I'm not afraid to stand back once in a while, and say: 'I don't know what to do. Let me go into another room and think about this.' She'd just react, right or wrong. She always felt she had to control the situation. In the '90s, we are aware how much there is to know about children and parenting and the psychology behind raising kids. It's much more complicated than ' children should be seen, not heard' or whatever was happening in the '50s."
Therapeutic documentary
One thing Arnaz has done differently than her parents is to not saddle her children with names like Lucy/Lucie Desi Jr., or Laurence, for that matter. "Desi Luckinbill just isn't the same, and I'd never call my daughter Lucie. It was always a pain in the butt when I was growing up. Someone would say, 'Lucy' and we'd both turn around." Unlike some children of famous parents, Arnaz doesn't try to distance herself from her parents. Her husband is writing a Broadway show based on her father s life, and she's working on a documentary about her parents, in part to balance the CBS-TV movie "Lucy and Desi: Before the Laughter"-which aired in February 199l -and a new book "Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Story of Television` s Most Famous Couple," by Warren G. Harris. They both portray Desi as an alcoholic and philanderer and the cause of the couple's problems.
Arnaz rejects such a one-sided view. "They were together for 20 years, and they shared equal responsibility for the joy and the pain." Arnaz says that working on the documentary, which will include home movies as well as interviews, has been therapeutic.
"Everybody should do it. We all have so many preconceived ideas about people. But when you start asking questions, you learn so much, you begin to understand why they were the way they were."
She says it has "definitely been a forgiving process. Everybody has to go through that to a certain extent with their parents. You come to realize that if you were in their shoes, you might not have reacted very well."
*This article originally appeared in the December 98 issue of the Westchester WAG.