DETROIT FREE PRESS
By SHIRLEY EDER
When I heard that Lucie Arnaz and her husband, Lawrence Luckinbill, moved bag and baggage, three kids and animals from their Los Angeles home to a 15-acre spread in Katonah, N.Y., I had to call.
"Why," I asked her, "the sudden family move to the East Coast?"
"It wasn't that sudden," she said. "We bought the house and property four years ago and were planning to move here some day. With both my father and mother gone, my brother Desi no longer living in LA, there were no family ties to make us want to stay there. The 'someday' for us had come.
"Larry loves the East Coast, and so do I. He loves working in theatre." (His one-man show, "Lyndon," in New York last season received critical raves and was a box office hit.) "I'd like to do another musical on B'way. We live now only 55 minutes to midtown New York City."
"Everything is so beautiful and green now. I get excited just looking out. Can you imagine how exciting it will be soon when the leaves turn color? We love the changing seasons, which you don't get in LA."
At that moment I heard Lucie exclaim, "Yes, Simon, you do have to soak it again tonight!"
Lucie explained that Simon, her eldest of three children, was protesting having to soak his staph-infected hand every night since he'd hurt it in a fall off his bike. "Between that and picking the ticks off the three kids because they're in and out of the woods on our property, I'm kept pretty busy," Lucie said.
"We've learned all kinds of new phrases since we've been here. One important one, because of Lyme disease, is'tick check.' We all get under the brightest light in the house and search for ticks. We've been lucky so far. . . .
"I'm really happy we made this move. It was a little frightening at first. Certainly it's more fun for the kids, and we really did it for them. It's an environment that kids should grow up in. Larry and I can work in theatre without having to make it a limited run. Now that the the kids are of school age, I can't take them with me on the road as I did. And Larry doesn't have to leave us behind.
"Actually, there is a musical on the drawing board I heard about that I'd like to do. If either or both Neil Simon and Marvin Hamlisch happen to be reading this in your column, Shirl: Hey, guys, I hear that you are working together on turning Neil's 'Good-bye Girl' play-movie into a musical for B'way. Remember, I had the female lead in your other together musical, 'They're Playing Our Song,' and we all did very well, didn't we!"
Knowing that Lucie had been designated as executor of her mother's will, I asked her if the move complicated those duties.
"No. . . . I went to the LA state attorney's office and asked if Desi and I could create some kind of holding company to filter everything through. They said it was a good idea, and that's what we did. Because we had to have a name for the company, Desi and I decided on DesiLu Too. Too," she said, "like in also."