Once a second banana, always a second banana when in the shadow of a brighter star.

For musician and actor Desi Arnaz, that shadow belonged to Lucille Ball, his wife and co-star on the ground-breaking 1950s sitcom “I Love Lucy.” Etched in television history are the images of Lucy falling on her rear while stomping grapes at a winery, Lucy overwhelmed by a conveyor belt of chocolates, and Lucy acting nonchalant as movie star William Holden lights up her fake nose instead of her cigarette. Desi seems as important as the cone is to the ice cream.

Not only was Arnaz his wife’s straight man, he endured non-stop mocking of his Cuban heritage on screen and off. In fact, he was a rare Latino on American screens, big and small, and played a successful husband and father, not a gangster or peo

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