LUCIE ARNAZ: SPRING IS HERE!
Anything that gets you to release the stress in your life and laugh is worthwhile ~Lucie Arnaz
Hope you're all well. Well, it happened. Spring arrived this afternoon according to the calendar. I am thrilled that Spring is in the air...where a young man or woman's "fancy" turns to...well, you know... Flowers will soon be in bloom. However, for me, spring OFFICIALLY arrives in New York on April 15th. That is when Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill comes home. I have always thought of Lucie
as a New Yorker, although she is a product of Hollywood AND for most of
her adult life has lived on the East Coast. I feel the way I feel about New York's "ownership" of Lucie because when I
first moved to New York she was starring on Broadway in They're Playing Our Song.
Over the past five years, our paths have constantly been crossing due to mutual circumstances and friends.
I have seen her in several concerts over the years.Lucie has been a nightclub headliner traveling internationally with her various concerts for 23 years.
I was lucky enough to be part of an event with Lucie once. It was a benefit for the American Theatre Wing.
They were honoring Carol Channing (where I came in) and Tommy Tune (where Lucie came in). In more recent years, we would see each other at shows and parties and then I heard she was leaving Connecticut and returning to her native California. It actually saddened me to hear that she was leaving. She assured all of us that know her that she was only changing residences and that she actually wasn't "leaving" New York and that she would be back from time to time. Well, she is true to her word!
Now, Lucie is returning to New York to appear at the swank and elegant Cafe Carlyle in Spring is Here! April 15th-19th. I was thrilled to find out earlier this week, thanks to our mutual friend, Ellen Easton, that Lucie is coming home!
No wonder New York is already warming up.Great singing, like all great art, comes from the heart. Positioning one's self, and actually becoming an expert in your field,
takes time, patience, and personal confidence and a lot of perseverance and hard work. Lucie has all of this in spades and then some.According to Lucie, this will be a show about the arc of love in all it's glory.
I last saw Lucie ENTERTAIN when she appeared at Feinstein's a couple of years ago.
Lucie has earned the RIGHT to headline at The Carlyle.
What can I say about Lucie that hasn't already been said?
I don't think there is a person alive who doesn't know that Lucie Désirée Arnaz Luckinbill is the daughter of actors Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, AKA Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha (born 2-Mar-1917 in Santiago, Cuba ) and the sister of Desi Arnaz, Jr.She was just a kid when she started.
Her life has been played out before our eyes since Day One for her due to her amazing lineage.
Today, I celebrate Lucie through her own bio lifted from her website.
I've highlighted aspects of her career so you can delve a little deeper.
My goal and hope is that all who see this will enjoy reading about
Lucie's life and career.
If you do, please call the Carlyle and reserve for Lucie's return. Let's give her a welcome back to rival Dolly's return to the Harmonia Gardens!
She began her long career in a recurring role on television on
The Lucy Show, opposite her mother, Lucille Ball.
At age fifteen, she became a series regular on Here’s Lucy, a show that ran for six seasons.
She starred in her own series, The Lucie Arnaz Show and later in the critically acclaimed Sons and Daughters on CBS. One of my favorite actors led the cast, Don Murphy.
He played Bing Hammersmith, the patriarch of the Hammersmith family, which was at the center of this weekly drama.
On the big screen, Lucie has starred opposite Neil Diamond and Sir Laurence Olivier in The Jazz Singer (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination); opposite Tom Laughlin in Billy Jack Goes to Washington; alongside Ken Howard in Second Thoughts; and opposite Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Henry
Winkler in Down To You, a Miramax film. Lucie also co-starred with Richard Roundtree, Robert Loggia and
Bob Forster in Wild Seven; and in an award winning controversial new
film about second hand smoke from writer/director Alyssa Bennett
entitled, The Pack, that debuted at Sundance.
She has starred in many made for television films, as well, including the cult classic Who Killed The Black Dahlia?, Washington Mistress, The Mating Season opposite Laurence Luckinbill and Swoosie Kurtz, Who Gets The Friends? with Jill Clayburgh and James Farentino, and Abduction of Innocence opposite Dirk Benedict.
On the stage, Lucie got her equity card playing many of the best women's
roles in the theatre - Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Daisy Mae in L'il Abner
(her first time opposite Dirk Benedict), Princess Winifred, opposite
Kaye Medford, Rudy Vallee, Christine Andreas and Don Amendolia in Once
Upon a Mattress, Goodbye Charlie (produced by Burt Reynolds), A Time to
Stay, opposite John Ritter. With Stockard Channing and Sandy Duncan, Lucie
created the role of Kathy in the west coast premiere of Vanities at the
Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. She later won the role of Gittle Mosca
in the national company of the Cy Coleman/Dorothy Field's "love of a
musical", Seesaw, opposite John Gavin and Tommy Tune and directed by
Michael Bennett. She spent a summer at 
The Jones Beach Theatre in New
York, playing Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, with
Harve Presnell. During that summer, Broadway
beckoned and she auditioned for and snagged the coveted role of the unforgettably wacky, Sonia Wolsk, in the Neil Simon/Marvin Hamlisch/Carole Bayer Sager musical They’re Playing Our Song, directed by Robert Moore for which she received The Los Angeles Drama Critic’s Circle, Theatre World and Outer Critic's Circle Awards.
In 1979, during the run of They’re Playing Our Song, Lucie met her husband, actor-writer, Laurence Luckinbill, while he was also on Broadway in another Neil Simon hit, Chapter Two.
The couple were married in June of 1980 and they have appeared together in the American premiere of Educating Rita, directed by Mike Ockrent; sold out tours of I Do! I Do! and They’re Playing Our Song; national companies of Whose Life is it Anyway? and the Andrew Bergman comedy Social Security, directed by Mike Nichols (Carbonelle Award); and in the revival of Lunt and Fontanne’s The Guardsman at The Papermill Playhouse.
Lucie has also starred opposite Tommy Tune in the international company of the acclaimed Gershwin musical My One and Only (Sarah Siddons Award).
Lucie returned to the Broadway stage where she received rave reviews for her portrayal of Bella in the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play, Lost In Yonkers, written by Neil Simon and directed by Gene Saks. Lucie has starred Off-Broadway as Glorie in Grace and Glorie, a two-hander with Estelle Parsons; and as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Tony-Award-winning tour de force Master Class, directed by Don Amendolia (who also directed her as Ruth in the Reprise production of Wonderful Town).
Lucie flew to London in 2000 to play Alexandra opposite Maria Friedman, Joanna Riding and Ian McShane in the new Cameron Mackintosh musical, The Witches of Eastwick, which opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
She has starred at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Eduardo Machado’s Once Removed; A Picasso, written by Jeffrey
Hatcher and directed by John Tillinger; Ann and Debbie with Elizabeth Ashley; and in April 2006, she opened in Sonia Flew, co-starring with her youngest child, then a senior and theatre major at University of Miami, Katharine Desiree Luckinbill.
She has appeared on television in The Lucie Arnaz Show, Sons and Daughters, Who Is The Black Dahlia, The Mating Season, Who Gets The Friends?, Washington Mistress, Death Scream and six seasons of The HERE’S LUCY show, (co-starring with her mother, Lucille Ball); on the big screen with Neil Diamond and Sir Laurence Oliver in THE JAZZ SINGER (Golden Globe Nomination) and Down to You.
Touring the U.S. and Europe with her critically acclaimed nightclub act, Lucie has made stops in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Tahoe, Reno, The Cinegrill in LA, New York’s elegant Rainbow and Stars, Feinstein’s and several sold out appearances at the world famous Birdland Jazz Club. Her first album, Just in Time was released on the Concord Jazz label and, her newest CD, “Latin Roots” was released in 2010 through LML Music.
Throughout her varied career, Lucie has found herself helming several different production retrospectives based on the iconic fame of her parents, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
With her husband, Larry Luckinbill, she teamed up to form ArLuck Entertainment, which produced the Emmy Award-winning documentary, Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, (for NBC in 1993, subsequently on A and E and Nickelodeon, and currently available on DVD), published two CD-ROMs (Lucy and Desi: The Scrapbooks, Volume I and II and How to Save Your Family History: A 10-Step Guide by Lucie Arnaz). Most recently, ArLuck Entertainment produced An Evening With Lucille Ball: Thank You For Asking, a
one-woman show starring Suzanne LaRusch, which I saw and LOVED, co-written and directed by Ms. Arnaz and currently touring the U.S. and Canada.
Lucie has performed the opening number on the Academy Awards (1981) and at THE WHITE HOUSE several times.
She was Executive Producer of the I Love Lucy Fiftieth Anniversary Special (EMMY nomination), and LUCY and Desi: A Home Movie (Emmy winner 1993).
She produced two CD ROMS on her family history.
In 2006 Lucie spent several months back on The Great White Way costarring with Jonathan Pryce, Norbert Leo Butz, Rachel York and Gregory Jbara, and then Keith Carradine, Brian D'Arcy James, and Sherie Rene Scott in the rib tickling Jeffrey Lane/David Yazbek musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, brilliantly directed by Jack O'Brien and played to sell-out crowds at the Imperial Theatre where she made her first Broadway appearance nearly 30 years before in They’re Playing Our Song.
With Larry, Lucie is mother to three beautiful and talented children - Simon (born in 1980), Joseph (in 1982) and Katharine (in 1985) in addition to being stepmother to his two sons, Nicholas (1969) and Benjamin (1975). It is these credits of which Lucie is most proud.
With her brother, Desi, she manages the estates of both her parents through Desilu, too, LLC. With her
husband, actor Laurence Luckinbill, she manages five grown children. Lucie invites you to visit her online at LUCIEARNAZ.COM.
Lucie's two CDs available now Just In Time (Concord Jazz 1993) and LATIN ROOTS (LML Music 2010).
My hope is to see more shows like Lucie's that uplift and are less destructive and violent.
Let's start celebrating artists again rather than tearing them down. Lucie and Spring are a good place to start.
Spring Is Here!
The fallout from cupid's arrows. The finding. The falling.
The fantasies. The foul ups. (All the "F" words!).
With songs from Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, Carolyn Leigh, Johnny Mercer, David Zippel, Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Johnny Mandel, Harold Arlen, Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Cole Porter, David Friedman, Craig Carnelia, Ron Abel, Chuck Steffan, Madeline Stone and Lucie Arnaz!
Arranged by some of the best in the music business (including Marvin Hamlisch, Billy Stritch, Tedd Firth, Cy Coleman, and Ron Abel).
Thank you ALL of the artists mentioned in this blog for the gifts you have given to the world and continue to give!
With grateful XOXOXs ,
Check out my site celebrating the FIRST Fifty years of Hello, Dolly!
I desire this to be a definitive celebration of Hello, Dolly! If any of you reading this have appeared in any production of Dolly, I'm interested in speaking with you!
If you have anything to add or share, please contact me at Richard@RichardSkipper.com.
Please do what YOU can to be more aware that words and actions DO HURT...but they can also heal and help!
CAFÉ CARLYLE
35 E 76th St, New York, NY 10075 (212) 744-1600
Musical Director: Ron Abel (Bass: Tom Hubbard, Drums: Ray Marchica).
Over the past five years, our paths have constantly been crossing due to mutual circumstances and friends.
I have seen her in several concerts over the years.Lucie has been a nightclub headliner traveling internationally with her various concerts for 23 years.
I was lucky enough to be part of an event with Lucie once. It was a benefit for the American Theatre Wing.They were honoring Carol Channing (where I came in) and Tommy Tune (where Lucie came in). In more recent years, we would see each other at shows and parties and then I heard she was leaving Connecticut and returning to her native California. It actually saddened me to hear that she was leaving. She assured all of us that know her that she was only changing residences and that she actually wasn't "leaving" New York and that she would be back from time to time. Well, she is true to her word!
Now, Lucie is returning to New York to appear at the swank and elegant Cafe Carlyle in Spring is Here! April 15th-19th. I was thrilled to find out earlier this week, thanks to our mutual friend, Ellen Easton, that Lucie is coming home!
No wonder New York is already warming up.Great singing, like all great art, comes from the heart. Positioning one's self, and actually becoming an expert in your field,
 |
| Lucie and Larry |
I last saw Lucie ENTERTAIN when she appeared at Feinstein's a couple of years ago.
Lucie has earned the RIGHT to headline at The Carlyle.
What can I say about Lucie that hasn't already been said?
I don't think there is a person alive who doesn't know that Lucie Désirée Arnaz Luckinbill is the daughter of actors Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, AKA Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha (born 2-Mar-1917 in Santiago, Cuba ) and the sister of Desi Arnaz, Jr.She was just a kid when she started.
Her life has been played out before our eyes since Day One for her due to her amazing lineage.
Today, I celebrate Lucie through her own bio lifted from her website.
I've highlighted aspects of her career so you can delve a little deeper.
My goal and hope is that all who see this will enjoy reading about
Lucie's life and career. If you do, please call the Carlyle and reserve for Lucie's return. Let's give her a welcome back to rival Dolly's return to the Harmonia Gardens!
Believe it or not, Lucie Arnaz is celebrating over 45 years in show
business.
 |
| Lucie in Wonderful Town |
At age fifteen, she became a series regular on Here’s Lucy, a show that ran for six seasons.
She starred in her own series, The Lucie Arnaz Show and later in the critically acclaimed Sons and Daughters on CBS. One of my favorite actors led the cast, Don Murphy.
He played Bing Hammersmith, the patriarch of the Hammersmith family, which was at the center of this weekly drama.
On the big screen, Lucie has starred opposite Neil Diamond and Sir Laurence Olivier in The Jazz Singer (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination); opposite Tom Laughlin in Billy Jack Goes to Washington; alongside Ken Howard in Second Thoughts; and opposite Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Henry
Winkler in Down To You, a Miramax film. Lucie also co-starred with Richard Roundtree, Robert Loggia and
Bob Forster in Wild Seven; and in an award winning controversial new
film about second hand smoke from writer/director Alyssa Bennett
entitled, The Pack, that debuted at Sundance.She has starred in many made for television films, as well, including the cult classic Who Killed The Black Dahlia?, Washington Mistress, The Mating Season opposite Laurence Luckinbill and Swoosie Kurtz, Who Gets The Friends? with Jill Clayburgh and James Farentino, and Abduction of Innocence opposite Dirk Benedict.
On the stage, Lucie got her equity card playing many of the best women's
roles in the theatre - Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Daisy Mae in L'il Abner
(her first time opposite Dirk Benedict), Princess Winifred, opposite
Kaye Medford, Rudy Vallee, Christine Andreas and Don Amendolia in Once
Upon a Mattress, Goodbye Charlie (produced by Burt Reynolds), A Time to
Stay, opposite John Ritter. With Stockard Channing and Sandy Duncan, Lucie
created the role of Kathy in the west coast premiere of Vanities at the
Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. She later won the role of Gittle Mosca
in the national company of the Cy Coleman/Dorothy Field's "love of a
musical", Seesaw, opposite John Gavin and Tommy Tune and directed by
Michael Bennett. She spent a summer at The Jones Beach Theatre in New
York, playing Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, with
Harve Presnell. During that summer, Broadwaybeckoned and she auditioned for and snagged the coveted role of the unforgettably wacky, Sonia Wolsk, in the Neil Simon/Marvin Hamlisch/Carole Bayer Sager musical They’re Playing Our Song, directed by Robert Moore for which she received The Los Angeles Drama Critic’s Circle, Theatre World and Outer Critic's Circle Awards.
In 1979, during the run of They’re Playing Our Song, Lucie met her husband, actor-writer, Laurence Luckinbill, while he was also on Broadway in another Neil Simon hit, Chapter Two.
The couple were married in June of 1980 and they have appeared together in the American premiere of Educating Rita, directed by Mike Ockrent; sold out tours of I Do! I Do! and They’re Playing Our Song; national companies of Whose Life is it Anyway? and the Andrew Bergman comedy Social Security, directed by Mike Nichols (Carbonelle Award); and in the revival of Lunt and Fontanne’s The Guardsman at The Papermill Playhouse.
Lucie has also starred opposite Tommy Tune in the international company of the acclaimed Gershwin musical My One and Only (Sarah Siddons Award).
Lucie returned to the Broadway stage where she received rave reviews for her portrayal of Bella in the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play, Lost In Yonkers, written by Neil Simon and directed by Gene Saks. Lucie has starred Off-Broadway as Glorie in Grace and Glorie, a two-hander with Estelle Parsons; and as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Tony-Award-winning tour de force Master Class, directed by Don Amendolia (who also directed her as Ruth in the Reprise production of Wonderful Town).
Lucie flew to London in 2000 to play Alexandra opposite Maria Friedman, Joanna Riding and Ian McShane in the new Cameron Mackintosh musical, The Witches of Eastwick, which opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
She has starred at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Eduardo Machado’s Once Removed; A Picasso, written by Jeffrey
Hatcher and directed by John Tillinger; Ann and Debbie with Elizabeth Ashley; and in April 2006, she opened in Sonia Flew, co-starring with her youngest child, then a senior and theatre major at University of Miami, Katharine Desiree Luckinbill.She has appeared on television in The Lucie Arnaz Show, Sons and Daughters, Who Is The Black Dahlia, The Mating Season, Who Gets The Friends?, Washington Mistress, Death Scream and six seasons of The HERE’S LUCY show, (co-starring with her mother, Lucille Ball); on the big screen with Neil Diamond and Sir Laurence Oliver in THE JAZZ SINGER (Golden Globe Nomination) and Down to You.
Touring the U.S. and Europe with her critically acclaimed nightclub act, Lucie has made stops in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Tahoe, Reno, The Cinegrill in LA, New York’s elegant Rainbow and Stars, Feinstein’s and several sold out appearances at the world famous Birdland Jazz Club. Her first album, Just in Time was released on the Concord Jazz label and, her newest CD, “Latin Roots” was released in 2010 through LML Music.
 |
| Lucie with Ron Abel and agent Alison Kaplan |
Throughout her varied career, Lucie has found herself helming several different production retrospectives based on the iconic fame of her parents, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
With her husband, Larry Luckinbill, she teamed up to form ArLuck Entertainment, which produced the Emmy Award-winning documentary, Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, (for NBC in 1993, subsequently on A and E and Nickelodeon, and currently available on DVD), published two CD-ROMs (Lucy and Desi: The Scrapbooks, Volume I and II and How to Save Your Family History: A 10-Step Guide by Lucie Arnaz). Most recently, ArLuck Entertainment produced An Evening With Lucille Ball: Thank You For Asking, a
Lucie has performed the opening number on the Academy Awards (1981) and at THE WHITE HOUSE several times.
She was Executive Producer of the I Love Lucy Fiftieth Anniversary Special (EMMY nomination), and LUCY and Desi: A Home Movie (Emmy winner 1993).
She produced two CD ROMS on her family history.
In 2006 Lucie spent several months back on The Great White Way costarring with Jonathan Pryce, Norbert Leo Butz, Rachel York and Gregory Jbara, and then Keith Carradine, Brian D'Arcy James, and Sherie Rene Scott in the rib tickling Jeffrey Lane/David Yazbek musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, brilliantly directed by Jack O'Brien and played to sell-out crowds at the Imperial Theatre where she made her first Broadway appearance nearly 30 years before in They’re Playing Our Song.
With Larry, Lucie is mother to three beautiful and talented children - Simon (born in 1980), Joseph (in 1982) and Katharine (in 1985) in addition to being stepmother to his two sons, Nicholas (1969) and Benjamin (1975). It is these credits of which Lucie is most proud.
With her brother, Desi, she manages the estates of both her parents through Desilu, too, LLC. With her
husband, actor Laurence Luckinbill, she manages five grown children. Lucie invites you to visit her online at LUCIEARNAZ.COM.Lucie's two CDs available now Just In Time (Concord Jazz 1993) and LATIN ROOTS (LML Music 2010).
My hope is to see more shows like Lucie's that uplift and are less destructive and violent.
Let's start celebrating artists again rather than tearing them down. Lucie and Spring are a good place to start.
CAFÉ CARLYLE
35 E 76th St, New York, NY 10075 (212) 744-1600
RESERVE TODAY!
RESERVE TODAY!
Spring Is Here!The fantasies. The foul ups. (All the "F" words!).
With songs from Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, Carolyn Leigh, Johnny Mercer, David Zippel, Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Johnny Mandel, Harold Arlen, Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Cole Porter, David Friedman, Craig Carnelia, Ron Abel, Chuck Steffan, Madeline Stone and Lucie Arnaz!
Arranged by some of the best in the music business (including Marvin Hamlisch, Billy Stritch, Tedd Firth, Cy Coleman, and Ron Abel).
Thank you ALL of the artists mentioned in this blog for the gifts you have given to the world and continue to give!
With grateful XOXOXs ,
Check out my site celebrating the FIRST Fifty years of Hello, Dolly!
I desire this to be a definitive celebration of Hello, Dolly! If any of you reading this have appeared in any production of Dolly, I'm interested in speaking with you!
NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED. FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY!
Please do what YOU can to be more aware that words and actions DO HURT...but they can also heal and help!
Here's to an INCREDIBLE tomorrow for ALL...with NO challenges!
Keeping Entertainment ALIVE!
Richard Skipper Celebrates
TILL TOMORROW...HERE'S TO AN ARTS FILLED DAY
Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie
|
Great information source on everything Lucie. I Love Lucie. Hope to get to the Carlyle to see her.
ReplyDeleteWell, Richard you have done an amazing piece again! And this rich, beautiful piece on Lucie shows us what a talent she is! It also shows us she married a man, Laurence Luckinbill who has his own grand talent and great heart. That's really it, Richard- the two of them carry their talent beautifully and with so much heart. I am so appreciative of how you celebrate such talents with your own! Keep soaring!
ReplyDelete