Milton Berle Delivered Brutal Roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

Desi Arnaz was full of racially charged one-liners that wouldn’t fly today. But those jokes weren’t the most offensive part of the routine, at least to Ball and Arnaz, who took the brunt of some intensely personal punchlines.  

Berle’s performance is largely forgotten, mostly because of another occurrence at the Roast — the death of comedian Harry Einstein, more famously known as radio comic Parkyakarkus and the father of Albert Brooks and Bob “Super Dave” Einstein. After he finished his hilarious tribute to the couple, he walked back to his seat and collapsed in Berle’s arms after a massive heart attack. 

But before the dramatic events that ended the evening, Berle delivered some gags that landed a little too close to home, according to the new biography, Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television. Berle had no problem throwing the jabs, perhaps because he was the king of television before Lucy and Desi dethroned him.

While Arnaz was proud of Ball and readily acknowledged that she was the star attraction, he was notoriously insecure about his own status as second banana. Berle took dead aim at those doubts with punchlines that he joked (?) were stolen from other comedians. 

“Listen to me, Desi,” Berle said. “You don’t need her. Dump her. She’s nothing. Now, may I introduce (famous Hollywood divorce lawyer) Jerry Geisler?”

The Ball-Arnaz union was already on thin ice, mainly due to Arnaz’s womanizing. Berle took notice. “The marriage will not last,” he predicted. “It will end.” 

That wasn’t really a joke, but he implored the audience to laugh anyway when the lines were met with silence. “And when the marriage ends, what a settlement!” Berle joked. “She gets RKO (the movie studio they bought after the success of I Love Lucy), and he s Castro.” (Arnaz was from Cuba, where Castro was on the verge of completing his revolution.)

Referencing Castro wasn’t exactly an ethnic slur, but Berle was getting there. “This no-talent lady, sitting right here, knocking around Hollywood, drunk, she met this poor nebbish here, this farkakte wetback, and they laugh at him. But one of these days, he may buy the whole country and we’ll be the ones talking funny.”

Berle kept pouring on the stereotypes. “When he came here, when he came to this country, what did he come with? Three hundred gallons of hair oil!”

Then Berle delivered an oral sex joke to poke at the open secret about Arnaz’s infidelities. “Who do you think he has as the attendant in the men’s room at Desilu? Edith Head!” (Head was a famous costume designer, but her name was the double-entendre punchline.) 

Berle’s routine wasn’t any more off-color than others delivered behind closed doors at the Friars Club, but it proved prophetic. The Ball/Arnaz marriage, already on the rocks in November 1958, was done by May 1960, a mere 18 months after Berle’s roast.  The comedian may have been cruel when he predicted the end of their marriage, but he was also right.