THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 10, 1994 TAG: 9409100266
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
Whatever happened to Little Ricky, the kid actor who played the son of Lucy and Desi, wore short pants and could Babalu with the best of them?
Plenty. In fact, his story is virtually a tabloid cliche, a tale of early success, sordid excess and eventual redemption.
He paused to talk about it all Thursday at Kempsville Presbyterian Church, where his wife's ballet troupe was performing.
Today, Little Ricky is 44. His real name is Keith Thibodeaux, and you would never spot him in a crowd as the former child star - except perhaps for the eyes.
Then, his hair appeared black on TV and was slicked back to emulate TV dad Desi Arnaz's. Now it's curly and gray.
Then, he seemed a slight, almost frail child. Now, he's a fit, athletic man. He's been through other changes too. A three-act, American drama.
Act One: A child prodigy drummer in Louisiana, Thibodeaux was on the road with the Horace Heidt band by age 4. His drumming and resemblance to Desi won him the Little Ricky part, even though he lacked acting experience. He appeared in 40 ``I Love Lucy'' episodes between 1956 and 1960 and was later cast as Opie's best friend, Johnny Paul, in a dozen ``Andy Griffith Show'' episodes.
But he was never comfortable as an actor.
He loved performing music but was anxious saying lines. ``I was around a lot of perfectionists, and I was painfully shy,'' Thibodeaux says in a light tenor voice. ``And the pressures came when I started stuttering or forgetting my lines. My dad said, `You've got to be good tonight.' Always having to be in an adult world while still trying to be a kid was hard.''
Thibodeaux's father was a stage parent, pushing his son into the spotlight.
``It's horrendous,'' Thibodeaux said. ``I think it's an ugly thing for the parents to subject their children to that pressure while they're young.''
Adding to the pressure was the tension on and off the set. Lucille Ball tended to be distant, and Desi Arnaz had a hot temper and was drinking more and more. The marriage was disintegrating. Thibodeaux became a playmate for the real Arnaz children, and Desi Jr. became his best Hollywood friend, but soon Lucy and Desi divorced. Thibodeaux's own parents were next.
He returned to Louisiana, feeling ``washed up at 15. It's like you're this person that's just worn out. Most child actors feel like they were worth more when they were young than when they get older. One minute you're on the sound stage, and the next minute you're out on the street.''
Act Two: It was now the middle '60s. ``I just wanted to distance myself from all that `I Love Lucy' stuff,'' he said. ``It was painful when I was introduced to a girl as Little Ricky.''
Thibodeaux became a drummer in a succession of bands. And he began taking drugs.
``It was cool at that point, and you were considered weird if you didn't do drugs.''
The next 10 years passed in a haze of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
``That was my panacea,'' he said. ``I wanted to just feel good all the time and I didn't feel good. I didn't want to live my reality - it was a nightmare. My dad had left my mom, we didn't have any money, I just didn't like my life. I didn't like me.''
For three years he sank into what he thinks of as a clinical depression, ``three years in the dark.'' He flirted with suicide and feared madness.
Act Three: Just in time, he attended a Charismatic Catholic service with his mother and had a vision of Christ and his forgiveness. ``It was an experience like a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus experience. It was a life-changing, about-face, turnaround in my thoughts and views.''
Thibodeaux says he's ``never had another vision like that.''
But he gradually pulled himself out of despair, gave up drugs, found a wife and eventually converted his carousing rock band, David and the Giants, into one of the first contemporary Christian bands.
Today, however, he's given up music. His wife is an award-winning ballet dancer, and he manages her dance company, Ballet Magnificat.
As far as he knows, it's the only Christian ballet company around.
The ballet plays 100 dates a year, and Thibodeaux and his wife also run a dance school in Jackson, Miss., with 280 students and a summer workshop at Bellhaven College.
In collaboration with Richmond writer Audrey T. Hingley, Thibodeaux has now told his story in ``Life After Lucy,'' published by New Leaf Press, a Christian publishing house. It's been out only a month, but he's already heard from ``a lot of kids, a lot of people from all walks of life who have told me how much they appreciate the book.''
He admits that a new generation of Lucy fans, who have discovered the show on the Nickelodeon network's Nick at Nite, ``are sometimes dismayed when they meet me because to them it's like it's happening today and they expect me to be their age.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE photo
Cast of "I Love Lucy"
Photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON, Staff
Keith Thibodeaux, who co-starred as Little Ricky in the TV show ``I
Love Lucy,'' and is now 44 years old, above, tells of the agony of
his early success. He appeared in 40 episodes with the popular cast,
left, between 1956 and 1960. He was later cast as Opie's best
friend, Johnny Paul, in a dozen ``Andy Griffith Show'' episodes.
by CNB