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Isabel Scott Rorick

(1900-1967)

Author

Rorick wrote Mr. & Mrs. Cugat: The Record of a Happy Marriage, drawn from a semi-autobiographical collection of stories about the ups and downs of a young couple's married life. Her husband, Ceilan Rorick, was a prominent banker with Spitzer-Rorick Trust & Savings Bank, co-founded by his father in 1911.

Her articles first appeared in a monthly publication of the National Junior League of America.  They drew the attention of Houghton Mifflin and ten sketches, complete with illustrations, were published in October 1940. It became one of the best selling books of 1941 and was made into a movie in 1942 entitled, Are Husbands Necessary? starring Ray Milland and Betty Field as the Cugats.

 

Rorick published a follow-up collection of Cugat stories, Outside Eden, in November 1945. In 1948, the radio show My Favorite Husband based on the Cugat stories debuted on CBS Radio. Lucille Ball and Richard Denning played the Cugats, though their last name was soon changed to Cooper to avoid confusion and a lawsuit threatened by bandleader, Xavier Cugat. When CBS asked Ball to do a television version of the show, she insisted that her husband Desi Arnaz play her husband on the show. Since Cuban-born Arnaz could not pull off the role of a Midwestern banker, the show was reworked into what became I Love Lucy

For more on My Favorite Husband, click here. 

 

To learn more about how Rorick became an author, click here for the April 12, 1941 Toledo Blade.

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