Isabel Scott Rorick

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Isabel Scott Rorick (1900–1967) was an American writer from Toledo, Ohio. She began by writing humorous sketches for the Junior League, which later appeared in a national publication. Her best-known work is Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, a collection about a married bank executive and his wife. Houghton Mifflin published ten Cugat sketches in October 1940 as Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage, and the book became one of the top ten best sellers in 1941. It was made into the 1942 film Are Husbands Necessary? with Ray Milland and Betty Field playing the Cugats. Rorick followed with Outside Eden in 1945.

In 1948, CBS Radio launched My Favorite Husband, based on the Cugat stories, with Lucille Ball and Richard Denning as the Cugats (the surname was soon changed to Cooper to avoid confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat). When Ball moved to television, Desi Arnaz urged that he play her husband, but he could not portray a Midwestern banker, so the show was reworked into what became I Love Lucy.

Rorick’s husband, Ceilan H. Rorick, a banker, died in June 1958. Isabel Rorick died in 1967 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Toledo. They had two children, Horton and Elizabeth (Mimi).