Fred Mertz

Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

Alcohol ages you quickly.

I love juicy

Lucy didn’t care as she was fucking him during the duration of the series.

Fred was in vaudeville

In real life, William Frawley was in vaudeville. He introduced several famous songs on stage for the first time, like "Nothing Could be Finer than to be in Carolina."

Why didn't Fred and Ethel have children? Was that ever addressed?

r4 It's true. Lucille referred to William as her big dick daddy from Cincinnati.

Ethel was post menopausal

r9 Even in her youth?

Ethel had a botched back alley abortion when she was 15, rendering her "barren."

"other's" ??

Nertz to Mertz..

[quote]Why didn't Fred and Ethel have children? Was that ever addressed?

It was a lavender marriage

IIRC, Vivian Vance was actually younger than Lucille Ball, but played Ethel Mertz older. They always dressed her frumpier than Lucy to make her seem older. And pairing her with William Frawley completed the illusion. Casting Mrs. Trumbull as Fred’s wife might have been more realistic, tho.

r15 Vivian Vance was born in 1909; Lucille in 1911.

Seems like Barry Livingston had a few nice memories about the old drunk.

He frequently had the shakes

Why did he pull his pants up so high? How did he pull his pants up so high?

[quote] Why was William Frawley so much older than the others?

Because he was born many years before the rest of them, stupid.

Frawley died on Hollywood Boulevard after leaving a movie theater where he had just seen Inside Daisy Clover starring Natalie Wood. According to Hollywood legend Vivian Vance was in a restaurant when she heard the news of his death Vivian Vance and was said to have exclaimed, "Champagne for everyone!"

He was old, a tight wad and un-funny unless he was belittling Ethel.

Inside Daisy Clover IS pretty bad.

Frawley only seemed genuinely happy when performing

He had only one friend, Desi Arnaz.

The reason he and Vivian Vance fell out and never were friendly with each other was because he found out she had complained to the producers about him being over 20 years older than her. He never forgave her for it.

R23 Though not bad enough to cause a heart attack! LOL!

R26 "Who'd believe I'd marry an old coot like him!"

Viv

R22 Divorced in 1927 he never remarried though he had a lifelong romance with alcohol!

I thought he was deeply closeted??

R30 Repressed, yes. Believable

[quote] The reason he and Vivian Vance fell out and never were friendly with each other was because he found out she had complained to the producers about him being over 20 years older than her.

He also pissed Vance off because he never read the script. Like many vaudevillians, he only learned his lines. It’s been said that in one of the episodes where Lucy was singing off key, he asked Vance why she was doing that. VV had to explain that Lucy singing off key was the joke. And there are other instances where he was confused because he didn’t read the whole script.

When Barry Livingston reached his late 40s/early 50s I found him to be a very handsome man. He's one of those men for whom baldness works very well. Much better looking in middle age than his brother Stanley.

VV is brilliant in r24’s clip. Watch her facial expressions. It really looks like some quickly rehearsed number that Ethel Mertz is not experienced enough for.

[quote] Why didn't Fred and Ethel have children? Was that ever addressed?

It’s never actually addressed, but their backstory is that they were trying to make it in vaudeville (think Rose in Gypsy). So it probably wasn’t convenient to wag children around with them. By the time they settled down and bought the building, Ethel was probably past child bearing years. You think even back then a woman past 35 wouldn’t risk it.

He would apparently do the table read once and then throw away all the pages of script that had no lines for him and just concentrate on his lines and not bother with the other character's lines.

You could hear Frawley doing Buddy's Blues from Follies or Mr. Cellophane.

It's shocking how much shorter Barry is vs his brother Stanley.

But then, now that I look at that picture more closely it looks like maybe Barry is sitting and the other two are standing.

Fred strangled Grace Foster after she caught him peeping through her window, then incinerated her body in the furnace. That was one of my favorite episodes.

r33 Barry looks good bald because he has remained fit. His brother Stanley has worn a wig for the past 40 years and also has gotten out of shape.

Nobody on that show was looking at fugly Barry or Stanley. It was Don Grady they wanted to see.

Although the casting is odd, you can't deny it worked out. And even though they detested each other in real life , that never came across on screen.

To this day, I wonder what ILL would've been like with original choices Gale Gordon and Bea Benadaret as the Mertzes.

[quote] To this day, I wonder what ILL would've been like with original choices Gale Gordon and Bea Benadaret as the Mertzes.

A complete shitshow with Gordon chewing the scenery and Benadaret doing her simpering act. The gods were wise to step in and bring us Vance and Frawley.

Benadaret wasn't simpering on The Beverly Hillbillies but Vance could certainly be simpering as Ethel.

One of the ILL books says that Frawley complained because in the credits VV’s name was before his. (And he had a point because he had several movie credits). Desi had to convince him that it was “ladies first”.

Just watch the show again in forty years, OP. You'll be amazed at how youthful and handsome Fred has become.

R37 R38 IMDB lists his height at 5'5" Runt of the litter

There were some very sweet scenes involving Little Ricky and Fred. When Keith Thibodeaux first appeared on I Love Lucy, his first scene was with William Frawley. He is so taken with the kid doing so well in the scene, that he breaks character and tells Ricky "ain't he a dandy?" I find it very endearing, both from a Fred M. and a William F. point of view. Another great scene with them involves Little Ricky naming his little puppy "Fred". Lucy asks him "why?". Little Ricky looks at Fred M. and very sincerely announces "I always name my pets after people I like." Probably the scene that gets to me the most is when Fred wins a horse thanks to Lucy entering him in a contest in her manic desire to send as many contest entries as possible by entering the names of all her friends, too. Fred starts out being a turd saying that he will give the horse to Ricky if the price is right. Little Ricky tells Fred that he wants Fred to be the first to ride "Whirling Jet" and Fred melts, picks up Little Ricky and tells him, "No, you ride him first. After all he's your horse." There are other examples, of course only to be found in seasons 5 and 6, after Keith T. began playing Little Ricky. They make Fred/William downright sweet and charming, to me, at least.

Contrast that to Gale Gordon who never showed any warmth or empathy. He was perfect for Mr. Mooney but as wrong as can be for Fred Mertz.

I think if Gordon had played Fred, the role would have been written differently.

It would have been a very loud show because Ricky would have been doing his Spanish foaming at the mouth and Gordon would have been shouting all his lines like he did in the other Lucy shows.

And can you see Ricky going to the fights with Gale Gordon like he did with Frawley? Nobody would believe GG at the fights.

Somehow it worked. Fred, Rick, and the girls.

R24 His voice is good. I want to muzzle Viv.

William Frawley was quite the ladies man, in addition to fucking Lucy on the down low, he was fucking Mamie Van Doren and Jennifer O'neill when she was still a teen.

[quote] I want to muzzle Viv.

She was actually a good singer. That clip is not in a key suitable to her voice. They may have pitched it for William Frawley.

Singing was another source of friction between Vance and Frawley. He hated her voice and constantly belittled her singing, which she resented.

I think all Frawley's and Vance's issues stemmed from the original insult of Vance not wanting Frawley to play her husband because he was so much older. Like most people who fall out with each other forever they both looked for any reason they could find to besmirch each other.

And frankly, matronly looking Vance did not look over 20 years younger than Frawley. The age difference was certainly not anything the audience picked up on either. It sounds like Vance took the casting of Frawley as a personal insult and childishly never let it go. Vance and Frawley were actually offered their own spin-off and Frawley put his dislike of Vance aside and was all for it. But ol' harpy Vance said no way. She said she didn't think the characters could pull it off without Lucy and Ricky & she simply refused to work with Frawley again.

No wonder Lucille had to be such a hard taskmaster on that set. The best off-camera line Vance ever uttered IMO was one day on the set Lucille was taking no prisoners and Vance was a couple of minutes late for her call and Lucille admonished her for it in front of everyone with a curt "you're late!". Vance responded "I would tell you to go fuck yourself, but Ricky already did".

r56 = Phil Ober

[quote] Why was William Frawley so much older than the others?

He was born years earlier.

r58 meet r20

[quote] Lucille was taking no prisoners and Vance was a couple of minutes late for her call and Lucille admonished her for it in front of everyone with a curt "you're late!". Vance responded "I would tell you to go fuck yourself, but Ricky already did".

Lucille was not a stupid woman. She realized how VV’s talents complemented her own. She dumped Desi, the brains behind Desilu Studio, but she kept reaching out to VV every time she needed a sidekick.

VV reportedly gave a make-up person a ride home after the first table read for ILL. The make-up person called Lucille Ball a bitch. VV supposedly answered, "Yeah, she might be a bitch but I'm gonna make that bitch love me."

The plan seems to have worked.

Vance was an experienced amateur actress when she moved to NYC and first made her mark as a singer in a series of hit 1930s musicals. She gradually moved up from the chorus to featured supporting roles. In one show, she was Ethel Merman's understudy. In other words, an experienced professional singer.

Daddy issues are real for many, OP.

I’ve been watching reruns again lately and have realized that the Mertzs took a lot of financial advantage of Lucy and Ricky. I know Fred was cheap, but they were not bad off since they owned the building. One ep I remember was when Ricky sold them the washing machine and then it broke, they wanted money back for it. Then they were pissed that Ricky didn’t buy them train tickets to go back to NY from LA. Meanwhile Ricky was probably footing the bill for that entire stay. So entitled. I think there was another ep about subletting the apartment. There’s probably a ton more examples. They rode on the the Ricardo coattails. I’ve never heard this come up before.

[quote] Fred was in vaudeville

Who was that, and why wasn’t Ethel upset?

[quote] You think even back then a woman past 35 wouldn’t risk it.

No I don’t. Don’t tell me what I think.

I’ll say this, VV definitely sounded a lot better than Lucille in later years.

Because I wasn't a raging alcoholic, r67

Bless you OP