I Love Lucy’ star William Frawley allegedly called Vivian Vance a 'cunt'

I can't imagine it only happened once.

I’m surprised people used the word cunt so freely in the 1950s. I didn’t realize it was a heavily used profanity at that time.

R2- Lucille Ball's mother used to refer to Desi Arnaz as the SPIC.

Just cunt, not fat cunt?

You can say a lot of things about William Frawley, but a liar isn't one of them

If Viv was a cunt, what was Lucy?

And they call ME a bitch!

[quote][bold]Tim Considine[/bold] exclusively tells Page Six that Frawley uttered the vulgar insult when a lieutenant general and his adjutant visited the set of the actors’ 1960s sitcom “My Three Sons” while Considine was in the Air Force Reserve.

Tim Considine was my first crush, starting with Spin & Marty, and the Hardy Boys.

I'm the Cuntiest Cunt who ever Cunted.

Was William Frawley a FAIRY?

My inquiring gay mind wants to know?

[quote] I’m surprised people used the word cunt so freely in the 1950s.

Back then, C U Next Tuesday was truly about the Taco.

Spic isn’t modern jargon, r3. Neither is cunt but I didn’t realize it was used until maybe the mid to late 60s. I was obviously wrong.

R10 I've wondered that too. There is a lot of emphasis that he had a live in male nurse for the last decade or so of his life.

Big deal!

I doubt he punctuated it with a few well-deserved punches to the crazy cunt's face.

I always loved him for being a crusty old dude who wore his pants up to his tits. Now I love his mind...

Not true!

He called her, "That smelly cunt"

He was totally straight!

Impossible. The word cunt was invented in 1972.

^ Then it's true, William Frawley was a time traveler

Isn't a variation of "cunt" found in Beowulf?

I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment.

R2 Don't be a cunt.

The Human Gunt called her a Cunt

Séance me when it comes out he shit in her dressing room.

Now they tell me!

Slow news day?

r20, it has a long history. I remember it was in the Canterbury Tales. Interesting etymology at the link, including the name of a street in England known for prostitutes.

LOL why has the official FOX "News" Twitter account posted this?!

BEARKING:

Constantinople falls to Ottomans!

Constantine issues Edict of Milan!

Socrates dies!

And do people think that Vivian was a saint or an introvert? From what I've read, she was quite capable of standing up to and handling her confrontations with Bill Frawley. And I've also read that she could dish it out as well as he or even Lucille could, e.g., on the set of the '60s "Lucy Show," when guest stars would recollect how she'd go toe-to-toe with Luch about scene adjustment suggestions or threats to take certain of Viv's lines out of a week's script, or else to give guests "scene-acting" suggestions in one ear while Lucille had their other ears with her suggestions. With all she went through and accomplished, including despite being increasingly abused verbally and emotionally by her dysfunctional first husband she eventually divorced, Vivian seemed to be both a tough person and actor.

Also, I remember reading that when Richard Burton and Liz Taylor guested on Lucille Ball's third "Here's Lucy" show in the '70s and experienced what it was like to rehearse that week on the set with her taskmaster self, they or at least Elizabeth got into the habit of referring to Lucy as "Aunty Cunty." I love Burton and Taylor for that! ;D

[quote]And do people think that Vivian was a saint?

Yes ... the patron saint of DL

R29- That's why the dl people LOVE her.

R27 All the news twitter accounts post things like that, because they must always have something new to post.

I guess it's a testament to their acting abilities when people who really don't like each other have great on-screen chemistry.

[quote]despite being increasingly abused verbally and emotionally by her dysfunctional first husband

Phil Ober was actually her third husband (and he was physically abusive too). Vivian was embarrassed by her first two failed marriages and told her family to never discuss them. Thus, Phil became her "first" husband.

She also felt guilty about breaking up Phil's marriage; her affair with him made the tabloids. He also lost custody of his daughter. I think that guilt, coupled with the shame of two failed marriages, kept her in that relationship for so long. I think he was a major contributor to her mental health problems; after her breakdown, Vivian said she pretty much couldn't leave their apartment without him. He later resented the independence that I Love Lucy granted her and tried to sabotage her friendships at Desilu (including with Lucille). He constantly hung around the studio, even though he had no real reason to be there ... I think, in part, he wanted to keep an eye on her. He made her account for every minute of her day.

When I listen to interviews with Viv in the 60s and 70s, she never strikes me as someone who would have put up with a domineering/physically abusive husband. I think that marriage embarrassed her too.

R35 She shouldn't have felt guilty about breaking up his marriage, she seems to have done the wife a huge favor.

The word "cunt"has been in use since at least the thirteenth century. Gropecunt Lane was a street in London (and other English towns ) recorded c1230. The Gropecunt Lanes were in district associated with prostitution. Over time the names were changed as attitudes about the word changed. Use of the word as an insult seems to date to the mid-nineteenth century.

In other words, the word "cunt" is hoary.

Thanks r37!

I knew Bill Frawley was old, but not medieval ...

From what I've read it was Vivian Vance who said NASTY things about William Frawley first and he found out and that's when he started HATING her guts. She was angry because she wanted her tv show husband to be handsome and young. Not William Frawley who was obese and TWENTY years older than her.

[quote]Not William Frawley who was obese

Bill Frawley is positively SVELTE by 2022 standards

After I Love Lucy ended the producers wanted to do a spin-off series starring Fred and Ethel Mertz. Vivian Vance was having none of it and very firmly and vocally turned the offer down. And never wanted to work with William Frawley again.

Didn't the NYPost also have the Betty and Rue Said Bea Called Them a Cunt story?

This must be Old Cunt week at the Post.

I always felt sorry for the way My Three Sons cut Frawley loose from the show. He was just given one little scene at the beginning of an episode about taking a short trip to Ireland, and then was never mentioned again. He did not want to go, but the show felt he was too unhealthy to continue.

I'm sure she WAS a cunt!

All women are.

Nana stopped inviting Frawley to her cul-de-sac parties after he pissed in Mrs. Howard's tuna casserole.

Vance called Frawley old and that was that.

Maybe he said Bundt. Like there was a cake nearby.

From Basry Livingston's memoir, The Importance of Being Ernie:

As sweet as Lucy was, Vivian Vance seemed like a grouch to work with. Maybe I caught her at a bad time. William Frawley (Bub on MTS) had nothing good to say about her, though. He played Vance’s husband, Fred Mertz, on I Love Lucy for six seasons. Whenever her name came up, Frawley would blurt out his favorite description: “she’s a double-barreled asshole.”

I was told that Frawley and Vance got off on the wrong foot right at the beginning of their relationship. During an early casting session of I Love Lucy, Vance had a meeting with Lucy and Desi. When they informed her that they had hired William Frawley to play her husband, she blurted, “Oh, c’mon! Nobody would believe I’d be married to that old fart!”

He obviously never forgave her and transferred that real-life bitterness into their TV marriage. It was funny as hell on screen because the feelings were real.

Even though Frawley hadn’t worked with Vance on Lucy for years, he held a grudge like an elephant. Occasionally, he would recruit Stan and me to help him harass Vance while she was working on the soundstage next to ours. When Frawley was in the mood for a sneak attack, usually after a few shots of Cutty Sark whiskey at lunch, we’d gather our ammunition: large circular film cans. Frawley would hold open The Lucy Show stage door and cock his ear, listening to a scene being rehearsed inside. The second he heard Vivian’s shrill voice he’d give us the signal to fling the metal cans through the open door. They would land with a loud metallic bang, and Frawley would yell, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” We’d flee like three juvenile delinquents, Frawley leading the way.

R48 I'm beginning to think William Frawley is the true patron saint of DL. The whole thing started because she called him old and he refused to get over it.

Also, R43, Livingston says in his memoir that due to his drinking problem, Frawley began to constantly forget his lines. Worse yet, he began nodding off during filming. His health deteriorated to the point that he was unable to pass his insurance health exam. That's what forced his departure from MTS - being uninsurable, they had to let him go.

He died a few months later.

he died over a year later. He did a camo on "The Lucy Show" shortly before he died.

[quote]He did a camo

Oh, dear.

You will never forget this.

" When Frawley was in the mood for a sneak attack, usually after a few shots of Cutty Sark whiskey at lunch"

That's funny, because his contract with I Love Lucy stated that if he was ever caught drinking on the job Desilu could fire him on the spot. He never was caught drinking. I guess My Three Sons had no such stipulation, so he immediately went back to drinking.

Seems like Bill Frawley got a lot of breaks that most old drunks never did. That's ok, Uncle Charlie was a good replacement for "Bub". He was never missed after a few episodes

Hey, Vivian Vance is one of DL's most cherished patron saints. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, or otherwise known as

R53 it's been posted here dozens of times

(I know, I was at least some of those posts!)

[quote]As sweet as Lucy was, Vivian Vance seemed like a grouch to work with.

And they called ME a bitch!

I'm doing research for my phantom Vivian Vance biopic (which is more than Sorkin can say ... ) and looking up 1950s interviews with and articles about Viv.

A few from earlier in the decade mention that after the success of I Love Lucy, she was offered several film roles, which she ended up turning down. Another states that she planned to use the hiatus during Lucille's pregnancy to appear in a couple of movies, a development which never materialized.

I wonder if Ober, who was appearing in films during this time, put his foot down.

Uncle Charley was an unwatchable character. Frawley hated Demerest, going back to their days as bit players in B movies.

^ I liked Uncle Charlie better than Bub. There, I said it. Seeing Bub work as a domestic made me think that Fred fell on hard times losing Ethel and the apartment building along with his dignity

William Frawley was a lifelong alcoholic, you can see his right hand shaking in many scenes of I Love Lucy, because he needed a drink,, or him put his hand in his pocket to hide the shakes. William Frawley was a real life curmudgeon, but very interesting to watch on screen. He and Vivian Vance detested each other, but had wonderful onscreen chemistry as a bickering married couple, that is what you call acting. I recall Frawley commenting on Vance along the lines, "She's the best thing to come out of Kansas, sometimes I wish she'd go back there." lol

The word cunt is almost a term of endearment in the UK. Yet here it's considered a. vile epithet. How did that happen?

r61 it's funny, as a kid watching ILL, I never noticed Frawley's shakes.

Now I can't unsee them in every scene.

r36 I can't put my finger on it at the moment, but in one of the tabloid pieces about the Vance-Ober affair, Ober's wife described him as the "perfect" husband and, iirc, begged him to come back.

I can see how he was a catch. Tall, handsome, charming, erudite, Preddie-Prep-and-Princeton educated ... from a very old Massachusetts family. In his own way, I think he loved Vance, but she probably embarrassed him: Midwestern, squarely middle class, barely high-school educated, a little too rough around the edges for his taste. They were from different worlds. I don't know much about his first wife, other than they were wed in their early 20s. I assume she was much more like Ober: New England stock, privately educated, etc. Also, I don't think she ever remarried.

To some extent, and also given the times, I think Vivian probably framed the abuse as a reflection of her shortcomings as a spouse. She seriously considered quitting I Love Lucy because dealing with Ober's jealousy became too much for her and she feared another nervous breakdown. However, he rather liked the lifestyle her earnings afforded him, and told her not to quit.

Cuntess R6..

Demerest was annoying in anything I've ever seen him do---basically a bit player who always the same performance. Frawley had a bit more subtlety and could play more varied roles.

Agreed r66

[quotes]That's funny, because his contract with I Love Lucy stated that if he was ever caught drinking on the job Desilu could fire him on the spot.

That’s what I always thought, but the article at OP states differently:

[quote]“I was very upset over the movie,” Kupferberg tells Page Six. “I thought J.K. Simmons, who’s a really good actor, his character was just not like Frawley was. They really warmed him up. The idea that he took a drink or two … he was really a very, very bad alcoholic.

[quote]“He drank all day. He would go across the street. He would go to a place called Nickodell,” she continues. “He would drink there, and then after work, he would drink more. He was also really cheap, and when Nickodell raised the price of their beer by 10 cents a glass, he stopped going there and went to Musso and Frank.”

R60 I agree. I liked Uncle Charlie better than Bub. I never saw the black and white episodes while growing up, it was the color episodes. I saw the Bub episodes when Nick at Night showed them and it was like you said. I felt I was watching Fred Mertz who had fallen on hard times. He was always Fred to me, couldn't never see him in another role. Demerest fit the color episodes and I thought he was quite good on them.

He was clearly a bad alcoholic, based on the shakes.

It's amazing he lived to age 79 as an alcoholic. They tend to die much earlier, like in their 60s.

Agreed, r71.

The alcoholics I've known who were so bad they got the shakes died in their 50s and 60s of liver disease

I deserved an Emmy.

He also called Vance "a big bag of door knobs." Pretty funny.

I preferred calling her "fat, ugly dyke"

Okay, Frawley experts. Tell me.

Was he, or was he not, gay?

I loved his small role as the stereotypical Irish-American political fixer in Miracle on 34th Street. I must have seen I Love Lucy before I'd seen the film, because when he came on the screen my mom said I just started yelling, "FRED, FRED, FRED!" I mean, it makes sense I used to watch I Love Lucy every morning and when I was five I asked for I Love Lucy VHSs to watch in my room.

William Frawley dropped dead of a heart attack while walking on Hollywood Boulevard on the day I was born.

And a DLer was born, r78!

BEARKING:

Cenozoic era begins!

Frawley always seemed old to me. But Elizabeth Patterson was ancient - born less than 10 years after Lincoln's assassination (1874).

I saw an old movie on TCM the other day that had Fred MacMurray and William Demarest in it....and they were both fairly young, so that could have had something to do with his being cast as Frawley's replacement.

I saw an interview with Barry Livingston (Ernie ) , and he said that while Demarest was good in the role, the kids on the show all preferred Frawley.

He looks old here, about seven years before I LOVE LUCY.

I think Frawley was born looking like a 40-year-old man

Demarest and MacMurray both were contract players at Paramount and worked together in a number of films. Paramount did not have the huge stable of contract players of MGM or Warners. Demarest was a favorite of Preston Sturges, who reused a lot of the same character actors in his films.

Like Frawley, Demarest was a drunk himself, just more functional.

A listing of the spare roster of Paramount players.

I had a great part for Demarest in Bases Loaded.

Did women ever call the police during domestic violence incidents back then? Did police ever make arrests?? Or did they just try to calm things down?

I love the episodes where Frawley sings. It's the only time he actually looks like he's enjoying himself.

The talk in this thread about the lifespan of alcoholics reminded me of an old FB from my 20s. He was in his 40s and highly dysfunctional - addicted to crack and a bad alcoholic. He has never had a steady job and has lived off a trust fund most of his life. He's also been a heavy drinker since his teens, and his father (also an alcoholic) died around age 55 of liver cancer.

Anyway, we really don't talk much anymore (we live several states away now), but every six months or so he gets lonely and texts me. He's in his 50s now, and I will be shocked if he sees 60.

It's sad that his entire adult life has been, more or less, defined by alcoholism. He's not a bad person, but I'm not sure he's ever wanted to get sober.

In other breaking celebrity news, Valentino is Dead and Arbuckle Held for Murder