“My Three Sons” (1960-1972)

I watched My Three Sons in color every day for years and years starting when I was 8. I was shocked circa 1983 when they started running the black and white seasons with Fred Mertz instead of Bill Demerest as the uncle/maid.

When I was a kid, the syndication packages of Bewitched, Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeannie all contained both the black and white and the color episodes. For some reason, The Andy Griffith Show package was ONLY the black and white episodes. While The Lucy Show was only the color episodes. Make Room For Daddy was never in color, but the syndication package eliminated the first 5 years when the wife was Jean Hagen, and they later seemed to retcon it to suggest he was only ever married to Kathy (Marjorie Lord.)

My Three Sons tends not to include the final year in the synication package either for some reason. Pretty crazy to consider it was still on when CBS was airing All in the Family.

Robbie got my little gayling heart to flitter....I thought he was perfection.

The show got progressively worse. You're probably not missing anything with that last season.

The early black & white seasons are much better than the later ones. The first season was largely written by Peter Tewksberry who actually tried to make good use of the motherless-family and the odd shooting schedule (MacMurray did all his scenes in short blocks). The subsequent seasons were written by increasingly hackish guys who rarely did anything novel.

r2 Fuck you.

Same here, R1. Right down to the b/w Andy Griffith episodes being shown instead of color. I don’t even think they show the color ones on TVLand.

As I said, it wasn’t until Nick at Nite that I ever saw the b/w episodes of most of these shows. I guess they thought only color reruns brought ratings.

Tim Considine (Mike Douglas) was the cover photographer for Joni Mitchell’s “Blue.”

Tim Considine was my first crush, when he was on Spin & Marty, the Hardy Boys, the Swamp Fox (hated that they killed him off).

This show was so dreary compared to Beverly Hillbillies, Brady Bunch, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan’s Island and others that were being syndicated in the 70s.

I loved the dad's later-seasons wife played by Beverly Garland, the kid Dodi, and Robbie's wife played by Tina Cole of the musical "King Family" cousins. But what a horror McMurray turned into when they contemporized him with those big ol' huge sideburns that could've only been bested by Ed Sullivan's ugly ones in his show's last couple of seasons, too.

Dodie was most definitely retarded.

R5 yeah when I was a kid, I loved the black and white episodes of Bewitched. As I got older, I noticed they removed the B&W episodes from the syndication package. Which was terrible partly because the original Mrs. Kravitz was so much better.

Eventually the black and white eps of both Bewitched and Gilligan's Island made it back into the syndication packages. Colorized.

As for Andy Griffith, they aired only the black and white episodes because they were so far superior to the color episodes, which I only discovered when they were shown on TV Land. Sorry, but it just isn't the same show without Barney.

The final season of My Three Sons was bad. The middle boy (Chip?) got married and he was way too young. There was a good one with a sexy Mickey Dolenz.

It was crazy how they moved to North Hollywood for the color episodes.

The first year of “My Three Sons” is brilliant.

Season 1 Episode 4 "Countdown" .

The story is beautifully told. It's like a fine elegant little play.

Excellent writing, staging. Note the sophisticated lighting. The artsy editing.

I’ll look for that, R12.

R11, I remember being 6-7 years old and thinking Chip was too young to get married.

R13 Click on the link.

I read Barry Livingston's autobio ("The Importance of Being Ernie.") Fairly entertaining, although not much juicy gossip about his co-stars. Barry still shows up on TV shows fairly regularly.

No one could dance quite like Don Grady as Robbie.

The family that jams together, stays together!

Remeber Steve's Scottish cousin? Played by Fred McMurray, but dubbed by another actor? That was so bad. Hearing a different voice coming out of Fred's mouth was so distracting I could never watch those episodes.

Fred MacMurray disliked working with children, so he worked it into his contract he got to spend as little time as possible with him. Usually in the color seasons when there's dialogue between Steve and one of the children, they each were filmed entirely separately so he could keep away from them.

[quote]Fred MacMurray disliked working with children

You have no evidence for that, certainly not from the kids ...now adults...who starred on the show.

The reason he filmed certain scenes separately was to slim down his work schedule. But even so, he filmed plenty of scenes with the kids as well. See post R13.

^ meant to write: See post R12.

When I was 13 or 14 My Three Sons, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet were all in syndication, leading to imaginary midnight swims with Robby, Ricky, and Wally. Eddie Haskell and a couple of his delinquent friends would crash the party, bringing beer and reefer to ensuing hijinks.

r23 Lumpy Rutherford was the pass-around bottom.

R12, thanks for posting that. It’s a good episode, well-directed and edited and nothing like the show in its later years.

In that first year William Frawley was given a lot to do. There are episodes that focus on his character and he carries the episode. You really get to see what a good actor he was.

Tina Cole as Sunny Day

Loni O' Grady was Don Grady's sister. When it came to pills 8 was never enough for Loni. She died at age 46

I can’t wait to see the show on HULU - now the theme song is running through my head. Happy , happy memories of this show. Love, love love Fred MacMurray. I can just hear him say “Hey Chipper!” Really enjoyed Tina Cole and Beverly Garland in the later years……. Are we ever going to see Ozzie and Harriet again? Those were in daily syndication when I was growing up. I watched a few episodes a on You Tube a few years ago Ozzie reminded me a little bit of Jerry Seinfeld. He was sort of the ringmaster of “nothing” he had the talent to make it look easy.

Beverly Garland was capable of better than the bland My Three Sons

Full Camp Beverly.

As Tuesday Weld's mom in Pretty Poison (1968)

I remember seeing Stanley Livingston in Paul Bartel's cult fave Private Parts (1972) His real-life brother Barry played Ernie on My Three Sons

Tina Cole, Dawn Lyn and Barry and Stanley Livingston are the last surviving members of the cast.

William Frawley who played 'Bub' was let go from the show due to deteriorating health. He suffered a heart attack and died on Hollywood Blvd. on March 6, 1966, while walking home after seeing the movie Inside Daisy Clover (1965) which starred Natalie Wood. Frawley worked with Wood in the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. He was 79 years old when he died.

Frawley's I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance upon hearing of his demise while dining at a restaurant said, "Champagne for everyone!"

Bill Frawley used to call Viv an "old bag of door knobs." She really resented having to play the wife of a 20 years older man.

I know that Lucy REALLY wanted Bea Benaderet and Gale Gordon as Fred and Ethel. Bea had played basically tge same role on Lucy's radio show, and she really didn't want to do the show wuthout Bea. But, she was Blanche Morton on Burns and Allen, and Gale was with Eve Arden on Our Miss Brooks.

I'm glad it was Viv and Bill. Gale and Bea would've been way too conventional. Viv and Bill were way more interesting.

I was born in 1970 and my prime TV watching years were 1973-1982. I LOVED TV. I remember my Kindergarten teacher saying "I'm sad today" on the last day of Kindergarten. I blurted out "Well I'm not! Now I get to see m' shows!" Haha.

We had three independent local stations in the NYC area. I grew up in New Jersey. WNEW (5) WPIX (11) and WOR (9). WOR was pretty worthless. They couldn't afford the more recent, popular syndicated shows, so they got cheap shows. While 11 had The Honeymooners, 9 had Life of Reilly. I think the only channel 9 show I watched was Hazel. And on Thanksgiving they would have a Godzilla/King Kong marathon.

Channel 5 had The Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith, The Flintstones, I Love Lucy, Make Room for Daddy, Bugs Bunny/Loony Toons and later on All in the Family and MASH.

Channel 11 had Batman, Gilligan's Island, Little House, Happy Days, Lavrene and Shirley, Dick Van Dyke, The Lucy Show, Mothers In Law, My Three Sons, and Love American Style.

An interesting thing- there were TWO versions of Our Gang/The Little Rascals. Channel 5 had the VASTLY superior Hal Roach 1924 to 1942 episodes. Channel 11 had the HORRIBLE MGM years 1943 to 1947ish. They were just awful and they had to call it Our Gang

Similarly, Channel 11 had the 1930s and 40s Popeye cartoons which were wonderful. Channel 5 had the early '60s Popeye cartoons that were made for television. They stunk on ice, if you dont mind me saying. For some reason in the later ones they called Bluto Brutus. They were just bad.

I was overall a channel 5 guy myself. Interestingly, WNBC, the NY local NBC affiliate, would run Mary Tyler Moore Show and Here's Lucy back to back at 4pm. Then I would watch Little House on channel 11 at 5pm. What a great lineup!

So much Lucy. Lucy was on at 9am on channel 5 with I Love Lucy. Then at 10:30am on 11 The Lucy Show, then at 4:30pm Here's Lucy. Honestly, at 7 or 8 years old, to me all 3 series were equally good. I would notice them repeating jokes, storylines, ect, on the 3 shows but it never bugged me. I have to say, I never liked The Lucy Show or Here's Lucy eps without Viv. In fact, I LOVED seeing Viv (Ethel) in color!! She always wore blue eyeshadow. I was so very gay. Haha.

I can't hear the theme song without singing the lyrics from the Nick at Night commercial (featured second on the attached). The rest are funny, too.

[quote]R36: Similarly, Channel 11 had the 1930s and 40s Popeye cartoons which were wonderful. Channel 5 had the early '60s Popeye cartoons that were made for television. They stunk on ice, if you dont mind me saying. For some reason in the later ones they called Bluto Brutus. They were just bad.

When production was beginning on the King Features Popeye episodes, they anticipated legal trouble using the name 'Bluto'; changing it to 'Brutus' was designed to circumvent that. The trouble never came, though.

Animation values for the King Features Popeyes was cheaper than those Paramount had used, being farmed out to Rembrandt Animation in Czechoslovakia. Rembrandt also did some of the later Tom & Jerry cartoons. Due to the poor animation values, viewers can easily tell which episodes.

But the King Features Popeyes did have something going for them - the extended cast of characters unseen since the Thimble Theater comics: Sea Hag, Rough House the chef, King Blozo, the Professor, the Magical Wiffle Bird, and Alice the Goon. They also seemed to lack boundaries as to the degree of pathos they exhibited in storylines. For example, 'Spinach Greetings', where the Sea Hag has her vulture snatch Santa and bag of toys, ties him up and makes him watch while she smashes childrens' toys with a hammer, and throws them into the fireplace. (Seeing this when I was three or four, I just about lost my goddamned mind - my resulting screams and wails brought my parents running. They scooped me up and bore me out of the room. :D)

r29 Ozzie and Harriet is on Freevee. Also Dobie Gillis, That Girl, and LOTS of other old sitcoms.

I love how it was entitled “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” when they just stayed at home and did domestic things.

[quote]I remember seeing Stanley Livingston in Paul Bartel's cult fave Private Parts (1972) His real-life brother Barry played Ernie on My Three Sons

I knew Paul a bit and once asked him about it. He said he'd never seen My Three Sons but thought Stanley's fans might come see the movie, as it had no stars. He also said Stanley came to the premiere and left without speaking to him afterwards, so I assume he was appalled.

Except for Double Indemnity MacMurray had a bland, sexless screen presence. It's hard to believe that My Three Sons ran for 12 years. During that time MacMurray appeared in a number Disney films: The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Follow Me Boys and The Happiest Millionaire.

McMurray was a Blandy McBlanderson, never understood his appeal or successful career.

Before she became Billie Jo Bradley on Petticoat Junction, Meredith McRae played the girlfriend of the oldest brother and they left together when they got married.

Meredith died young.

That show went on about three years too long. Should have ended when he finally got married.

Don’t forget that Fred MacMurray was the wicked boss man womanizer J.D. Shelldrake in “The Apartment.” Shirley MacLaine tried to kill herself over him in Jack Lemmon’s apartment.

Apparently, Fred MacMurray was a complete piece of crap on the show.

In real life, he was not a nice person like his tv and movie personas.

Trying to edit him into all the episodes after he taped a full block of episodes must’ve been a logistical nightmare.

At the time I was watching reruns in the 70s, MacMurray was in ads on TV shilling some bizarre kind of math for kids called something like “Chisanbop.”

They wanted Lucy to play Uncle Charlie.d Gary talked her out of it.

My Three Tits

The Livingstons' father owned strip clubs in Baltimore. I doubt that they were particularly sheltered.

They should have pulled the plug when ABC cancelled the show. Demerest was annoying whereas Frawley was brought a certain warmth.

MacMurray was notoriously cheap. He charged for using his own golf clubs as a prop for one episode. His movie career was an odd one--he straddled A and B films, lacked the charisma to carry a film on his own but did well in ensembles.

Frawley hated William Demorest with a passion and after he was cut from the show he kept coming back to the lot and started causing trouble due to his anger at being replaced. They finally had to ban him from the lot altogether. Frawley was a well known alcoholic. When he was on Lucy Desi finally had to have it written into his contract that if he showed up to the set more than once drunk he'd be fired on the spot. Frawley also had it written into his contract that he got the day off for every home game of the Dodgers.

It's always amazed me how there is not one iota of family resemblance between Barry & Stanley Livingston.

[quote]Apparently, Fred MacMurray was a complete piece of crap on the show.

Link please.

[quote]Except for Double Indemnity MacMurray had a bland, sexless screen presence.

Hardly. He was good in "The Caine Mutiny" and "Remember the Night."

I would watch "My Three Sons" when I was ten years old and imagine Don Grady had the biggest, most dense bush ever seen.

Fred MacMurray was the star of the second highest grossing film of 1959, beat only by Ben Hur. The 5th highest grossing film of 1961. And the 6th highest grossing film of 1963.

During an interview David Nelson was asked the difference between his TV life and his real life and he said: "On tv, my mom knows where the kitchen is."

[Quote]Hardly. He was good in "The Caine Mutiny" and "Remember the Night."

he may have been 'good', but he was bland and sexless

[Quote] The Livingstons' father owned strip clubs in Baltimore. I doubt that they were particularly sheltered.

At 18 he (Stanley) married a go-go dancer, Sandra Livingston. The six-year marriage ended in 1974. The marriage produced a daughter, Samantha -IMDB

R57 was MacMurray in Sleeping Beauty? 1. Ben-Hur 1959 3h 32m G 8.1 (252K) ... 2. Sleeping Beauty 1959 1h 15m G 7.2 (160K) ... 3. Some Like It Hot 1959 2h 1m Passed ... 4. Operation Petticoat 1959 2h 4m Approved ... 5. Pillow Talk 1959 1h 42m Passed ...

So Chip getting married so young on the show wasn’t so far fetched.

Boxoffice 1959 - Shaggy Dog - #2

I remember an episode when Don Grady was in ballet tights. He looked good.

Don Louis Agrati....he was pure Italian.

Barry talking about William Frawley getting drunk at lunch and he and his brother having to coax him back to work from the restaurant they were at.

Barry was on GH recently.

Not sure how reliable Wikipedia is R62 Not listed in the top 10 here

The Shaggy Dog

For MacMurray this was a big film. His career was in the doldrums at that point and this film brought him to his final phase of his career as the star of family oriented comedies. He got a television series, My Three Sons, after this and that together with the Disney films kept him steadily working for the next fifteen years.-IMDB

The live-action Disney films were bland big screen sitcoms not unlike My Three Sons

[quote]Not sure how reliable Wikipedia is [R62]

The numbers are from Variety

Even the link posted by R60 immediately shows Shaggy Dog at number #2.

MacMurray's contribution to those films' financial success was likely about the same as Alec Guinness' to the Star Wars franchise.

Fred was no Hayley Mills

What are you smoking R68?

1. Ben-Hur 1959 3h 32m G 8.1 (252K) ...

2. Sleeping Beauty 1959 1h 15m G 7.2 (160K) ...

3. Some Like It Hot 1959 2h 1m Passed ...

4. Operation Petticoat 1959 2h 4m Approved ...

5. Pillow Talk 1959 1h 42m Passed ... More items

some of the lists may refer to domestic BO while others might indicate worldwide BO

R71 The link leads to a Google page. I'm on a VPN, not in the US, perhaps that's why.

Out of curiosity: Where are the figures in your link coming from? And what are the grosses?

BTW: The link R66 posted says: "To make this list a movie had to be made in 1959." "Shaggy Dog" was made in 1958. Released in 1959.

[quote]Fred was no Hayley Mills

Speaking of Hayley -- she's the murder victim on the newest episode of "Death in Paradise."

R73 click on the links @ R60 and R66

Tim Considine who appeared in The Shaggy Dog was part of the Original cast of My Three Sons

MacMurray filmed all his scenes for every full season in a few weeks. He'd come in, film every scene he was to be in and then he'd split and leave the rest of the cast there to do the scenes he wasn't part of.

^ Same for Brian Keith in Family Affair.

At least Uncle Bill and the kids talked about the dead parents. A lot. I love Family Affair, it's head and shoulders above My Three Sons. It's just that FA was the most morose sitcom in history. Loved the pathos. Fucking even Jan Brady died on FA. Love MTS too though. Just not as much. Maybe it would have helped if they had better doorknobs.

I’m Jaye P Morgan appearing in an episode years before I flash my boobies on the Gong show.

Family Affair was dreadful in its melancholy. Mr. French was the least annoying character on the show. Kathy Garver apparently was a wack job. My Three Sons just became cliche ridden in its last several seasons.

It didn’t show up when I searched for it on Hulu.

[Quote] BTW: The link [R66] posted says: "To make this list a movie had to be made in 1959." "Shaggy Dog" was made in 1958. Released in 1959.

Nonetheless R73 The Shaggy Dog IS on that list. Scroll down.

I found it on Amazon, r81. I don't know if you need to be a Prime member or not.

gonna getcha

Stanley Livingston can be glimpsed @2:00 in the trailer for Private Parts (1972)

R82 For "Actual Box" and "Adjusted Box Office" it has Shaggy Dog at #4

Variety has it at #2

Whatever: it was a big hit.

Don Grady was Italian but changed his name. I had the biggest crush on him. Annette who kept her original Italian name and refused to change it became the biggest child and teenage Disney star of all time. She was great even in the most banal shows. What a horrible torturous end she had. Unfortunately her husband released video on youtube of her at the end of her life and it was a terribly cruel and unwarranted thing to do.

I stopped watching when Fred married the world's most boring actress Beverly Garland(he had to be schtupping her on the side)and that circus freak of a child.

The worst of MTS was the episode when Chip, Richard, was interested in a girl who lived with her grandmother, who apparently grew up in 1865 and wanted to stay in that year. Chip had to pick the girl up in a horse and buggy. Lord it was as bad as a show could get.

My favorite Family Affair story, from another thread:

"I was in this interactive murder-mystery show -- lots of audience participation -- and she was brought in to bring a "name" to the show. From the beginning, we could tell she was a loon. Just very dramatic, showing off her little boy's headshot, bitching about this lawsuit against Haim Saban (who ripped her off from royalties, etc).

Anyway, rehearsals were tough, because the directors were always trying to throw us curveballs as they prepared us to be in front of the audience. One day, Kathy says to me, "I've got a bit of a headache" and on we go with rehearsal. The directors were actually being a bit tough on me and some of the other actors, not Kathy, but she suddenly runs offstage!

The director sends the stage manager backstage to see if she's OK and we continue.

All of a sudden we hear this bloodcurdling scream, "MOMMY!!! I WANT MY MOMMY!!!! AAHAHHAHAA!!!" It was unreal. Needless to say, the director sent us outside for a bit.

We came back in, there's Kathy, sitting in the audience, eating a bear claw (I'll never forget that). After a minute, she came back onstage and said to me, "Well, my headache is gone."

They fired her the next day.

The stage manager told me later that when he went backstage, Kathy was lying on the ground in a fetal position and when he went to touch her to see if she was OK, she jumped up and stared past him as if he wasn't there. And then she started to scream for her mommy.

It's probably the most bizarre experience I'd ever had in the theater (and there have been a few!)."

I, too love the detail about the bear claw.

beverly Garland began her career in Roger Corman films.

LOL, r90, I'd forgotten that.

My Three WELL HUNG Sons 🍆🍆🍆

Make room for daddy my three sons, father knows best!

R87 his mother was Mary Grady

Don wrote the theme for The Phil Donahue Show

"Grady was born Don Louis Agrati in San Diego, California, the son of Mary B. (née Castellino), a talent agent, and Lou Anthony Agrati, a sausage maker."

I bet his hole smelled like Irish Spring.

Don at 21. The girl seated next to him Judy Bishop reminds me a bit of Patty Duke

I just want to dribble some cum in Don's chin cleft

They've got a Dad

His name is Steve

He's got a job

He is real tall!

r21 One instance of MacMurray's not liking working with young people is that he didn't get along with Tommy Kirk.

Poor Tommy. What a mess.

I'm Stanley Livingston singing my little heart out. Please to enjoy!

Fred MacMurray was semi retired during the later seasons of My Three Sons and it was written into his contract that they could have him for a maximum of 65 days of filming per season. They would do every scene for the entire season based on what room the filming was done in. They'd do all his kitchen scenes for the season in a couple days, then move on to all the living room scenes, etc.

And there is not one iota of evidence that he was anything but well liked by everyone on the set. He was known as a very easy going guy.

R104 - you are correct about how the show was shot, but I believe that was MacMurray’s deal from the start. I read, decades ago in “The Great TV Sit-Com Book,” that William Frawley hated this piecemeal approach (which is essentially how most feature films are shot) because he was so used to the stage-play rhythms of I Love Lucy

A poster way above stated that this much have been a nightmare for the shows editors - they are actually the ones whose workflows were still basically the same, editors are used to working on scenes piecemeal during production.

The difficulty here was for the writers, production manager, crew and actors - it is one thing to plan out and pull off an out of sequence shoot for a roughly 2 hour movie — they were doing it for around 13 hours of runtime.

R87 I remember that video that Annette's husband put on YouTube. It was horrible to see.

Later I watched an interview with Shelley Fabares - Annette's dear friend - and she was asked if she had seen it and what she thought.

She said that Annette would have wanted folks to see what MS does to a person and maybe it would raise some money for research.

R105: You are correct. I believe he did 3 blocks of episodes in the beginning when they did 39 episodes/year and probably less later ion when 26 episodes was the norm.

They would need to have a large number of scripts ready to go and couldn't do a lot of retakes. Ironically, the show was much better in the beginning when they had to film more shows and figure out how to organize the material. Widowed parents were more of a novelty and they did more with that in the plots. They also had much better writing in the beginning---later on it was recycled plots and gimmicks like Robbie having triplets and the inevitable weddings. They would contract with directors for entire seasons--the first season was Peter Tewksbury who took more care (and ran up higher production costs) than the people they had later.

Fred MacMurray and a few of his on screen sons definitely gave the illusion of sizemeat.

I can't believe that at 92, Jaye P Morgan is still with us

Oh good. Another excuse to link to JP's disco album.

It's good.

R110 it is SO

FUCKING

GOOD!

LOVE this album. LOVE it!

(Can't Hide Love is the SHIT!)

Just listen to "You're All I Need To Get By" ! Fabulous.

William Frawley would get the kid actors go throw film cans at the door to the set of The Lucy Show when he’d hear Vivian Vance rehearsing her lines to throw her off. Desilu produced both shows. Frawley was a mean sob and the kid actors have talked about it in recent years.

It was such a dull show, as you could tell by the animated credits of the boys' feet with their hands thrusting down to show signs (what was the point of that?). Robbie and Chip were pretty unfunny, so the entire show depended on Ernie's goofiness and (most of all) Uncle Charley's constant crankiness.

It was one of the shows you would watch just to waste time.

The introduction of Dawn Lyn was death for the show, though. There were so many TV shows at that time featuring very small adorable children like The Courtship of Edie's Father, the Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, and Family Affair: her introduction must have been the network's attempt to tap into that market. But she was not appealing, and delivered almost all of lines in a monotone, and stood around with her mouth open.

I watched that “Countdown” episode posted above. It’s quite good. The editing is clever. During the end credits, they seem to just randomly show cars on the road. I guess this was sponsor content but I’ve never seen that before.

How's Dawn doing these days?

Yeah, the piecemeal filming approach can be tricky I’m sure when you need to make sure wardrobe and everything matches. I used to think “Knots Landing” (yes, I said it) must have been complicated to have say, Val walk into her house from outside and make sure everything- hair, clothes, accessories- all were the same when she entered the set of the house in a studio.

They said you could see irregularities in later seasons of MTS with the size of Dawn Lyn’s growing teeth in the MacMurray scenes and other scenes he wouldn’t be in for the same episode.

That story at R113 is classic. Vance was said to have been at a restaurant and exclaimed, “Champagne for everyone!” when she heard of Frawley’s death.

[quote]I watched that “Countdown” episode posted above. It’s quite good. The editing is clever. During the end credits, they seem to just randomly show cars on the road. I guess this was sponsor content but I’ve never seen that before.

The show was sponsored by Chevrolet. The end credits tie into the commercials but without context it does seem strange.

Just a Frawley side note: that’s actually NOT him as the owner of the tree that Jimmy Stewart plows his car into in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I swore it was him for years.

What did the show have to gain by moving from the Midwest to California? It wasn’t “Laverne and Shirley” and barely affected storylines - well, except when Ernie ends up at Eva Gabor’s house.

[Quote] And there is not one iota of evidence that he was anything but well liked by everyone on the set. He was known as a very easy going guy.

but there is plenty of evidence that he sucked the energy out of his scenes as an actor

MacMurray with June Haver his wife of 43 years 1954-1991 @18:40 Tab Hunter is a panelist

[quote] What did the show have to gain by moving from the Midwest to California?

It was likely they were attempting to reinvigorate the show by attracting a younger audience. That's the usual reason TV shows do a big plot change later in their runs.

Fred looks like he had a Big One.

[quote]The difficulty here was for the writers, production manager, crew and actors - it is one thing to plan out and pull off an out of sequence shoot for a roughly 2 hour movie — they were doing it for around 13 hours of runtime.

Brian Keith had the same deal on "Family Affair." Kathy Garver has said they shot all the Uncle Bill scenes first, then the ones with Buffy and Jody (due to child actors not being allowed to work as long as adults), and Kathy would end up doing her closeups to a prop man or a mop.

Inspiration for this?

Darn it - I just checked Hulu and I can’t find My Three Sons! Am I looking in the wrong place? ….. BTW - I always have a problem with Hulu buffering- it is crazy making.

June Haver was a Betty Grable wannabe at Fox - Betty said that June walked around with a Bible in one hand and some condoms in the other.

She quit the movies and went to a convent to become a nun - then left the order to marry Fred MacMurray.

Hedda Hopper said that that was changing your mind with a vengeance.

[quote]She quit the movies and went to a convent to become a nun

I thought she did that because she had a drinking problem.

OP here. The show is on Amazon Prime, not Hulu. My mistake.

I liked the fact that they had the boys grow up unlike something like Leave It To Beaver wher Beaver remained as stupid and gullible in the eighth grade as he was in the second grade.

Leave it to Beaver was based on the producers kids and they wrote many of the episodes. My Three Sons didn't have the same kind of inspiration, so the story arcs were usually stuff writers had done before for other shows.

That’s prob why the focus was on Wally so much in the later seasons.

[quote]Leave it to Beaver was based on the producers kids

Which one got stuck in the billboard coffee cup?

It was Zesto soup if you mind.

Fred & June appeared together in the uranium/Las Vegas episode of "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour."

And correcting the above-- Desilu did not "produce" MTS - it was just filmed on their lot.

Even in the earliest episodes, Don Grady was a nice looking kid in his early teens.

Those Livingston brothers never really blossomed, did they?

I loved 'Leave It To Beaver' when I was a kid in the 50s/60s. But now that I'm old as dirt when I watch it all I can see is how damn dumb Beaver was, what consummate liars he and Wally could be, and just how stupid June was most of the time, and what complete scum most of the boy's friends were. It's also very glaring now how little people thought of women and mothers back in those days. Beaver would get into trouble at school and the principal would call his house and June would answer. The principal would ask her to have her husband come down to the school asap to discuss a problem. When June said "is there anything I can do?", the principal (a woman) said "oh I think I'd better discuss it with Mr. Cleaver". Ward and June knew what trash Eddie and Lumpy were, yet they still let Wally hang around with them. And all of Beaver's friends were nothing more than troublemakers who'd coax idiot Beaver into doing something bad just so they could laugh at him.

And my God, that little fool Larry Mondello (played by Rusty Stevens), who could get Beaver to do any stupid thing he wanted, and whose mother (played by Madge Blake), was old enough to be his grandmother. He left the show after his contract ended because his mother refused to sign a new contract (the producers apparently disliked her immensely). The family then up and fled to Pennsylvania. Apparently he and Jerry Mathers were close during the show and years later Mathers searched for 20 years until he finally found Stevens selling insurance in New Jersey. He brought him back to TV for the LITB movie and a few episodes on the new series.

I liked Larry Mondello more than Beaver’s later friend, the adenoidal Gilbert.

I always said "Gilbert will grow up to be a criminal". He was played by Stephen Talbot, son of stage & screen actor Lyle Talbot.

Speaking of kids from the show who didn't end up that well, Stanley Fafara, who played Beaver's friend Whitey, After the show was over he later on got friendly with the members of the band Paul Revere & The Raiders and moved in with them for a while. He became an alcoholic and drug addict. then at his parents' instigation, he went to live with his sister in Jamaica, where he tried his hand at painting; however, he continued to drink and use narcotics. He then returned to Los Angeles in 1972 where he was married briefly. He supported himself by dealing narcotics. In the 80s he was arrested for breaking into pharmacies seven times. Fafara was sentenced to a year in jail after being arrested and convicted for an eighth burglary. After his release from jail, he tried several jobs but eventually returned to dealing drugs.

Fafara later developed an addiction to heroin, developed Hepatitis C and was in-and-out of rehabilitation centers for many years until he got sober in 1995. Poor guy died in 2003, on his 54th birthday, in Portland, Oregon, of complications from hernia surgery he underwent the previous month

Who is the idiot saying Fred sucked the energy out of scenes? He just stars and gives great performances in two of the best American films ever made Double Indemnity and The Apartment. He's perfect in both films. He's can also play genuinely comically goofy in The Absent Minded Professor. Very gifted.

I haven't read the above article on Kirk yet. But I'm sure it mentions Fred reading Tommy the riot act. Kirk said he deserved it. He was doing drugs and being an all around lowlife. I'm a big fan but he was fired from Disney because in his early 20s he was fucking a 15 year old boy. The mother confronted Disney and everyone froze him out understandably so. She probably got a very nice payout. But Disney brought him back for one more film he was so popular. I just read it. He was not treated cruelly he was being an asshole.

Look at the covers of both the DVD and bluray of Swiss Family Robinson. Kirk is the only family member excluded. And he and James were the most important stars in terms of bringing in the audiences.

He eventually could have had a nice career on TV. Instead he becomes a carpet cleaner.

He did it to himself. I understand how difficult it was back then for gays but being unprofessional and going out with a 15 year old is incredibly stupid and self destructive. No wonder Wyman was a bitch to him.

Do y’all remember the episode where Don’s character started growing pubes and was very confused,?

He asked Uncle Charley about it.

Charley inspected his crotch very closely and left him very relaxed and with a stain in his underwear.

As the laundry guy in the house, Charley promised to take care of it. And in the privacy of his room, man he did!

The guy mentions Moon Pilot. I don't remember Kirk in it so his role must be very small. A really disappointing movie not at all what you want it to be. Two good moments, Tryon in the bathroom without a shirt on and the ending where I believe he directs his rocket to the planet where his lover the alien comes from with Brian Keith yelling at him from mission control.

I'm fascinated by this thread's rabid Fred MacMurray Troll, who becomes hysterical if anyone suggests anything that could even possibly be construed as negative about Fred. Whoever dreamed there would be such a troll?

Fred had about as much range as a dial tone.

Fred hadn’t had pussy for years, until that harlot came along.

His wooden-like persona was also in his pants.

Just fucking grow up and watch films other than Avengers and Avatar movies. Idiots like you wouldn't know a great film from a toilet bowl cleanser commercial.

WTF are you shrieking about, r160? You seem to be on the wrong thread. This is about a TV show, not "a great film."

R149. Those pants were high-waisted for a reason.

A girl at his age, especially in the aircraft industry, needed to present both meat and potatoes to get any restroom glory hole action.

Fred MacMurray is in one of my favorite films of all time: "Woman's World" (1954) with Lauren Bacall, Clifton Webb, Cornel Wilde, a fabulous Arlene Dahl and unfortunately June Allyson.

Leave It To Beaver was vastly superior to My Three Sons. At least they HAD a mother. Most sitcoms in the 60’s seemed to be about widowers or single men living with kids or widowers living with single men AND kids.

Hyperbole, R154. A few, not even close to “most.”

“Bachelor Father,” “Family Affair,” “My Three Sons,” “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.”!

^ "Julia", "The Ghost & Mrs. Muir", "Bonanza", "Petticoat Junction", "The Doris Day Show"

R154 is correct....maybe not exactly "most" but it sure seemed that way.

Required mention of the Miyoshi Umeki troll of DL yesteryear.

R154 was speaking about men. They said “Widowers.”

And single parents became more and more of a thing in real life.

"The Andy Griffith Show."

"Make Room for Daddy" (for a few seasons between spouses)

I have formed the scientific hypothesis that the boy that Tommy Kirk had an affair with was Kevin Corcoran.....he is the right age.

And it seems possible that his mother would have read Walt the riot act when it happened. And of course Kevin had a job at Disney for the rest of his life - working behind the scenes until he died.

Did Noreen know?

R155 - Gidget, Nanny & The Professor, The Andy Griffith Show, hell, even My Little Margie about a father obsessed with his adult daughter's love life

I drink the wonderful MacMurray Ranch Pinot Noir. Good inexpensive wine.

And now, for feeling old... I was looking for the MacMurray Ranch at a wine store when a mid-20s sales guy approached and asked if I needed help. I spaced on the name for a (senior) moment and said I was looking for the wine made by the famous actor in MTS, The Shaggy Dog... when the name came back to me. The sales guy gave me a strange look and I asked if he knew who Fred MacMurray was, had he heard of MTS? No and no. But he found the wine.

MacMurray never operated the farm as winery. His estate sold it to Gallo with the provision that the ranch be sold to a family who would respect the land and continue running it as a farm. Gallo converted it to a winery (it's in prime Russian River wine country) and began producing wine in 2000.

Leave it to Beaver is vastly superior to most shows.

Single parents were okay back then, but a married couple sleeping in the same bed was verboten. They always had twin beds until a certain point in the 60s.

Yesterday on LITB Ward and June were getting nervous about Wally hanging around with friends just 3 years older than him who were married. He was invited to dinner at their apartment. The husband was played by Ryan O'Neal.

LITB was a bit more subversive than people gave it credit for. It was way under the surface but it was still there if you cared to look. Especially in the first 2 seasons when Beaver was very little. He was arguably the best child actor until self awareness kicked in.

Ward Cleaver: Well, you boys are very quiet tonight. What are you thinking about? Beaver Cleaver: I was just thinkin' what I'd do if I was a pig eatin' peoples ribs. June Cleaver: Beaver, please.

Eddie Haskell: Look Sam, if you can make the other guy feel like a goon first, then you don't feel like so much of a goon.

Wally Cleaver: I don't get that.

Eddie Haskell: Of course you don't. That's because you never went to kindergarten with a home permanent.

Ehh, Beaver was just contemplating his next barrage of lies he was going to tell his stupid mother.

That's funny, r166, because the Barbara Parkins (Judy the babysitter) episode was also on.

Violet Rutherford drinks gutter water

Wally Cleaver: Did Dad hit ya?

Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver: No.

Wally Cleaver: Did he yell at ya?

Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver: No.

Wally Cleaver: Then why ya cryin'?

Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver: Sometimes things get so messed up, crying is the only thing you can do.

How did this turn into a Beaver thread?

all threads eventually devolve. Hell, I'm surprised a MTS thread got this far as it is. I expected it to make about 10 posts.

I wonder if Wally and Beaver were intact. Wally had BDF for days.

Maybe June and Ward were 50s Beatniks, then settled down to squaresville once June got knocked up.

Back to "My Three Sons."

My brother used to say that most of sitcoms in the 60s that didn't involve magic or aliens were never actually meant to be very funny, but they were meant to just reassure viewers people were out there living normal lives. That's why they were so dull. He always gave this show and "The Brady Bunch" as examples.

I suspect June has a past:

Ward Cleaver: Ah, June, Gilbert's always talking about his parents. Have you ever met them?

June Cleaver: Oh, I see her at the supermarket every once in a while. She seems like a calm sensible person.

Ward Cleaver: You can't really go by that. You might look the same way to her.

OK. That's it for my LITB. I'll stick to MTS

Tony Dow just kept getting better and better looking, well until he hit that wall most men hit at a certain age. But poor Jerry Mathers, well, bless his heart.

As a kid, Uncle Charlie just seemed ugly and cranky. Bub was a warmer character.

Jerry Mathers was an outstanding child actor who turned into a terrible adult actor. His performance on the reboot of "Beaver" was abominable, and every time he guested on another show (e.g., "Married With Children"), he stank worse than Cheryl's pussy.

[quote]As a kid, Uncle Charlie just seemed ugly and cranky. Bub was a warmer character.As a kid, Uncle Charlie just seemed ugly and cranky. Bub was a warmer character.

Frawley understood comedy. The other guy really didn't.

I first watched MTS in its last season or two when I was 6 or 7. At first I thought all three sons were adopted because they looked not at all alike, and Ernie was clearly Special Needs. And why did gargoyle Uncle Charlie color his paltry hair thatch hair bright orange?

It’s fun to watch the show go from the staid early 60s looks to the vibrant early 70s.

Frawley may have been a mean drunk but he had good presence.

And after Desi Arnaz told him if he ever showed up drunk for work again, he’d be fired, Frawley never did.

[quote]and Ernie was clearly Special Needs

So then he could've been Dodie's brother.

(r160) You are correct per a lunch I had with Kirk at The French Marketplace in West Hollywood in the latter 70's.

This is Dodie's brother, r185...

I've always thought Stanley Livingston (Ernie) grew up to be a quite handsome man even though he is bald. His brother Barry is not attractive at all to me.

You know there was fucking on the set.

Who was the party bottom?

Probably Frawley.

Demarest at 87

Thanks R186.

Dawn Lynn was really good pre-MTS in a Dragnet episode as a neglected kid left alone with her baby sister. I liked Tina Cole and Ronne Troup added to the show. Beverly Garland always looked cheap to me. And I was thinking this at 9 years old!

Garland worked quite a lot for Roger Corman, screaming a lot and once fighting a giant cucumber. It probably kept her from having a more dignified screen presence.

She worked a lot. I'm guessing that she showed up, hit her marks, worked cheap and didn't have much attitude.

Demerest showed up often on Merv Griffin. He was tiresome. Merv purring with Estelle Winwood was funny, because one thing they shared was being closet cases.

Demarest looked better @R191 with white hair than that awful hair color on My 3 Sons

That fuzzy doily he plopped on top of his head was ridiculous.