Usually when this kind of thing happens, the actor has complained to the producers that he (or she) is tired of playing the same part, and they need to find a way to let them play an "evil twin" or something to liven up the show. They did the same thing with Erkel (Jaleel White) on Family Matters, where he tired of playing the cartoonish character week after week. I can tell you he was not happy with people who called him "Erkel" on his later show, Grownups.
I've read a lot about William Frawley and he was my kinda guy. Whats especially impressing about him was the deal he made with Desi Arnaz. Arnaz wanted Frawley to play Fred Mertz, but CBS put up a huge fight because of Frawleys shenanigans with the bottle at many other studios. Arnaz told Frawley that he'd force him into the cast (because Arnaz had final say per his contact as Executive Producer) BUT, that if Frawley fell back into his old ways it was three strikes and he'd be out, not just off I Love Lucy, but in all of Hollywood. Frawley agreed, and during the entire run of ILL , he never missed a days work. Good old fashioned professionalism. And its true, there was going to be a spin off featuring Fred and Ethel, but it never came to be. Vance probably just wanted to work with Lucy, which she did a few years later on The Lucy Show.
I get that, but the miming kind of takes the "challenge" out of it. Any character, the few there have ever been where the entire performance is dubbed... it's not a good look. There was Jethrine Bodine on Beverly Hillbillies, but that was a cartoonish drag bit. What MacMurray was doing wasn't inherently funny enough to do if you have to dub it, and it makes him look worse, not better, as an actor. I wonder if something happened, he tried to do a voice but couldn't pull it off and they decided to dub at the last minute. I suppose with the way they filmed the show they did all of those scenes in one shot, so it must have been an all or nothing decision.
My Three Sons was a regular when I was a kid it was something of a shock the first time I saw Double Indemnity .... And Pushover..... And discovering Demarest was a regular in so many Preston Sturges films.
It's possible that after filming all the Scottish scenes, someone decided they didn't like the accent he was using...
Fred is delightful in some of his early comedic roles especially with Carole Lombard. hands Across the Table Princess comes Across True Confessions. there was a DVD Universal set released in the early days of DVD that has these and several more Lombard films. Highly recommended if you like either Fred is kind of a “lite” Cary Grant but I like him almost as much and “no time for love” with Claudette Colbert is lots of fun.
One of WD's episodes that I like is from season 5, Lady In The Air. The main plot is FM is asked to modify a plane for a woman pilot, who wants to make a flight around the world. In the interim, she becomes attracted to him as well as he towards she, and wants to settle down with his family after being invited to dinner at the house, but he later unselfishly talks her out of it by saying she won't be happy later on. The subplot was Ernie noticed a grim painting in a store of an older man that looked exactly like Demerast, which was titled The Mean Old Grouch. They then all make a trek to the store to have a group look-see, and decide it is him because the bathrobe in the painting has a torn pocket just like his, which makes Demerast even madder. But who was the mystery artist that was gong to have to pay the piper....
According to the 'I Love Lucy' Book (Bart Andrews), Frawley would immediately go to the track after rehearsals and/or the tapings, and probably any other chance he got. Acting was a job to him and would badmouth Hollywood in general any chance he got. I read an interesting solution to the decline in the ratings, maybe in the above referenced book, maybe more recent than that. Since they were always trying to keep the show fresh via going to Europe, Hollywood and even the move to the country, which of course put the same four main characters in visually different settings, it was suggested that the Mertzes should have stayed put in NY, and the Ricardos stay in the country. Have story lines that involve the Ricardo's current country neighbors and maybe some new ones, and have actual scenes involving the Mertzes and some of their tenants in some episodes, and the ones that didn't, at least have them orally referenced so they were always fresh in our minds. And of course the segments that were solely devoted to the Mertzes, they could throw in a reference about the Ricardos from time to time in their scenes to maintain the connection. But alas, it would be much easier to make it a spinoff as you suggested they intended to do, and they could have met up in each others show from time to time, much like they did later on with The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, although neither was really a spinoff from the other.
Yes, agreed. I believe having the Mertzes stay in NY, with The Ricardos living in the country (Westchester, if i recall) would have been the best solution. They could have visited each other any time and created story lines about that. Vance probably killed the idea of a spinoff because she hated working with William Frawley, thats for sure.
I'm sure that Frawley did love going to Hollywood Park (the racetrack) as the three boys in My Three Sons have said the same thing. They also all say that he was a lot of fun to work with and treated them like his own sons.
I believe I read the reason the show was nixed was because Vance couldn't be persuaded to work with Frawley again. It's well known that they didn't get along, but it seems that Vance disliked Frawley much more than he disliked her.
Barry Livingston’s book says anytime you mentioned Vivian Vance to Frawley, he would loudly say “that woman is a double barreled a*****e”! Vance may have hated him more but he wasn’t fond of her either
LOL......I'm sure thats true. The story that is in Someones book is that there was a episode of "Lucy" where Fred and Ethel had to do a Vaudeville type dance number, and Vance expressed serious doubt that Frawley in his age and condition, could pull it off. Whereby Frawley supposedly answered with "Well, I've been in Vaudeville since I was 6, and I Guarantee you I end up teaching her fat F@#$%ing ass how to do the thing".......(something very close to that) . So Vance was offended and things were never very civil between them from then on.
I remember William Schallert played a similar role during The Patty Duke Show. He appeared as Martin's twin brother and old Uncle Jed. Raymond Burr played a different character on Perry Mason as well.
Maybe there is a fan of the show who can help me track down a MY THREE SONS episode I have been searching for for years. It would probably have been from the first three seasons. Robbie is determined to be thought of as a man, so he tries to grow a beard, attempts to swear ("heck" is the worst word he can come up with) and tries smoking a pipe. But at the end, he is invited to a "Bonnets and Booties" costume party, where everyone must dress up as a little kid and he puts on a Goody Two-Shoes outfit. I know it definitely exists because Nick at Nite used footage from it in a promo back in the early 1990s. Someone thought it was "The Chaperone" from Season Four, but that wasn't it. I have seen many episodes, but I can't seem to figure out which one this storyline is in. Does anyone know? Thanks!
I remember the episode, saw it within the last couple of years on MeTV. Perhaps "The Coffee House Set" from season 5? I remember the episode was black and white so it has to be sometime during the first 5 seasons.
Or it might be episode 12 from Season 5... "First, You're a tadpole". You might be remembering both episodes. I think he trying to impress Sally in one of the episodes.
I always preferred William Demarest as Uncle Charley over Bill Frawley as Bub, simply because I was very young when the Bub episodes aired and I have more memories of the later shows. I have only watched a handful of episodes in recent years. I haven't seen the bulk of the episodes since the original run.
When the shows were originally on US ABC and CBS, first-run, there were cast commercials, and MacMurray often did an intro and/or an outro. For example, before the opening credits could be film of MacMurray saying "Hi, welcome to our show" or "Hi, welcome to our show for Bristol-Myers" or whatever advertiser had the show that day. They did this throughout the original run, so there were lots of those bits for different advertisers. It is possible that an opening or closing or commercial would have a Christmas theme, and they could use those on any episode shown around Christmas. Remember, that show was filmed pretty strangely. Here is one example, from the fifth season - the open and close and cast commercial will never be syndicated but might turn up on an official disc release someday as an extra. The bit at 1:05 with the tomato and bottle is an echo of previous commercials with the cast using that gimmick, not flavors.
