My Three Sons

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My Three Sons
Image:My3Sons.jpg
My Three Sons opening titles.
Format Sitcom
Starring Fred MacMurray
William Demarest
Don Grady
Stanley Livingston
Barry Livingston
Tim Considine
William Frawley
Meredith MacRae
Tina Cole
Beverly Garland
Dawn Lyn
Ronne Troup
Daniel, Joseph, and Michael Todd
Country of origin Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
No. of episodes 380
Production
Running time 30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel ABC (1960-1965)
CBS (1965-1972)
Original run September 29, 1960 – August 24, 1972
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

My Three Sons is a situation comedy about a Scots/Irish- American family (Douglas/ O'Casey), that ran from September 29, 1960 to August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of an aeronautical engineer and widower Steve Douglas, played by Fred MacMurray, and his three sons. This seemingly simple premise was a huge hit and a cornerstone of the CBS lineup in the 1960s. With 380 episodes produced, it is second only to The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet as television's longest running (live-action) family sitcom. The show began on ABC in black-and-white, but moved to CBS for the 1965–66 season after ABC would not commit to the expense of producing the program in color.

Along with the change in networks and the transition to color, other changes happened during 1965: William Frawley (who had played Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy in the 1950s) played "Bub" O'Casey, the boys' maternal grandfather until he was declared too ill to work by Desilu Studios and the producers could no longer find insurance for him. They took a gamble on Frawley for half a season, until a suitable replacement could be found. He was replaced by William Demarest who played his brother Charley. According to the storyline, Bub fell in love with Ireland while the gang visited the Emerld Isle the previous season and went back to help his Aunt Kate celebrate her birthday. Shortly after Bub left, Charley dropped by unannounced to pay a visit and stayed on as housekeeper. According to Frawley's biography Meet the Mertzes, he was never pleased with being written out of the show. He would frequently return to the studio and criticize William Demarest's performances. Frawley died a short while later. Tim Considine, who had worked with MacMurray on The Shaggy Dog, played oldest son Mike and did not renew his contract. Considine was into car racing, which his contract forbade. The character was written out with Meredith MacRae who had played his fiancee and (in his last episode) new wife.

To keep the show's title plausible, Tim Considine wrote a storyline where youngest brother Richard (better known as Chip - and played by Stanley Livingston) had an orphaned friend named Ernie Thompson (played by his real-life brother Barry Livingston) who was awaiting adoption. When Steve tries to adopt Ernie, he faces trouble as a widowed parent, until Uncle Charley (Demarest) comes to the rescue. (In the storyline, the law requires a woman to live in the home of an adoptee. The judge determined that the intent of the law was to make sure a full-time caregiver would be present; with Uncle Charley meeting that role, he assents to a legal fiction declaring him "housemother" to the Douglases.)

While the three sons were always central to the storyline, several major changes happened by the late 1960s. In 1967, the family moved to California from New York. Robbie married his classmate/girlfriend Katie Miller (Tina Cole). Two years later, Steven re-married, taking widowed teacher Barbara Harper (Beverly Garland) as his wife; she had a 6-year-old daughter, Dorothy aka Dodie (Dawn Lyn), so Steven now had a stepdaughter. Also, the last 1 1/2 years of the series featured fewer appearances of both Don Grady and Stanley Livingston, Grady's character was in the military, which allowed for his wife Katie and their triplet sons (named Charles, Steven, and Robert) to remain within the Douglas household, while Chip and his teen wife Polly (who eloped after Polly's father refused to accept the marriage) had moved into their own apartment.

The series' cast had an unusual music connection. MacMurray began his career as a sax player during the 1930s, and sometimes played it on the series. Actress Tina Cole (Katie) was born into the King Family, a popular 1950s-60s group. Ronne Troup (Polly) was the daughter of musician/ composer Bobby Troup (Emergency!), who wrote the song "Route 66", and Dawn Lyn is the younger sister of popular 1970s idol, Leif Garrett. Bobby Troup was married to his Emergency! co-star singer Julie London. Don Grady (Robbie) composed and produced music, having created a successful Las Vegas venue for Phantom of the Opera star Michael Crawford.

Contents

[edit] Production schedule

Fred MacMurray was the only actor to appear in every episode of the series. Reportedly, MacMurray's contract stipulated that he work only 65 days per year. His scenes for each season were produced in two blocks of filming. He would report to the Desilu-Gower lot in late May and work thirty-five days (five days per week, weekends off), then take off for 10 weeks. He would then return to complete his remaining 30 days of shooting and was finished altogether around Thanksgiving. MacMurray's ten-week hiatus in the middle of each season's production schedule freed up the actor to follow other pursuits, while the filming of scenes with the other cast members continued. In short, all episodes were filmed out of sequence. This sometimes produced noticeable continuity problems onscreen, especially as the boys grew and changed styles. William Frawley, for one, never felt comfortable with this filming method, having grown accustomed to filming I Love Lucy in sequence.[citation needed]

[edit] Distribution

My Three Sons was created by George Tibbles and produced by Don Fedderson throughout the show's run, with MCA Television co-producing the series during its 1960-65 ABC run. CBS Paramount Television presently owns distribution rights to the entire series (including the more widely seen 1965-71 CBS episodes), while the ABC episodes and the final season on CBS (1971-72) are included in a separate syndication package. The color episodes were syndicated during the 1970s; the earlier black-and-white episodes were seen on Nick-at-Nite in the 1980s, as the color ones were during the 1990s.

[edit] Main Cast

Recurring cast:

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://india.smashits.com/wikipedia/My_Three_Sons"
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