How William Frawley Turned the ‘My Three Sons’ Kids Into His ‘Little Army’ Against Vivian Vance

William Frawley never forgot a grudge. By the time he was starring as Bub O’Casey on My Three Sons in 1960, it had been three years since I Love Lucy ended its run and the same year that the final of 13 episodes of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour had aired. Yet his long-running feud with former television wife Vivian Vance was far from over. As fate would have it, Frawley soon found two enthusiastic accomplices in young My Three Sons co-stars Stanley and Barry Livingston, whom he enlisted in a series of practical jokes aimed at his former TV wife.

To understand why Frawley was still orchestrating practical jokes years after I Love Lucy ended, you have to go back to the very beginning of the classic sitcom. According to entertainment historian Geoffrey Mark, author of The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television, the bad blood started before the cameras ever rolled.

GEOFFREY MARK: “Day one of I Love Lucy, the first read-through, Bill is there early to prove he’s reliable. Vivian shows up and innocently greets Desi Arnaz. She didn’t recognize Bill Frawley because Vivian wasn’t really a film person; she was a Broadway and nightclub performer. She said to Desi, ‘Who’s the old coot?’ Desi said, ‘That’s the guy who’s going to play your husband.’ ‘Husband?! He could play my grandfather!’ Bill heard this, instantly hated her and never forgave her. But the hostility became so obvious that the writers began writing the animosity into the scripts. It gave them a reason not to be huggy-kissy and lovey-dovey.”

Ironically, Frawley’s departure from Desilu is what made his later “venom campaign” possible. 

GEOFFREY MARK: “Bill had a contract with Desilu, which he completely ignored and went right into My Three Sons. Desi forgave him because of what he felt Bill had brought to the success of I Love Lucy. My Three Sons, its first five seasons, was shot at Desilu. Two seasons into that run, Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance came back for The Lucy Show.”

Hollywood pranksters

BARRY LIVINGSTON (actor, “Ernie Douglas,” My Three Sons): “We shot on sound stages that were literally right next to each other.” 

STANLEY LIVINGSTON (actor, “Chip Douglas,” My Three Sons): “He got me involved in pulling a prank on her a couple of times. I didn’t know what he was up to, but one time he said, ‘You know what I want you to do? I want you to go in there and get about 10 or 20 of those film containers.’ Those containers were aluminum and made to hold reels of film. I was more than happy to get them. Then we found a box and put them in there, but still didn’t know what Bill was up to.”

BARRY LIVINGSTON: “Bill would hold open the door to The Lucy Show stage and, anytime he’d hear Vivian’s voice, he’d signal us, ‘Okay, throw them!’ 

STANLEY LIVINGSTON: “Then we threw this box up there, and all these film tins came crashing down. Some of them took off rolling and spinning and running into each other. It really made a commotion.” 

BARRY LIVINGSTON: “When they’d hit something, there’d be this explosive metallic bang-bang-bang. Then he’d say, ‘Come on, let’s get the hell out of here,’ and we’d run back to our soundstage.”

STANLEY LIVINGSTON: “I think Vivian must have known it was Bill, because we heard this voice scream, ‘Bill!’ He yelled some expletive back at her and we ran for it. The crew was laughing; they may have known it was coming for all I know. It was just kind of fun to participate in Bill’s hijinks.” 

BARRY LIVINGSTON: “It was under the cover of this little intrigue, like we were on a mission. We were Bill’s little toadies in his little army—we would do his bidding to wreak havoc on Vivian whenever he felt like it.”

As outrageous as the prank sounds today, Geoffrey insists it wasn’t an isolated incident.

GEOFFREY MARK: “It wasn’t just the film cans. Bill also went in there and made other noises, loudly saying nasty things about her if she was within earshot—not to her face, but about her. It was just little things; Bill just hung onto this feeling about her. The kids went along with him because they loved Bill. They didn’t have a grandfather, and Stanley especially felt that Bill was a grandfather to them.”

That affection explains why the Livingston brothers remember the incidents with laughter rather than any lingering sense of guilt. To them, they weren’t taking part in some bitter Hollywood vendetta, but instead helping their favorite older co-star play another practical joke. Yet Barry is quick to point out that the mischievous side of William Frawley was only part of the man they knew.

BARRY LIVINGSTON: “He was a wonderful, gentle, funny guy. It was all steeped in a lot of Cutty Sark. He was just a guy straight out of the Depression—a hard nut who didn’t take any guff from anybody. He was also a big prankster.”

STANLEY LIVINGSTON: “It was just kind of fun to participate in Bill’s hijinks.”

For Geoffrey, though, the story is also a reminder that the famous Frawley-Vance feud wasn’t simply a publicity myth.

GEOFFREY MARK: “Vivian resented Bill’s treatment of her. I think if Bill had behaved better, she probably would have let it go, but he never really did.”

Even so, decades later, it’s hard not to smile at the image of one of television’s most beloved curmudgeons recruiting two young co-stars into what Barry Livingston laughingly describes as his “little army”—all in service of keeping one of Hollywood’s longest-running grudges alive, one crashing film can at a time.