‘60s Child Star Recalls Backstage Prank He Pulled on ‘I Love Lucy' Legend
In the 1960s, Barry Livingston was a child actor on My Three Sons. The young star played Ernie Douglas on the beloved classic TV comedy series from 1962 to 1973.
In a recent interview with Woman's World, Livingston, now 72, recalled working with William Frawley, the curmudgeonly actor best known as Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy. Frawley played "Bub" O'Casey on My Three Sons from 1960 to 1965, but he had some leftover beef with his I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz)-and that's where Livingston came in.
My Three Sons was shot on the same studio lot as Vance and Lucille Ball's post-I Love Lucy series, The Lucy Show, and Frawley convinced Livingston and his brother Stanley to help him cause chaos to spite Vance.
"We would collect these big metal cylindrical film canisters back in the day," Livingston recalled to the magazine. "Bill would get Stan and I to be co-criminals with him. We'd hear Vivian's voice coming from the stage next door and he'd go, ‘Okay, it's time,' and we'd Frisbee these big old metal film cans in there and you'd hear, ‘Bang! Boom! Bang! Bang! Bang!' And then you'd hear, ‘Cut!' And Bill would go, ‘Let's get the hell out of here. Come on!' So yeah, we were little criminals in his organized crime."
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Frawley's feud with Vance was well known during their I Love Lucy days in the 1950s. While they played nicely on camera, behind the scenes, Vance was put off by the fact that Frawley, 22 years her senior, was cast to play her husband.
"It really bothered her," Gregg Oppenheimer, the son of the late producer and screenwriter Jess Oppenheimer, told The Television Academy. "She told people, ‘How will anyone believe I'm married to that old man?'"
Oppenheimer added that Frawley overheard her complaints and "was insulted."
Once he moved on to My Three Sons, Frawley's co-stars were aware of his lingering animosity toward Vance as she who worked next door on The Lucy Show.
My Three Sons alum Tim Considine (Mike Douglas on the series) told Page Sixthat Frawley once referred to Vance as a "miserable c–t" when asked what she was like.
As for Livingston, his prank with Frawley never got him into trouble with Ball. The actor recalled that the comedy legend liked him and hired him for a small role on her show. "I kept getting requests to come and play Gail Gordon's son, Arnold Mooney," Livingston told Woman's World. "So she kept writing me into episodes."
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This story was originally published June 7, 2026 at 4:36 AM.