Created
by Don Fedderson and Leave it to Beaver alumnus George Tibbles,
My Three Sons was one of television's longest running and
most influential domestic comedies. The program was conceived originally
as a television vehicle for Fred MacMurray, (who owned 50% of the
program), when Fedderson was approached by Chevrolet to develop
a program that was "representative of America." During its twelve
year run, the program averaged a respectable, but not spectacular
22.2 rating and a 35% share, and underwent enormous narrative and
character changes. It is most significant for its development of
a star-friendly shooting schedule and for its redefinition of the
composition of the television family.
Before
he agreed to his contract, Fred MacMurray queried veteran television
performer, Robert Young, about Young's workload. Upon Young's complaint
about television's time-consuming schedule, MacMurray insisted on
a unique shooting plan that was to be copied by other top actors
and christened "the MacMurray Method." This so-called "writer's
nightmare" stipulated that all of MacMurray's scenes were to be
shot in 65 non-consecutive days. All other actors had to complete
their fill-in shots while MacMurray was on vacation. Practically
speaking, this meant the series had to stockpile at least half a
season's scripts before the season ever began so that MacMurray's
role could be shot during his limited work days. The repercussions
of this schedule were enormous. Guest-stars often had to return
nine months later to finish filming an episode; MacMurray's co-stars
had their hair cut weekly so as to avoid any continuity discrepancies
(MacMurray wore a toupee); and any unforeseen event (a sudden growth
spurt, a guest-star's death) could cause catastrophe. Often times,
the producers were forced to film MacMurray in scriptless episodes,
and then construct a script around his very generalized monologues.
Frequently, to avoid complication, the writers simply placed his
character "out of town," so that there are an inordinate number
of episodes in which Steve Douglas communicates to his family only
by telephone. Despite the hardship on writers, directors and co-stars,
the MacMurray method was adapted by a number of film stars (Jimmy
Stewart, Henry Fonda) as a conditional requirement for their work
in a television series.
The program's narrative concept has proven equally influential.
Until 1960 most family comedies were centered on strictly nuclear
groupings--mom, dad and biological children. While an occasional
Bachelor Father, or The Bob Cummings Show might focus
on the comedic exploits of an unmarried adult raising a niece or
nephew, most programs, from I Love Lucy to Father Know
Best, depicted the humorous tribulations of two-parent households
and their biological offspring. My Three Sons initiated what
was to become a popular trend in television--that of the widowed
parent raising a family. While initial director Peter Tewksbury
called the premise a truly depressing one, producers Tibbles and
Fedderson chose to ignore the potential for pathos and flung themselves
wholeheartedly into the comedic consequences of a male-only household.
Ironically (some might even say with more than a touch of misogyny),
the bulk of the program's first five years did not focus on the
stereotypical male ineptitude for all household chores, but instead
continually reinforced the notion that males were, in fact, far
domestically superior to the "hysterical" female guest stars.
During
the course of its twelve year run, My Three Sons functioned,
in essence, as three successive programs with different casts, writers,
and directors. For its first five seasons, the program was shot
in black and white, aired on CBS and focused on Steve Douglas (MacMurray),
aerospace consultant, who, along with his father-in-law, Bub O'Casey
(William Frawley) has struggled for the past seven years to raise
Steve's three motherless sons--18 year old Mike, 14 year old Robbie
and 7 year old Chip. The show was directed and produced by Father
Knows Best alumnus Peter Tewksbury. The first year of the program
is by far the series' darkest, dealing explicitly with how a family
survives, and even thrives, in the event of maternal loss. In its
second season, George Tibbles took over, moving the program more
toward situation comedy and inserting multiple slapstick-type episodes
into the mix. From the third season onward, Ed Hartmann's role as
producer redirected the program yet again, to a heavily moralistic,
but lighthearted look at generational and gender conflicts. In addition,
Hartmann's long-standing friendship with members of the Asian community
contributed to an unusual number of episodes dealing with the Chinese
and Japanese friends of the Douglas family, granting television
visibility and respect to a previously neglected minority group.
When
ABC refused to finance the series' switch to color production, the
program moved to the CBS network, losing two cast members in an
unrelated series of events. First, in the midst of the 1964-65 season,
terminally ill William Frawley's $300,000 insurance policy was canceled
and Don Fedderson was forced to replace Bub O'Casey with "Uncle
Charley," a role played by William Demarest for the program's remaining
seven years. Next, an argument with Don Fedderson over Tim Considine's
desire to direct resulted in the actor's departure from the program.
As eldest son Mike was written out of the series with a fictionalized
"move to California," the producers chose a new third son, Ernie,
as a replacement. With no regard for narrative plausibility, the
producers created a three-part episode in which Chip's best friend
Ernie loses his parents in a car crash, suddenly becomes two years
younger, and is adopted by Steve as the youngest member of the Douglas
family.
Two
years later, the program experienced its third incarnation when
the Douglas family moved from the fictional Bryant Park to Southern
California. Here, Robbie was to romance and wed Katie, and Steve
was to end his long-term widowerhood by marrying Barbara and adopting
her small daughter. For the program's remaining years, the narrative
focused on blended families, Chip's romantic escapades and eventual
elopement, and Robbie's triplets, where the premise of three sons
promised to continue indefinitely.
The
series' influence was demonstrated by the quick succession of single-parent
households that were to dominate television's comedy schedule for
the next decade. Family Affair, The Courtship of Eddie's Father,
Flipper, Nanny and the Professor all featured eligible
bachelors burdened with raising their own (or relative's offspring)
with the help of an adept elderly man or desirable young woman.
All of these series worked to erase the necessity of the maternal,
as the family operated in an emotionally secure and supremely healthy
environment without benefit of the long since dead mother. While
there were occasional widow-with-children programs (The Ghost
and Mrs. Muir, Julia), these women were not granted the
same versatility of their male counterparts, and were forced to
turn to strong male figures (dead ship's captains and doctors, respectively)
for continual guidance.
While
the 1980s witnessed a regeneration of television's nuclear family,
the legacy of My Three Sons dominated, and for every Cosby,
there was a Full House, My Two Dads or Brothers. By the 1990s
one would be hard-pressed to find any family show that wasn't a
single-parent family, a family with adopted children, or a blended
arrangement of two distinct families--all configurations which owe
their genesis in some way to My Three Sons.
-Nina
Leibman
Hamamoto,
Darrell Y. Nervous Laughter: Television Situation Comedy and
Liberal Democratic Ideology. New York: Praeger, 1989.
Javna,
John. The Best of TV Sitcoms: Burns and Allen to the Cosby Show,
The Munsters to Mary Tyler Moore. New York: Harmony Books, 1988.
Jones,
Gerard. Honey, I'm Home!: Sitcoms, Selling the American Dream.
New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992.
Leibman,
Nina. Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television.
Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1995.
