Showing posts with label Stanley Livingston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley Livingston. Show all posts

Sunday, November 20, 2011

INTERVIEW: Barry Livingston chats with Ray Shasho about ‘The Importance of Being Ernie’


By Ray Shasho

Another CLASSIC ROCK MEETS CLASSIC TV Segment.

Actor Barry Livingston has played numerous roles during his resilient acting career. He’s currently filming in an upcoming movie entitled Argo and most recently completed roles in Hostel: Part III, Horrible Bosses and the TV series Castle and The Event. Livingston has appeared on Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Monk, NCIS, Everybody Hates Chris and Two and a Half Men. He’s even appeared in the movie The Social Network.
The irrepressible trouper amassed an impressive resume of characters throughout his acting career but none as memorable as the charming and witty nerdy kid with huge specs named Ernie Douglas from the TV sitcom My Three Sons. The ‘Ernie’ character may even be considered a pioneer for nerdism. In 1993 the ‘Ernie’ persona was rediscovered for the movie The Sandlot when child actor Chauncey Leopardi played Michael ‘Squints’ Palledorous. Leopardi’s portrayal was uncanny.

Livingston’s Mom was a fan dancer like the legendary Gypsy Rose Lee. Barry’s Dad inherited a Gaiety Theater on the infamous Block in Baltimore. After the invention of Television the business crumbled so the couple headed west for Hollywood to a new beginning.
Barry Livingston and older brother Stanley were born in Hollywood. The brothers grew up in a poor working class neighborhood. Barry found ways of entertaining himself including imitating the sinister big- eyed actor Peter Lorre and compulsively watching television within a few feet of the screen, an unhealthy habit that may have been partially responsible for his astigmatism.

Barry’s Mother was a spirited networker who never accepted the word ‘no’ as a final answer. Brother Stanley got his first break as an actor while attending swim school. The swimming pool/social club was shared by aspiring young actors and located on Hollywood Boulevard. One day a reporter asked a few young swimmers to ride their tricycles underwater across the bottom of the pool. The reporter wanted to shoot their photo through an underground window that peeked into the pool’s deep end. When the photos were published in the newspaper it caught the eye of the producer for the TV series Lassie. Stanley resembled the character Timmy on the show and became the perfect stunt double.

When their mom took Stanley to sign up at the Screen Actors Guild she discovered that anyone could walk in and join the Guild, even if you’ve had no previous acting experiences. She had an “Ah-ha” moment and decided that two working actors may help the family escape their impoverished lifestyle. Thus the Livingston Brothers acting careers were set in motion.

Author Barry Livingston’s impressive new memoir reveals the truths of becoming a child actor in Hollywood. The book is titled ‘The Importance of Being Ernie’ and was officially released on October 25th. It’s a great story and a must read. The book is penned by Barry himself without any outside help and is extremely well-written. I had the opportunity of speaking with Barry recently about his amazing life story.

Here’s my interview with Actor/Author/ TV Icon/ the incomparable ‘Ernie’ Barry Livingston.

Thanks Barry for being on the call today. I really enjoyed your book, it’s well written, it flows well and extremely entertaining. What compelled you into writing the story?

“You know probably a lot of things. On one level my dad always wanted to be a writer and never really finished anything. I think I’ve kind of had some sense of try to do for him what he couldn’t do. I also knew I had a lot of great stories about people that I’ve worked with over the years Jerry Lewis and Debbie Reynolds and my meeting with Elvis Presley and of course all the stuff on My Three Sons. It was just the right time and the Fiftieth Anniversary of The Sons was looming when I was writing it. Better now than never.”

Your Grandfather owned a Gaiety Theater on the infamous block in Baltimore?

“Yea I think his was called the Globe? He had more than one but yea that was part of the early days of the Livingston’s.  My mother’s first career and probably only career that I knew of was as a fan dancer in the theater that my dad owned. It was the Gypsy Rose Lee era and that was pretty salacious right on the edge of boarder line striptease fan dancing back in those days but by today’s standards that was pretty tame.”

So was sitting only a few feet from your television set to blame for your poor vision? 

“That’s what your mother always wants you to believe but it was probably going to happen regardless of TV or not but in those days you’d want to crawl inside the set. She’d say it’ll blind you you’re too close and of course she was right I developed an astigmatism but that was going to happen regardless.”

They actually thought that you had a seizure on the set while acting in one of your first roles right?

“Well they didn’t know when I first had the problem on Rally ‘Round the Flag Boys my eyes were inexplicably spinning around in my head so they didn’t know they just knew there was something wrong with this kid’s eyes. I was taken from the set and I remember it very clearly I was four years old and they took me to a nearby hospital and ruled out the seizure but then I went to see the eye doctor immediately after that and that’s where I got my glasses right then and there.”

Your mom was responsible for giving you a shot in show business, what were those early auditions like? 

“There were no rules at the time it was like a line around the block half the time it was like American Idol tryouts it was just mobbed with kids. Of course one of the problems was that they could only schedule auditions after three o’clock when kids got out of school so they had a real limited window of opportunity to interview kids from probably around three to six so they’d jam every stinking kid in the town going in for three lines on Sea Hunt you’d have a hundred kids that would be piled into some little waiting room.”
“Yea I recall that being a real big pain in the ass. I don’t particularly enjoy this part of it you’d rather be home playing handball with your friends at that point. But my mom twisted our arms to go get it done and luckily we started bagging some jobs. It would be very frustrating if you go through that whole effort and nothing comes of it.”

You began your TV career on the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet it must have been pretty cool to watch Ricky Nelson’s rock and roll career skyrocket. 

“That was because even by that time I really liked Pop music and it was all the rage of Ricky Nelson and Paul Anca… Buddy Holly and Elvis. I actually got to see Ricky do some of his songs at Sock Hops it was always a gas it was always fun than a week later the show would air and the song would go to number one.”

One of the many wonderful moments in your new book is when you were shooting on the set of the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and you were suppose to say your line while eating ice cream but you didn’t because you were so fixated on eating the chocolate ice cream.

“Yea that was funny and again I can remember that very clearly but I just got so taken with the taste of that chocolate ice cream I just gobbled it down and when my cue for my line came I was just faced down in the ice cream. Ozzie was as much of an acting teacher then anybody that I ever had kind of laughed because he was that kind of a guy didn’t get all crazy you wasted film. He said you know Barry when people speak you have to look at them listen what they’re saying and when it’s your turn say what you have to say and then you can go back to eating the ice cream. So that’s exactly what I did I was eating the ice cream listening and the second my line came up I looked up said it and went right back to eating my ice cream which is perfect because that’s what a six year old kid would do. He saw that I had talent so I was a natural at that point.”

But you were a really smart kid and extremely adultlike. I thought it was fascinating that Fred De Cordova(directed My Three Sons) included you in his circle as if you were one of the guys, like when he took you to a baseball game at Dodger stadium with Jack Benny.

“Fred and I had a very special relationship I became like his right hand man. He was probably in his mid 50’s and never had kids just recently got married so I became his buddy and it was a great time. He was the funniest man in the world and then he had great funny friends so what more could you ask for.”

Fred De Cordova was a genius and he accomplished so much on The Tonight Show. 

“He was a very well connected fellow he just knew all the biggest most powerful people in and out of show business mainly because he was an extremely witty-witty man and he was talented at what he did but he also was just loved by the people around him so he was perfect for Carson at that point in his life. He knew Kings… Movie Stars they all knew him and he knew everybody’s home phone number. So you couldn’t ask for a better guy than Fred to run The Tonight Show at that time.”

I wasn’t aware that Ryan O’ Neal was originally cast in the role of Robbie on My Three Sons?

“Yea he was first cast for the pilot and I guess it was Fred who thought he wasn’t up to their comedy standards and they decided to recast and brought in Don Grady who was a Mousketeer. And Bobby Diamond who was actually on Fury before that was cast and he couldn’t come to terms and I think they wanted him. He was fired he just didn’t like the terms that they offered him then they hired Ryan O’Neil and they eventually wound up with Don.”

Barry, talk about your limo excursion with Elvis Presley.

“Yea it was actually around the Paramount movie lot… it was surreal obviously I was a big fan because I knew Ricky Nelson and that was rock and roll and Elvis was the undisputed king of rock and roll although I didn’t particularly care for what he was doing with music I liked his early stuff and even at that point I wasn’t into Blue Hawaii but still it was Elvis. But it was out of the blue I just happened to see his limo and didn’t know it was his and suddenly he’s standing behind you. Next thing he says do you want to take it for a little test drive you want to hop in and check out the TV. And you didn’t have any great exchange of ideas about the world rather you’re sitting there with the king of rock and roll for five minutes and it was very interesting and very surreal.”

“I always thought one of the funnier My Three Sons is that they were trying to find out who would be a great English rock and roll star for an episode. Somebody would come to Bryant Park and I loved The Stones at that time and thought Brian Jones was the coolest. You didn’t really know what his lifestyle was because it was all sanitized in the newspapers so I said you’ve got to get Brian Jones see if you can get him. I think they actually made some effort to contact him or his management and yea I don’t think they even got a reply. But it would have been an amazing inside joke that Brian Jones with all of his drug problems and hedonistic lifestyle suddenly comes to stay with the Douglas family. That would have been unintentionally funny.”

Besides The Rolling Stones who were some of your favorite rock groups while growing up in California?

“The Yardbirds I was learning to play the guitar with Jeff Beck who was a hero… I guess Eric Clapton before that although even with the Yardbirds you didn’t know Eric Clapton as Eric Clapton until he became Eric Clapton but I knew he was the lead guitar player before Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds and Jimmy Page. In America…Lovin’ Spoonful… Simon and Garfunkel of that era those were the people that I thought were the great stars and great artists. Prior to that Buddy Holly and some of the blues guys I like B.B. King and Muddy Waters… Bo Diddley. And I’m a music fan today… I like Arcade Fire… Wilco and my son is a musician so I hear about a lot of new bands and I love a lot of the stuff that’s happening today.”

You’re an actor who loved rock and roll music growing up in California in the 60’s.  I guess it was inevitable that you were going to be hanging out with people who did drugs. And you mentioned in your book that you were one of them. 

“You know it was a phase honestly there was an era in Hollywood and I probably fell victim to it as many did. If you weren’t a partier if you weren’t part of the new Hollywood that they called it which was the era of Jack Nicholson… Michael Douglas and Spielberg and all these people that were the new wave of Hollywood and part of that really in the 1970’s involved drugs and the studio heads themselves were taking part. You kind of were looked at as like you’re kind of that old school you’re not hip like us so there was some odd pressure I mean you could have said no and I didn’t. You could’ve but I kind of wanted to be part of that new wave and part of that was a permissiveness that perhaps was the old thought ill conceived but that was the era. And being a young man of twenty years old with some money sure that’s all part of it all wrapped up together.”

What did your kids say when they read about your past drug use?

“I didn’t have to write it to tell them about my experiences with things like that and I tried to be honest only because I figured I didn’t want to be in a position where I said no I never did any of that and then somebody comes along somewhere someway and says oh you use to do all these things and I’d come off looking like a big liar to my kids. So you have to make a decision do you soft sell that whole era or do you just be completely honest and say this is what it was and I did it. Honestly I’m not sure if it was a great idea it’s just what happens you go through a phase. So I’d rather try to put it in perspective than say no then have to look like a liar and put it in perspective.”

“The danger is people use that against you and somehow it gets all blown out of proportion today and I hope it doesn’t but in the real perspective of it all that was a very short period of my life but it was a very informative time and instructed me hey here’s the danger what do I do to get out of it and so those are the challenges of life.”

I talked with your Brother Stanley about how the media usually blames Hollywood for corrupting child actors usually leading to grave consequences.  I’m one to disagree I think you’re probably going to try drugs regardless of what Hollywood is doing and no one is holding a gun to your head. 

“It’s the people in the business that you surround yourself with and it’s your peer group. At that age peer group are much more persuasive than your parents or your friends… those are your friends. In that era my peer group was experimenting with all those kind of things it was part of the Hollywood scene. I jumped in just like about everyone else did and fortunately didn’t wallow in it… in a way it wasn’t repairable and moved on.”

I loved how you described your encounter and infatuation with actress Myrna Loy in your book.

“I grew up watching in LA they use to have a thing called the million dollar movie and they would play old classic films from the forties and thirties and one of those was the Thin Man just a great old movie to me and she was beautiful.”

How old was she when you met her?

“Probably mid to late 50’s but she was a very attractive woman even at that stage of her life and just the whole evening a little bit of wine and my infatuation with her and trying to be debonair and suave.”

You have other siblings that we never hear about, talk about Bill, Michelle and Gene?

“My Brother Bill is an engineer for an oil company and went to West Point. He was adopted from birth very successful and is in Azerbaijan at the moment. He’s been working for years with BP down in San Pedro which is in the southern part of LA and he’s moved to Azerbaijan for the company.”

“My sister Michelle again she sort of dabbled a little bit in Television I think my mom tried to keep that going for a little bit she was actually in a show called Toma which was a precursor to Baretta. Toma was Tony Musante it was the same show. He was a detective adopted all kinds of bizarre disguises and he didn’t want to do it after awhile. Anyway she played his daughter in the Toma series. She was really young probably 7 or 8 years old. When he left the show that’s when the job went and Robert Blake stepped in and they renamed it Baretta. So she lives in Texas and is very successful in the Real Estate world.”

“My Brother Gene had gotten quite successful in a computer business. He partnered with a buddy in the 80’s and they’ve become one of the first computer companies in LA that had the where with all to setup networks for big companies and some of their early clients were Aaron Spelling…Walt Disney and so they’re still doing that business today.”

How are your kids? I know your Son Spencer plays in a band.

“They are doing quite well the band is called The Alternates. He’s just a really great songwriter and they just recorded an EP and he’s got a solo thing that he’s doing and actually has three shows in New York he’s going to be doing when I’m back in New York for the release of the book. They just played at a club out here called The Satellite and I wouldn’t be surprised if something occurs in his whole ambition he’s very good. He just wrote a song called Occupy Wall Street.”

“My Daughter Hailey is just out of high school about a year out. They’re going through baby steps of who they’re going to become and what they want to be. But they’re great kids.”

 I’ve also got to mention Karen your better half.

“Well that’s the key to my life we’ve been together for over 30 years. She gets me and I get her and we still amuse each other. She’s a Physical Therapist.”

Barry I admire the fact that you’ve written your own book. Many celebrities say they’ve written a book but in reality hire a professional Ghost Writer.

“Yea I’ve written a lot personally and some more like screenplays and things so it wasn’t like pulling teeth for me to sit down and do something like that and I’m very pleased with the way it came out. I was very thrilled that when I sent it off to somebody in New York that I heard back two days later and they said they wanted to publish it. I got the right guy. It was the right time the right person. I sent it to an editor through a friend that made a connection for me and he said yea send it to this guy. I had sent out a few query letters and got nowhere. This guy said send it to him a guy named Gary Goldstein from Kensington and he knew everything else about my career too. It was amazingly fast… but he read it and loved it.”

So where can we watch Barry Livingston in motion picture or on television soon?

“I’m starting work on this movie tomorrow called Argo with Ben Affleck directing in it and starring in it a lot of great people Bryan Cranston and Alan Arkin and then I did an episode of Castle I think it’s going to be out on Halloween night. Suburgatory I did an episode of that and the Hallmark Channel I did a movie for them that’s coming out pretty soon called Love’s Christmas Journey. I did a little thing for this TV show called Supah Ninjas for Nickelodeon …and then the book."

Barry, thank you so much it’s been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Good luck with the new book and your acting career.

“Thank you Ray it’s been real fun.”

Order Barry Livingston’s wonderful new bookcalled The Importance of Being Ernie released by Kensington Press (Citadel Publishing) available to purchase at Amazon.com.

The Importance of Being Ernie official website http://theimportanceofbeingernie.com/
Barry Livingston Film and Television credits http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0515225/
My Three Sons http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=mythreesons
Spencer Livingston and the Alternates band website http://www.thealternatesband.com/

Order author/columnist Ray Shasho’s great new book called Check the Gs –The True Story of an Eclectic American Family and Their Wacky Family Business today at amazon.com, iuniverse.com, barnesandnoble.com or border.com. Order now for the holidays!
 
Normalcy is a myth and anyone who tells you differently isn't very normal."Check the Gs" is a memoir from Ray Shasho who tells of his own offbeat upbringing working in the family business art gallery, from a young age. Of Cuban and Syrian descent, he tells a very American story of coming from everything, seeing everything, walking the line of the law and much more. A fun and fast paced memoir, "Check the Gs" is a worthwhile addition to many a memoir collection. ~~ MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW     

Contact Ray Shasho at rockraymond.shasho@gmail.com





Monday, September 26, 2011

Classic TV: A Chat with (Chip) Stanley Livingston of 'My Three Sons'


By Ray Shasho

Classic Rock meets Classic TV. This is the first in a series of interviews dedicated to Classic TV icons.

Stanley Livingston is best known as middle son “Chip” Douglas for the momentous TV sitcom “My Three Sons.” The storyline is about a widower (played by veteran actor Fred MacMurray) and the trials and tribulations of everyday life while raising three sons.
The show ran from 1960 through 1972 and then instantly went into syndication. The family sitcom became a mainstay on Nickelodeon and helped to launch the TV Land network in 1995. Last year marked the Golden Anniversary of “My Three Sons” and included a spectacular reunion celebration at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, California.

Child prodigy Stanley Livingston also played a part in the TV series “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” movies “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” (starring Doris Day and David Niven) and in the star-studded epic “How the West Was Won” In 1962.

Over the years Livingston has appeared in various motion pictures, television episodes and specials, theater, commercials, and also contributed his voiceover talents on animation.  
In 2009 the BizParentz Foundation honored Stanley Livingston at the CARE Awards. Anne Henry, founder of BizParentz Foundation said, “Stanley is a great example of a child star who did wonderful things with his life, and still made time to leave a legacy for our generation of child actors. We want to show kids that it is possible to work as a child actor and be a positive force in the industry -- in front of the camera or behind it." 
Today Stanley Livingston is 60 years old and busier than ever. He’s an Actor, Director, Producer, and Cinematographer. Livingston is head of First Team Productions an LA-based Production Company and also the founder and CEO of The Actor’s Journey Project which includes –“The Actor’s Journey” and “The Actor’s Journey for Kids.” It’s a MUST see DVD program for anyone considering- or actively pursuing a career as an actor or performer. Livingston has endured a remarkable 55 years in show business.

Here’s my interview with Classic TV Icon Stanley Livingston.

Thank you for being with me today Stanley, how’s the weather this morning in Sunny California?

“Cooling off finally a little bit anyway the last few days have been just outrageous well over 100.”

“Stanley you’re the Founder and CEO of an enterprise that is very important to you. Talk about The Actor’s Journey Project.”

“I’ve been thinking about doing it actually for quite awhile. For people that want to become actors and anybody that’s been in the business for a long time and succeeded and we look at all the people trying to get into it you finally recognize yea I’ve been doing it for 20 years but there’s this disconnect for actors.
Basically in this country and I’m sure this happens all over the world you know actors get trained in the art and craft of acting and it doesn’t matter whether you go to a local Mom and Pop School or whether you choose to do it at some university, a Junior college, a regular college, or one of the prestigious acting academies or even at Yale or Harvard. The entire focus of what they teach you is all about the art and craft of acting, technique and performance skills and you spend anywhere from two to four years learning that and spending quite a big chunk of money especially if you’re going to one of the four year colleges you’re spending forty to sixty thousand dollars on this education if you’re going to Yale or Harvard it’s north of a hundred thousand dollars and then what happens it all stops. People get out of college and they’re ready to get into the business assimilate into the industry and they get the pictures they get the resume together and then nothing happens. It’s really-really frustrating and we’ve seen this for decades and decades and there’s a problem.

The problem is the fact that only the art and craft of acting and performance skills are taught there’s nothing taught on the business side of our industry. How you go about doing it, how you launch a career, how you sustain a career, how you survive in the industry and it’s not taught and that’s understandable because the people that teach the performance part are professors who rarely if ever have been involved in the industry to any great extent so they’re incapable of teaching it –but basically you wish the students well and you know you’ve got their money they spend it all and then nothing happens.
 In this industry we have over a 99% failure rate of people to assimilate into the industry and that’s not for lack of talent or training it’s because they don’t know the industry and there’s nowhere where you can go to learn it except the school of hard knocks which like I said shows a 99% failure rate so we decided to do something about this and I talked to a lot of my peers people that I’ve worked with and for and we thought gee if there was a program that really laid out what the business side was all about and a lot of things that are almost mystifying for new talent and put a comprehensive program together that instead of being taught by- because that’s the other side of the problem is the people that are attempting to teach whatever little knowledge they have on the business side and most of them have had short careers or worked sporadically and even though they haven’t done it very well themselves they’re going to teach you and show you how to do it.

So we thought what if we borrow a hundred people -that’s one of the criteria’s we use you had to be in the industry 20-30 years who really have an extensive list of credits that are verifiable that’s one of the other components a lot of people have credits but they tell you they have and you go look them up on the IMDb (the Internet Movie Database) and they don’t exist or you find out that they weren’t really an actor they were an extra or they’ll tell you they were a Director of Photography when they were a Focus Puller and all that stuff sort of goes on.

So we put together a hundred people -everywhere from actors we have people like Henry Winkler, Melissa Gilbert, Michael York, Sherman Hemsley, Danny Trejo and on and on and on. With the actors we involve directors -directors like Richard Donner, Richard Rush, producers, executive producers, talent agents, talent managers we even had the president of the Screen Actors Guild, the president of the Directors Guild, people that were chairpersons at various committees at the various guilds and also people that have sat on the various boards and people who on camera are teaching what the business of acting is all about.”

So you’re teaching the real world side of the acting business, that’s a switch.

“Yea, it’s a ten- hour long program and it’s for adult actors that are at least 18 years or older and its taught by a hundred people who have incredible experience in the industry and its completely focused on business it has nothing to do with your talent as an actor or acting ability which is train with people in this other area that there is no training on and give them what I call the nonperformance skills they need to do this. It’s a pretty novel approach and certainly needed and at this point too we’re trying to get it integrated into the world of higher ed in addition to maintaining a website that we now have where people who hear about it can come and buy the DVD set that came out of it. Basically we did it that way because the actors come from everywhere so it’s got to be portable and you can just buy it online.

Anyway while we shot that we also did a second program which is called The Actor’s Journey for Kids. The program is called The Actors Journey but we did The Actor’s Journey for Kids which actually is not for kids and all the material is directed at their parents – but it’s the same thing a business program for parents who want to involve their kids or teens and save a lot of time and probably for the parents and kids the other little thing that came out of it is there’s so many scam companies around that take people’s money and because these people are just so ignorant of the business they think they’re getting help when all they’re doing is spending three to five to ten thousand dollars and nothing happens. So hopefully it will put these people out of business.”

I’m glad someone is finally going to reveal the truth about the business side of it. I talked with Professor Mark Volman (Flo) of The Turtles recently and he’s educating his students about the real world of the music business. I mean who better to learn from than veteran musicians or actors. So between you and Professor Volman you’re really helping a vast percentage of people trying to work in the world of entertainment.

“Yea we want to give something back to the community and people that are there that are really deficient in this information even the rank and file of the Screen Actors Guild I would say probably 90% of them are totally deficient too and they got a lucky break and they’ve got the Screen Actors card but the heck if they know the business side of it and most of them still don’t know how to get work and it will make life more sweeter for them and for the newbie’s coming in from the colleges who are trying to do this in this day and age you know they’re so vested in the talent and image part of it that they’re not really aware that there is this business side and they promote that side of it and finally they’re just drummed out or you make some of the classic mistakes and that’s what we’re trying to help people from doing.”

Let’s dive into My Three Sons and your acting career. What was it like working in the business as a child actor?

“It all became this process that you sort of learn about. I actually started in “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” I got a job as an extra on that and for whatever reason Ozzie gave me a line and I was able to get into the Screen Actors Guild which back then is what you’d want to do but nowadays you wouldn’t want to join immediately. That’s when I found out yea if you’re on the set you’re going to school for three hours a day that’s mandatory and no matter what I did -I did some movies between Ozzie and Harriet and going on to My Three Sons quite a bit of episodic work on just different TV shows and I always had to go to school. It was a little bit different with My Three Sons as oppose to working on Ozzie and Harriet I’d probably work for three or four days or a week and then I’d go back to public school. When we did My Three Sons it was a continuous job and I was in all 39 episodes.

When the season would start I was working and I was going to school on the set. You did three hours a day and then have an hour off for lunch and for nine months I was on the set. The other three months unlike a lot of the kids who were involved in other TV shows they either had a tutor during the offseason or there was a school on Hollywood Boulevard called Hollywood Professional School and I think almost everybody who was a kid on TV or Kid Star went to that school – for whatever reason my parents said you’re going back to public school you’re not going to private school you’re not getting a tutor we want you to integrate with real kids and so that’s what we did.”

How were you treated at the public schools?

“I was starting to get known because of doing movies and Ozzie and Harriet and a bunch of different TV shows but when My Three Sons broke -because in those days there were (3) networks and right now if you’re on the network you probably have whatever 15, 20 Million people watching you and back then it was somewhere between 60 to 80 Million people a week watching your show especially with a hit show which we were.

But when I went back to school for the first time I was pretty scared because everybody in the school knew who I was and you didn’t know if they wanted to be your friend or beat you up. You very quickly had to learn some skills on how to deal with people. But I think my parents even though it was a scary proposition they really made the right decision. I think those are some of the skills that we learn how to deal with all types of people anything from fans who probably just want to know you because you’re on TV to people that just wanted to beat you up because you are on TV and everything in between. But you find out who your real friends were and the ones who were just sort of enamored with you because they perceived you as a child TV Star.

 I guess I was probably about in the fifth grade when My Three Sons hit and- I’m going back every year from February to about maybe the beginning of May it wasn’t that long I was only there for about three months but it gave me a real grounding to deal with people and to deal with situations and all that and I look back and I’m grateful for it now but at the time I was why can’t I just go to private school so I wouldn’t have to go through any of this or have a tutor which certainly we could have afford it but my parents thought it would be a better experience in the long run and by God they were right”

Did you have any famous buddies or even girlfriends while you grew in the business?

“Most of my friends were from outside the industry and I’m still friends with the same guys. I grew up on the streets of Hollywood on Wilcox and Lexington I went to the elementary school there, junior high school and then my parents moved to the Valley, the guys that I met when I was in first grade about five or six of those guys the ones that are still alive we’re still friends and they’re my core friends. My parents sort of encouraged me to keep those friends as opposed to the ones in the movie industry because I really just wanted to go off and play baseball and do normal things.”

What was it like working with legendary actor Fred MacMurray?

“Working with Fred was great, and when I first started working with him because I was nine years old and I was told he was a big movie star and all that and obviously I saw him in The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor but I certainly wasn’t aware of the depth or rep of his big films in the industry ranging all the way back from films in the 30’s when he was doing Double Indemnity, The Egg and I, The Caine Mutiny and The Apartment all these kinds of films so you know as I grew older obviously it was like oh wow this guys been in a lot of stuff. As a kid you don’t really think of that its some older guy on the set that everybody’s giving deferential treatment to.

But later when I thought about it even after the show I went oh my God when this guy came to the show it was almost like an historical event because movie stars didn’t do TV shows they would do guest spots like on a Bob Hope Special or maybe appear on a sort of Lucy but they didn’t come and do a 9-5 five day a week grind to do a TV series but they found out a way to accommodate him. He would work for several months be in every scene and he worked very hard from eight in the morning till six o’clock at night and he would go away for two or three months in the summer and then come back a couple more months and finish everything up and that’s how they revolved the series around him.

He was pretty much like you saw him as the character of Steve Douglas he was just this low key unassuming guy that was a huge-huge movie star. When I talk about that to kids today they don’t know who Fred MacMurray is and they may have heard the name because they saw an episode of My Three Sons but not realizing the ramifications of having a star of that caliber so to put it in perspective I said it would be like Tom Cruise in a television series right now. It would be unheard of.”

There were only (3) Networks ABC, CBS and NBC back in the 60’s and the quality of programming was exceptional. Now we have the option to choose more than 250 channels and the quality of programming is considerably below the standards of those in the glory years of Television. And it seems that there is less entertainment and a lot more advertising? 

“To be honest, TV was never really created for the show people think it is that it was created to have “I Love Lucy,” “My Three Sons” and “Andy Griffith” but it was created to sell product in these shows in between the commercials it’s there for the commercials it’s not there for the programming. The programming is the hook and the bait to get you hooked to that show so they can pop all those commercials into it that’s why they call it programming.”

I always ask classic rock artists to share an amusing story with me. Do you have a funny story that may have happened on the set of My Three Sons?

“Do you remember the episode when a lion gets into the Douglas household? It revolved around a circus coming to town and somehow the lion escaped and incidentally makes its way over to the Douglas residence and for some reason our back door was open that night and the lion gets into the house. The Douglas’s just keep missing running into it and going in and out of doors up and down of stairs -he thinks he hears something but of course when he goes down of course the lion goes up.

Anyway when we were shooting that day the trainer thought he left the lion in his cage and he didn’t lock the door so the lion got out and was actually walking around on the set like in the episode. Bill Demarest (Uncle Charley) was headed for makeup walking down this aisle and he turned the corner and here comes this lion about twenty or thirty feet from around the corner walking right at him and he does the worst thing you can possibly do he started running and the lion started running after him so he turned the corner and that’s right where is dressing room was so he ran in there and shut the door. And then he called the production office upstairs thank God he had a phone and he said, “There’s a lion outside my door.” I don’t think those were quite the words that he used though.”

(Laughing)That’s a great story.
I heard that you really enjoyed working with William Frawley. (“Bub” O’Casey character -he also played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy)

“When I found out that he was coming on to the show as the Grandfather I was elated, weirdly on I Love Lucy he was always my favorite character. I liked him better than Lucy. So to get to work with him was going to be like a real treat and what was really bizarre was he didn’t like kids. He didn’t like working with kids it was like the W.C. Fields thing no kids no dogs. I just thought of him like my real Grandfather
And forever reason we kind of bonded and he just adored me. I could do no wrong, I’d imitate him and we became best friends.

I’d go eat lunch with him and there was a restaurant around the corner known as this Hollywood watering hole it was right next to Paramount. Everybody from Paramount would be there for lunch and everyday Bill had lunch there same place- same booth- same seat- they’d always hold it for him and I’d eat with him every day. And he would drink at lunch it kind of became a little bit of an issue. You’d only have an hour for lunch and he’d be telling stories and didn’t want to leave and somebody from the production company would go over there and try to get him up and he wouldn’t leave so they took me to the side and said, “Look  he’ll only listen to you, you’ve got to get him up and back.” So when I told him Bill we’ve got to go back to the set he said, “Oh okay” he wouldn’t listen to them. So that became sort of my unofficial job which is to get Bill to work back to the set.

On my thirteenth birthday I walked in my dressing room and there was a nine foot long Dewey Weber surfboard in my dressing room from Bill.  Yea, I was blown away by that.”

Stanley, I could talk with you all day man.

You know, I think the media has always had a tendency to stereotype child actors as growing up into a life of degradation and they usually blame the business as the cause of it. But when you have a supportive family behind you it’s not so. Child actors like you, Brother Barry and of course the Howard’s are perfect examples that you can still work in the entertainment industry as a kid and grow up normal.   

Thank you so much Stanley for being with me today.

“My pleasure Ray, it’s been a lot of fun.”

You can learn more about Stanley Livingston’s “The Actors Journey Project” by clicking on this link… http://stanleylivingston.com/id15.html
Stanley Livingston’s website http://stanleylivingston.com/index.html
The Art Glass Works of Stanley Livingston (Beautiful glass art work for sale)  http://www.stanleylivingstonart.com/index.html
My Three Sons –TV Museum   http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=mythreesons

Special thanks goes out to Trevor Joe Lennon for arranging this interview.

Order author Ray Shasho’s new book Check the GsThe True Story of an Eclectic American Family and Their Wacky Family Business. A Baby-Boomer MUST!

“I found Check the Gs to be pure entertainment, fantastic fun and a catalyst to igniting so many memories of my own life, as I too am within a few years of Ray.  So to all, I say if you have a bit of grey hair (or no hair), buy this book!  It’s a great gift for your “over-the-hill” friends, or for their kids, if they are the history buffs of younger generations trying to figure out why we are the way we are.” ~~Pacific Book Review

Contact Ray Shasho at rockraymond.shasho@gmail.com