William Frawley Used “My Three Sons” Child Stars as His ‘Little Army’ in Feud with Vivian Vance

William Frawley teamed up with Barry and Stanley Livingston to prank Vivian Vance

NEED TO KNOW

• Vivian Vance’s offhand remark about William Frawley on the first day of I Love Lucy sparked their lifelong feud

• Writers incorporated the pair’s real-life animosity into their characters’ dynamic on I Love Lucy

• Frawley enlisted My Three Sons child stars to prank Vance on the set of The Lucy Show

One remark from Vivian Vance started a long-standing feud with on-screen husband William Frawley, which spanned years and multiple TV sets and even inspired young stars from My Three Sons to join in. 

In a piece from Women’s World, television historian Geoffrey Mark, author of The Lucy Book: A Complete Guide to Her Five Decades on Television, recalled the moment when the feud originally started. 

“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!’ “

Mark shared that Frawley “heard this, instantly hated her and never forgave her.” This is what ultimately led to the couple’s on-screen “animosity” that writers wrote into the scripts.

After I Love Lucy ended, Frawley joined My Three Sons. At the same time, Vance was filming The Lucy Show. Frawley decided to prank Vance with the help of Barry and Stanley Livingston, who played Ernie and Chip Douglas on the show, respectively. 

“We shot on sound stages that were literally right next to each other,” Barry shared. 

“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,” Stanley said. 

Frawley would hold the door open to The Lucy Show stage, and whenever he heard Vance’s voice, he would tell the brothers to release the film containers. 

“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,” Stanley shared. 

After the noise, they would run back to their soundstage. 

“I think Vivian must have known it was Bill, because we heard this voice scream, ‘Bill!’ He yelled some expletives 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,” Stanley shared. 

Barry said that the experience made it feel like “we were on a mission.”  “We were Bill’s little toadies in his little army,” he said. “We would do his bidding to wreak havoc on Vivian whenever he felt like it.”

Mark shared that it wasn’t isolated incidents, and Frawley would frequently say mean things about Vance around her, but never to her face.

“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,” Mark shared. 

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