Stanley Livingston tells about pranks on the set of "My Three Sons"

He has worn many hats in Hollywood—writer, editor, cinematographer, director, producer—but Stanley Livingston is forever known as the actor who played Chip on My Three Sons. He starred on that popular TV series from 1960 to 1972. When I asked Stan about how his career in Hollywood began, he said his interest in the performing arts developed in grade school.

My Three Sons in 1965: Stanley Livingston, Don 

Grady, and Barry Livingston. (Courtesy of Stanley

Livingston)

“I started off as an actor on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in the late ‘50s,” says Stan. “I was hired as an extra. For whatever reason on that first job, Ozzie Nelson noticed something in me and said, ‘Hey, I want you to say this line.’ He gave me a line to say, and I guess I said it the way he wanted me to and did it well. I remember when the day was over he came up to my mom and said, ‘We want to have him back; how do we get in touch with your agent?’ Anyway, from that point on I became, I guess, a semi-regular on the show from about 1957 or up to the point I was going to do My Three Sons. On the other side of the Ozzie and Harriet stage they were shooting Mr. Ed, so I would always be over there when they didn’t need me, petting Mr. Ed and giving him something to eat, whatever. There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot for a kid to do on a studio lot.”

In 1959 Stan auditioned for My Three Sons. He was cast immediately, but there was one problem—he had signed a contract with Jackie Cooper a year earlier for a series called Skippy. “The series hadn’t sold,” Stan explains. Cooper graciously freed him from that commitment, paving the way for him to sign the contract for My Three Sons. Meanwhile, Stan’s little brother, Barry Livingston, became his replacement, the “go-to-neighborhood kid,” on Ozzie and Harriet.

Young Stanley Livingston didn’t realize the breadth and depth of the work of Fred MacMurray, who played his father, Steve Douglas. “He was the guy from the Nutty Professor. And I had no idea at that point in my life about Caine Mutiny, The Apartment—the other films. All I knew was he was the big shot and the star of the show.”

Stan, who grew up in Hollywood, remembers feigning illness to stay home so he could watch I Love Lucy. “My favorite character wasn’t Lucy, it was Fred Mertz . . . There was something about him that I liked. And when I found out he was going to be the grandfather on My Three Sons, I was stoked.” But actor William Frawley was not especially fond of children. “For whatever reason, though, he warmed up to me, and I think he could see I idolized him, and we became fast friends. I officially made him my grandfather, we hung out together on the set, and he would take me to baseball games after the show. He was quite a character!”

I asked Stan about working with Don Grady, who played older brother Robbie.

“The first year of the show I didn’t realize Don was that much older than me—he wasn’t very tall.  I thought, This is great, I’m going to have this guy in the schoolroom, and as a really close buddy.

When I said Don always looked younger, Stan agreed. “And so did I. I looked seven when I was ten. You know, I think Don was playing about 13 when he was actually 15 or 16. He just turned 16 when we started shooting. I thought, Wow, this guy’s getting his own car! He was 16, and it was really hard to believe. And then he graduated from high school during the first year.” Stan had no one in the schoolroom until his real-life brother, Barry Livingston, joined the cast of the show as Ernie.

“Don was really interested in his music. And that’s all he did. In between scenes, in his dressing room, he had a little set up where he could compose and write music and seemed to be consumed with that. That was his passion.” Don used earphones to keep from disturbing anyone in the studio. “His dressing room was immediately over our schoolroom. We would always hear his foot tapping to the beat, even though you couldn’t hear the music. We would kind of smile because we knew he was up there doing that.

“We would horse around as kids. Don would always join in. We would play pranks on each other. The stairs going to my dressing room were a straight shot to the door, but Don’s stairs went up, hit a landing, then reversed, went the other way, hit another landing and then went to the door of his dressing room. I remember one time Don was up there on the phone, and Barry and I hatched this plan. We went to the prop man and got a ball of string and snuck up the stairs. At the top we created this cobweb—it went around the railing and down and out and over and all the way down the stairs. We knew that in about 20 or 30 minutes that they would call, ‘Don Grady on the set!’ We were waiting for that. The door opened and he said, ‘I’m going to catch you guys!’ He had to force his way down, snapping these strings all over him.

"Oh, I remember what he did to get even!  He bombarded us one time—we were up in our dressing room—and these dressing rooms, because they were on the inside of a stage, had no roof on them. You could look up and see the ceiling another 30 feet. He collected about 25 or 30 cups—old coffee cups—out of the trash. All of the sudden this bombardment came over, and we were hit by coffee cups. We got even for that one, too.”