Things You Did Not Know About Classic TV Actors

[roadman65]

if you ever watched I Love Lucy and ever wondered why Fred and Ethel had such a great love/ hate relationship?  Well mainly cause it was not acting as in real life actors William Frawley and Vivian Vance disliked each other in real life.  They went along acting with one another, but both had resentment toward each other which showed on camera to make them the ideal love to hate each other couple.

Plus on another note William Frawley was not particularly fond of by CBS Television as they told Desi Arnaz that he was to give Frawley another only 3 chances to be both on time for filming the show, and to be sober.  As Frawley was said to be a drinker and not one to hold his liquor either.  If he showed up late and/ or stoned on the set, he would be fired.

Not to mention William Frawley also played on the sitcom My Three Sons as the second lead to Fred MacMurray as a grouchy father in law/ grandfather to the cast until he got fired from the show mid season in 1965 over an insurance issue as his aging health required insurance on the actor that either the network (ABC at the time) or Don Fedderson (the production company) could not afford.  Frawley had hard feelings to his being canned and he would show up on set after he left and give actor William Demarest (his replacement on the show) a hard time to the point he was banned from returning.  That may be why Frawley's death the following year was never mentioned on the program as many shows always do a tribute episode to fellow and former actors who have passed away, My Three Sons wrote out his character to move away to Ireland and develop Chuck Cunningham syndrome to never be seen or talked about again.

In other notes Leonard Nimoy was not the original pick from creator Gene Roddenberry to play the famous Spock character.  It was mentioned by Nimoy himself before he died that Goober on Andy Griffith was to be the fictional Vulcan character, but George Goober Lindsay turned down the offer and it was given to Nimoy instead.

Also Caroll O Connor was not to be Archie Bunker on the hit 70's sitcom All In The Family as  Norman Lear  (the creator of the series) wanted veteran actor Mickey Rooney to play the part.  However Rooney thought the character of Archie Bunker was way too controversial for him to want to act out and reluctantly turned it down.   In addition the early show producer John Rich, who left the show in the 5th season, if he would have been around at the end of that season he left where the show made the change as both Mike and Gloria moved out into their own home next door, the move would have never happened.  Rich told a Entertainment show staff, that he did not believe the family should have been parted and he would have kept the four under one roof as long as he was producer.

Another thing that many of you might of known about the late Robert "Mike Brady" Reed that he was not only gay, but his sexuality created a bigger challenge on screen for him then imagined.  As you seen him as the ideal dad as producer Sherwood Schwartz wanted the show to be strictly conservative and for a man who was practicing an alternative lifestyle in real life to do the serious dad scenes he did required the full acting capabilities of the actor to pull it off.  Also to mention in the last episode of the Brady Bunch where Bobby turned Greg's hair orange due to some bad hair tonic he gave him, Robert Reed did not appear in the episode at all, as Reed thought the whole orange hair concept was too cartoonish for a serious sitcom. 

[kkt]

In All in the Family, keeping the kids under the same roof would get more and more unbelievable as the years went on.  If they wanted to play it that way, they'd have to have Mike and Gloria feeling very inferior and depressed that they have to accept Archie's charity.  Sure, there's love under the surface, but there's an awful lot of friction on top of the love.