Chapter 27

Lovable Crank

William Frawley—Los Angeles

William Frawley will forever be known to television buffs as Fred Mertz, neighbor and landlord to Ricky and Lucy Ricardo in the pioneer television series I Love Lucy. His grumpy wisecracks and impeccable comic timing gave Frawley the biggest laughs every week that the show aired on CBS, from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, and then again in thirteen one-hour specials until 1960. Unbeknownst to most viewers, Fred Mertz was a merely toned-down version of William Frawley, without the profanities, racist jokes, and misogyny.

Born to Mike and Mary Frawley on February 16, 1887, in the Mississippi River town of Burlington, Iowa, Bill grew up in relative prosperity. Mike Frawley was an insurance man and civic booster of Burlington who made sure that his children, John, Bill, Paul, and Mary, received a good Catholic upbringing. Mary wanted only the best for her children, which meant her kids would all get good jobs with the railroad, get married, and have children.

Bill loved sports and singing and he did both whenever he could. His smooth baritone would bring tears to the eyes of the toughest railroad workers. He had dreams of leaving Burlington and becoming a vaudevillian, going to new places and meeting interesting people.

Mike Frawley died in 1907 at age fifty, which gave Bill more leeway to pursue his dream of performing. For awhile, Frawley toiled at a boring insurance job, but managed to get himself transferred to Chicago with the intentions of going into show business. Once in Chicago, Frawley wasted no time in pursuing his aspiring entertainment career, and he appeared on stage in short order in the chorus of The Flirting Princess. Mary—who had incredible pull with her children, even when they were adults—soon found out that Bill had quit his insurance job to sing and dance on stage, and she sent his brother John to retrieve him. John gave Bill a letter from their mother in which she proclaimed that she would rather see him dead than watch him wreck his life as an actor. When Bill arrived back in Burlington, he took a job with the railroad. No doubt his domineering mother, who constantly threw roadblocks in front of his dreams, triggered a lifelong disdain for female relationships.

Bill and brother Paul put together a song and dance act, and they tried it out in an East Saint Louis vaudeville house. The act went over well and, after acquiring stage experience, they worked the Midwest vaudeville circuit as The Frawley Brothers, until Paul left the act to attend college, at Mary’s insistence. Eventually, Paul left the Midwest for the New York City stage, where his handsome looks and good voice kept him working on Broadway for the next twenty years. Mary died in 1921, and, after attending Mary’s funeral, Bill Frawley never went back to Burlington, Iowa.

Bill teamed up with pianist Franz Rath with an act called A Man, A Piano, and a Nut, and they landed a year-long gig at Denver’s popular Rex Café. Once their contract was up in Denver, they hit the Western and Pacific coast vaudeville circuits. One night, they could be performing for the super-rich at Del Monte and the next day playing to farm workers in Gilroy. It was while performing to such diverse audiences that Frawley honed his comic timing. Frawley could read an audience in seconds, and he would spice up the act with ad libs tailor-made just for the crowd he was playing for. The crowds ate it up.

In 1914, Frawley was smitten with San Diego native Edna Louise Broedt. Edna was six years younger than Frawley when they teamed up for the vaudeville stage. After a whirlwind, on-the-road courtship, the two married.

The couple performed a song and dance act, sprinkled with jokes, with Broedt playing the straight woman to Frawley’s antics. Signed to the first-class Orpheum circuit, the pair performed at the best theaters in all the major cities.

In 1916, Bill picked up some extra money by acting in his first film, Lord Loveland Discovers America. In it, Frawley portrayed his first of many roles as a newspaper reporter. Later that year, Edna joined Bill in the silent film, Persistent Percival. She went on to film two more films that year without her husband, Billy Van Deusen’s Wedding Eve and A Gay Blade’s Last Scrape.

By the autumn of 1921, the Frawleys were separated. Their life had been one of nonstop traveling, rehearsing, and performing, which could not have been easy on the couple. It probably did not help matters that Bill was a loud, foulmouthed, two-fisted boozer, who at age thirty-four already looked like his future character, Fred Mertz. Edna quit show business and went back to San Diego. The couple divorced in December 1926. Neither Edna nor Bill ever remarried.

Being divorced suited Frawley fine. As far as he was concerned, men were men and women were for sex. He liked to socialize with men so that he could tell salty stories, play cards, talk sports, and drink without having a female pipe in. Bill loved all sports and had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball. The only thing he loved more than drinking with other old-time performers was drinking with professional athletes and talking about sports.

Frawley next hit Broadway, where his little brother was enjoying a successful run on the boards. When Bill was not on stage or in rehearsal, he could be found in one of Manhattan’s many swank speakeasies, drinking with members of the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants. It was on Broadway that Frawley started to get a reputation for his penchant for intolerance and violence after he punched his co-star, Clifton Webb, in the nose during rehearsals for the 1928 production of That’s My Baby. Webb, who was one of Broadway’s most respected stars of that era and a closeted homosexual, angered Frawley with his prissy ways. Frawley was fired from the play.

Bill rebounded and continued to act on Broadway. From 1925 to 1933, he performed in nine Broadway plays, before moving to Hollywood. He was possibly motivated to make the move to a different medium by seeing his brother Paul’s career fading on the Great White Way. Frawley was a working performer, and he was constantly on the watch for better opportunities and more money.

The film studios took to Frawley immediately, and, after making a film for Universal, the forty-six-year-old actor signed a seven-year contract with Paramount. He appeared in more than one hundred films between 1933 and 1951, usually playing cops, newspapermen, bartenders, coaches, and curmudgeons. His big films were the Bob Hope classic The Lemon Drop Kid; Gentleman Jim, with his drinking pal Errol Flynn; and the Charlie Chaplin film Monsieur Verdoux. His biggest role was in the Christmas classic, Miracle on 34th Street, where he appeared as the judge that freed Kris Kringle.

Hollywood fit Frawley well. He had a suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel, just off Hollywood Boulevard and close to his favorite watering holes. It suited him so well that he lived in the hotel for thirty years. He held court at the Brown Derby, the Musso and Frank Grill, and the Nickodell with the likes of Spencer Tracy, Pat O’Brien, and Bing Crosby, as well as professional boxers, baseball players, and even golfers.

To Frawley, Mexicans were Spics, African-Americans were Spades, and everyone else were Wops, Polacks, Krauts, or Limeys. His contempt for humanity had no prejudice; the slurs were just Frawley’s way of seeing if you were one of the boys. If you had a hard time being addressed by an ethnic slur, Frawley made sure that you would not feel welcomed in the group. Fights would often break out when Bill was around, with the easily insulted Frawley often being restrained by the likes of Errol Flynn or Joe DiMaggio.

By the 1950s, Frawley’s acting roles were drying up. Producers, directors, and fellow actors were wary of working with him. Although he was a professional first and foremost, his drinking and rude comments disturbed many in the film industry. Watching his bank account plunge, Frawley looked to the new media of television. Hearing that Hollywood knockabout Lucille Ball and her bandleader husband Desi Arnaz were looking to cast an old curmudgeon for the television program that they were producing, Frawley wasted no time contacting the pair.

Arnaz and Ball thought that Frawley would be perfect as their landlord and neighbor, Fred Mertz. Once the bigwigs at CBS found out about Frawley, they contacted Arnaz about their concerns over his behavior. Arnaz met with Frawley and told him of the network’s issues.

“Well, those bastards,” answered Frawley about the charges. “Those sonsabitches. They’re always saying that about me. How the hell do they know, those bastards.”

Arnaz wanted the cigar-chewing wise guy for the part, so he set some guidelines for Frawley: Three unexcused absences and he would be terminated. Frawley accepted the proposal, along with three hundred and fifty dollars a week. Also written into his contract was an October clause that allowed him to attend baseball’s World Series every year. Frawley never missed a day on the set for the entire run of I Love Lucy.

Frawley’s intolerance of the opposite sex was tested immediately, when stage actress Vivian Vance was selected for the role of Fred’s wife, Ethel. Vance, who was a serious stage actress, was not exactly happy that she was paired up with Frawley. She felt that her character would never be married to a man Frawley’s age. Vance, who had a reputation as a clothes-horse, was also unhappy with Ball’s requirement that she be dressed in frumpy outfits, as well as having to weigh more than Lucy.

Vance and Frawley got did not get along. Vance thought Frawley was crude and disgusting. Frawley thought Vance was a stuck-up phony. In the early days, neither thought much about the future of the show, nor did they have any idea that I Love Lucy was going to be a huge hit and force them to work together for years. But being the true professionals that they were, they took the friction that they shared in real life and made it work for their characters, as they traded on-screen marital barbs at each other.

Frawley stayed to himself while on the program. He preferred to hide in his dressing room and away from the socializing on the set, where his humor and comments could easily be misconstrued. On most nights, Frawley could be found drinking at the Musso and Frank Grill, the revered Hollywood restaurant that was located right around the corner from the Knickerbocker Hotel.

Although he was earning more money than he had ever made in his life, Frawley stayed in his suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel. His little sister Mary moved in with him shortly after I Love Lucy became a hit. She kept him company, and she religiously attended the live tapings of the show. Mary died in 1957, at age fifty-nine.

Brothers Paul and John were in no shape to enjoy their brother’s success. Both of them were hopeless alcoholics and were in the care of the St. John of God Hospital in Los Angeles. Frawley paid for their hospitalization for the rest of their lives.

One of the most frequently told stories about Frawley was about the time he took an unkempt panhandler to the Brown Derby Restaurant. Frawley was a regular there and was waved into the seating area, along with the bum. When Frawley ordered two scotch and sodas, the panhandler ordered the same, not knowing that Frawley was ordering for both of them. Frawley swore at him and punched him in the jaw, knocking him out cold.

During a rehearsal for I Love Lucy, Vance questioned Frawley’s dancing abilities, which were required in the upcoming broadcast. Frawley delicately responded, “Well, for Chrissakes! I was in vaudeville since I was five years old and I guarantee you I’ll wind up teaching old fat-ass how to do the fucking thing.”

Their animosity toward each other became so heated that neither would accept script changes if one or the other wanted it. The irritated Frawley would often ask Arnaz, whom he called “Cuban,” “Where the hell did you find this bitch?”

Television viewers had no idea that the actors despised one another. Frawley was nominated five times for an Emmy Award, but never won. Vance became the first actress to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress and was nominated three more times while I Love Lucy was in production.

After the production of I Love Lucy concluded on May 6, 1957, Arnaz offered a television series reprising Frawley’s and Vance’s roles as Fred and Ethel Mertz. The new series meant big money for the actors, and the penny-pinching Frawley was eager to sign on to the project, even if that meant working with his nemesis. Vance quickly dismissed the idea, even turning down a fifty-thousand dollar signing bonus. She would not even film the pilot episode. Frawley was furious, which made Vance ecstatic.

At age seventy-three, Frawley was financially secure, as his contract with Arnaz paid him royalties in perpetuity. Most of the early television performers were paid royalties for only a couple of syndication runs, but Frawley’s deal gave him royalties each and every time I Love Lucy was aired. Instead of spending his days watching his beloved Los Angeles Dodgers or hanging out with his pals at the Santa Anita Racetrack, Frawley did not know how not to work. His hobbies were expensive and he was always concerned about money.

Frawley landed another television acting role, this time on My Three Sons as Bub O’Casey, the maternal grandfather of the three young sons of widower Steven Douglas, played by movie star Fred McMurray. The show was a massive hit for the fledgling American Broadcast Corporation. Frawley’s role was to be the housekeeper and comic foil for the boys and their misadventures. Unlike on I Love Lucy, Frawley took to the cast and was an endearing person to the young actors. Like a favorite uncle, Frawley told raunchy jokes, joined in on pranks, and taught the young cast how to drink. In a heartfelt gesture, Frawley bought cast member Stanley Livingston a top-quality surfboard for his birthday. The thought of Frawley shopping for surfboards cracked the cast up for weeks.

As apron-wearing Bub, Frawley was always cooking or cleaning, despite the fact that he had never cooked for anyone, even himself, for his entire adult life and had no idea how to act as if he were actually cleaning and cooking. Frawley did not care, as he was basically hired to play a censored version of himself and there was not an alcohol clause in his contract. Taking advantage of the loophole, Frawley usually drank his lunch at the nearby Nickodell Restaurant. The cast members were amazed at not just how much Frawley drank, but at the variety of drinks that he would consume. But he still hit his marks and cues after lunch.

To liven up My Three Sons, Steven Douglas needed to have an occasional girlfriend. One of them, Patricia Berry, caught Frawley’s attention. Berry was a busy television actress, forty years younger than Frawley, but that did not stop a torrid affair from happening on and off the set during Berry’s guest roles. Eventually, the married, brown-eyed, redheaded actress cooled off the relationship with Frawley, but not before word got out about the tryst.

When actress Joan Vohs was a guest on the show, Frawley caught a glimpse of the beautiful redhead walking past his dressing room. Frawley called director John Stephen over and asked him who the redhead was, and before Stephen could answer, Frawley added, “Oh boy, would I like to fuck her!” Stephen then informed Frawley that the redhead was his wife.

In one episode, a Native American was a guest on the show. The man never smiled the entire week of production, and that bothered Frawley to no end. All week long, Frawley tried to crack up the actor, but to no avail. Finally, while the last scenes were being filmed, the Native-American actor was filming a close-up when Frawley pulled out his penis and urinated on the floor within the actor’s sightline. The actor completely lost his composure and laughed hysterically, along with the cast and crew.

My Three Sons sponsor Quaker Oats invited Frawley to the company’s national convention as guest of honor and keynote speaker. The event was held in Frawley’s dreaded Midwest, a place he had avoided for decades. My Three Sons production manager John Stephens came with Frawley at Frawley’s insistence. Frawley started drinking heavily the day of his speech. As the dinner dragged on, Frawley was almost blind drunk. A Quaker Oats executive got up to introduce Frawley and went on for too long, piling exaggerated compliments upon their esteemed guest of honor. Finally reaching the end of his introduction, the speaker introduced Frawley as “the greatest living American” to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Frawley stumbled to the microphone and announced to the assembled mass, which included the executives’ wives, the following:

“All right, I gotta tell ya this. I’ve been introduced in a lot of places, by a lot of people, but never, ever, have I heard so much shit piled so high as this last guy who introduced me. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you are really full of shit. Thank you and good night.”

As My Three Sons progressed into its third year, Frawley began to show signs of failing health. He forgot lines and would fall asleep during filming. It got to the point where cast members were put next to Frawley so they could poke him in the back to wake him for his line.

Frawley did not pass his insurance physical for the 1964–65 season of My Three Sons. The doctor told producers that Frawley had suffered several strokes and should have been dead years ago. He was kept on for half the season until he was replaced with another hard-drinking, two-fisted actor, William Demarest. Bub was written out of the show with the explanation that he had moved to Ireland. Demarest was supposed to be Bub’s brother, Charlie. The producers had wanted the two men to meet in Frawley’s last episode, but it turned out that Demarest and Frawley had long hated one another and refused to work together.

Frawley occasionally visited the set after his release from the show, but his constant and vocal criticism of Demarest’s work caused too much conflict, and Frawley was asked not to come back. With his health in rapid decline, Frawley moved out of the Knickerbocker, after having resided there for nearly thirty years, and into an apartment at 450 North Rossmore. He hired male nurses to help him around the clock with his medical and physical needs.

On the evening of March 3, 1966, William Frawley suffered a heart attack at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. His nurse carried him into the lobby of a nearby hotel and called an ambulance. Frawley was pronounced dead on arrival when he got to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital.

Desi Arnaz took out a full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter for his friend. Along with his vital statistics and a photo of Frawley from his I Love Lucy days, the ad read only, “Buenas Noches, Amigo!”

Frawley’s career spanned an amazing period in American entertainment history. He started out in pre-World War I vaudeville, was on Broadway in the twenties, in film in the thirties and forties, and on television in the fifties and sixties. He lived his life on his own terms, and he became famous at an age when most people retire from their careers.

Oddly, Frawley left the majority of his estate to actress Patricia Barry, his fling from My Three Sons.