#339 My Three Sons: Stanley Livingston’s Life in Classic TV

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

alright, dottie. Thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome everybody to episode 339 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host. Jeff Dwoskin, this week's episode is going to be a classic episode for the ages. My guest today is none other than chip. Douglas himself. Stanley Livingston, that's right. Chip from my three sons, is hanging out with me, and we're diving deep into that classic show you're gonna love every second of it, and it's coming up in just a few seconds, and in these two seconds, if you love deep dives, do not miss my conversation with Richard Gehrman, TV producer and author of married with children versus the world, the world, the world we dive deep into married with children behind the scenes discussions. You're gonna love it, but you're also gonna love my deep dive into my three sons and Stanley Livingston's career. Buckle up, because we're getting classic, and that's coming up right now. All right, everyone, I'm excited to introduce my next guest actor, producer, director, over 65 years in the entertainment industry, beloved as Chip Douglas on my three sons, welcome to the show. Stanley Livingston,

Stanley Livingston 1:58

hey, how you doing today?

Jeff Dwoskin 2:00

I am doing great. I am doing great. I'm very excited to talk to you about your entertainment journey. It's incredible. So thank you for hanging with me. I do appreciate that

Stanley Livingston 2:13

Absolutely.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:14

I want to dive into my three sons, because it's fascinates me on a few levels. One is because it ran for so long you were just a kid and basically grew up on the show. So it was like, it must have just every few years, must have been just a complete reinvention, just because of your age. And I mean, one minute you're just a kid and the next you're getting married. So it's like it ran for a long time, people coming and going. Imagine it's every kind of period of that show different kind of story and block of memories for you.

Stanley Livingston 2:46

Yeah, I know it sounds surprising, but by the time I started doing my three sons, I was actually an old pro that wasn't my, my the first rodeo by any means. Prior to that, I'd been a member of an, you know, a recurring part on another show called Ozzie and Harriet, which I worked on for about four years, and did about 1520, episodes for the Nelsons. But it already starred in three when I started with one of the actors in and I guess maybe a co star of about three or four movies. And did you know a lot of TV independent you know TV shows, you'd be hired one off to do one episode, and that was it. That was your contribution to that show. Yeah, by the time 1950 rolled around, I had a heck of a resume back. I had even starred in a TV pilot where, actually I was the star. The pilot was written for me by a producer, director who was also a child star when he was about my age when I started my three sons, a guy named Jackie Cooper, yeah. So before my three sons, as they say, I was paying my dues and paid my dues to get at least that far. And you know what you find out in the entertainment industry, each job you do is like a rung on the ladder. It gets you to the next rung. You pull yourself up. Sometimes it's a big part. Sometimes it's a smaller part. Sometimes you're working with a major star. Sometimes I worked with people that didn't even have as many credits as me and I was just a kid then, you know, runs the gamut, but yeah, each one of those rungs led me somewhere else. Probably the most important rung out of the bunch was the TV pilot that I did for Jackie Cooper. The pilot didn't sell. I did it at the end of 1958 for about a year or two, Jackie Cooper tried to sell the show. It didn't sell, and he ended up doing another TV series. Immediately after that, he starred in and produced a direct so I think he lost interest, but what it provided me was an incredible reel that showed my capability as an actor, and the fact that I had the starring role and above the tie. Little credit as an actor was a heck of a thing to have when you're only eight years old. But that reel, my agent used that to get me out of work. You know how actors today, just like today, they go, Hey, can I can I see your reel? Where's your demo reel? Well, demo reels have evolved too. Most people are familiar with demo reels being a videotape of all your different scenes, or later it became a DVD with those scenes on it, and now they're file based, so your reel is up on the internet and accessible to people, probably through a thing called actors access. So that's how it was done. In my day, it actually was a reel my agent would have to go to Jackie Cooper and get a 16 millimeter reel, rent a theater, rent the projectionist, and after midnight, they could show my, you know, my work, to either other casting directors or sometimes a producer. And that's how I ended up getting my three sons. 1959 they were looking for an actor, three actors play the three sons in a series to be called my three sons, which almost wasn't my three sons, a little bit of trivia. It was actually going to be called my three daughters. My three daughters was going to start the I believe it was the Lennon sisters, the McGuire sisters, whatever one of the groups of girls was on Lawrence Welk. My boss also produced the show, Lawrence Don Feddersen, who ultimately was the producer and creator of my three son and he went to them and said, Hey, I have a show. I'd like you to star in it, and I want to move you from Lawrence Welk over to that show. And they had nailed down an actor to play the dad. It was Eddie Albert, and it turned out those girls didn't want to leave Laurence well, so that got scuttled. And Don Pedersen, I guess, thought about the idea for a while, and my hunch is he went to see a movie that was out about the end of 1958 I believe it was. It was called the shaggy dog. And it happened to star very prominent actor. Actually, the highest paid actor in Hollywood at that time was an actor named Brad McMurray. And it was, you know, kind of in the late 50s. It was portrayed. So, you know, had that age of innocence that people were familiar with. On my three sons, they watched the show in the early years. And it had three sons, you know, had Tim Considine, who actually did become a son on my three sons, had Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran was the one who was my age. And it actually had a dog like trim. It was a little bit more of a sheep dog. The other thing it was missing was the grandfather, Don Feddersen, put the show together again, and talked Fred McMurray into becoming involved, and hit him right at the right moment in time, because he really didn't want to travel anymore and do movies where he'd be gone to three to six months a year. And he in June, had just they had adopted twins, and he, you know, wanted to see his kids grow up. So Right place, right time they got him, and he agreed to do it. And they were searching for, you know, some guys to play the sons, one of which was me, and then Don Grady eventually became Robbie. And Tim Considine, who worked with Fred in the shaggy dog, became the oldest brother, Mike. And they would needed a grandfather, and they decided to go with William Frawley. William Frawley was known, I guess the audience is pretty widely known by then on, I Love Lucy. He was the Fred Merz character, so he segued, yeah, from I Love Lucy on our show. We did the pilot in 1959 I got hired because of the Skippy reel. My agent sent it over to Desi Luce studios, and they screened it. The next day, I got an offer to play the character chip, and then I had a decision to make, because I was up for a movie at the same time, and they were kind of fixated on me play the lead role in a movie called Huckleberry Finn, which had been around for about a year and a half, originally, was going to be a musical, and then they decided not a musical, and that's how I, you know, was offered chance to play Huckleberry Finn in it. My agent, and this all happened like, within months, unfortunately, was killed in an auto accident. She's the one who discovered me and nurtured my career, and, you know, help me get the work and just champion my career. So I had to get another agent. And this was all happening at the same time, a decision had to be made whether to do the movie and or to accept the offer to do my three sentence and the new agent that I got, a lady named Jeannie Halliburton, decided it was probably much more advantageous to do a TV series with Fred McMurray, and I'm sure she was looking at it. From the financial standpoint, if you do a movie, you get one paycheck. If you do a TV series, you get 39 those days filming 39 episodes. So I got paid for each and every one of those episodes. So that was. Yeah, that's how I came into that show. And

Jeff Dwoskin 10:02

she must have been thinking, oh, you know, this is three to five years payday right there, not even realizing designing you offer what becomes like the second longest running TV show like ever. Yeah,

Stanley Livingston 10:15

you have no awareness of that, or even, you know, any sense that your show is going to go any further. I mean, if it's a real disaster, they used to yank shows after 13 episodes too. We thought we had a pretty good chance to go a whole season because of President Murray's participation, biggest actor in Hollywood on our show, the highest paid actor. And it was something novel to have a celebrity and an actor of his ilk doing the daily grind of a TV series. You know, that kind of work doesn't make you feel real special. I mean, you know, you're happy to have the work at all if you're an actor, but for somebody like him, most actors looked at appearing on a TV series, especially if you're a regular on as a step down or maybe several step down, but yeah, he wanted to do it. You know, he made time for his kids. He had a great schedule. He worked from eight to five every day, went home, had dinner with his family, and during the summer months, his agreement with the production company was he would work for three months, be let off for three months, where he could just go away, travel the country, enjoy life while we were toiling away down in the down in the mine, and come back for the last three months finish off the series.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:28

So since you brought it up, I do want to go back in time a little bit, just to hear about some of the what sparked you early on to become an actor before doing Skippy and all that, Ozzy and Harriet, what you're describing, I believe, is what they call the McMurray method of filming. I know Brian Keith. When I talked to some of the folks from family affair, they had a similar thing where they filmed all him and then they would fill in all the rest as well. Was it difficult to do that like, I mean, they're saying, like, you're getting haircuts once a week. You're to stay all in in sync, and they're filming tons of different shows,

Stanley Livingston 12:02

yeah, well, they keep our appearance the same throughout the season. You know, some of it you had control over, like they're saying your hair color, in terms of your wardrobe, you know, keeping the continuity of what you wore from scene to scene. In my case, about the second year I had a growth spurt. It was nothing anybody could do about that. But yeah, for the most part. You know, people think all this stuff is just shot from beginning to end, and it's not. No matter what you work on, they start somewhere in the script. They pick a scene that's usually fairly easy to do and let the actors get acquainted and something that doesn't involve a lot of emotion. Or, in other words, they're not going to shoot your nervous breakdown or your big crying scene on the first day, and the first scene actors are used to, I think, working in scripts and doing films where the scenes are not shot any particular consecutive order. I mean, they shy to as much as they can, but for the most part, that doesn't happen for various reasons. Sometimes you've got another actor in there, and they hired him. He's only available two days, so you got to work with him, and he's at the end of the script. So you're shooting the end. First, you can have a location that you have, or you rent it. You only have the location for one day, so you got to get everything done. And that particular location somewhere near the end of the thing, there's all kinds of things that dictate why we don't shoot, you know, movies or TV series in any particular order. You're doing a live show, it's a different thing. You know, they're kind of made where it's all in one location, you know, like a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and they're all kind of connected on the soundstage, so you can literally go from set to set to set. Maybe there'll be a one wild set where they go to a restaurant and they'll break, move the camera over there and do that. But those are shot pretty much in consecutive order. But for movies and TV series, like my two sons, they are

Jeff Dwoskin 13:57

for the shooting you were doing multiple, multiple episodes at any given time. Yeah, right. Well,

Stanley Livingston 14:04

that was the other thing, yeah, the way we shot it, like I said, not necessarily in in the same order of how the script had it, but we're also shooting in a number of scripts per day. You know, we shoot maybe a couple of living room scenes and then move over to the bedroom set. Shoot a scene there. Move into the kitchen, shoot maybe two or three scenes there. So, yeah, it and those were all from different shows. So I think the moves on internally on the set were just, you know, to keep us from going crazy. We sat there and just kept shooting scenes in the kitchen where you're eating. By the end of the day, it'd be, it'd be puking, doing a breakfast scene, then a dinner scene, and another couple of breakfast scene, a scene where you're baking a cake. Who knew? But, yeah, it's the way we did. It

Jeff Dwoskin 14:51

was that easier or harder than to prepare, because you're not learning then one full script, right? You're like, okay, we're shooting this scene from scripts. And this one from script 13, this one from by

Stanley Livingston 15:02

the time you're shooting it, you should have read the scripts. That's part of your job as an actor. So you know what the story was. Then you're just kind of revisiting it in the various scenes that are in that script on the day you're shooting. You know, you had an idea, you know, where you should be emotionally, if it had any emotional stuff to it. I mean, the early 19th certainly had, I thought, a lot more emotional scenes than later in the show. Everybody was just happy, go lucky by then. But the beginning, first year, two years, I had a lot of crying scenes. Bub was always leaving and I was always crying about it. I had to be prepared to cry. And, you know, different directors work different ways too. We have the same director that was hired to shoot the entire season, so you worked with him. First year, we had a director named Peter Tewksbury who was very meticulous about how he wanted to shoot it and working with the actors and developing their characters, you know, because it was a new show then, and you you needed to set the characters kind of how their character was going to be. And he worked with us in between scenes where later on, that that wasn't the case. You know, even the next year, the director that we had didn't work with us as much. So we kind of took what we learned from Peter Tewksbury about our character and carried that forward. And about the third, fourth year. You know, we were really, you know, we were just coming in doing the job. We weren't really getting much help or direction from the directors, unless there was a problem. Your job as an actor is, I know your lines and hit your marks and show up, which some don't do

Jeff Dwoskin 16:35

when you finish the show and like a show was ready. If Did you watch it air?

Stanley Livingston 16:40

No, no, no. I probably have seen maybe, maybe 2030, episodes. So the other, other 350 shows I haven't

Jeff Dwoskin 16:52

seen yet. You had to do a rewatch show like, Yeah, I'd have to block out a month. That's the problem, because, like, only you and Fred are in all of them, right?

Stanley Livingston 17:01

Yeah, we're in all 12 seasons. Yes, I'm not in. There's a few shows the last year that I'm not in, and that's because I almost left the show and I thought I was going to transition over to the Virginia got it, and I was kind of didn't know what to do, and was waiting to make that decision to the last, last second, I was just racked with guilt about leaving, but thought I should try something new. And, you know, offers don't come along every day, but there was an offer to be a different character. And by then, I was an adult. Kind of wanted to move away from the chip character. It would have been a good opportunity. But in the end, I felt like a traitor leaving. I just thought, you know, I started with the show. It was good to me. I went down with the ship.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:46

Well, you know, it's get the distinction of being there for the whole run. And so it's, I think that's, that's pretty cool. Did you have afterwards? Was it difficult? You know, everyone see you as Chip after

Stanley Livingston 17:57

the show? Yeah, yeah. No, it was difficult. I mean, it had its good sides and its bad side. You know, once you're on a TV series for any length of time, you kind of become pigeon holder, typecast, especially if the show is ahead. Everybody knows you that way, including the people in Hollywood who potentially can hire you, casting directors, producers. So you know, some wanted you because you were on a TV show. And, you know, they thought, I guess I would bring an audience to whatever they were doing. You know, we had quite a few fans from having been on a show for almost 400 episodes and for 12 years. And there were other producers and casting directors go, you know, this guy's typecast. You know, people won't see past the fact that you're supposed to be, you know, George, the guys who's second in command of the street gang, and they're never going to buy it. This is chip. This chip who just shot that cop. It's kind of what George, George Ruiz went through. You know, he was actually pretty well known working actor. Before he did Superman, he's gone with the wind and some other prestige projects. Did Superman thinking, you know, it's just going to be I don't think he realized the implications. And maybe the implications weren't there to be realized yet, because this was early TV people coming into people's homes on a weekly basis, and becoming synonymous with a particular character would be the death knell to your career as an actor. And he was in some movie after he did Superman, and they had a screening of it. You know, when he walked in, came on screen, I think it was a period piece too. You know, people just in the audit said, Oh, my God, it's Superman, Superman. And producer leaned over to his party goes, we got to cut that. Can't have that in our film. So I think actors who had some longevity on TV series kind of suffered the same fate. You know, when you're playing a character, they want you to be that character. They don't want you to be known for anything else. It's just the way it is and the way it works.

Jeff Dwoskin 20:03

So let's jump back in time. So you're doing Skippy with Jackie Cooper, who, by the way, was Perry White and Superman the 1970s Yeah, and they but like before Ozzy and Harriet was something, was being an actor or something you wanted to do. I know your brother, Barry also got into acting as well. And, you know, yeah,

Stanley Livingston 20:21

I always wanted to be an actor from the time I was in school. And knew you could be an actor. You know, when I was going to grade school in Hollywood, I went to Gardner street elementary school, and they always, you know, in the auditorium, would put on shows. I wanted to be in those shows. I wanted to be the guy that the kid that wore the, you know, policeman's outfit or something cool, like the fireman outfit. I think one time I had my first crushing blow in show business was I was made the milkman skit in some show at Gardner street. So I wasn't really thrilled about that. But, yeah, I learned you can't always, you know, get the parts you want. And then when I moved over, my parents moved and I had to go to another elementary school, Vine Street, Elementary School, which is right in the heart of Hollywood, and actually was a school that a lot of celebrities before me went through. I think I saw pictures of, like Mickey Rooney, and could have been Shirley Temple, I don't know, but there were quite a few I didn't know that when I went there, I went back for its 100 year anniversary, and they asked me to speak at it. I hadn't been to that school since fifth grade, but it was a showcase, right when you walked in the front doors, and it was filled with pictures of kids who went to school there that had a illustrious career in Hollywood. So that was kind of cool. Didn't know about it, but yeah, when I was there, the same thing, I tried to become involved in all the all the school plays or musicals or whatever they're doing, they'd have a Christmas show. And I remember I wanted to be the emcee. I got to be the MC of the Christmas show, and I was in other shows. So that was kind of my goal. And by then, I think my parents, obviously were coming to the school, seeing me do whatever it is I was doing, singing and and my mom, you know, she put me in a dance school, and I did other things that she I guess she thought would be useful if he became an actor, learn how to do certain skills, like ride a horse, which there were a lot of Westerns in those days. And I guess you shouldn't be getting on Bonanza or something. I don't know, but yeah, you know, we went out, went to dance classes, singing classes, horseback riding, sports. Learn how to ice skate, roller skate, bicycle, whatever. Just kind of doing kid type things too. But they're all useful that you know how to do them. It was right around the time I started going to Bunche elementary school when I was in kindergarten there. I also learned how to swim at a young age. And the swimming pool that I went to was right on Hollywood Boulevard, near Western Avenue, just east of there, and the lady that ran it was named Jen lovin and, yeah, she's a real mover, shaker and entrepreneur. You know, it wasn't just a swim school. She figured out a way to get publicity for this place. She had a porthole cut in the side of the pool and had a big four foot, must have been three inch thick piece of plate glass installed. So if you went downstairs, you actually could take pictures of people underwater. That's cool. It was a great idea. So she put cars and bikes and swings underwater. We were just kids, so we go into there and play. And photographers came out, and she called us Water Babies. And she got quite a bit of publicity, you know, in the LA Times magazines, period magazines, look life, Vogue, all came out and took pictures of Water Babies doing, you know, high diving and doing stuff underwater. There was a show on in that era called, you asked for it. And so I'm sure it was her that asked for it, but it didn't come out and film a segment on us. Because of that, a lot of Hollywood people, producers, directors, casting directors, started bringing their kids there to learn how to swim. Anyway, there was an agent whose daughter, although she was considerably older than me, she was about 1213, at that point, was learning how to swim. I guess she took a liking to me. You know, it's cute, and I was very extroverted, and could talk to adults, talk to her, and you know, I wasn't really what you would call a shy kid. I guess she thought I'd made a good candidate to be a child actor, and kept after my mom, and finally convinced her to represent me and give it a try. So we did, and she was now my agent, and the first few jobs I had that I went out, that I got, I had no lines. I was just basically hired as an extra. But she said, No, that's okay, because you'll learn, learn the ropes and learn what's expected of them. So I did that. One of my first jobs was to drown or look like I was drowning. For John Provost was playing Timmy on Lassie, and I was in that transitional episode where Tommy Reddick was leaving the show, and also the two adult actors. And the storyline was he couldn't take Lassie with him. He bequeaths John Provost character Timmy, Lassie and but I think in that episode, Timmy wasn't real thrilled about living in the country, even though he had the dog and ran away. And somehow he falls in the water, gets in there and starts drowning, and the dog goes and gets an adult who rushes out into the water and saves his life. Well, that wasn't John, that was me out there in the water flailing around, pretending that I was drowning, which I almost did. I went underwater a couple times and got stuck in the goop, the mud. It was at the bottom of this pond that we were filming in, and this section really had a good hold on me. And I didn't think I was going to be able to come up, but I finally broke loose. Came up when I looked like I was drowning. I think I actually was by that point. So, yeah, it was a method acting I guess. So my first job actually was as a stuntman,

Jeff Dwoskin 26:06

all right, so you were Timmy. You were Timmy stuntman, John stuntman. I

Stanley Livingston 26:11

was playing Timmy. Yeah, yeah, okay, and John, we've been friends our whole lives. So I met John on that. You know, our friendship has continued for about 65 years anyway, yeah. So, yeah, I did that and did some, you know, extra work. I was up for another part, but I didn't get it for Dennis the Menace, and I got down to the you know, wire with two other actors, one being Jay north, and I can't remember the other kid's name? Jay north, got the part of Dennis and menace, and I got a booby prize. I got to be an extra on it for two or three episodes. I was uncredited, but at

Jeff Dwoskin 26:50

least you didn't drown on that show. So that's a bonus. Yeah,

Stanley Livingston 26:54

just got hit with like, a slingshot or something. Get your eye put out instead. Yeah. Well, it was, you know, like I said, you're learning stuff. I was hired as an extra on Aussie and Harriet, but my agent knew what she was doing. It was really kind of giving me experience, although I didn't know that's what it was. And, you know, went out, and he had an episode where Ozzy was selling Christmas trees out of his backyard one year to make extra money. And he had a prospective client there, and he had a sea of Christmas trees in the backyard, and then all of a sudden, about, you know, six, eight kids, little kids, come marching out of there, and we all have sleeping bags and backpacks on. And anyway, we, you know, walk out of there, and he's kind of looking, what the heck, and didn't know he had a campground in there. So we shot it a couple times, and then he took me aside. Said, Hey, I want you to say this line. And he told me what to say. And he said, When you get to this point, he put a piece of tape on the floor. When you get to that spot, don't look at that table. Stop there and just look at me. Don't look down and say this line. And then, so we shot it a couple times, and then he moved the camera closer. We shot it again. I guess I was getting that close up. And yeah, my line was sure. Was mighty good camping in there, Mr. Nelson. And anyway, I guess I said the line okay. And at the end of the day, came up to my mom and said, I want to have Stanley back. Leave your contact information with my secretaries. So yeah, my mom did. And, you know, we didn't know what to expect. And meanwhile, I went off and did some other TV shows. And but the difference now was because I said that one line, I was actually able to join the Screen Actors Guild and become a professional actor. That was the demarcation point of my career where I became an actor, and, yeah, I did some other shows, period shows in that era that I don't even remember. I don't even know how many shows I did, and back then, we really, you know, wasn't like you recorded them. So, right, right, right. Some of them were probably never seen again. Remember, I did a show called Peck's Bad Girl, and it was with Patty McCormick, who had just done the bad seed that one. I remember, you know, there was other ones I just, they were just unremarkable. Probably that's why I think I did a thing called day in court where I accidentally was playing with a gun that my parents didn't lock up and I shot and killed my little brother. That was, yeah, pretty crazy. In fact, our next door neighbor was a little old lady, we used to call her aunt variation, probably in her early 80s, and she called the police after she saw the episode to tell them that, you know, Barry hadn't been it wasn't shot. Nothing happened. She didn't know was acting. Thought I she was taking it as for real. So the police came to our house. My parents had explained that I was on a TV show and it aired the day before, and our next door neighbor, because she's 80 years old, didn't realize it was just an acting job. And oh yeah, by the way, here's Barry. He's perfectly fine. I. That was really crazy as crazy stuff in those days, people not knowing that some of those shows which seem real, you know, it was like a real courtroom drama. But she just believed that. That got me going, started getting movies. I did a movie called, what was it? Called Bonnie Parker story with Dorothy provine as Bonnie Parker did rally around the flag boys football, Newman and Joe and Woodward, and just after I did Skippy, that's how I got into please don't eat the daisies. My agent sent that reel over, and again, I was cast on the basis of that, although I had to come in and still meet the producers ahead of time.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:42

You were working with some really big names early on. Yeah, Doris Day, yeah, Doris dame, yeah, Niven. And then you mentioned Paul Newman, and yeah, and

Stanley Livingston 30:50

all this was before my three sons. So, you know, yeah, that's all that mattered. If you're trying to get work as an actor, that they see you working. And, you know, if you're doing stuff and it's got major movie stars. That's certainly a feather in your cap, and much more advantageous and comforting to the producers, that you can handle yourself and do what you got to do. And you're not completely freaked out because you're working with a movie star. When you're a kid, you're not. You don't think of those people with movie stars. They're just adults that you're working with. So you know, they didn't mean anything to me, and none of the other kids, you know. So like, Oh, wow. Paul Newman going to Woodward, you know, there's no thought of that in my head. Just like, this is a big guy I got to work with today, and he's pretending to be my dad. And then

Jeff Dwoskin 31:36

how the West was one that added like, 100 more big names to them. Yeah,

Stanley Livingston 31:41

that came later. Actually, we started doing my three cents. I think the first movie I did in between season was in six in the 61 beginning of 62 I did a feature film where Charles Bronson played my dad. It was a movie called X 15. Had James Gregory, yeah, had couple other pretty well known actors, and actually launched the movie career. Mary Tyler Moore, oh, Kenneth Toby, that's a ocean. I think he was in it. Anybody's familiar with the original the thing movie? Sure, the Howard Hawks produced movie. He was the star of that. Anyway, got to work with Kenneth Toby. And actually, I think I did a whirly bird suit. That was one of the other episodes I couldn't remember from before. Just popped into my head. Every once a while I see shows, I go, Oh, wow, yeah, I forgot I was doing that. Yeah. So I did this film with Charles Bronson. He played my dad. It was about the X 15 program, the rocket plane that they had that was actually flying into space and then returning, and the pilot actually lived. It wasn't the TV debut, but it was the feature film debut of a director who became a very, very big director. It was Richard Donner, and, yeah, that was his first feature film. You know, he later went on to do the omen and Superman, all the lethal weapon movies, Maverick,

Jeff Dwoskin 33:02

a few movies of note. Yeah, yeah. His

Stanley Livingston 33:05

director, you know, we were friends my whole life. From having worked there, we kind of, you know, developed a connection. I think he really liked me, and occasionally, well, he that's how he saw me. Came down to the my three sunset I was working, and I guess he was told there's a 11 year old kid, 12 year old kid, whatever it was at the time, working down there, and they needed to cast that part. So remember, he came down and took a gander, and I guess he liked what he saw. And I got the part, and then I knew Dick his whole life. Yeah, he just great guy, and one of the best people I ever met in the industry. He

Jeff Dwoskin 33:38

is great. Everyone who ever says his name only has praise for the time they spent working with him. Sorry to interrupt. Have to take a quick break. I want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting us here at Classic conversations, and that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my amazing conversation with Stanley Livingston. I think it's incredible, like, how much of your career was, how much you were able to leverage the footage from Skippy. And what I mean by that, specifically is in today's years, me hearing that, of course, it's easy to showcase with YouTube and Vimeo or whatever, but we're not talking about it. We're talking 1950s where you didn't, I mean, it was just, it was, it's impressive. It's impressive. It

Stanley Livingston 34:26

was lucky. You know, because most of the time you never could get a hold of real they would never loan that out. It was only because I became friends with Jackie Cooper after that, and part of it was the show was not going to be picked up. But, you know, I think he saw it and saw what was in it for me, which was the work that I did in it was pretty spectacular. I mean, a funny side note. Well, not funny. It was maybe tragic. I don't know that all the years I did Skippy, but I never saw it, thing that was getting me work all the time. I. And I had never seen it, because the only way it could be seen was to rent a theater after midnight and pay the projectionist to put it on. And my bedtime was like about nine, 910, o'clock back then, so I just it was just bad timing. I never got to see it. When I was an adult, I'd run into Jackie, and I remember one of the times I ran into him and said, Hey, you still have this, that 16 millimeter print of Skippy. I said, I don't know whether you know it or not. I never got to see it. And he was, like, surprised to hear that. So yeah, he invited me over to his house in Beverly Hills. I think we rummaged through his garage or something. Couldn't find it. So yeah, I was really disappointed. And it might have been five years later, six years I ran into him again. He says, Why don't you come out again? Both in my attic, it's time. If I put it up there, you can help me. So I went there and couldn't find it. And I said, Hey, it's okay. I guess it's just meant to be, you know, I'll take your word for it. I was, I did a good job, right? And he said, You were, like, unbelievable. And it was, I mean, the funny part of this is hearing that from the guy who originated that part in 1932 because Skippy was a movie, and it was made in 1932 and it was nominated for an Academy Award. Movie. The director won the Academy Award, and Jackie Cooper, I believe, won the Academy Award as as Best Actor, or at least he was nominated. It was unheard of that a child would be nominated. The only other person was ever nominated, as it was Shirley Temple, but Jackie Cooper, when he got his nomination for a lead actor, was younger. I guess that's what happened when he met me, when I was doing Ozzy and Harriet. Think I reminded him of himself when he was a kid, and I was very outgoing. And I remember when he came up to me, I was actually playing with the dog who was part of their cast series called people's choice that he starred in. And I had a dog named Cleo. And every lunch hour, I would leave the Ozzie and Harriet set go eat lunch, and then run over and play with the dog. I didn't know who he was when he came up to me, although, you know, watch the little rascals, but you know, he was probably 2930 33 and I don't remember his exact age. And memory came up to me and said, Hey, who are you and what are you doing here? And I stood up, stuck my hand out, said, Hi, I'm Stanley Livingston. And no wise cracks, please. I cracked him up. And so something clicked in his brain. We talked for about 1015, minutes. Then he wanted to meet my mom. And then I remember I asked him. He says, Am I in trouble? And he goes, No, no, no, you're not in trouble. He goes, but I would like to meet mom. So I said, Okay, well, she's over on stage five with Ozzie and Harry. So I brought him over to the set and said, Mom, this guy wants to meet I didn't even know his name and walked away because I thought I was in trouble and that he was going to tell her that I was wandering around the lot, and he can't have kids wander around the lot for insurance reason, anyway. So they stood there and talked for about 20 minutes, and he finally went away, and my mom didn't take me out back and spanked me. So I figured that was okay in those days, we got spankings.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:03

Does your mom love meeting all these famous people? Well,

Stanley Livingston 38:07

she knew who he was. I didn't, you know. I mean, she was kind of drop jawed when I introduced him, but I I didn't put two and two together, you know, I didn't realize it was Jackie Cooper I was introducing him to. I could introduce him to like Paul Newman, and I wouldn't have known that either. It just would have been a guy that was probably during the summer months, out on July, something August. Anyway, he went away, wrote a script called skipping and approached my parents about me starring in it. My it was the first week of December of 1958 I was back on the general service studio lot and shooting Skippy, which Jackie directed and produced. So anyway, he assured me I did a good job. So anyway, all this time goes by, never saw it, and about three years ago, some guy on Facebook contacted me, and I recognized the name. I was going, Oh, wow, I'm talking to this guy because he actually worked on my three sons a couple times, and I didn't remember his name. Just wasn't in my memory banks anymore. We contact each other. I think he, whatever they call private, messaged me his phone number, and I called him and, you know, we hashed over old times when he was actually my best friend in that TV pilot, Skippy a guy, an actor named Jack Jay Potter, and he played Suki, who was the best friend of skipping Skippy guy, for those who don't know, was kind of like, kind of like Dennis the minutes. It was a newspaper cartoon. That's where the original idea came from. Back in 1931 they turned that cartoon into a movie. Later, Jackie Cooper decided to bring it back from the dead and do it again as a TV pilot. So anyway, I asked him. I said, So did you ever see Skippy go, oh yeah, you know, I've seen it, yeah, a bunch of times. I go, Well, how did you see it? I never saw it. He's like, Well, I have a copy of it. When you do well. I'm like, Wow. I said, I never Wow. I said, So where do you live? Fortunately, he lived up by San Francisco and but he said, I come down through LA and out to Palm Springs, December every year I have a condo out there. So during the Christmas birthday, at Christmas weeks, I come down. We made a plan for him to come by my place, and we went out to lunch and came back and he had Skippy on a DVD, so it's like, Oh, wow. So finally got to see myself. Yeah, that was pretty good. I can see now why producers would want me. I mean, I handled there's a big load, let's put it that way, I was in every single scene, and I had the other half of a dialog, and there was stuff that was pretty emotional in it, and thought I handled it pretty well. So anyway, when Jay was leaving, I said, Hey, would you mind if I make a copy of this DVD? You know, that I do editing, so I've got a duplicator. And I said, like, you want some more copies I can run off. My duplicator will make, like, I think it was 18 of them at one time, it'll only take it'll be less than five minutes. So I said, Sure. So I just dropped it in, dropped in 18 blanks, and five minutes later, I had 18 copies. Gave him nine. I had nine. And so I was like, Wow, I can't believe this. I'm gonna have to watch it again later. I don't believe I actually saw this finally. So anyway, walked him out to his car. When he was leaving, he opened his truck. He said, You know, you should have this. And I said, Yeah, what is it? And so he reached in, and he pulled out an old it was like a film mailing box. It looks like it must be made out of. It's not cardboard. I don't know, almost like a plastic whatever it was, it had the 16 millimeter print of Skippy in there. So, wow, I didn't want to say anything. I gladly accepted it and probably displayed there behind me somewhere. Yeah, I think what happened? His mom was also an actress, and Jay was working a lot back then, and certainly that film for the scenes that he had, and it would have showed him up pretty well. She must have borrowed a jack a couple times, and the last time she just didn't return it, and it went missing for 5060, years, I guess, wow. However, like I said, I guess it was karma. It was meant to be that I should have it in my possession. And so

Jeff Dwoskin 42:21

can I get a copy of this DVD on eBay or something?

Stanley Livingston 42:23

Now, no, I can't even really do anything with that. I don't really own it, right? I'm sure if there was a copyright on it, terms of ownership, it's probably expired. That was 1958 and I think you only had you could copyright something. It was good for 52 years, and then you had a chance to copyright it again a second time. I mean, for 26 years, you can copyright it a second time. Bring it up to 52 years, but that 52 year mark has already passed, so it's probably public domain. All right.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:57

Time to bring Skippy back. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember auditioning for my three sons, or did what you were auditioning for? So many things you're like, not really.

Stanley Livingston 43:06

I didn't have to audition. Oh yeah, skipping, yeah. Agent sent that reel over. They hired me on the basis of that reel. I met the people ahead of time, but, you know, I already knew I was hired. Just came in, met Don Feddersen, met the production manager and other people associated with the real but yeah, by that point, I had, I had a track record as a kid, I'm only nine, but I had a track record that, you know, was getting me work I couldn't show Skippy when I was 20, and go, Hey, here's my work. It's like, wait a minute, you're only nine there. So, yeah, it benefited me, you know, for that period of time, and you know, was the vine that I swung from all the TV stuff and movies I did to my three sons. And after that, it was just a useless thing outside of saying I was in it. Here it is. You can take a look at what you look like. I had just turned eight years old. So

Jeff Dwoskin 43:59

when you started as Chip. You were eight. Well, around eight, right? Yeah, I

Stanley Livingston 44:05

was just about to turn nine, yep. Well, we did the pilot,

Jeff Dwoskin 44:08

yeah, just to kind of wrap to, like, what I was saying earlier, so, like, right, so you're nine, and then ends 12 years later. You're, what, 2021 right?

Stanley Livingston 44:18

Uh, yeah. I mean, from the time I did the pilot to the time the very last episode aired from the 12th season. I was almost 23 I was maybe a month or two short of that. Yeah, it really took me from being a kid the pre pubescence, I guess you call it, to being an early teenager, mid teenager, late teenager and young adult. By the time the show was over in real life, I was married when it ended. I had a three, almost four year old daughter, and I was going to school at night, four nights a week. You know, hoping I was going to have a career after my three sons, I was kind of anxious for it to be over and see what else was out there for me. You never know. You know. Was startling, although, I guess that happens to every actor been on a TV show and it went that long. I never really bought into the star routine. I just thought of myself as like a working actor, so I wasn't in any way. I thought stuck up, you know, just, I'm just an actor. So when it ended, though you'd still expect to go out for a certain level of work. Thought my agent would call, and I told him I wanted to take a month off call me the beginning of the year. And he did. I thought he had something for me, you know, maybe another series, maybe a part in a movie. No. So what? What is this you want to send me out on? And he goes, Oh, it's a McDonald's commercial. Like, case you didn't notice, I've been a star on TV for 12 years, even though I'm don't really think of myself that way. But I get how the industry works. Should I really be going from starring on a TV series to doing like a McDonald's commercial anyway? That's what I was thinking. I don't think I said that. And then it suddenly hit me, you're back to square one, pal, how you got Skippy? You got to go out there and prove yourself all over again. And that involved. You know, back when before my two sons, was doing whatever commercials, two lines guest star, whatever, movie, TV commercials, industrial so I said, Yes, just have nothing else. It would be a good lesson for me and getting my feet wet back in when I turned the real world of acting, you know, where nobody owed you any favors, you had to go in and compete for a part. So I did. I went out on the McDonald's commercial the next day, and there was me there and about 100 other guys that looked just like me learning those sides and say, you know, you got to eat a McDonald's, lettuce, tomato, cheese on a toasted sesame seed bun, whatever it was. So I did it. I think part of me was like, wow, I don't, I don't believe I'm here doing this, and so I didn't get the part. But, you know, it's like you didn't really try either. You had those thoughts in my head, and later I realized you got to go in and you just got to go for it, man, you know, and get it, and you got to do what you do. And you can't be ranking things, or that there's an order of things. It's just a job. If you get it back in those days, you could actually make a lot of money doing a commercial. So there is that to say, or I got my ass in gear and just said whatever to my agent. So, you know, I'd go out on different TV shows for parts and win an audition, like every other actor. And you know, a lot of the actors I was auditioning with, some went on the favorite fortune I used to audition, it seemed like all the time with Mark Hamill, other people pack and remember who my ilk is. But you know, some of them had good luck and went on, and others fell by the wayside. You went in, you compete. Yeah, I went out. I told my agent, you know, set me out on commercials too. I don't care. I want to do it. So I remember there was one day I called me says, I got two interviews for you today, one in the morning, and then one at about two o'clock, once a Honda motorcycle commercial, and the other is Kemper insurance. But you have to know how to ride a horse. I'm going well, thanks, Mom, ride a horse. I says, I'm not too good on a motorcycle. I said, but I guess when is the commercial? Goes, it's next week. I go. I'll know how to ride but I tend to get there. So I called a buddy of mine, Apple had a I remember what it was, a Honda 253 50 or something came over. We went over to Griffith Park. So I learned how to ride it, and went out, and it turned out that the auditions were on the same day, and actually at the same place. It was this place called filmways over on cuingus. I went in the morning and got past the hurdle, I did the lines, and then they said, well, we just need to test to make sure you can ride a motorcycle. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So I went outside and rode around the parking lot, and I'm thinking, God, I, you know, I'm this is scary, because I'm not really a rider. Wonder, you know, if you're gonna have to ride for real or go fast? I don't know. So I kept my mouth shut, and then, two o'clock, I went back and went on the Kemper insurance commercial. It was like a stranded motorist, and the Kemper insurance cavalry riding horses, comes up to him and saves him. He's stuck in the middle of the desert, and so I have to get up on a horse and ride away with the cavalry. They asked me to stay, so I did, and did it again a couple more times, and they said, Okay, you got the part, and they go. But before we give it to you, we have to know you could ride a horse. So go to Griffith Park stables, I think it was, and we want to see you ride a horse. I had to go the next morning, so I went over there and, you know, got up on horse, rode down this hill, you know, galloped down, came back, jumped up like that's great, except the horse you're going to be riding this you're not going to be in the saddle. You're going to be in back of a guy that's in the saddle. And as I realized. And they said, Yeah, you have to run and jump, get up on the back of the horse. Well, I say, Wow, no stirrup to get up when they're like, now you're gonna It's like doing a, what do they call that thing, where you dive over the pole, or you have to throw your leg up and over, kind of like that when you're doing it on a horse. So I did it. Finally made it after about four or five times, hitting the horse and then falling on the ground, but I finally got my ass up there, and they went okay, but two days later, my agent calls this, well, you got the Kemper insurance commercial. You get the ride on the back of that horse's ass, and he says, and you got the Honda commercial too, he says, but they're both filming on the same day, so you're gonna have to pick one. And I said, Well, I think I'd rather ride a horse than ride a motorcycle. Feel more comfortable. So I took the Kemper insurance commercial, and we went and shot it anyway, because luck would have it this commercial, this one day shoot. Turned out they ran that commercial for 10 years during tennis season. Wow, it doesn't sound like a lot. You know, made like, I think $15,000 a year per season was like January, February and March. They would run it, yeah, it's only 15,000 but it ran for 10 years. So it actually made $150,000 off this one day job that I got paid scale for. Yeah, who knew? You know, I picked the right one, the Honda. I don't ever remember seeing their commercial at all,

Jeff Dwoskin 51:21

a lot of money for jumping on a horse's ass it is, you

Stanley Livingston 51:24

know, well, you know, I'm saying $15,000 but in those days, you could buy a house in Studio City for $45,000 like a three bedroom, three bath house on maybe two thirds of an acre for 45,000 so three years in a Row, you could go buy a house. So that was on for 10 years. Gonna go and bought three of those houses. Had you been smarter than me? Anyway? Yeah, it was a big gig. I've never seen it again. I've seen a couple other commercials I was in when I was a kid. I did a Chevy commercial, actually, before I was on my three sons, and Chevy was our sponsor the first four or five years and but I think was also about 1958 I got hired to do a Chevrolet commercial where it was parents about to take a Sunday drive, and they pick up grandma, and there's two kids in the backseat with her, one of which is me, what I didn't know at the time. I mean, I my mom actually befriended the mom of a little girl. I remember we used to go to her place, play and swim. They lived in the valley. And anyway, the little girl was angelian, oh, and

Jeff Dwoskin 52:28

Jillian, sure, yeah, uh, my three sons question. So it's 12 years, I think, of recent like The Goldbergs at like, 10 years is like, one of the few shows to even come close to running that long during the time, right? You had the OG years for William Frawley left, right? So that's the original cast, black and white. There's that kind of period. And then William Demar demaurest replaces William folly. And then later Mike leaves, and your brother becomes your brother on the show, and then Tina Cole joins, and then triplets, and the show evolved and changed. I mean, besides you literally going from nine years old to in your 20s, is there like a period that you can remember that you're like, looking at the show now? Did it feel that way while it was happening, or the changes to you? Yeah. But, I

Stanley Livingston 53:21

mean, you know, it was the natural progression of things. Number one, I wasn't going to stay nine years old the whole time, or 10 years old, say, who I was eventually going to grow up. Same with Don Grady. Same with Tim Considine, who, you know, I think he was probably the first evolution in the show was when they couldn't get Bill, probably reinsured for the season, and they knew they were gonna not be able to bring him back. And, you know, they let him go and hired William Demmer. So that was, that was a big change for the show. And had to sell Uncle Charlie to the audience, although he was cut from the same cloth and kind of fulfilled the same thing. And just being a crusty old, crabby guy that you like, that had a, you know, heart of gold, like Bill. Bill probably did. And then the next big change was my brother, who, by that point, was playing a friend of mine on the show. He wasn't the original friend, actually, Ricky Allen, right? Before the season started, he got his front teeth knocked out playing ice hockey. Of course, I was playing too, but I didn't get mine knocked out, and he didn't come back. They had to find another person to bring into the show as a friend of mine, either a neighborhood classroom fence. They hired my brother, who, you know, was a working actor by then, and done a lot of TV, done movies, big feature films. And, you know, people go, Oh, it's nepotism, but it wasn't really, I mean, it only in that you heard about the job, but, you know, wasn't nepotistic at all. What happened was, you know, he was on a lot of TV shows back in the late 1950s early 60s. He was in Papas delicate condition when Jack. Gleason. He was in the Aaron boy with Jerry Lewis. He was in my six loves with Debbie Reynolds, David Jansen, Cliff, Robertson, so not like they were throwing him a bone. He proved himself, and he had his little reel too. So yeah, it was perfect type. And so they brought him on the show. But then when the next thing happened was Tim Considine decided to leave the show. And as you know, the show was called my three sons, two sons. So there was, there's a problem there. So they decided they came up concocted this whole storyline where Ernie, my friend, was actually a foster kid. You know, he never met his foster parents before that, or he didn't talk about it, and then his parents were going to move out of the United States and couldn't take him, and he's going to be put up to become a foster kid to get adopted again. And so the Douglas family steps up to the plate, and we adopt them. You know, over the course of about six, seven episodes, it's all the storyline played out and by the end, my brother, Barry was now Ernie Douglas, and was into the show and had a main role as one of the main characters. Yeah, and it worked out well, he was on the show after that seven more years, so he got the benefit of that.

Jeff Dwoskin 56:16

Did you love working with your brother? Yeah, I

Stanley Livingston 56:18

did. Well, we worked together before we actually did an Ozzie and Harry episode together, and we actually did rally around the flag boys. He was in that but he's not all the way through. He worked. One day he got fired because he had cross eyes, and the director was having a fit that he wasn't looking at the TV set that we were supposed to be looking at. And so they shot all morning and took Barry to an ophthalmologist during the lunch hour, found out he had crossed eyes by one o'clock. I had a new brother. Barry learned a valuable lesson. There's no security in show business, but actually was, was a good thing too. I mean, yeah, it was traumatic, I'm sure, at the time, but what happened after that? Barry had glasses and how to wear glasses in real life. And it just made him a different type of actor than the type that were out there. Were popular at that time, like me. I had blonde hair, blue eyes, so did 100 other little kids. My grand brother had this unique look that he pioneered. He looked really smart, like a nerd, but yeah, gave him good luck. And, you know, he because of that, started getting work because of that little serendipity thing that happened during that movie. And, you know, turned out it was for the best. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 57:31

awesome. And then Tina Cole joins, and I read that they tried to do a spin off, or there was a potential spin off. She has triplets of her own.

Stanley Livingston 57:38

Yeah, that was at the end of the show. You know, when reached the 12 Second, Don wasn't even in the 12th season. Think it came after that because Tina was still doing the show. And like I said, I almost didn't come back. I hadn't offered to do that Virginian thing, and I was weighing that heavy, and then decided I couldn't jump ship, so I stayed to the bitter end. But yeah, the show progressed again. We and we actually went color, changed networks, from ABC to CBS, and we actually changed studios, because

Jeff Dwoskin 58:09

ABC didn't want to pay for the color, right? That's what I read. It

Stanley Livingston 58:13

was pretty much, yeah, it was expensive. They thought, you know, they thought we'd probably shot our wad by the fifth season. So yeah, they didn't, didn't want that, you know, went seven more years with CBS, so it was, had a shot at some squad. And yeah, the producers were smart. They let the show evolve. Tim left, Barry came in. Following year, Robbie falls in love. He meets Katie. They have their whole whirlwind romance. Get married, and then the next year she gets pregnant, was all about the pregnancy and having triplets. And the year after that was my turn. I met Paulie, and it's actually Fred mcmurray's turn. He met Beverly garland, who had a little daughter, Dodie, and so went through their whirlwind romance. And Beverly garland, her character, moves in with her daughter, Dodie. Then the following year was me. I met Polly, and we ended up eloping. Had we gone another couple years, probably Barry would have been getting married or the dog just seemed like, are we shooting the same script over with just different characters?

Jeff Dwoskin 59:19

I read that they used the Brady Bunch recycled a lot of your kind of, at least plots or episode ideas.

Stanley Livingston 59:27

I heard that, yeah, I don't know was that Sherwood Schwartz, I guess, yeah.

Jeff Dwoskin 59:32

It's amazing how they were able to keep pivoting and changing the show. Because, like, the Brady Bunch kind of burned itself out when the kids were getting older, like most shows can't make that transition when the definite shift in ages,

Stanley Livingston 59:44

it was, it would have been Bonanza, you know, that was the problem. I think of Bonanza at the end. I mean, you know, these guys are no longer young adults. These are like middle aged men. They're still not married. What the hell is that all about? I didn't meet a girl here, you know, in Virginia City. Me they would have been spending all their time. They wouldn't have been on that ranch anymore. Yeah, they had. The problem is, is trying to stay true to the original idea in the series, and at the same time evolving. I mean, even my three sons got away from what it originally was, which was an all male household, which provided all the humor. You know, guys don't know how to do anything. That's why we have women on the shore of the wives that know how to do it all in yelling. But yeah, that's what my two sons was in the beginning. And you had a guy from each age group, 10 year old, a 17 year old, a 20 year old, a 50 year old and a 70 year old. It's crazy. I mean, I look at it now, and I go, wow. You know trippy to think that I'm either the same age or maybe a year older than William Frawley was when he was playing Bob. I'm there. I don't feel like Bob, but I'm there.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:00:51

TV, movie, math is, don't ever do that. It's scary. Like someone said recently, like if Back to the Future was shot today, it'd be going back to 1985

Stanley Livingston 1:01:01

something like that. Well, see, try, have tried to redo my three cents. They never it just ended up, we didn't, because of Fred McMurray, but there was always a problem trying to do an updated version of my three cents, because you've got three choices. One is you can, you know, do it now, but if you're taking looking at the world now that's not the world of 1959 1960 when the show was created. Your second choice is to do it in kind of like Brady Bunch manner, which I used to call that kitsch, just kind of oddball funny. And I don't think our show really lent it some to that. I mean, we were kind of more of a drama with moments of comedy, right? A light comment, I guess they call it. But the only way you could do my three sentence, in my estimation, because a couple people have tried, in fact, they were trying to get one going years ago, till you realize what the problem was of doing the script they were going to set it now it's not going to work, you know. And our show didn't lend itself to, you know, the kind of comic abuse some of these shows do. If you look at them out gold, that's ridiculous. So yeah, about, Oh God, it's about 15 years ago, Michael Douglas was optioned my three sons to do as a movie, and with some partners who actually worked at CBS, and they were developing a script, and they never could get the script right, and he finally bailed on it. But the problem was they were trying to do it as a dad now with three sons, and it's not the same thing. And so my estimation, my humble estimation, the only way to do my three sons is you have to do it and make it a period piece. And part of what the show's about was what was there in the 19 late 1950s early 60s, before civil rights for the Vietnam War, it was just a quiet period of time and had a real Midwestern flavor to it back. It would be a who understands this probably the best, but it's CBS that owns it, unfortunately, and not their student would have been Disney. You know, Disney always did those shows where they always seem to be set around 1900 evoke like another time and place, but they also had the shaggy dog. And if you look at the shaggy dog, that's really what my three sons was in the first year or two. It really evoked that time and place. And I think you'd have to do it and go, here's how life was in 1959 which now is so far back. It is like, you know, almost like when we did, my two sons that are looking at the turn of the century as Disney did, especially Main Street and Disneyland. And I'm assuming Disney World, that, you know, he wanted to keep that feeling from the turn of the century, alive, what you saw and what you felt and how things look, you know, to be in a small town. And although Bryant Park was supposed to be a small town Midwest, however, we had everything there, International Airport, Army, you know, bases and flying saucers whizzing overhead at all. We had it all. Wasn't like, LA, Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 1:04:04

amazing worries. Thanks for sharing them with me. What do you have to these days? What's what projects you got going?

Stanley Livingston 1:04:10

I did a documentary, which probably it's been up because we, I guess, for at least five years. We had it as a the end result was a DVD product, but what it was is it programmed for actors, and as far as I know, it's the only program like this in the world for actors. You know, actors run up when you're, you know, teenager, young adult, and you know, to acting school, and you learn how to act, you learn the art and craft of acting. There's this missing element that I always saw that was missing. Talk about it with other actors, and our union didn't know anything about it. Nothing's ever been done. And becoming an actor is a two component deal. One of the components is learning the art craft of acting. The other is trying to figure out the business side of being an actor, the non performance skills. You need to employ and understand the processes to get work. I couldn't find anything like it. It's really spoken about, you know, you there's a few things that are kind of considered the business of acting, and that's how most actors know it just the tip of the iceberg. You know, you're going to need a resume. You know, you're going to need to try and put a reel together. You know, you're going to try and need to get an agent, you're going to need to join the Screen Actors Guild, and, you know, just the peripheral things, they're important. But if that's all there was, everybody be doing it, if it was that simple, right? So I put a program together, and I recruited about 100 people from the entertainment industry, and I didn't want it just to be actors. I wanted to bring in the opinions and the ideas from everybody in the industry, kind of a plethora point of view. So projects called the actors journey, like I said, I brought in people there. Well, we have actors, directors, producers, executive producers, showrunners, casting directors, agents, talent agents, talent managers. Time we shot I had the president of the Screen Actors Guild. I had the president of the Directors Guild of America. And these 100 people teach this program, and it's a 10 hour long program. We originally released it on DVD because we wanted it to be portable. Because, yeah, no, none of these people are going to be able to go around and teach it. I don't have time to do that either. And you can

Jeff Dwoskin 1:06:24

make 18 copies real fast,

Stanley Livingston 1:06:27

and I can, yeah, or you can go, you can go give it to somebody else, and they can make 1000 copies at the time. It takes me to make 18 but, yeah, we sold quite a few DVDs. And then I got busy with other projects, and I couldn't run the company, so I basically pulled the website down so we wouldn't receive any more orders that I wouldn't be able to deal with. And I started thinking about it about a year or so. I go, you know, I should really put this back up again, because I, you know, get emails all the time, people wondering where it is or how they can get it. And I thought, well, you know, at this point in time, you don't really want to do it on DVD anymore. I'm going to go ahead and make it a streaming media program. So right now, as we speak, it's being uploaded to servers where it will live, and I will connect that up with the website, which is already built. It's just sitting there. It's just not published. And you'll go there and you can buy the program. My hope is to have it so you can buy the program in its entirety, meaning whole 10 hours, or the way we had to, you had to buy it on DVD. But what you were getting was a set of DVDs. So there was eight volumes, which are about an hour, I think, hour and a half long each. And so you could go through the material that way, and then the whole program, whether you get the whole thing or you're looking at it in the chunks of a volume over about 65 segments that are the segments that everybody felt were really taught in its entirety. The business part of being an actor. Because what you find out, if you're an actor, is acting is the thing you're going to do the least. You get a job. Once in a while, you get a movie, you get a TV show. Probably, if you like me, I let that. I got a series that was on for 12 years. But most people don't get that. They got a series that saves on two years or for seven episodes, and then you're out of work and you're looking for your next job, you're going to spend 95 maybe more percent of your time practicing the business, part of the business to try and get work. And if you don't know what stuff means, or being led down the primrose path of people trying to make money, off for you, off of you, and telling you to do things that are complete waste. I mean, you need to know all these things. At least this program affords people the opportunity to learn all this stuff prior to their first day in the industry, if they want, you know, not saying don't act that is fun, and that's what we're all got into business to do. But if you can couple that with this program and the material that's taught there, the non performance skills, you need to know you're way ahead of the game. I mean, it kind of levels the playing ground. The best part is, you're learning it from, you know, qualified masters. Everybody that we had in there had worked in the industry 2030, years. So they know where they speak. And these are all people that found success, you know, either had major movies or had TV series that were hit series. And like I said, you're getting the perspective of a plethora of people, you know, not just actors. I mean, that's good to have, too. But you know, you need to know what a director wants. You need to know what a producer wants. Definitely need to know what the casting director wants. And even in the beginning, when you're trying to get an agent, you need to know what the agent wants, or you're never going to get an agent. So there's all these things, and it's all laid out and, yeah, pretty straightforward. If you have the will and the gumption, you can sit there for 10 hours and learn it one big shot. Or, like I said, we're going to hopefully break it up and have it in chunks so you can obtain any one of the volumes and start somewhere. Or, if you're gun shy or you don't have a lot of money, you can watch the segments, you know, like five. Bucks a piece, so you can work your way through it when you have time and money, and you'll be learning the exact same thing as if you bought the whole thing anyway. That's the idea. Hopefully we'll be up very shortly. That's amazing. And if somebody wants to find it, just go look for a website. It's called the actor's journey. So it's the actor's journey.com. Sounds

Jeff Dwoskin 1:10:19

like an amazing service. The only other thing I would say that you should do is do a re watch podcast of my three sons. Because, you know, I was watching the full House Dave Kool a and like, they have the full house one, and I didn't think about it, but you meant when you mentioned you hadn't seen the episodes. They never saw a full house. I was watching both, and they're like, well, we've never seen it where this is us watching it for the first time. Also, it would be great, yeah, great to do that

Stanley Livingston 1:10:46

at some point I probably, I'm sure I'll get ill. Anything to do. I mean, you know, it's people always go, why didn't you watch it? I said, Listen, what do you do for a living? I'm an auto mechanic. I go, how would you like to come home and watch a video of yourself from the day before fixing a car, or how about 380 hours of you fixing a car. It's like, I don't want to watch myself either. You know, it's just okay. I know how that landed. Yeah. I mean, there's certain segments and, you know, I probably like say I like the pilot, and I have seen that, and the one that's my favorite probably isn't everybody else's favorite, because I just liked it because it was so different. There's an episode called Small adventure, and it really doesn't star the main character. Doesn't star Steve, Robbie, chipper, Ernie Mike. It stars tramp, and it was such a clever idea. And it's actually very different, because our show, like I said, it's supposed to be a light comedy, but in small adventure, it's one of the scariest shows you'll ever see in your life. Tramp brings a stick of compress it, or where they can cut some dynamite into the house. He's putting in places where people can step on it, it, you know, if you hit it the wrong way, it blows up. Not only would it blow up the house, or probably blow up the block anyway. It was just very clever how they did it, and the dynamites everywhere ends up in Bob's laundry basket. It comes coming down the stairs. The only reason doesn't go off, as we have carpeted stairs, bringing it all over the house. I just thought that was such a different story idea.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:12:21

Love it. Love all these stories. Annie, thank you so much for spending all this time with me. Really appreciate it.

Stanley Livingston 1:12:27

Yeah, no, my pleasure. My pleasure. Good to see it. Hey, if there's a link you want me to put out, I have a website, standard livingston.com that's my my fan website, I guess you'd say, or people keep track of me on that, and I'll be happy to post the link back to your video and the Zoom cast. So do that, and my other website, if you want to find out what I'm doing, on the other side of the camera is first team productions. Awesome. Thank

Jeff Dwoskin 1:12:54

you so much. Well, thanks for having me on. Alright, how amazing was Stanley Livingston. Raise your hand if you watch my three sons. I see y'all. I hope you enjoyed that deep dive in that conversation. Stanley was awesome to talk to. Check out all his websites. I'll put links in the show notes to make that easier for you. And woo. That just flew by, huh? Can't believe it. Another episode is over. I do want to thank my amazing guest, Stanley Livingston one more time, and of course, I want to thank all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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