Frawley William - Meet the Mertzes: the life stories of I love Lucys other couple

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Contents

For Vivian Vance and William Frawley,
who filled our lives with laughter

Acknowledgments

We offer our heartfelt thanks to every person listed below for taking the time to respond to our queries or to reminisce, offer opinions and anecdotes, and, in quite a few cases, set the record straight.

The following individuals, culled from the worlds of show business and baseball, were especially kind to us: Elden Auker, Yogi Berra, Frenchy Bordagaray, Jim Bouton, Dann Cahn, Gary Collins, Tim Considine, Emily Daniels, Cliff Dapper, Dom DiMaggio, Walter Doniger, Robert Douglas, Dale Evans, Charles Forsythe, Jimmy Garrett, Paul Michael Glaser, Don Grady, Edmund Hartmann, Gloria Henry, Gene Karst, Irma Kusely, Marc Lawrence, Art Linkletter, Barry Livingston, Stanley Livingston, Marjorie Lord, Tony Lupien, Meredith MacRae, Sheila MacRae, Sylvia Miles, Tom Naud, Patricia Neal, Irv Noren, Hugh OBrian, the late Samson Raphaelson, Rhodes Reason, Elliott Reid, Gene Reynolds, Robert Rockwell, the late Roy Rowan, Jay Sandrich, Bob Schiller, John Stephens, Chuck Stevens, Roslyn Targ, Keith Thibodeaux, Bob Weiskopf, Ted Williams, and William Windom. Extra special thanks go to Considine, Garrett, Grady, Stanley Livingston, Lord, Meredith and Sheila MacRae, Miles, Reason, Reynolds, Sandrich, Schiller, Stephens, Stevens, and Weiskopf for the generosity of their time and their extensive, detailed recollections.

Happily, we were able to track down a number of Vivian Vances and William Frawleys relatives, friends, and hometown natives. Dorothy Jones ONeal (Vances younger sister), Imogene Littell (whose father was Vances first cousin), Edward Dailey (Frawleys distant cousin), Dan and Millie Bied, Burton Prugh Jr., and Lloyd Maffitt all were kind enough to speak with us.

A few of those who worked with Vance and Frawley, including Barbara Feldon, Sherwood Schwartz, Elena Verdugo, and Margaret Whiting, expressed their enthusiasm for the project. Here is where an additional dilemma in researching events that unfolded several decades earlier comes into play. For example, comedy-writer maven Sherwood Schwartz coauthored a Thanksgiving 1958 edition of TVs Red Skelton Show in which Frawley appeared as a guest. Sorry, I dont remember Frawley on the Skelton show, Schwartz declared. Hell, I dont even remember what I had for breakfast today.

Still others were gracious enough to respond to our queries: Steve Allen, Donald L. Burrows (son of the late Mary Jane Walsh), Hume Cronyn, Fred DeCordova, Jim Delsing, Victoria Enos (daughter of the late Vic Lombardi), Carl Erskine, Nina Foch, Joe Garagiola, Bert Granet, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Clyde King, Ruta Lee, Gavin MacLeod, Walter Parker (administrator of the estate of Willard Parker), Hugh Rawson, Mike Sandlock, Robert Stack, Don Taylor, Harry Walker, Max Wilk, and Don Zimmer.

Additionally, a book such as Meet the Mertzes would be impossible to complete without the assistance of librarians and archivists. The following individuals and institutions offered invaluable assistance: Maryann Chach of the Shubert Archive; Joan Clawson of the Albuquerque (New Mexico) Little Theater; Laurel E. Drew and Gail Rasmussen, librarians, Albuquerque/Bernalillo (New Mexico) County Library System; Dan Einstein, television archivist at the UCLA Film and Television Archive; Jim Gates, Greg Harris, Corey Seeman, and Helen Stiles of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum; Susie Guest of the Burlington (Iowa) Public Library; Rosemary Hanes and Madeline Matz, reference librarians, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress; Patricia King Hanson, the American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films; Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project; Karol Kennedy of the Dubuque County Recorders Office; Deb Kolz-Olson of the Des Moines County Historical Society; Jessie Lickteig, librarian, Cherryvale (Kansas) Public Library; Howard Prouty, archivist, Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center; Ron Simon of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City; and Janice Weir, library director, Independence (Kansas) Community College.

The following also came through when help was needed: David Bartholomew, Jim Beaver, Dick Beverage, the Bohman-Fannings, Ross Boissoneau, C. Douglas Bredt, John Cocchi, Stephen Cole, Rush Dudley, Geoffrey Mark Fidelman, R. Hall, Joanne Lawson, Michael Luders, Leonard Maltin, Phil Nichols, Art Pierce, David Pietrusza, Rhonda Revercomb, Tom Shieber, the Society for American Baseball Research, Thomas P. Syzdek, and our agent, Andy Zack.

A special acknowledgment is earned by Gregg Oppenheimer for allowing us access to letters, photographs, and other very special material. And finally, extra-special thanks go to our all-knowing and ever helpful editor, James Robert Parish, whose endless stream of information and suggestions is much appreciated.

Introduction

On Sunday, October 3, 1954, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, William Frawley, and Vivian Vance were guests on Ed Sullivans weekly CBS-TV variety show, Toast of the Town.

At one point, in a skit in which all five appeared as themselves, Sullivan asked Ball, By the way, could you tell me how to get hold of the Mertzes?

Lucy responded, You mean Vivian Vance and William Frawley?

Ed said, I always forget. I always think of them as the Mertzes.

And Lucy responded, Yeah, well, everybody does.

* * *

By the early 1950s, television rapidly was replacing the movies and radio as Americas number one source of leisure-time entertainment. On October 15, 1951, a legendary half-hour comedy show initially was broadcast into homes across the country: I Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball as wacky Manhattan housewife Lucy Ricardo and Desi Arnaz as her Cuban-born bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo. The supporting players on this CBS-TV series were William Frawley and Vivian Vance, cast as Fred and Ethel Mertz, the Ricardos landlords and best pals.

I Love Lucy, of course, became an immediate smash hit. At the end of its first season, it was the most popular sitcom in the nation. By then, more than eleven million American households were tuning in each Monday night to laugh at the antics of Lucy and Ricky Ricardoand Fred and Ethel Mertz. For almost an entire decade, their capers delighted audiences in 179 half-hour shows and 13 hour-long programs, most of which have been spinning along in reruns for more than forty years.

The life stories of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz have been celebrated in dozens of biographies, autobiographies, histories, documentaries, and made-for-TV movies. However, what of William Frawley (18871966) and Vivian Vance (19091979), those indispensable second bananas?

As I Love Lucy remains fresh and funny, and is certain to be aired somewhere on planet Earth every day until the end of time, the personages of Fred and Ethel Mertz have become larger than the actors who played them. In the 1997 big-screen thriller Conspiracy Theory, taxi driver Mel Gibson, in describing the picture of Benjamin Franklin on the newly minted $100 bill, cracks, He looks like the love child of Fred Mertz and Rosie ODonnell. Younger viewers, who had yet to be born when Frawley last played Mertz in 1960, may be familiar enough with the character to connect with the reference. But how many of them would have appreciated the joke if Frawleys name had been inserted in place of Mertzs?