Wednesday, February 16, 2022

William Frawley was always one of my heros!

 


New York Post, Page Six February 15, 2022

“I Love Lucy” star William Frawley was such a crass curmudgeon that he once allegedly called his on-screen wife, Vivian Vance, a “miserable c–t.”

Tim Considine exclusively tells Page Six that Frawley uttered the vulgar insult when a lieutenant general and his adjutant visited the set of the actors’ 1960s sitcom “My Three Sons” while Considine was in the Air Force Reserve.

After a pleasant lunch, the quartet walked back to work.

“I was thinking, ‘Hey, this is a great success. [Frawley] hasn’t said anything to put anyone off,'” Considine remembers. “I was pretty pleased with myself.”

Unfortunately, not even 30 yards from the entrance, the lieutenant general asked Frawley what Vance was really like — and that’s when Considine’s stomach dropped.

“I saw it coming,” he recalls.

According to Considine, Frawley succinctly responded, “That miserable cunt.”


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3 comments:

MamaM said...

Holy Cow, you missed half the story!

It looks like Frawley ends up being described in that same article as "really a very, very bad alcoholic".

... writer Audrey Kupferberg — who co-wrote “Meet the Mertzes: The Life Stories of I Love Lucy’s Other Couple” with her late husband, Rob Edelman — says he was much worse than people know and that his character was sanitized in “Being the Ricardos. "He drank all day. He would go across the street. He would go to a place called Nickodell,” she continues. “He would drink there, and then after work, he would drink more. He was also really cheap..."

The author describes Frawley as “a mean, rough man,” adding, “He was a woman-hater, known throughout Hollywood for very bad language and just antisocial behavior.”

Same article, different viewpoint.

Was she a peach? Who knows? Four marriages for her, with the 3rd lasting 18 years and the 4th another 18 yrs until her death following stroke and breast cancer.

edutcher said...

Read somewhere in passing Lucy and Viv didn't get along, either.

How true, I have no idea.

ampersand said...

I read that Lucy wanted Gale Gordon and Barbara Pepper originally for the Mertzes. Gordon was unavailable and Desi didn't want Pepper because he didn't want two drunks to deal with. Believe it or not, Pepper was a showgirl with Lucy in the 30s. Her last role was as Mrs. Fred Ziffel in Green Acres.