Biography

The name Chip Douglas is probably going to be on my tombstone. That's neither good nor bad; it's just a fact of life.

[asked if Fred MacMurray had a problem with co-star Tim Considine wanting to direct episodes of the CBS version of My Three Sons (1960), after he left the ABC version at the end of the 1964-65 season] It was difficult. The other problem was we never shot [just] one show. We shot, maybe, like four to five shows a day, because Tim was going to become a director. How would they work that out, if you weren't working, if you weren't doing shows back to back? And then I think Fred MacMurray felt uncomfortable having one of the actors, and particularly somebody that young, directing [him]. He just kind of made it known that he preferred it was, "And then, Tim, when you're young and dumb, you're outta here!" Something could've probably been worked out.

[on his on- and off-screen chemistry with Fred MacMurray, who played Steve Douglas] It was great, he was a huge movie star when he came to the show, and that's saying something. I think the younger generation looks at the show, they don't realize that would be like Mel Gibson or Michael Douglas deciding to do a TV series now, that's how it was when Fred came to the show.

[on Fred MacMurray] He was pretty much like his son, and there wasn't any kind of pretense, and like I say [for a movie star of his stature], he was an accessible guy, and just very down-to-earth, nothing pretentious about him of the movie stars who lived in Bel-Air. Fred lived in nice Brentwood, but if you see the house, you probably dropped by the My Three Sons (1960) house, you know? {Not] one of these Xanadu mansions or anything, and he was basically a guy from the Midwest, Midwest sensibilities, and even though he was super, super wealthy, just really had modest taste and just really [wanted] to be accepted as your average Joe. I mean, he drove a Pontiac station wagon that happened to be our sponsor, so he wanted to buy a car, that was cool, and his wife would pack a brown-paper-bag lunch . . . Perino's or Chasen's [well-known eateries for Hollywood stars] every day, [he] just wasn't interested.