My Three Sons

My Three Sons
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Don Fedderson
Starring	Fred MacMurray William Frawley William Demarest Don Grady Stanley Livingston Barry Livingston Tim Considine Meredith MacRae Tina Cole Beverly Garland Dawn Lyn Ronne Troup Daniel, Joseph, and Michael Todd
Theme music composer	Frank De Vol
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	12
No. of episodes	380 (184 in black-and-white, 196 in color) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	Don Fedderson
Producers	Peter Tewksbury (1960–1961) George Tibbles (1961–1962) Edmund L. Hartmann (1962–1972)
Running time	25 minutes
Production companies	Don Fedderson Productions Gregg-Don, Inc. (seasons 1–5) MCA TV (seasons 1–5) CBS Productions (seasons 6–12)
Original release
Network	ABC (seasons 1–5) CBS (seasons 6–12)
Release	September 29, 1960 (1960-09-29) – April 13, 1972 (1972-04-13)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

My Three Sons is an American television sitcom that aired from September 29, 1960, to April 13, 1972. The series was filmed in black-and-white and broadcast on ABC during its first five seasons, before moving to CBS for the remaining seven seasons, which were filmed in color. My Three Sons chronicles the life of widower and aeronautical engineer Steven Douglas (Fred MacMurray) as he raises his three sons.

The series originally featured William Frawley (who had first co-starred with Fred MacMurray 25 years earlier in the film Car 99) as the boys' maternal grandfather and live-in housekeeper, William Michael Francis "Bub" O'Casey. William Demarest, playing Bub's brother, "Uncle Charley", replaced Frawley in 1965 because of Frawley's declining health. In September 1965 (when the show moved from ABC to CBS and began to be filmed in color), eldest son Mike (Tim Considine) married fiancée Sally Ann Morrison (Meredith MacRae), and his character was written out of the show. To keep the emphasis on "three sons", original youngest son Chip's (Stanley Livingston) friend Ernie (Barry Livingston, Stanley's real-life brother) was adopted. In the program's later years, Steven Douglas married Barbara Harper (Beverly Garland) and adopted her young daughter Dorothy Anne ("Dodie") (Dawn Lyn).

The series was a cornerstone of the ABC and CBS lineups in the 1960s. Disney producer Bill Walsh often mused on whether the concept of the show was inspired by the film The Shaggy Dog, as in his view they shared "the same dog, the same kids, and Fred MacMurray".^[1]

A Lawrence Welk cover version of the theme song reached #12 in Canada, April 24, 1961.^[2]