We were the first TV generation. This was before they called it the "boob tube." Its novelty had started to wear off, but our parents still remembered getting together for Sid Caesar and "The Honeymooners." TV was a breakthrough, just like the internet. And you'd watch anything, just for the experience, just like you surfed mindlessly in the early days of AOL and the World Wide Web.
I can't remember the first TV show I watched. I think it was "Winky Dink." You put a plastic screen in front of the TV and drew along. And then there was "Tom Terrific." And "The Mickey Mouse Club."
I don't remember a time when "The Mickey Mouse Club" was not on the air. It was a ritual, watching it every night while we ate dinner, at least we three kids. Sitting at our table in the lower floor of our split-level, the "playroom." One wonders where that table went. It hung around for quite a while, it became a utility table thereafter, a place to store goods, it wasn't even three feet square. It had black and white-checked linoleum on top. And four miniature chairs that disappeared quickly. It's my Rosebud, but not really. I have essentially nothing from that period. My mother could throw anything out. Like the day's newspaper. Sleep in? It's too late, it's ten a.m., the papers are GONE!
And what I remember eating most was buttered noodles. Much better than with tomato sauce. And we never ever drank milk, unless it was chocolate. My father owned a liquor store, we had a flowing pipeline of soft drinks.
So we're sitting there eating and there were the Mouseketeers.
We were too young to know that Annette was a dream. She was a teenager, we looked up to all teenagers, never mind the ones on "The Mickey Mouse Club." They were tall, and had a level of freedom. And it wasn't only Annette. There was Cubby and Tommy and Darlene.
And there was "Spin and Marty." It was a serial within the show. Set on a ranch. In black and white, nothing was in color. And Tim Considine was Spin.
"Spin and Marty," no one ever talks about it anymore, but they did all the way up until the early seventies. I remember at a summer program in Chicago I was called "Moochie." Maybe the most famous actor on "Spin and Marty." But even he's dead now, he passed in 2015.
And then came "My Three Sons." It started in 1960. A new decade, which we were excited about, it was all about new back then. Shiny, pushing the envelope, possibility.
I had no idea Fred MacMurray had starred in "Double Indemnity." He was just the guy from the Disney movies, all of which we saw. The two best, which Fred starred in, were "The Absent Minded-Professor" and "The Shaggy Dog." Going to the theatre and watching them in pristine black and white, what an experience. MacMurray was a comic actor. But really he wasn't.
So "My Three Sons." Of course my favorite was Chip, he was closest to my age. I only wished I could be beamed into the TV, for I had no brothers, never mind two!
Robbie was the in the middle, played by Don Grady, whom I met a little over a decade ago. I went to see the Refugees at the Getty, and he came up and introduced himself. ROBBIE! He was a reader. At first I was speechless, he was a god in my book. But here he was, older, much shorter than I'd thought, talking to me! Turns out he was a composer.
The oldest was Mike. Played by Tim Considine.
But five years later, when the show jumped networks, he was gone. He'd gotten married, he'd started his real life, at least on television. He was replaced by Barry Livingston as Ernie, Chip's younger brother in real life. Who I never accepted. He was young and goofy. None of the three sons had ever acted so. Sure, they screwed up. But they projected an air of maturity.
You have no idea how much kids wanted to be on TV back then. There was no internet, essentially no way to break out of your hometown, you had to move to Hollywood, where they not only made the movies and TV shows, but the music too. California was aspirational. Instead of the right wing punching bag it is today. It was three hours behind. Long distance phone calls were expensive. It might as well have been a different planet.
But it was beamed into our homes almost all day long. Programming filled the air between the test pattern. Haven't seen that recently. In the eighties, with the growth of cable TV, there started to be 24/7 programming, and that was a boon for a night owl like me. If you needed a friend in the middle of the night, you could find one. An old movie. Or the infomercials. They were everywhere, and you knew them all...Didi 7, did it really clean that well? I knew to be wary of products hawked on TV, there was usually a scam involved, I mean how could they offer two for the price of one if you called right now, but I always wondered.
But we had plenty of TV back in the fifties and sixties, at least in the New York market. Three networks and three independents. And I thought CBS was on channel 2 everywhere, just like NBC was on 4 and ABC was on 7. Turned out this was true in Los Angeles, but in the rest of the country the networks could be at any number from 2-13, which I still don't get. Then again, it's not about networks anymore. It's not even about cable, but on demand streaming. Actually, there's a good chance you're paying more for a little less, how did that happen?
So Beaver came back. Some of the legendary fifties and sixties actors. Hell, even Sid Caesar came back in a Mel Brooks movie. But mostly they live in our minds. And before the internet you had no idea what they were up to, they were just royalty, living in Hollywood somewhere. At least until they started ripping-off 7/11's and having their mug shots in the news.
So Tim Considine was 81. Is that old or young, I no longer know. 81 was ancient when "My Three Sons" was on the air. 70 was old. But now your seventies are seen as an active decade. And you slow down in your eighties, but if your health is good you're quite alive, you get around.
But reading the obituary I learned that nothing really happened for Tim Considine in show business after "My Three Sons." He ultimately became a photographer, of cars and sports. He pivoted. He survived. Ironically in Mar Vista, only a hop from where I used to live.
And Tim's death has me thinking, how life is long. Seemed short and immediate when I was watching him on TV, you had to do it now or forever lose your chance. And we know now that fame wasn't everything we thought it was. Sure, kids knew you all over the country, the world. But you didn't go to regular school. Your parents banked and possibly stole your money, which wasn't huge to begin with. You had to have a second act.
That's hard for boomers to square. At the end of our parents' work lives we learned employment wasn't for life. And today's kids know that jobs are temporary and they'll have a zillion. But us? We kind of still believed in the company, even though we ultimately got canned, and too many never recovered, if for no other reason than age makes you a pariah, companies don't want to pay the health insurance.
So you've got to start all over, alone. Be an entrepreneur. But no one ever taught us these lessons. Certainly not in college. You took a job, you didn't make one. And being an entrepreneur involved risks. Which our parents never wanted us to experience. Get a degree from a good college, plug yourself into the system and hang on. Or if you really wanted to go all out, become a professional, a doctor or a lawyer, accountants weren't in the same league. And none of them were upper class, you could make good money as a surgeon, but you couldn't afford to live in a 10,000 square foot house.
So many baby boomers are lost. They don't know what to do with themselves. They may even have enough money to survive, but how to fill up the time? And volunteering just doesn't fill you up, have the same gravitas, as getting paid.
So actually, Don Grady, who passed back in 2012, and Tim Considine won. Unlike one hit wonder musicians, they didn't trade on their one success for the rest of their lives. They could leave the spotlight behind and continue. Maybe they were forced to, who knows. It's hard to stay in the action in Hollywood, and like I said, pay was nowhere near what it is today, even in adjusted dollars.
But Mike can't be dead. I mean Fred MacMurray, sure. But the three sons...they were always young and cool. Like an old girlfriend they're fixed in our brains. And when we run into them years later, we're shocked they still don't look the same.
Tim Considine was Mike, but his hair had lost its color, he wore glasses, he looked like the guy you saw at the supermarket, or maybe down on the docks, looked fine, but older, which he most certainly was.
And if Tim got old, if even he couldn't hold back the sands of time, that means...
I got old. You too. Time is running out. What do we want to do with it? Because if Robbie and Mike can die, ANYBODY CAN!
"Tim Considine, Young Star of 'My Three Sons,' Is Dead at 81": nyti.ms/3CgPxYI
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