Customer Reviews

From My Three Sons to Major Dad: My Life as a TV Producer (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has a lot of verbiage, but ultimately says nothing. It's unclear what the author's intention is other than to perhaps write a book about what he thinks is a career that people will want to read about. This book is not only poorly written, but in many cases the stories do not track. The price is very high for a book that has little value.

This odd little book is not well written but gives a few behind-the-scenes stories into the production of some classic sitcoms. The book is overpriced for what it delivers and basically provides something interesting about once every 20 pages of the 172-page book.

The author was apparently some type of producer on these shows--however, he never really explains his duties, titles or even his industry background. His father was a studio executive and the writer just starts the beginning of the book with a story about his first industry job and how he dealt with William Frawley. From there he quickly glides through his life on television stages, with some brief stories about the stars he worked with from Zsa Zsa to James Arness.

He does give details into Fred MacMurray's shooting schedule of My Three Sons and Brian Keith's terrible work attitude (and who know Mr. French was such a diva!?!). He also gives a little insight into Henry Fonda (a pain who refused to work with rookie actors), Jimmy Stewart (who demanded a gigantic charitable contribution to be made even though he agreed to do the show for scale) and even confirms MacMurray's legendary stinginess. Just about every performer throws fits and has silly requirements, with most stars insisting on rewriting parts or telling the director how to do a scene. He hated doing Family Affair saves his most revealing stories for that cast of misfits, who were anything but the kindly characters that they played.

The book is really only for TV historians as the stories are rather feeble. The author doesn't attempt to go into depth on any production and tends to overpraise most of the series he is involved with. He doesn't seem to conjure up many details about these shows and even when he slams the big names he works with, he ends up knocking himself for not dealing with them better.

It's possible the writer has some more good stories to tell that he just didn't pull out of himself and maybe the book should have been written by someone else or done in an interview format. Here the stories are too short and not interesting enough to spend money on.