William Frawley

William Clement Frawley was born on February 26, 1887, in Burlington, Iowa, the second of four children born to Michael A. Frawley (1857–1907) and Mary E. (Brady) Frawley (1859–1921). He attended Catholic schools and sang in the choir at St. Paul's Catholic Church, while also taking small roles in local theater productions at the Burlington Opera House. His mother, a deeply religious woman, discouraged his interest in performance. His first professional position was as a stenographer for the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, Nebraska, after which he relocated to Chicago to work as a court reporter. There he secured a singing part in a musical comedy called The Flirting Princess, though he subsequently moved to St. Louis to work for another railroad company in deference to his mother's objections. He later formed a vaudeville act with his brother Paul (1889–1973), though the partnership lasted only six months before their mother called Paul back to Iowa. During this period, Frawley wrote a vaudeville script titled Fun in a Vaudeville Agency and sold it for over $500.

Frawley subsequently moved to Denver, where he worked as a café singer and teamed with pianist Franz Rath. The two eventually relocated to San Francisco with an act billed as "A Man, a Piano, and a Nut." In 1914, he married fellow vaudevillian Edna Louise Broedt, and together they developed a comedy act called "Frawley and Louise," described as light comedy with singing, dancing, and patter, which they performed across the country until their separation in 1921 and subsequent divorce in 1927. The couple had no children. Over the course of his vaudeville career, Frawley introduced and helped popularize the songs "My Mammy," "My Melancholy Baby," and "Carolina in the Morning," and in 1958 he recorded a selection of his old stage songs on an LP titled Bill Frawley Sings the Old Ones.

Frawley's Broadway career spanned from 1925 to 1933. His first Broadway appearance came in 1925 in the musical comedy Merry, Merry. His subsequent credits included The Ghost Writer, She Lived Next to the Firehouse, Guns, and the musical Tell Her the Truth. In 1932, he took on his first dramatic stage role, playing press agent Owen O'Malley in the original production of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's Twentieth Century, a production also listed among his Broadway credits as On the Twentieth Century. He continued performing in dramatic roles through 1933. His brother Paul Frawley also appeared on Broadway, though with relatively few stage credits.

In 1916, Frawley signed with Paramount Studios and appeared in two short silent films that year, later adding three more short subjects before committing fully to a film career in 1933, when he appeared in short comedy films and the Universal Studios feature musical Moonlight and Pretzels. He subsequently moved to Los Angeles and signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures, working steadily as a character actor in comedies, dramas, musicals, Westerns, and romances. Among his notable film roles were a baseball manager in Alibi Ike (1935) with Joe E. Brown, a political adviser to Judge Henry X. Harper, played by Gene Lockhart, in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and the wedding host in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947). He also appeared as a hard-nosed insurance investigator in My Home in San Antone alongside Roy Acuff and Lloyd Corrigan, and had roles in two James Cagney films, Something to Sing About and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. By 1951, Frawley had accumulated credits in more than 100 films over roughly 35 years.

With film offers diminishing by 1951, Frawley pursued the role of cantankerous landlord Fred Mertz in the new CBS television situation comedy being developed by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. He contacted Ball directly to inquire about his prospects. While Ball and Arnaz were enthusiastic about casting the experienced film veteran, CBS executives expressed reservations about his well-documented history of heavy drinking. Arnaz warned Frawley that any instance of arriving late, appearing drunk, or being unable to perform for reasons other than legitimate illness would put his position on the show at risk. Contrary to the network's concerns, Frawley never arrived at work drunk and was able to master his lines after a single reading, discarding all pages of the script except those containing his own dialogue. I Love Lucy debuted on CBS on October 15, 1951, and ran for six years as a half-hour series before transitioning to hour-long specials from 1957 to 1960 under the title The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show, later retitled The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. For his performance as Fred Mertz, Frawley received five consecutive Emmy nominations from 1953 through 1957 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Vivian Vance played his on-screen wife Ethel Mertz; though the two performed effectively together, they held a strong mutual dislike offscreen, largely attributed to Vance's resentment of being cast as the wife of a man 22 years her senior. Frawley was also an avid New York Yankees fan and had it written into his contract that he was not required to work during the World Series when the Yankees were participating, a clause that resulted in his absence from two episodes of the show. When I Love Lucy concluded in 1957, Ball and Arnaz offered Frawley and Vance the opportunity to headline a Fred and Ethel spin-off series for Desilu Studios; Frawley accepted, but Vance declined.

Frawley next joined the cast of My Three Sons, the ABC situation comedy later moved to CBS, beginning in 1960. He played live-in grandfather and housekeeper Michael Francis "Bub" O'Casey for the first five seasons of the series, which starred Fred MacMurray as a widower raising three sons. The production schedule required MacMurray to complete all of his scenes during two concentrated blocks totaling 65 working days, with the remaining cast, including Frawley, filming around his absence for the rest of the year. Frawley reportedly found this out-of-sequence method uncomfortable after years of filming I Love Lucy in sequence. William Frawley died on March 3, 1966, at the age of 79.