[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.

[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.

[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.

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.