My Three Sons is an American sitcom. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until the end of its run on April 13, 1972. 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'd first co-starred with MacMurray 25 years earlier in the movie Car 99) as the boys' live-in maternal grandfather and housekeeper, William Michael Francis "Bub" O'Casey. William Demarest, playing Bub's brother, "Charley", replaced Frawley in 1965 due to Frawley's illness. In September 1965, eldest son Mike (Tim Considine) married, and his character was written out of the show. To keep the emphasis on "three sons", original youngest son Chip's friend Ernie was adopted. In the program's later years, Steven Douglas remarried and adopted his new wife's young daughter Dorothy ("Dodie") (Dawn Lyn).