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Barry Livingston

Barry Livingston’s career began with the kind of false start that could have discouraged a young performer. Cast as one of Paul Newman’s sons in Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys!, he was let go after being told he needed glasses to correct his astigmatism. His first professional screen appearance instead came in a small, uncredited part in Jerry Lewis’s The Errand Boy in 1961. Born in Hollywood on December 17, 1953, Livingston was working steadily while still a child. Early television appearances included The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show, where he played Arnold Mooney. He also appeared among the children adopted by Debbie Reynolds in the 1962 film My Six Loves. The role that shaped his early career arrived in 1963, when he joined the ABC sitcom My Three Sons as next-door neighbor Ernie Thompson. His older brother, Stanley Livingston, was already a regular as Chip Douglas. Barry became a permanent cast member two years later, with Ernie adopted into the Douglas family, and stayed through the series finale in 1972. Livingston did not disappear with the end of the sitcom. He moved through television, film and theatre, taking roles in Room 222, The Streets of San Francisco, Police Woman, Simon & Simon and 1st & Ten. Onstage, he played Linus in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and reprised the part for the musical’s 1973 television adaptation. His theatre work also extended to Broadway and off-Broadway productions. Later film appearances show the durability of that working-actor career. Livingston can be seen in Zodiac, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, The Social Network, Horrible Bosses and War Dogs, shifting easily between drama and comedy without leaning entirely on his childhood fame. In 2011, he published the anecdote-filled autobiography The Importance of Being Ernie, looking back on a screen career that began in childhood and continued well beyond My Three Sons.