Don Grady, Robbie on ‘My Three Sons,’ Is Dead at 68 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/arts/television/don-grady-robbie-on-my-three-sons-dies-at-68.html Don Grady, who played Chip and Ernie’s wholesome, heartthrob big brother Robbie on the long-running television sitcom “My Three Sons,” died on Wednesday at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 68.
A family spokesman said the cause was cancer.
Mr. Grady, a versatile musician and singer who got his start in television as a Mouseketeer on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” considered music his vocation and his acting career something of an accident. At 14, he was an aspiring musician in high school who played ukulele, drums, accordion and clarinet while acting on the side when he was called to audition for the part of Robbie Douglas, one of three sons of the wistful, pipe-smoking widower Steve Douglas, played by Fred MacMurray.
The producers had already cast another actor. “But, for reasons I never found out, they needed to replace him,” Mr. Grady wrote in the forward to “Fred MacMurray,” a 2007 biography by Charles Tranberg. “I was summoned to a hastily held audition at noon, and by 3 p.m. I was cast as the new Robbie. My acting abilities probably helped, but I still believe the reason I got the part was because the cleft in my chin looked like Fred’s...”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/arts/television/don-grady-robbie-on-my-three-sons-dies-at-68.html