Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Father Knows Best: Cast Photo

Father Knows Best aired from October 1954 until September 1960 on CBS and NBC.

Father Knows Best was the classic wholesome family situation comedy. It was set in the typical Midwestern community of Springfield, where Jim Anderson ( Robert Young), was an agent for the General Insurance Company.

Every evening, he would come home from work, take off his sports jacket, put on his comfortable sweater and deal with the everyday problems of a growing family . In contrast with most other family comedies of the period, in which one or the other of the parents was a blundering idiot, both Jim and his wife, Margaret ( Jane Wyatt) , were portrayed as responsible, thoughtful adults. When a family crisis arose, Jim would calm everyone down with a warm smile and some sensible advice.

When Father Knows Best went on television in 1954, the three children were aged Betty ( Elinor Donahue)- 17, Bud( Billy Gray) - 14 and Kathy( Lauren Chapin) - 9. As the seasons passed, two of them graduated from high school, first Betty in 1956 and then Bud in 1959. However, neither one of them left home, choosing to go to Springfield State College. In one episode, Jim and Margaret wanted Betty to attend their alma mater but soon realized that she was an adult now and capable of making her own choice - she chose State.

Other regulars in the cast over the years included Sarah Selby as Miss Thomas; Robert Faulk as Ed Davis; Vivi Jannis as Myrtle Davis; Yvonne Lime as Dottie Snow; Paul Wallace as Kippy Watkins; Jimmy Bates as Claude Messner; Roger Smith as Doyle Hobbs; Robert Chatman as Ralph Little; Sue George as April Adams; and Roberta Shore as Joyce Kendall. Natividad Vacio occasionally appeared as gardner Frank Smith, a newly nationalized American citizen.

The Andersons were an idealized family - the kind that viewers related to and wished to emulate back in the 50's. The kids went through the normal problems of growing up, including those concerning friends, school and, of course, the opposite sex! They didn't always agree with their parents and occasionally succeeded in winning their independence. But the arguing was minimal and everything always seemed to work out by the end of the half hour.

Like many shows of the period, Father Knows Best began as an NBC radio series. It began in 1949, with Robert Young in the starring role. He was the only member of the radio cast that made the change to TV in 1954.The characters were created by Ed James and he wrote more than 100 scripts for the radio version. Jean Vander Pyl-the voice of Wilma on the Flintstones played the role of Margaret on many broadcasts. In the radio version the title of the show ended with a question mark, suggesting that Jim's role as family leader and arbiter was dubious.

In 1953 Robert Young and his partner Eugene B. Rodney decided to try the format out on TV. In partnership with Screen Gems , a pilot was developed. It was aired on The Ford Theatre in 1953, and was entitled " Keep It In The Family." It starred Robert Young in the identical Father Knows Best home but with an entirely different cast. It was decided the family in the pilot episode wasn't good enough to belong to such a " sterling father" so the hunt was on for a new cast which resulted in the one viewers know today.

Father Knows Best debuted on CBS on Oct. 3, 1954. A few weeks after the show began , the sponsor ( Kent Cigarettes), became dissatisfied with its low ratings and decided not to extend the 26 week contract. Fans sent letters of protest with most people hitting that " this is one of the very few good shows that our whole family , young and old watches and likes . We even learn something from it." Television Columnist even took up the crusade, urging audiences to write to the President of the CBS network and suggesting that Father might have a higher rating in the polls if it was shown earlier, Sundays at 10 pm , they said was too late for a family show. Father Knows Best even won the 1954 Sylvania Award for outstanding family entertainment, but CBS and Kent Cigarettes canceled the show anyway in March 1955.

Just when the show seemed scheduled to leave the air for good , The Scott Paper Company ( seeing the public response), picked up the sponsorship contract and moved it to the NBC Network at an earlier hour ( 8:30 pm). From there the rest is history. Within a year, 19 million households tuned in to watch Father Knows Best on Wednesday Evenings. By 1960 it was finishing in the top 10 every week, becoming an institution.

The show became such a symbol of the "typical" American family that the U.S. Treasury Department commissioned the producers to film a special episode to help promote the 1959 U.S. Savings Bond Drive. The story, "24 Hours in Tyrant Land," told how the Anderson children attempted to live for a day under a make-believe dictatorship. Never aired on TV, this special episode was distributed to schools, churches and civic organizations to show the importance of maintaining a strong American Democracy.

Movie actor Robert Young created and defined the role of Jim Anderson. His approach to playing him was perfect, he radiated affection, admitted his own shortcomings and had an uncanny ability to view life from the same perspective as his fictional children. In terms of temperament, directors referred to Young as Hollywood's most unstarlike star! He worked hard, seeked direction, apologized for fluffs in lines, was dependable and got his sleep nights instead of prowling nightclubs. He was already happily married to his wife Elizabeth for 24 years when he began Father Knows Best and remained married to her for the rest of his life.

During the 1959-1960 season - its last with original episodes - Father Knows Best had its most successful year, ranking #6 among all TV programs. By the end of the year, however, Robert Young had had enough of the role, which he had been playing for 11 years, and decided it was time to move on in his career. This was one of the rare occasions in the history of television when production on a series ended when it was at the peak of its popularity.It was not quite the end however because CBS scheduled rerun episodes in primetime for another 2 years, also a rarity and ABC reran them for another season after that.

There were 203 episodes filmed between 1954 and 1960 but only 190 episodes are shown in syndication. Two episodes, #40 " Stagecoach To Yuma" and #202 " Not His Type" are considered lost. The other 11 missing episodes were recut versions of earlier episodes usually having a family member recalled what happened to them using a flashback sequence. Those original 11 episodes were originally remade for 2 reasons. 1) It was really cheap to produce an episode with old footage and 2)tv was still so new, it was fascinating to see the physical changes in a character over a matter of years. Unfortunately when Father Knows Best was canned for syndication, the distributers decided one of each episode was enough. So most of the recut episodes have been lost.

Father Knows Best was well regarded in the television industry itself with Robert Young winning 2 emmy awards for his portrayal of Jim Anderson and Jane Wyatt winning 3 for her role as Margaret.

As for the legacy of Father Knows Best, at least one former cast member didn't like it. Billy Gray who played Bud had this to say about the show: " I wish there was some way I could tell kids not to believe it-the dialogue, the situations, the characters-they were all totally false. The show did everybody a disservice. The girls were always trained to use their feminine wiles, to pretend to be helpless to attract men. The show contributed to a lot of problems between men and women we see today. And it gave everone a bad comparrison with their own lives. People said to themselves, " If my mother and father aren't like that, they must be really bad people." I think we were all well motivated, but what we did was run a hoax. Father Knows Best purported to be a reasonable facsimile of life. And the bad thing is that the model is so deceitful. It usually revolved around not wanting to tell the truth, either out of embarrassment, or not wanting to hurt someone, or...Looked at from a certain slant, it's an incredibly destructive pattern for emulation..."

After Father Knows Best ceast production, Young, Wyatt and Donahue continued to appear frequently on television. Young of course starred in Marcus Welby M.D. for 7 years ( 1969-1976). Gray and Chapin ,however, made few tv appearances. On May 15, 1977, the 5 appeared together in The Father Knows Best Reunion on NBC. The slow moving hour long special proved disappointing. A second reunion special called Father Knows Best: Home For Christmas aired on Dec. 18, 1977.

Robert Young passed away on July 22, 1998.

Here's his Obituary as reported by CNN.

'Marcus Welby' actor Robert Young dies
July 22, 1998
Web posted at: 9:26 a.m. EDT (0926 GMT)
LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- Actor Robert Young, best known for his lead roles in the long-running television shows "Marcus Welby, M.D.," and "Father Knows Best," died Tuesday night, according to a statement issued by his publicist.

Young, 91, died of respiratory failure at his home in Westlake, California, the statement issued Wednesday by Bernstein Communications said.

"The world has lost one of its last real leading men, and I have lost my father," said daughter Betty Lou Gleason.

"When I saw Dad a couple of days ago, we had a wonderful visit. He was alert and joking, so it came as a real shock to learn he'd gone so fast."

A funeral and memorial service will be held in the Los Angeles area, probably next Monday, the statement said.

Beloved figure

Young started his acting career in 1931, after a talent scout saw him in a play. That year, he achieved stardom in "The Sin Of Madelon Claudet."

"Father Knows Best"
In the years that followed, Young performed on stage, on the radio and in the movies, playing the romantic lead in dozens of films before making a permanent mark on television.

Young became a pop culture icon for playing the all-American dad Jim Anderson in "Father Knows Best," which aired from 1954 to 1963.

"Look, son, let me give you a tip -- cling to your youth. Time has a way of moving forward, never backward -- stay with it as long as you can," was one line of advice from the caring dad.

For seven years in the 1970s, Young also played the kindly doctor on the popular "Marcus Welby, M.D."

In his TV roles and in his many movies, such as "They Won't Believe Me," Young exuded a calm optimism that won viewers' hearts.

Young once said that the secret to his success was the fact that the audience liked to see him in the role of the good guy.

"I played a guy in bad hat -- it didn't work. The audience didn't believe it," he told CNN in a 1984 interview.

Problems with alcohol, depression

It was equally hard for the public to believe Young when he confessed to his problems with depression and alcoholism. He told reporters that he sometimes felt guilty playing the reliable steady-as-a-rock patriarch, when in real life, he was often so unhappy.

"Marcus Welby, M.D."
But that kind of candor only endeared him more to the audience.

Later in life, after he learned he had a chemical imbalance, Young spoke out about the insidious problem of depression, which led to a suicide attempt in 1991.

In his later years, Young continued acting, starring in the TV movie "Mercy Killing."

Parts were rare for an actor in his 80s, but Young said his favorite role was always that of a family man.

"Whether it was stage, film, TV," he told CNN, "I've always enjoyed it, and I derived a lot of pleasure from it."

Robert Young's career credits
'Father Knows Best' highlighted a lengthy acting career
Web posted on: Wednesday, July 22, 1998 2:14:39 PM

(CNN) -- Actor Robert Young, who died Tuesday night at the age of 91, was best known for his TV roles as the father of "Father Knows Best" and as the title character in "Marcus Welby, M.D." Yet during his career, Young also performed on stage, in more than 100 movies and on the radio. His film and television credits are listed below:

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Young starred in dozens of movies, including "Secret Agent," the story of a British soldier and novelist who returns home during World War I to find that a government agency has faked a report of his death.

Young played a doting dad in "Father Knows Best," which went on to become one of the most popular television series of its era. His character, Jim Anderson, along with wife Margaret (Jane Wyatt), were considered a reflection of middle-class parents of the 1950s, as they thoughtfully soothed the growing pains of their children, Betty, Bud and Kathy.

"Marcus Welby, M.D." was the highest-rated show in the 1970-71 season; Young played the compassionate doctor who became involved in his patients' hopes and fears, while trying to cure their ailments.

Films:

"The Black Camel," 1931
"The Sin of Madelon Claudet," 1931
"The Guilty Generation," 1931
"Hell Divers," 1932
"The Wet Parade," 1932
"New Morals for Old," 1932
"Unashamed," 1932
"Strange Interlude," 1932
"The Kid from Spain," 1932
"Men Must Fight," 1933
"Today We Live," 1933
"Hell Below," 1933
"Tugboat Annie," 1933
"Saturday's Millions," 1933
"The Right to Romance," 1933
"Carolina," 1934
"Spitfire," 1934
"The House of Rothschild," 1934
"Whom the Gods Destroy," 1934
"Paris Interlude," 1934
"Death on the Diamond," 1934
"The Band Plays On," 1934
"West Point of the Air," 1935
"Vagabond Lady," 1935
"Calm Yourself," 1935
"Red Salute," 1935
"Remember Last Night?", 1935
"The Bride Comes Home," 1935
"Secret Agent," 1936
"It's Love Again," 1936
"The Three Wise Guys," 1936
"Sworn Enemy," 1936
"The Bride Walks Out," 1936
"The Longest Night," 1936
"Stowaway," 1936
"Dangerous Number," 1937
"I Met Him in Paris," 1937
"The Emperor's Candlesticks," 1937
"Married Before Breakfast," 1937
"The Bride Wore Red," 1937
"Navy Blue and Gold," 1937
"Paradise for Three," 1938
"Three Comrades," 1938
"Josette," 1938
"The Toy Wife," 1938
"Rich Man Poor Girl," 1938
"The Shining Hour," 1938
"Honolulu," 1939
"Bridal Suite," 1939
"Maisie," 1939
"Miracles for Sale," 1939
"Northwest Passage," 1940
"Florian," 1940
"The Mortal Storm," 1940
"Sporting Blood," 1940
"Dr. Kildare's Crisis," 1940
"Western Union," 1941
"The Trial of Mary Dugan," 1941
"Lady Be Good," 1941
"Married Bachelor," 1941
"H.M. Pulham Esq.," 1941
"Joe Smith American," 1942
Cairo, 1942
"Journey for Margaret," 1942
"Slightly Dangerous," 1943
"Sweet Rosie O'Grady," 1943
"Claudia," 1943
"The Canterville Ghost," 1944
"The Enchanted Cottage," 1945
"Those Endearing Young Charms," 1945
"The Searching Wind," 1946
"Claudia and David," 1946
"Lady Luck," 1946
"They Won't Believe Me," 1947
"Crossfire," 1947
"Relentless," 1948
"Sitting Pretty," 1948
"Adventure in Baltimore," 1951
"That Forsyte Woman," 1951
"Bride for Sale," 1951
"And Baby Makes Three," 1951
"The Second Woman," 1951
"Goodbye My Fancy," 1951
"The Half-Breed," 1952
"Secrets of the Incas," 1954
"Born Free," 1966
Television:

"Father Knows Best" (1954-60) (also on radio, 1949-54)
"Window on Main Street" (1961-62)
"Marcus Welby, M.D." (1969-76)
"Marcus Welby, M.D.: A Holiday Affair" (1988)
"Conspiracy of Love" (1987)
"Mercy or Murder?" (1987)
"The Return of Marcus Welby, M.D.," (1984)
"Little Women" (1978)
"My Darling Daughters' Anniversary" (1973)
"All My Darling Daughters" (1972)
"Vanished" (1971)

Here's Jane Wyatt's Obituary as reported by The New York Times.

Jane Wyatt, Mother on ‘Father Knows Best,’ Dies at 96

By ROBERT BERKVIST
Published: October 23, 2006

Jane Wyatt, who reigned as America’s ideal suburban mom during the 1950’s when she starred with Robert Young in the television sitcom “Father Knows Best” and who nearly lured Ronald Colman away from diplomacy and into a lamasery in Frank Capra’s 1937 film “Lost Horizon,” died on Friday at her home in Bel Air, Calif. She was 96.

Her death was confirmed by her publicist Meg McDonald, The Associated Press reported.

A petite, attractive brunette, Ms. Wyatt found it hard to avoid being typecast and wound up playing quite a few of what she described as “good wives of good men,” though she confessed she would have been happier “playing the murderer or the heavy.” She did get to play a few offbeat roles on stage and screen. In Philip Barry’s wryly titled play “The Joyous Season” (1934), she was a moody member of a family seething with petty feuds. As the wife of an attorney (Dana Andrews) in the 1947 film “Boomerang,” she became embroiled in the corruption surrounding a notorious murder. And in Lillian Hellman’s “Autumn Garden,” on Broadway in 1951, she was married to an indolent drifter (Fredric March) for whom she felt nothing but contempt.

For the most part, however, as she shuttled between Hollywood and Broadway, she was called upon to be loyal, loving and courageous. In “None but the Lonely Heart,” a 1944 film starring Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore, she was an adoring musician who pined for an indifferent Grant. She was cast as a courageous nurse in “Canadian Pacific” (1949); as the faithful, supportive wife of a naval airman (Gary Cooper) in “Task Force” (1949); and as a happily married (to David Wayne) mother of five in “My Blue Heaven” (1950).

Her Broadway credits included “Night Music” (1940), by Clifford Odets, a Group Theater production directed by Harold Clurman, in which she played a young woman who finds the love of her life in New York; and “Hope for the Best” (1945), by William McCleery, with Ms. Wyatt as a factory worker who helps a popular columnist (Franchot Tone) see the light of liberalism.

Jane Waddington Wyatt was born on Aug. 12, 1910, in Campgaw, N.J., into a family of distinguished lineage and grew up in New York City. Her father was an investment banker, her mother a writer for Commonweal and other publications. She attended the Chapin School and studied at Barnard College for two years before joining the apprentice school at the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, Mass. Back in New York she found work as an understudy in a Broadway show, and her name was removed from the New York Social Register. Clearly, the wicked stage was no place for proper young ladies.

Not daunted, she continued to audition and soon made her Broadway debut in 1931 in A. A. Milne’s “Give Me Yesterday,” as the daughter of an ambitious British politician (Louis Calhern). She achieved a breakthrough of sorts in 1933 when she succeeded Margaret Sullavan in “Dinner at Eight,” the hit comedy by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, and then toured in the show, leading to a contract offer from Universal and her Hollywood debut in “One More River” (1934), based on John Galsworthy’s last novel.

Ms. Wyatt said at one point that her favorite film role had been in “Task Force,” opposite Gary Cooper, but she is probably best remembered for her work in “Lost Horizon,” based on the novel by James Hilton and directed by Frank Capra. Most of the film’s action takes place in Tibet in a fabled region called Shangri-La, ruled by an ancient High Lama. A plane crash brings a small group of Westerners led by a British diplomat Bob Conway (Ronald Colman) to the lamasery. There, Colman meets and is entranced by Sondra (Ms. Wyatt), an attractive young woman who has grown up in Shangri-La. The High Lama is looking for a successor, Sondra is looking for love, and the Colman character must choose whether to stay or return to the war-torn world beyond the mountains. Critics agreed that Ms. Wyatt was luminous in the role.

Ms. Wyatt had already made a number of appearances in television dramas before she joined the cast of “Father Knows Best” in 1954. The show followed the lives of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield, with Robert Young as Jim Anderson, Ms. Wyatt as his wife, Margaret, and their three children, two of them teenagers. Family crises arose — a son’s first dance, a daughter’s first crush — and were firmly but lovingly resolved. When CBS dropped the show in 1955 there were so many protests from viewers that NBC was persuaded to pick it up. “Father Knows Best” returned to CBS for the 1959-1960 season, its final run of new episodes. The show brought Ms. Wyatt three Emmy Awards. In 1977 she returned to the role, this time as a grandmother, in two made-for-television movies, “The Father Knows Best Reunion” and “Father Knows Best: Home for Christmas.”

Ms. Wyatt married Edgar Bethune Ward in 1935. He died in 2000. She is survived by their two sons, Christopher Ward of Piedmont, Calif., and Michael Ward of Los Angeles; three grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

One of her more offbeat television parts was that of Amanda, the human mother of Mr. Spock, the pointy-eared Vulcan member of the “Star Trek” crew of space voyagers in the late 1960’s. She reprised the role in the 1986 film, “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.”

For a Review of Father Knows Best go to http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/fatherknows/fatherknows.htm