TV'S Favorite FAMILIES

FATHER KNOWS BEST

Like many shows in television’s golden age, Father Knows Best started life as a radio program. Beginning Oct. 3, 1954, and running to May 23, 1960, it made the leap to television, where it became one of the most iconic family sitcoms ever. This was perhaps thanks to lead Robert Young, who starred in both versions. An interview with young published posthumously in 2015 in Films of the Golden Age indicated the actor’s desire for an “entirely new cast and different perspective” and a new focus as a “warm relationship show” for thetv version of Father Knows Best versus the straight-up comedy of the radio version. Following the lives of the middle-class Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield, Father Knows Best starred Young and Jane Wyatt as parents Jim and Margaret, with Elinor Donahue as daughter Betty (a.k.a. “Princess”), Billy Gray as son James Jr. (a.k.a. “Bud”) and Lauren Chapin as daughter Kathy (a.k.a. “Kitten”).