Father Knows Best

Father Knows Best portrayed a "typical" American family. Living in the Midwest in a "white frame house" in a fictional town Springfield (perhaps the same Springfield where The Simpsons now reside), the family consists of the father, Jim Anderson (Robert Young); the mother, Margaret (June Whitley, followed by Jean Vander Pyl; a boy-crazy teenage daughter, Betty (Rhoda Williams); her younger teenage brother, Bud (Ted Donaldson); and the youngest daughter, Kathy (Norma Jean Nilsson).

Jim tries to be the autocratic ruler of his domestic circle and usually fails miserably, while Margaret is a consistent voice of reason. Much of the humor of the show revolves around smart-alecky repartee between Jim and the kids, as Margaret tries to rein in Jim's more boorish tendencies.

The show ran on NBC radio from 1949 til 1954. It moved to CBS television in the fall of 1954 and ran variously on NBC and CBS television until 1960. In the transition from radio to television, significant changes were made to the tone of the show; in particular, Jim became less autocratic and the smart-alecky repartee between father and family was dialed back a few notches.

For more information, see Wikipedia.

Series description provided by Frank Bell.