who starred in the original father knows best
Father Knows Best TV Show Watchlist. Premise. Perhaps the quintessentially comforting '50s sitcom, about the Anderson family---rock-steady Jim, sensible wife Margaret, and their kids Betty, Bud and Kathy---in the Midwestern town of Springfield. The series was adapted from a radio program, also starring Robert Young, that began in 1949. When CBS canceled the show in 1955, fan protests led to NBC picking it up and nurturing it into a hit. In fact, repeats aired in prime time for three years after the production of its last original episode.
Correction Appended. Jane Wyatt, who reigned as Americaâs ideal suburban mom during the 1950âs when she starred with Robert Young in the television sitcom âFather Knows Bestâ and who nearly lured Ronald Colman away from diplomacy and into a lamasery in Frank Capraâs 1937 film âLost Horizon,â died on Friday at her home in Bel Air, Calif. She was 96.