Father Knows Best is an American sitcom starring Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin.

The Anderson children were Betty (Rhoda Williams), Bud (Ted Donaldson) and Kathy (Norma Jean Nilsson).

In an interview published in the magazine Films of the Golden Age (Fall 2015), Young revealed about the radio program: "I never quite liked it because it had to have laughs.

Developed by Young and his partner Eugene Rodney, it was intended as a pilot for a Father Knows Best television series.

[3] In the episode, Peggy dreams of making it as an actress, but a talent scout who has raised her hopes just wants people for his acting school.

An article in the trade publication Billboard noted the program's cost (approximately $30,000 per week), the weakness of Honestly, Celeste!

[4] Scott Paper Company became the primary sponsor when the series moved to NBC in the fall of 1955, where it aired Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. (ET) for the next three seasons.

"[6] As the two eldest children aged from teenager to young adult, Betty (1956) and Bud (1959) graduated from high school and attended Springfield Junior College.

Father Knows Best had become so ingrained in American pop culture as an idyllic presentation of family life that in 1959, the U.S. Department of the Treasury commissioned a special 30-minute episode of the show titled "24 Hours in Tyrant Land".

Young left the series in 1960 at the height of the show's popularity to work on other projects, but reruns continued to air in primetime for another three years, on CBS from 1960 to 1962 and on ABC from 1962 to 1963.

On November 22, 1963, at 1:42 p.m. EST during a rerun of the third-season episode "Man About Town" on several ABC affiliates, mostly in the Mountain Time Zone, (WABC-TV in New York was airing a local repeat of The Ann Sothern Show), ABC News broke into the program with the first bulletin of the news of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

Originally built in 1941 during the production of a series of Blondie movies, this theatrical property continued to serve for many more years as part of the backlot of Columbia Pictures (now Warner Brothers Ranch in Burbank, California).

The house can also be seen in both its familiar Father Knows Best style and later renovated variations in episodes of Hazel, Bewitched, The Monkees, The Partridge Family and in numerous other television comedies and dramas.

Betty was the widowed mother of two girls, Jenny (Cari Anne Warder) and Ellen (Kyle Richards), while Bud and his wife Jean (Susan Adams) were the parents of a son, Robert "Robby" (Christopher Gardner).

[7] Betty tells Jim and Margaret that a lot of people at school think Bud's a snob.

When a girl scout comes to the door to sell cookies, Bud thinks Betty set it up and he hides in the closet.

Robert Young plays the role of Tate Ibsen, one of the passengers riding a stagecoach through Arizona in the year 1860.

One passenger named Duece (Rayford Barnes) has been convicted of murder and is handcuffed to deputy Watts (Robert Griffin).

Margaret's mother Martha (Sylvia Field) sends a letter saying she would like to have the family come to visit.

Margaret's father Emmett (Ernest Truex) feels his health is failing and he needs to sell his business to retire.

When a girl scout comes to the door to sell cookies, Bud thinks Betty set it up and he hides in the closet.

Turns out Kathy wasn't really asleep, but she pretended to be because she knew Jim wanted to see Ed's slides.

Margaret's friend Myrtle Davis (Vivi Janiss) tells her that she and her husband Ed (Robert Foulk) are taking dance lessons.

Once he sees Miss Luvois (Roxane Berard), the attractive French teacher, he decides to stay in the class.

Her and Margaret had entered Betty's picture in a lookalike contest to a popular movie star named Donna Stuart.

Betty and Margaret arrive in Hollywood and are greeted by publicity man Bert Layne (Judson Pratt).

Kathy must complete a nature folder for a school club by that night in order to be promoted to a higher rank the next day.

Kathy tells her father that she is not really wanting to graduate from junior high school as it is the happiest time of her life.

In March 1994, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were developing a dramatic adaptation of Father Knows Best for Universal Pictures.

[14][15] In July 2000, it was reported Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies were developing a new adaptation of the series that would be more light-hearted in comparison to McMurtry and Ossana's attempt.