Episode 9677: Father Knows Best- "Watching The Dog" (09-11-52)

The Old Time Radio Researchers Group

Father Knows Best (ep137) 1952 Watching the Dog
n early 1949 General Foods, represented by Young & Rubicam and Benton & Bowles, dropped its sponsorship of the Burns & Allen radio program which advertised its Maxwell House Coffee. Executives blamed the cancellation on the program’s weekly $17,500 price tag which they claimed had become too expensive for radio in a time of growing television power. Not ready to entirely abandon radio, General Foods (still through Benton & Bowles) committed $7,500 per week – less than half their budget for Burns & Allen – to a new domestic comedy, Father Knows Best.

The show was created by Ed James – who also scripted it initially – and developed by Rodney-Young Productions. Rodney-Young was a partnership formed years before between Eugene B. Rodney and Robert Young, the latter a Hollywood actor who would be cast as the series lead, the Anderson family patriarch Jim Anderson. Harold “Scrappy” Lambert, a former band vocalist who got into radio in the 1930s - packaged the entire deal.

Father Knows Best debuted on August 25, 1949 over NBC. In addition to Robert Young – a contract studio actor who earned over 100 film credits in 20 years on the big screen – Father Knows Best featured Jean Vander Pyl as mother Margaret Anderson for almost the entire run. Pyl’s biggest fame came later in television, most notably as the voice of Wilma Flintstone. The eldest child, Betty, was played by Rhoda Williams, the middle child, Bud, by Ted Donaldson, and the youngest, Kathy, primarily by Norma Jean Nilsson.