Father Knows Best shows

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tolivac

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Any Applianceville members have the "Father Knows Best"First Season on DVD?I got mine a few weeks ago-and they are really great!Perfect for you fans of the 50's.Portrays a family living in those days.In the Episode of "Bud's Encounter with the law"We have little Kathy that delights in using the familys new Westinghouse slant face washer-she throws anything in it that isn't tied down including Mom's apron containig the days mail and Bettys new Dress that she was going to wear to an important outing-girls day!Jim-Says after the bill for the machine was dug out of the soaked apron pocket-He says-"Don't Know if I should pay for it or sue for damages"Bud gets a soaked message from the police-you will need to watch to see how it turned out.
and on the Episode 'Matchmakers"The family tries to get their cousin to marry-Bud and Kathy are trying to put together a radio kit-and Betty is upset with her boy freind.Bud and Kathy's radio is either a transmitter or a fuse and breaker tester-but doesn't work as a radio.and in the kitchen is a mixer that can anyone who has seen the show identify?
 
Margret's Mixer

I recall Margret (Jane Wyatt) having a portable mixer in the kitchen. There was a episode in which Bud had attached sand paper to one beater and was using the mixer to sand some wood project he was making. Margret made it known to Bud she didn't appreciate her appliances being used in such a manner. The mixer looked like a Regent or Iona model from the late 50s. I recall the slant front Westinghouse washer as well. Jim Anderson's nickname for Kathy was "Kitten"
 
Bud's Mixer "sander"

Would like to see that episode-don't think its in the box set I have-season one.Also remember Jim's nickname for Betty was "Princess"Poor Bud-he didn't have a nickname.Would love to see Buds improvised drum sander made from the mixer.I haven't seen the portable mixer-just have seen the stand mixer on the kitchen counter in the season#one episodes.Don't recognize it.Was wondering if an Applianceville "mixer spotter" could identify it.Has a glass bowel and twin beaters.And a rather streamlined mixer head.Or was it Bud was using the stand mixers head for his sander?
 
oh, puh-leeeze.....

Kathy isn't "Kathy"....she's KITTEN!!

Betty ain't "Betty"....she's PRINCESS!!

No one was allowed to have more than cookies because, as Margaret Anderson always said, "It'll spoil your appetite for supper..."

Father Knows Best was the quintessential 50s sitcom...and where Father Knows Best left off, the Donna Reed Show picked up the beat and transitioned us into the Swinging Sixties.
 
Too bizarre...

The other night, I couldn't sleep for trying to remember what the actress who played "Princess"'s real name was...I don't know why this popped into my head right at bedtime, but it did...bugged the heck outa me...I thought and thought, then came up with "Angela Cartwright", which of course, is wrong (Angela was the littlest bratkid on Danny Thomas' "Make Room For Daddy" and was later on "Lost in Space")

I finally had to get up out of bed at 3 a.m. and get on the web and go to IMDB to find out for myself that it was Elinor Donahue who played "Princess," the perfect 50's teen girl...She was also Andy Griffith's girlfriend for awhile on his show.
 
Angela Cartwright was a toddler during the run of Father Knows Best, and appeared on Danny Thomas' "Make Room For Daddy" as his stepdaughter (daughter of second wife played by Marjorie Lord, in the show the first wife dies--the actress left the show---and he marries Marjorie Lord who comes with daughter Angela Cartwright).

Elinor Donihue married Harry Ackerman, who was vp at CBS in charge of television, and they remained married until he died (he was quite a bit older than her). She had a relatively stable life and did some acting after marriage. The other two child actors had stormier lives post Father Knows Best, as often is the case with child actors (whereas Donihue was not really a child actor but a teenaged actor, she was already mid-teens at the show's start and is in college at the show's end in 1961). Neither Billy Gray nor Loren Chapin had any acting career after the show. Chapin got into drugs and alcohol. Now she works as a greeter or hostess in Orlando, FL.

I'm not sure if Margaret and Jim Anderson would have approved of such a career, particularly not Jim's strict spinster Aunt Neva (the one with whom Kitten had the big Christmas blow up). All of Springfield would have been gossiping about it.

As a young child, the humor of Make Room For Daddy was beyond me, it was much easier to relate to the Andersons or to the visual antics of Lucille Ball, who fought with the Mertzes over an old automatic washer, baked 13 feet long loaves of bread, and burned dinners in her electric range. They wanted electric dishwashers but it was never clear if they ever got them from their husbands.
 
Something you may not know about Jane Wyatt

Jane Wyatt was a registered Republican and came from a Social Register New York background (raised in an affluent section of New Jersey), but she believed very deeply in personal liberties. She opposed HUAC, stood up for the Hollywood Ten, and was blacklisted because of her views.

Great video interview of Jane Wyatt, including the political issues: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3449760723830467666

 

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