America's Mom

(3 of 4)
E

ach episode would begin with an establishing shot of the Andersons’ handsome two-story house at 607 South Maple Street, with the picket fence out front and a back yard suitable for barbecues. Jim Anderson (Robert Young) would come home from work at the insurance company, give Margaret (Jane) a hello kiss on the mouth — they kissed a lot, in an affectionate way — then take off his work jacket and put on his sweater smock as the three children rushed in to greet him.

The kids were Betty, known as Princess (Elinor Donahue), who during the life of the show sailed through high school and college; Jim Jr., aka Bud (Billy Gray), earnest and accident-prone; and Kathy, or Kitten (Lauren Chapin), the runt of the litter. They were decent kids with cute problems — no abortions or drug use — that Father, or very occasionally Mother, would resolve as the ultimate arbiter in a kind of domestic civics lesson. Similarly, Jim and Margaret had a relationship free of dark clouds or even cold fronts. Adultery, frigidity, alcoholism were unknown to this couple who were so devoted to the proper resolution of their kids’ anxieties that they discussed them in bed — rather, in the separate beds the censors ordained for all of TV’s married couples.

Cancelled by CBS before the first season had run its course, FKB was an early example of a show saved by the fans. By popular demand it returned for five more seasons, with Wyatt winning three Emmys as Best Actress in a Comedy and Young two as Best Actor. After its retirement, FKB was rerun in prime time on all three networks till 1967. It lingered in syndication for another few decades, and in the pop-cultural mind as a time capsule of '50s decency (if you liked the show) or white-bread smugness (if you didn’t). Springfield, Jim and Margaret’s home town, was so generically, maybe genetically, perfect that Matt Groening just had to use it as the site for his Simpsons, who in their bickering and perennial father-knows-worst scenarios qualify as the anti-Andersons.

In retrospect, one or two of the show’s cast saw it as a toxic fantasy. “I wish there was some way I could tell kids not to believe it,” said Gray (who was, by the way, one of the great child actors). “The dialogue, the situations, the characters — they were all totally false. The show did everybody a disservice. The girls were always trained to use their feminine wiles, to pretend to be helpless to attract men. The show contributed to a lot of the problems between men and women that we see today.” (Chapin later had her own problems, like many a TV kid star. She was forced into heroin abuse and prostitution by a boyfriend and never quite regained her footing. Gray was mistakenly reported to have been a drug dealer, but no, he only played one in a movie. As for Donahue, she apparently enjoyed a maturity as pleasant and undramatic as the show had mapped out for Betty.)