Professional Father

Professional Father is an American situation comedy that aired from January to July 1955 on CBS, under the sponsorship of Helene Curtis. The series stars Stephen Dunne. It replaced That's My Boy in the CBS schedule.[1]

Professional Father
GenreSituation comedy
Created byHarry Kronman
Written byHarry Kronman
Jerry Adelman
Bob Schiller
Directed byJohn Claar
Sherman Marks
StarringStephen Dunne
Barbara Billingsley
Beverly Washburn
Phyllis Coates
Joseph Kearns
Arthur Q. Bryan
Theme music composerPaul Baron
ComposerPaul Baron
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes18
Production
ProducerHarry Kronman
Running time22 minutes
Production companyCBS Television
Release
Original networkCBS
Picture formatBlack-and-white
Audio formatMonaural
Original releaseJanuary 8 (1955-01-08) –
July 2, 1955 (1955-07-02)

Overview

Dr. Tom Wilson (Dunne) is a child psychologist who is successful with his patients but less than effective with his own family. Barbara Billingsley played his wife, Helen Wilson.[2] Beverly Washburn played daughter Kathryn "Kit" Wilson, and Ted Marc portrayed the son, Tom Wilson, Jr., or "Twig".[3]

Phyllis Coates and Joseph Kearns played the neighbors, Madge (a nurse) and Fred Allen. Ann O'Neal starred as the housekeeper "Nana", and Arthur Q. Bryan played Mr. Boggs, the handyman. The series was created and produced by Harry Kronman, directed by John Claar and Sherman Marks, and partly written by Kronman, Jerry Adelman, and Bob Schiller.[4] Paul Baron and Lud Gluskin provided the music.[3]

Jack Gould panned the program's first episode in a review in The New York Times, writing that the premiere "was only a frantic and amateurish facsimile of farce, a witless mishmash that in any other medium but TV would have closed the same night."[5]

Production notes

Professional Father, a mid-season replacement for the sitcom That's My Boy, offered new episodes from January 8[2] to July 2, 1955.[3] Professional Father aired opposite The George Gobel Show on NBC[5] and The Stork Club, a talk show on ABC hosted by Sherman Billingsley. In the fall of 1955, Professional Father was succeeded in the 10 p.m. Eastern Saturday time slot with the first season of James Arness's Gunsmoke, which became the longest running western series in television history.[6]

Helene Curtis Industries, Inc. was a sponsor of the program,[2] which was filmed at General Service Studios before a live audience.[3]

References
  1. Oliver, Wayne (December 16, 1954). "Big Networks Favoring More Canned Shows". The Petaluma Argus-Courier. California, Petaluma. Associated Press. p. 16. Retrieved December 16, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. Adams, Val (December 14, 1954). "TV comedy show tries psychology". The New York Times. p. 50. Retrieved November 30, 2020 – via ProQuest.
  3. Leszczak, Bob (2 November 2012). Single Season Sitcoms, 1948-1979: A Complete Guide. McFarland. pp. 157–158. ISBN 978-0-7864-6812-6. Retrieved November 30, 2020.
  4. Alex McNeil, Total Television, New York: Penguin Books, 1997, p. 676
  5. Gould, Jack (January 10, 1955). "Television in Review: ' Professional Father' Is on Saturdays Same Time as Gobel: Tune In Gobel". The New York Times. p. 32. Retrieved November 30, 2020 – via ProQuest.
  6. Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Guide to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946-Present, New York: Ballantine Books, 1992, appendix
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.