Best TV Dads of the 1950s & 1960s That Defined the Generation
What To Know
- TV dads of the 1950s and 1960s set the standard for wholesome, wise, and supportive father figures in American sitcoms.
- The era also introduced more dynamic and diverse father characters, reflecting changing family and cultural values.
Sometimes they know best. Other times, you wonder how they could be so clueless. Whether comforter or bumbler, curmudgeon or confidant, where would we — who were raised on television — be without our TV dads?
Since the medium’s infancy, viewers have leaned on our father figures for guidance and support in comedies, dramas, and even Westerns. In one of the most famous instances, the long-running sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, America watched a real-life family play an ever-so-slightly fictionalized version of themselves from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s.
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Ozzie Nelson was the unflappable dad, unfailingly good-humored as he and beatific Harriet raised two boys who grew up right before our eyes from adolescents to young adults — and in the case of Ricky Nelson, into a pop idol who eclipsed his famous parents in enduring stardom.
The Nelsons’ all-American family was the template for the wholesome sitcoms of the era, symbolized by Father Knows Best. Robert Young (the future Marcus Welby, M.D.) starred as insurance agent Jim Anderson, who, with loving wife Margaret (Jane Wyatt) managed an idealized household, doling out sage advice to his “Princess” Betty (Elinor Donahue), his namesake James Jr. or “Bud” (Billy Gray), and his “Kitten” Kathy (Lauren Chapin) through their growing pains.
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These wise, but rarely wisecracking, dads were anchors of calm as the 1950s bridged the more turbulent 1960s — none more so than even-keeled Ward Cleaver (Hugh Beaumont) of Leave It to Beaver, who always had a gentle life lesson for the mischievous Beav (Jerry Mathers) and his older brother Wally (Tony Dow).
Things got a little more excitable in the swank New York home of Danny Williams, a nightclub entertainer played by the brash Danny Thomas on Make Room for Daddy, later The Danny Thomas Show. Juggling career and fatherhood, Danny spoke loudly but was a softie when it came to little Rusty (Rusty Hamer) and Terry (Sherry Jackson).
1960s Most Revered Fathers
When rural comedies became the rage in the 1960s, no TV dad was more revered than Sheriff Andy Taylor of The Andy Griffith Show. With wry wit and seemingly infinite patience, he kept the peace in bucolic Mayberry and never lost his cool with adoring son Opie (Ron Howard) or childish Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts), and somehow managed to stay refreshingly clear of back-country caricature.
Meanwhile, the suburban status quo was well represented in the ’60s on My Three Sons. Fred MacMurray played Steve Douglas, an affable aviation engineer raising Mike (Tim Considine), Robbie (former Mickey Mouse Club member Don Grady), and Chip (Stanley Livingston) — and later adopting Ernie (Barry Livingston, Stanley’s actual brother) after Mike got married and left. Father and son were each other’s “Best Friend” (the catchy title tune) on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, with impish Eddie (Brandon Cruz) forever playing matchmaker for his widowed publisher dad, Tom Corbett (Bill Bixby).
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Lucky Dick Van Dyke, as Rob Petrie on the self-titled The Dick Van Dyke Show, had a gorgeous wife at home (Mary Tyler Moore in her star-making role as Laura) in New Rochelle, and when he wasn’t writing comedy for the dyspeptic Alan Brady (Carl Reiner), he helped care for little Ritchie (Larry Mathews). Though prone to slapstick, Van Dyke was Joe Normal compared to the outrageous dads from two macabre comedies that aired from 1964 to 1966: The Munsters‘ monstrously naive Herman Munster (Fred Gwynne), who could never understand why people were terrified by his Frankenstein visage; and the suave but decidedly weird Gomez Addams (John Astin) of the ooky and kooky The Addams Family, who never much cared what anyone thought.
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This article originally ran in the June 2020 Best TV Dads issue of ReMIND Magazine. You can purchase it at the link below.
