The show actually began life as a radio show that first aired in 1949 to 1954. Young also played the role of the father on the show, and was the only member of the radio cast to make the transition to television. Father Knows Best debuted on CBS in 1954, and ran until 1960, when Young left to pursue other projects. The show was so popular, however, that it continued to run in primetime reruns for the next three years. During its last (1959-60) season, the show ranked 6^th in its average Nielsen ratings.

The enduring popularity of the show was highlighted when the cast of Father Knows Best was reunited for a pair of TV movies in 1977, Father Knows Best Reunion and Father Knows Best: Home for Christmas. In the intervening years, Young starred in another hit series, Marcus Welby, M.D., for which he won another Emmy for his work on the show. Wyatt, meanwhile, went on to create another iconic character: Amanda Grayson, the mother of Spock, whom she played in the original Star Trek series and the 1986 movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. And Father Knows Best continues to enjoy a healthy afterlife both in syndicated reruns and in DVD box sets that allow a new generation of viewers to rediscover one of America’s best-loved fictional TV families.

The majority of the households that had sets at the start of the decade were affluent ones, and because of this, many 1950’s TV shows of the period were aimed at an upscale audience. The most acclaimed programs then were live dramatic anthologies such as Playhouse 90 and Kraft Television Theatre, which staged their own versions of popular Broadway plays, and lured acclaimed writers such as Rod Serling, Gore Vidal, Horton Foote and Paddy Chayefsky to do original plays for television. Many of these teleplays, such as Marty and Twelve Angry Men, later went on to become equally acclaimed and award-winning theatrical feature films. As a result, this period of television history became known as The Golden Age of Television.

Comedy was also a popular television genre in the fifties, and many of the most popular 1950’s TV shows were situation comedies, or sitcoms as they became more popularly known. Some of the most popular sitcoms of the era were I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best and The Honeymooners; many of these had their roots in radio shows which often brought the original casts and writing teams with them when they made the transition to TV. These sitcoms often presented idealized TV families and ways of life that many Americans soon accepted as the norm.

One of the reasons for the success of The Honeymooners is undoubtedly the social status of its characters. Unlike many other sitcoms of the period which featured prosperous middle-class families living in suburbia, the Kramdens and the Nortons are lower middle-class New Yorkers who live in a rundown tenement in Brooklyn. They are also portrayed as constantly squabbling, another contrast to the perfect couples who were the norm in 1950s television. Many of the episodes of the series revolved around Ralph’s get-rich-quick schemes, which would inevitably be frustrated.

The Honeymooners began life as a series of live sketches performed by Gleason during his many variety series. The sketches initially started with just Gleason and actress Pert Kelton as his acerbic wife; Kelton was eventually replaced by Meadows after she developed heart problems and was politically blacklisted. Eventually, Carney and Randolph were added to the sketches, and this became the cast of The Honeymooners show. Although initially a ratings success, the show fell out of the top 10 due to competition from the popular Perry Como Show, and Gleason decided to end the series and return to a variety show format. He sold all rights to the show to the network for just $1.5 million, a move which cost him millions in foregone revenues as The Honeymooners proved a bonanza in syndication.

Since then, The Honeymooners has played almost continuously in syndicated reruns, and has been released as successful DVD box sets, which also include the so-called “lost episodes,” re-edited filmed sketches from Gleason’s personal collection.

The series revolved around Lucy and Desi Ricardo, a young married couple: Desi is an orchestra leader and Lucy a frustrated housewife who constantly wants to join him in show business despite his belief that women should not entertain such ambitions. Other members of the cast of I Love Lucy included Vivian Vance and William Frawley as the Ricardos’ landlords, the Mertzes; an odd bit of casting considering that Vance was actually 23 years younger than her on-screen husband. In the second season, Lucy’s real-life pregnancy was worked into the show and became one of the first on-air pregnancies. The episode in which she gave birth, the airing of which was timed to coincide with her actual delivery, became what was then the most watched TV show ever, exceeding even the coverage for the presidential inauguration of Dwight Eisenhower the next morning.

After the series ended in its sixth season, the format continued as a series of hour-long specials called The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show; thirteen episodes featuring the cast of I Love Lucy were aired from 1957 to 1960. Sadly, the day after the last episode was filmed, Lucy filed for divorce from Desi Arnaz. The series remains popular and is still continually aired in syndication; DVD box sets of all the episodes, including the hour-long ones, were also released.