Quotes

[in 1983, on his Father Knows Best (1954) years] I wish there was some way I could tell kids not to believe it--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 . . . I think we were all well motivated, but what we did was run a hoax. Father Knows Best (1954) purported to be a reasonable facsimile of life. And the bad thing is that the model is so deceitful. It usually revolved around not wanting to tell the truth, either out of embarrassment or not wanting to hurt someone . . . If I could say anything to make up for all the years I lent myself to that kind of bullshit, it would be: "YOU Know Best".