The mention of Father Knows Best triggered a memory of Billy Gray, who played the son, Bud on that show.
Billy was a child actor in the late forties and through out the 50s into the early 60s. However after that in addition to tinkering with mechanical things and doing a little “inventing” and improving things, he was a professional motorcycle racer. Speedway motorcycles, two wheel sprint cars. 500cc engine putting out 60+ horsepower, burning nitro methane fuel until the mid 70s when the nitro was dropped. Then straight methanol. No brakes and weighting about 175 lbs.
I met him first in the mid 80s and again in the early 90s, when he helped us with a couple races by coming to race for darn little money and a chance to hang out and have a beer with us.
A very nice man whom I give what in my circle is a very high complement:
Billy Gray was a Racer. Not the fastest of his era, but by God he was a Racer.
Father Knows Best is put up there with The Donna Reed Show, Leave It, To Beaver, The days when family was family and was the priority in life. Thank you for the update on ‘Bud’. Paul Peterson began a group for child stars and how they could once again become a whole person so to speak.
When watching the old family shows, it was all peaches and cream but, unfortunately that was not always true. It was rumored that Robert Young? had a drinking problem. At least that is the name remembered. True or not, I don’t know but to watch his show one would have never guessed. And that might have been before the problem; perhaps it occurred while filming Marcus Welby.
I was very young when I watched Father Knows Best but I still remember Bud always being punished when he did something wrong. Unlike today’s parents the punishment was not revoked when one of the parents felt sorry for him. If he was told he couldn’t go to the dance, he didn’t go. There were no last minute reprieves so that the show had a happy ending.